The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 20
“All right,” says he. “That was all I wanted. You can go now, Champdivers.”
And as I was going out he added, with a laugh: “By the bye, I ought to apologise: I had no idea I was applying the torture!”
The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece of paper in his hand. He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly no mind to be polite.
“Here!” he cried. “Which of you fellows knows any English? O!” – spying me – “there you are, what’s your name! You’ll do. Tell these fellows that the other fellow’s dying. He’s booked; no use talking; I expect he’ll go by evening. And tell them I don’t envy the feelings of the fellow who spiked him. Tell them that first.”
I did so.
“Then you can tell ’em,” he resumed, “that the fellow, Goggle – what’s his name? – wants to see some of them before he gets his marching orders. If I got it right, he wants to kiss or embrace you, or some sickening stuff. Got that? Then here’s a list he’s had written, and you’d better read it out to them – I can’t make head or tail of your beastly names – and they can answer present, and fall in against that wall.”
It was with a singular movement of incongruous feelings that I read the first name on the list. I had no wish to look again on my own handiwork; my flesh recoiled from the idea; and how could I be sure what reception he designed to give me? The cure was in my own hand; I could pass that first name over – the doctor would not know – and I might stay away. But to the subsequent great gladness of my heart, I did not dwell for an instant on the thought, walked over to the designated wall, faced about, read out the name “Champdivers,” and answered myself with the word “Present.”
There were some half-dozen on the list, all told; and as soon as we were mustered, the doctor led the way to the hospital, and we followed after, like a fatigue-party, in single file. At the door he paused, told us “the fellow” would see each of us alone, and, as soon as I had explained that, sent me by myself into the ward. It was a small room, whitewashed; a south window stood open on a vast depth of air and a spacious and distant prospect; and from deep below, in the Grassmarket, the voices of hawkers came up clear and far away. Hard by, on a little bed, lay Goguelat. The sunburn had not yet faded from his face, and the stamp of death was already there. There was something wild and unmannish in his smile, that took me by the throat; only death and love know or have ever seen it. And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk.
He held out his arms as if to embrace me. I drew near with incredible shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with overwhelming disgust. But he only drew my ear down to his lips.
“Trust me,” he whispered. “Je suis bon bougre, moi. I’ll take it to hell with me and tell the devil.”
Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities? All that he thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could not clothe it otherwise than in the language of a brutal farce. Presently he bade me call the doctor; and when that officer had come in, raised himself a little up in his bed, pointed first to himself and then to me, who stood weeping by his side, and several times repeated the expression, “Frinds – frinds – dam frinds.”
To my great surprise the doctor appeared very much affected. He nodded his little bob-wigged head at us, and said repeatedly, “All right, Johnny – me comprong.”
Then Goguelat shook hands with me, embraced me again, and I went out of the room sobbing like an infant.
How often have I not seen it, that the most unpardonable fellows make the happiest exits! It is a fate we may well envy them. Goguelat was detested in life; in the last three days, by his admirable staunchness and consideration, he won every heart; and when word went about the prison the same evening that he was no more, the voice of conversation became hushed as in a house of mourning.
For myself, I was like a man distracted; I cannot think what ailed me: when I awoke the following day, nothing remained of it; but that night I was filled with a gloomy fury of the nerves. I had killed him; he had done his utmost to protect me; I had seen him with that awful smile. And so illogical and useless is this sentiment of remorse that I was ready, at a word or a look, to quarrel with somebody else. I presume the disposition of my mind was imprinted on my face; and when, a little after, I overtook, saluted, and addressed the doctor, he looked on me with commiseration and surprise.
I had asked him if it was true.
“Yes,” he said, “the fellow’s gone.”
“Did he suffer much?” I asked.
“Devil a bit; passed away like a lamb,” said he. He looked on me a little, and I saw his hand go to his fob. “Here, take that! no sense in fretting,” he said, and, putting a silver twopenny-bit in my hand, he left me.
I should have had that twopenny framed to hang upon the wall, for it was the man’s one act of charity in all my knowledge of him. Instead of that I stood looking at it in my hand and laughed out bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then went to the ramparts, and flung it far into the air like blood-money. The night was falling; through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the lamp-lighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and looked on moodily. As I was so standing a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and I turned about. It was Major Chevenix, dressed for the evening, and his neckcloth really admirably folded. I never denied the man could dress.
“Ah!” said he, “I thought it was you, Champdivers. So he’s gone?”
I nodded.
“Come, come,” said he, “you must cheer up. Of course it’s very distressing, very painful and all that. But do you know, it ain’t such a bad thing either for you or me? What with his death and your visit to him I am entirely reassured.”
So I was to owe my life to Goguelat at every point.
“I had rather not discuss it,” said I.
“Well,” said he, “one word more and I’ll agree to bury the subject. What did you fight about?”
“O, what do men ever fight about?” I cried.
“A lady?” said he.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Deuce you did!” said he. “I should scarce have thought it of him.”
And at this my ill-humour broke fairly out in words. “He!” I cried. “He never dared to address her – only to look at her and vomit his vile insults! She may have given him sixpence: if she did, it may take him to heaven yet!”
At this I became aware of his eyes set upon me with a considering look, and brought up sharply.
“Well, well,” said he. “Good-night to you, Champdivers. Come to me at breakfast-time to-morrow, and we’ll talk of other subjects.”
I fully admit the man’s conduct was not bad: in writing it down so long after the events I can even see that it was good.
CHAPTER IV
ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK-NOTES
I was surprised one morning, shortly after, to find myself the object of marked consideration by a civilian and a stranger. This was a man of the middle age; he had a face of a mulberry colour, round black eyes, comical tufted eyebrows, and a protuberant forehead, and was dressed in clothes of a Quakerish cut. In spite of his plainness, he had that inscrutable air of a man well-to-do in his affairs. I conceived he had been some while observing me from a distance, for a sparrow sat betwixt us quite unalarmed on the breech of a piece of cannon. So soon as our eyes met, he drew near and addressed me in the French language, which he spoke with a good fluency but an abominable accent.
“I have the pleasure of addressing Monsieur le Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves?” said he.
“Well,” said I, “I do not call myself all that; but I have a right to, if I choose. In the meanwhile I call myself plain Champdivers, at your disposal. It was my mother’s name, and good to go soldiering with.”
“I think not quite,” said he; “for if I remember rightly your mother also had the particle. Her name was Florimonde de Champdivers.”
“Right again,” said I, “and I am extremely pleased to meet a gentleman so well informed in my quarterings. Is monsieur Born himself?” This I said with a great air of assumption, partly to conceal the degree of curiosity with which my visitor had inspired me, and in part because it struck me as highly incongruous and comical in my prison garb and on the lips of a private soldier.
He seemed to think so too, for he laughed.
“No, sir,” he returned, speaking this time in English; “I am not ‘born,’ as you call it, and must content myself with dying, of which I am equally susceptible with the best of you. My name is Mr. Romaine – Daniel Romaine – a solicitor of London city, at your service; and, what will perhaps interest you more, I am here at the request of your great-uncle, the Count.”
“What!” I cried, “does M. de Kéroual de Saint-Yves remember the existence of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count kinship with a soldier of Napoleon?”
“You speak English well,” observed my visitor.
“It has been a second language to me from a child,” said I. “I had an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr. Vicary.”
A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer’s face.
“What!” he cried, “you knew poor Vicary?”
“For more than a year,” said I; “and shared his hiding-place for many months.”
“And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business,” said he. “Excellent man! It was on the affairs of M. de Kéroual that he went to that accursed country, from which he was never destined to return. Do you chance to know his end, sir?”
“I am sorry,” said I, “I do. He perished miserably at the hands of a gang of banditti, such as we call chauffeurs. In a word, he was tortured, and died of it. See,” I added, kicking off one shoe, for I had no stockings; “I was no more than a child, and see how they had begun to treat myself.”
He looked at the mark of my old burn with a certain shrinking. “Beastly people!” I heard him mutter to himself.
“The English may say so with a good grace,” I observed politely.
Such speeches were the coin in which I paid my way among this credulous race. Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have accepted the remark as natural in itself and creditable to my powers of judgment, but it appeared my lawyer was more acute.
“You are not entirely a fool, I perceive,” said he.
“No,” said I; “not wholly.”
“And yet it is well to beware of the ironical mood,” he continued. “It is a dangerous instrument. Your great uncle has, I believe, practised it very much, until it is now become a problem what he means.”
“And that brings me back to what you will admit is a most natural inquiry,” said I. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? how did you recognise me? and how did you know I was here?”
Carefully separating his coat skirts, the lawyer took a seat beside me on the edge of the flags.
“It is rather an odd story,” says he, “and, with your leave, I’ll answer the second question first. It was from a certain resemblance you bear to your cousin, M. le Vicomte.”
“I trust, sir, that I resemble him advantageously,” said I.
“I hasten to reassure you,” was the reply: “you do. To my eyes, M. Alain de Saint-Yves has scarce a pleasing exterior. And yet, when I knew you were here, and was actually looking for you – why, the likeness helped. As for how I came to know your whereabouts, by an odd enough chance, it is again M. Alain we have to thank. I should tell you, he has for some time made it his business to keep M. de Kéroual informed of your career; with what purpose I leave you to judge. When he first brought the news of your – that you were serving Buonaparte, it seemed it might be the death of the old gentleman, so hot was his resentment. But from one thing to another, matters have a little changed. Or I should rather say, not a little. We learned you were under orders for the Peninsula, to fight the English; then that you had been commissioned for a piece of bravery, and were again reduced to the ranks. And from one thing to another (as I say), M. de Kéroual became used to the idea that you were his kinsman and yet served with Buonaparte, and filled instead with wonder that he should have another kinsman who was so remarkably well informed of events in France. And now it became a very disagreeable question, whether the young gentleman was not a spy? In short, sir, in seeking to disserve you, he had accumulated against himself a load of suspicions.”
My visitor now paused, took snuff, and looked at me with an air of benevolence.
“Good God, sir!” says I, “this is a curious story.”
“You will say so before I have done,” said he. “For there have two events followed. The first of these was an encounter of M. de Kéroual and M. de Mauséant.”
“I know the man to my cost,” said I; “it was through him I lost my commission.”
“Do you tell me so?” he cried. “Why, here is news!”
“O, I cannot complain!” said I. “I was in the wrong. I did it with my eyes open. If a man gets a prisoner to guard and lets him go, the least he can expect is to be degraded.”
“You will be paid for it,” said he. “You did well for yourself and better for your king.”
“If I had thought I was injuring my emperor,” said I, “I would have let M. de Mauséant burn in hell ere I had helped him, and be sure of that! I saw in him only a private person in a difficulty: I let him go in private charity; not even to profit myself will I suffer it to be misunderstood.”
“Well, well,” said the lawyer, “no matter now. This is a foolish warmth – a very misplaced enthusiasm, believe me! The point of the story is that M. de Mauséant spoke of you with gratitude, and drew your character in such a manner as greatly to affect your uncle’s views. Hard upon the back of which, in came your humble servant, and laid before him the direct proof of what we had been so long suspecting. There was no dubiety permitted. M. Alain’s expensive way of life, his clothes and mistresses, his dicing and racehorses, were all explained: he was in the pay of Buonaparte, a hired spy, and a man that held the strings of what I can only call a convolution of extremely fishy enterprises. To do M. de Kéroual justice, he took it in the best way imaginable, destroyed the evidences of the one great-nephew’s disgrace – and transferred his interest wholly to the other.”
“What am I to understand by that?” said I.
“I will tell you,” says he. “There is a remarkable inconsistency in human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of occasion to observe. Selfish persons can live without chick or child, they can live without all mankind except perhaps the barber and the apothecary; but when it comes to dying, they seem physically unable to die without an heir. You can apply this principle for yourself. Viscount Alain, though he scarce guesses it, is no longer in the field. Remains, Viscount Anne.”
“I see,” said I, “you give a very unfavourable impression of my uncle, the Count.”
“I had not meant it,” said he. “He has led a loose life – sadly loose – but he is a man it is impossible to know and not to admire; his courtesy is exquisite.”
“And so you think there is actually a chance for me?” I asked.
“Understand,” said he: “in saying as much as I have done, I travel quite beyond my brief. I have been clothed with no capacity to talk of wills, or heritages, or your cousin. I was sent here to make but the one communication: that M. de Kéroual desires to meet his great-nephew.”
“Well,” said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat surrounded, “this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to the mountain.”
“Pardon me,” said Mr. Romaine; “you know already your uncle is an aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up, and his death shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about it – it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet.”
“From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,” said I; “but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men’s secrets, and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a truculent patriotism, to say the least.”
“I am first of all the lawyer of your family!” says he.
“That being so,” said I, “I can perhaps stretch a point myself. This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the bottom. Once at the bottom I am helpless.”
“And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,” returned the lawyer. “Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess, and on which I offer no opinion – ”
But here I interrupted him. “One word ere you go further. I am under no parole,” said I.
“I understood so much,” he replied, “although some of you French gentry find their word sit lightly on them.”
“Sir, I am not one of those,” said I.
“To do you plain justice, I do not think you one,” said he. “Suppose yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock,” he continued, “although I may not be able to do much, I believe I can do something to help you on your road. In the first place I would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or in my shoe.” And he passed me a bundle of bank-notes.
“No harm in that,” said I, at once concealing them.
“In the second place,” he resumed, “it is a great way from here to where your uncle lives – Amersham Place, not far from Dunstable; you have a great part of Britain to get through; and for the first stages, I must leave you to your own luck and ingenuity. I have no acquaintance here in Scotland, or at least” (with a grimace) “no dishonest ones. But further to the south, about Wakefield, I am told there is a gentleman called Burchell Fenn, who is not so particular as some others, and might be willing to give you a cast forward. In fact, sir, I believe it’s the man’s trade: a piece of knowledge that burns my mouth. But that is what you get by meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue now extant, M. de Saint-Yves, is your cousin, M. Alain.”
“If this be a man of my cousin’s,” I observed, “I am perhaps better to keep clear of him?”
“It was through some paper of your cousin’s that we came across his trail,” replied the lawyer. “But I am inclined to think, so far as anything is safe in such a nasty business, you might apply to the man Fenn. You might even, I think, use the Viscount’s name; and the little trick of family resemblance might come in. How, for instance, if you were to call yourself his brother?”
“It might be done,” said I. “But look here a moment. You propose to me a very difficult game: I have apparently a devil of an opponent in my cousin; and, being a prisoner of war, I can scarcely be said to hold good cards. For what stakes, then, am I playing?”
“They are very large,” said he. “Your great-uncle is immensely rich – immensely rich. He was wise in time; he smelt the Revolution long before; sold all that he could, and had all that was movable transported to England through my firm. There are considerable estates in England; Amersham Place itself is very fine; and he has much money, wisely invested. He lives, indeed, like a prince. And of what use is it to him? He has lost all that was worth living for – his family, his country; he has seen his king and queen murdered; he has seen all these miseries and infamies,” pursued the lawyer, with a rising inflection and a heightening colour; and then broke suddenly off, – “In short, sir, he has seen all the advantages of that government for which his nephew carries arms, and he has the misfortune not to like them.”
“You speak with a bitterness that I suppose I must excuse,” said I; “yet which of us has the more reason to be bitter? This man, my uncle, M. de Kéroual, fled. My parents, who were less wise perhaps, remained. In the beginning they were even republicans; to the end they could not be persuaded to despair of the people. It was a glorious folly, for which, as a son, I reverence them. First one and then the other perished. If I have any mark of a gentleman, all who taught me died upon the scaffold, and my last school of manners was the prison of the Abbaye. Do you think you can teach bitterness to a man with a history like mine?”
“I have no wish to try,” said he. “And yet there is one point I cannot understand: I cannot understand that one of your blood and experience should serve the Corsican. I cannot understand it: it seems as though everything generous in you must rise against that – domination.”
“And perhaps,” I retorted, “had your childhood passed among wolves, you would have been overjoyed yourself to see the Corsican Shepherd.”
“Well, well,” replied Mr. Romaine, “it may be. There are things that do not bear discussion.”
And with a wave of his hand he disappeared abruptly down a flight of steps and under the shadow of a ponderous arch.
CHAPTER V
ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE
The lawyer was scarce gone before I remembered many omissions; and chief among these, that I had neglected to get Mr. Burchell Fenn’s address. Here was an essential point neglected; and I ran to the head of the stairs to find myself already too late. The lawyer was beyond my view; in the archway that led downward to the Castle gate, only the red coat and the bright arms of a sentry glittered in the shadow; and I could but return to my place upon the ramparts.
I am not very sure that I was properly entitled to this corner. But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private, in the Castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should command a view on the chief thoroughfare!
It is not necessary that I should trouble you with the train of my reflections, which turned upon the interview I had just concluded and the hopes that were now opening before me. What is more essential, my eye (even while I thought) kept following the movement of the passengers on Princes Street, as they passed briskly to and fro – met, greeted, and bowed to each other – or entered and left the shops, which are in that quarter, and, for a town of the Britannic provinces, particularly fine. My mind being busy upon other things, the course of my eye was the more random; and it chanced that I followed, for some time, the advance of a young gentleman with a red head and a white greatcoat, for whom I cared nothing at the moment, and of whom it is probable I shall be gathered to my fathers without learning more. He seemed to have a large acquaintance: his hat was for ever in his hand; and I dare say I had already observed him exchanging compliments with half-a-dozen, when he drew up at last before a young man and a young lady whose tall persons and gallant carriage I thought I recognised.
It was impossible at such a distance that I could be sure, but the thought was sufficient, and I craned out of the embrasure to follow them as long as possible. To think that such emotions, that such a concussion of the blood, may have been inspired by a chance resemblance, and that I may have stood and thrilled there for a total stranger! This distant view, at least, whether of Flora or of some one else, changed in a moment the course of my reflections. It was all very well, and it was highly needful, I should see my uncle; but an uncle, a great-uncle at that, and one whom I had never seen, leaves the imagination cold; and if I were to leave the Castle, I might never again have the opportunity of finding Flora. The little impression I had made, even supposing I had made any, how soon it would die out! how soon I should sink to be a phantom memory, with which (in after days) she might amuse a husband and children! No, the impression must be clenched, the wax impressed with the seal, ere I left Edinburgh. And at this the two interests that were now contending in my bosom came together and became one. I wished to see Flora again; and I wanted some one to further me in my flight and to get me new clothes. The conclusion was apparent. Except for persons in the garrison itself, with whom it was a point of honour and military duty to retain me captive, I knew, in the whole country of Scotland, these two alone. If it were to be done at all, they must be my helpers. To tell them of my designed escape while I was still in bonds, would be to lay before them a most difficult choice. What they might do in such a case, I could not in the least be sure of, for (the same case arising) I was far from sure what I should do myself. It was plain I must escape first. When the harm was done, when I was no more than a poor wayside fugitive, I might apply to them with less offence and more security. To this end it became necessary that I should find out where they lived and how to reach it; and feeling a strong confidence that they would soon return to visit me, I prepared a series of baits with which to angle for my information. It will be seen the first was good enough.