St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England by Stevenson (books for new readers TXT) 📕

‘It is more than I have the right to ask,’ I replied; ‘but among gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural.  If your brother and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his animosity.’  (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.)  ‘Ah, my dear young lady,’ I continued, ‘there are many of your countrymen languishing in my country, even as I do here.  I can but hope there is found some French lady to convey to each of them the priceless consolation of her sympathy.  You have given me alms; and more than alms—hope; and while you were absent I was not forgetful.  Suffer me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to make a return; and for the prisoner’s sake deign to accept this trifle.’

So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke out with a cry.

‘Why, how did you know my name?’ she exclaimed.

‘When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,’ said I, bowing.  ‘But indeed, there was no magic in the matter.  A lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I was quick to remark and cherish it.’

‘It is very, very beautiful,’ said she, ‘and I shall be always proud of the inscription.—Come, Ronald, we must be going.’  She bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could have sworn) with a heightened colour.

I was overjoyed: my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace till she had made it up to me.  No greenhorn in matters of the heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at the court of my lady.  The lion might be ill chiselled; it was mine.  My hands had made and held it; my knife—or, to speak more by the mark, my rusty nail—had traced those letters; and simple as the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was grateful and that I found her fair.  The boy had looked like a gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy.  And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I could not sufficiently admire it.  It seemed to me finer than wit, and more tender than a caress.  It said (plain as language), ‘I do not and I cannot know you.  Here is my brother—you can know him; this is the way to me—follow it.’

I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that discharged our visitors into the street.  Our little market was no sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according to fancy in any part of our quarters.

I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed—as the sight-seers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were susceptible beyond reason.  Some of these old whiskerandos, originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies, and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations, could ill brook their change of circumstance.  There was one man of the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was otherwise unfitted—that of maréchal des logis in the 22nd of the line.  In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a brawling, bruising ignorant pillar of low pothouses.  As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often on myself.

It was so now.  Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near.  He wore an air of hateful mirth; a set of young fools, among whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable pleasantries.  He took a place beside me, spread out his rations, drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.  What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel.  For my part, I thought at first I should have died.  I had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by her name.  Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a volume of living anger that surprised myself.

‘Are you nearly done?’ I asked.  ‘Because if you are, I am about to say a word or two myself.’

‘Oh, fair play!’ said he.  ‘Turn about!  The Marquis of Carabas to the tribune.’

‘Very well,’ said I.  ‘I have to inform you that I am a gentleman.  You do not know what that means, hey?  Well, I will tell you.  It is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings.  The lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion.  I am a gentleman, and I cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt.  Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us.  Here is your health!’ said I, and pledged him in the prison beer.  ‘You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,’ I continued, ‘who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to me and some others of us mendicants.  If the Emperor’—saluting—‘if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from your gross body.  I cannot do that; I cannot take away what His Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you—I promise you, Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.’

I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed.  But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself.  Whatever the cause, at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing (to do him justice) handsomely.

‘And I promise you, by the devil’s horns, that you shall have the chance!’ said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him scrupulous honour.

The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the speed of wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of the spectators at a horse-race; and indeed you must first have tasted the active life of a soldier, and then mouldered for a while in the tedium of a jail, in order to understand, perhaps even to excuse, the delight of our companions.  Goguelat and I slept in the same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee of honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates.  They chose for president a sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the army, an excellent military subject, and a good man.  He took the most serious view of his functions, visited us both, and reported our replies to the committee.  Mine was of a decent firmness.  I told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken had on several occasions given me alms.  I reminded him that, if we were now reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill-boxes for charity, it was something very new for soldiers of the Empire.  We had all seen bandits standing at a corner of a wood truckling for copper halfpence, and after their benefactors were gone spitting out injuries and curses.  ‘But,’ said I, ‘I trust that none of us will fall so low.  As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support that of the army.  You are my elder and my superior: tell me if I am not right.’

He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three fingers on the back.  ‘C’est bien, mon enfant,’ says he, and returned to his committee.

Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself.  ‘I do not like apologies nor those that make them,’ was his only answer.  And there remained nothing but to arrange the details of the meeting.  So far as regards place and time we had no choice; we must settle the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round had passed by, and in the open middle of the shed under which we slept.  The question of arms was more obscure.  We had a good many tools, indeed, which we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants.  At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined twine—the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe.  It was a strange thing to feel in one’s hand this weapon, which was no heavier than a riding-rod, and which it was difficult to suppose would prove more dangerous.  A general oath was administered and taken, that no one should interfere in the duel nor (suppose it to result seriously) betray the name of the survivor.  And with that, all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment.

The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its further passage.  Leclos, the sergeant-major, set us in our stations, engaged our wands, and left us.  To avoid blood-stained clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet.  The man was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong.  In the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a parade.  I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the same moment.  It was to play my life upon one card: should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults, and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most readily expose.

‘Allez!’ said the sergeant-major.

Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted.  As it was, he did no more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.

When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads crowded around me.  I sat up.  ‘What is it?’ I exclaimed.

‘Hush!’ said the sergeant-major.  ‘Blessed be God, all is well.’