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

said I.  ‘A qualm.  It has gone by.’

‘Are you sure?’ said he.  ‘You are as white as a sheet.’

‘Oh no, I assure you!  Nothing whatever.  I am my own man again,’ I said, though I could scarce command my tongue.

‘Well, shall I go on again?’ says he.  ‘Can you follow me?’

‘Oh, by all means!’ said I, and mopped my streaming face upon my sleeve, for you may be sure in those days I had no handkerchief.

‘If you are sure you can follow me.  That was a very sudden and sharp seizure,’ he said doubtfully.  ‘But if you are sure, all right, and here goes.  An affair of honour among you fellows would, naturally, be a little difficult to carry out, perhaps it would be impossible to have it wholly regular.  And yet a duel might be very irregular in form, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, loyal enough in effect.  Do you take me?  Now, as a gentleman and a soldier.’

His hand rose again at the words and hovered over me.  I could bear no more, and winced away from him.  ‘No,’ I cried,  ‘not that.  Do not put your hand upon my shoulder.  I cannot bear it.  It is rheumatism,’ I made haste to add.  ‘My shoulder is inflamed and very painful.’

He returned to his chair and deliberately lighted a cigar.

‘I am sorry about your shoulder,’ he said at last.  ‘Let me send for the doctor.’

‘Not in the least,’ said I.  ‘It is a trifle.  I am quite used to it.  It does not trouble me in the smallest.  At any rate, I don’t believe in doctors.’

‘All right,’ said he, and sat and smoked a good while in a silence which I would have given anything to break.  ‘Well,’ he began presently, ‘I believe there is nothing left for me to learn.  I presume I may say that I know all.’

‘About what?’ said I boldly.

‘About Goguelat,’ said he.

‘I beg your pardon.  I cannot conceive,’ said I.

‘Oh,’ says the major, ‘the man fell in a duel, and by your hand!  I am not an infant.’

‘By no means,’ said I.  ‘But you seem to me to be a good deal of a theorist.’

‘Shall we test it?’ he asked.  ‘The doctor is close by.  If there is not an open wound on your shoulder, I am wrong.  If there is—’  He waved his hand.  ‘But I advise you to think twice.  There is a deuce of a nasty drawback to the experiment—that what might have remained private between us two becomes public property.’

‘Oh, well!’ said I, with a laugh, ‘anything rather than a doctor!  I cannot bear the breed.’

His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far from comfortable.

Major Chevenix smoked awhile, looking now at his cigar ash, now at me.  ‘I’m a soldier myself,’ he says presently, ‘and I’ve been out in my time and hit my man.  I don’t want to run any one into a corner for an affair that was at all necessary or correct.  At the same time, I want to know that much, and I’ll take your word of honour for it.  Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor must be called in.’

‘I neither admit anything nor deny anything,’ I returned.  ‘But if this form of words will suffice you, here is what I say: I give you my parole, as a gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing taken place amongst us prisoners that was not honourable as the day.’

‘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?  Oh!’—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 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 two-penny-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 lamplighters 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?’

‘Oh, 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 chose.  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 St.-Yves