St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England. Роберт Стивенсон
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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 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?’
Carefull 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