Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I

The day which followed the events I have mentioned was a sad one to me. The fatigue and the excitement together brought on fever with De Meudon. His head became attacked, and before evening his faculties began to wander. All the strange events of his checkered life were mixed up in his disturbed intellect; and he talked on for hours about Italy, and Egypt, the Tuileries, La Vendee, and Ireland, without ceasing. The entire of the night he never slept, and the next day the symptoms appeared still more aggravated. The features of his insanity were wilder and less controllable. He lost all memory of me; and sometimes the sight of me at his bedside threw him into most terrific paroxysms of passion; while at others, he would hold my hand for hours together, and seem to feel my presence as something soothing. His frequent recurrence to the scene in the churchyard showed the deep impression it had made upon his mind, and how fatally it had influenced the worst symptoms of his malady.

Thus passed two days and nights. On the third morning, exhaustion seemed to have worn him into a false calm. His wild, staring eye had become heavier, his movements less rapid; the spot of color had left his cheek; the mouth was pinched up and rigid; and a flatness of the muscles of the face betokened complete depression. He spoke seldom, and with a voice hoarse and cavernous, but no longer in the tone of wild excitement as before. I sat by his bedside still and in silence, my own sad thoughts my only company. As it grew later, the sleepless days and nights I had passed, and the stillness of the sickroom, overcame me, and I slept.

I awoke with a start; some dreamy consciousness of neglect had flashed across me, and I sat up. I peeped into the bed, and started back with amazement. I looked again, and there lay De Meudon, on the outside of the clothes, dressed in his full uniform, – the green coat and white facing, the large gold epaulettes, the brilliant crosses on the breast; his plumed chapeau lay at one side of him, and his sabre at the other. He lay still and motionless. I held the candle near his face, and could mark a slight smile that curled his cold lip, and gave to his wan and wasted features something of their former expression.

“Oui, mon cher,” said he, in a weak whisper, as he took my hand and kissed it, “c’est bien moi.” And then added, “It was another of my strange fancies to put on these once more before I died; and when I found you sleeping, I arose and did so. I have changed something since I wore this last: it was at a ball at Cambacérès.”

My joy at hearing him speak once more with full possession of his reason, was damped by the great change a few hours had worked in his appearance. His skin was cold and clammy; a gluey moisture rested on his cheek; and his teeth were dark and discolored. A slimy froth, too, was ever rising to his lips as he spoke; while at every respiration his chest heaved and waved like a stormy sea.

“You are thirsty, Charles,” said I, stooping over him to wet his lips.

“No,” said he, calmly, “I have but one thing which wants relief; it is here.”

He pressed his hand to his heart as he spoke, while such a look of misery as crossed his features I never beheld.

“Your heart – ”

“Is broken,” said he, with a sigh. For some minutes he said nothing, then whispered: “Take my pocket-book from beneath my pillow; yes, that ‘s it. There is a letter you ‘ll give my sister; you ‘ll promise me that? Well, the other is for Lecharlier, the chef of the Polytechnique at Paris; that is for you, – you must be un élève there. There are some five or six thousand francs, – it ‘s all I have now: they are yours; Marie is already provided for. Tell her – But no; she has forgiven me long since, – I feel it. You ‘ll one day win your grade, – high up; yes, you must do so. Perhaps it may be your fortune to speak with General Bonaparte; if so, I beg you say to him, that when Charles de Meudon was dying, in exile, with but one friend left of all the world, he held this portrait to his lips, and with his last breath he kissed it.”

The fervor of the action drew the blood to his face and temples, which as suddenly became pale again. A shivering ran through his limbs; a quick heaving of his bosom; a sigh; and all was still. He was dead!

The stunning sense of deep affliction is a mercy from on high. Weak human faculties, long strained by daily communing with grief, would fall into idiocy were their acuteness not blunted and their perception rendered dull. It is for memory to trace back through the mazes of misery the object of our sorrow, as the widow searches for the corpse of him she loved amid the slain upon the battlefield.

I sat benumbed with sorrow, a vague desire for the breaking day my only thought. Already the indistinct glimmerings of morning were visible, when I heard the sounds of men marching along the road towards the house. I could mark, by the clank of their firelocks and their regular step, that they were soldiers. They halted at the door of the cabin, whence a loud knocking now proceeded.

“Halloo, there!” said a voice, whose tones seemed to sink into my very heart; “halloo, Peter! get up and open the door.”

“What’s the matter?” cried the old man, starting up, and groping his way towards the door.

The sound of several voices and the noise of approaching footsteps drowned the reply; and the same instant the door of the little room in which I sat opened, and a sergeant entered.

“Sorry to disturb ye, sir,” said he, civilly; “but duty can’t be avoided. I have a warrant to arrest Captain de Meudon, a French officer that is concealed here. May I ask where is he?”

I pointed to the bed. The sergeant approached, and by the half-light could just perceive the glitter of the uniform, as the body lay shaded by the curtain.

“I arrest you, sir, in the King’s name,” said he. “Halloo, Kelly! this is your prisoner, isn’t he?”

A head appeared at the door as he spoke; and as the eyes wandered stealthily round the chamber, I recognized, despite the change of color, the wretch who led the party at the churchyard.

“Come in, damn ye,” said the sergeant, impatiently; “what are you afraid for? Is this your man? Halloo, sir!” said he, shaking the corpse by the shoulder.

“You must call even louder yet,” said I, while something like the fury of a fiend was working within me.

“What!” said the sergeant, snatching up the light and holding it within the bed. He started back in horror as he did so, and called out, “He is dead!”

Kelly sprang forward at the word, and seizing the candle, held it down to the face of the corpse; but the flame rose as steadily before those cold lips as though the breath of life had never warmed them.

“I ‘ll get the reward, anyhow, sergeant, won’t I?” said the ruffian, while the thirst for gain added fresh expression to his savage features.

A look of disgust was the only reply he met with, as the sergeant walked into the outer room, and whispered something to the man of the house. At the same instant the galloping of a horse was heard on the causeway. It came nearer and nearer, and ceased suddenly at the door, as a deep voice shouted out, —

“Well! all right, I hope, sergeant. Is he safe?”

A whispered reply, and a low, muttered sound of two or three voices followed, and Barton – the same man I had seen at the fray in Malone’s cabin – entered the room. He approached the bed, and drawing back the curtains, rudely gazed on the dead man, while over his shoulder peered the demoniac countenance of the informer Kelly, his savage features working in anxiety lest his gains should have escaped him.

Barton’s eye ranged the little chamber till it fell on me, as I sat still and motionless against the wall. He started slightly, and then advancing close, fixed his piercing glance upon me.

“Ha!” cried he, “you here! Well, that is more than I looked for this morning. I have a short score to settle with you. Sergeant, here ‘s one prisoner for you, at any rate.”

“Yes,” said Kelly, springing forward, “he was at the churchyard with the other; I’ll swear to that.”

“I think we can do without your valuable aid in this business,” said Barton, smiling maliciously. “Come along, young gentleman; we ‘ll try and finish the education that has begun so prosperously.”

My eyes involuntarily turned to the table where De Meudon’s pistols were lying. The utter hopelessness of such a contest deterred me not, I sprang towards them; but as I did so, the strong hand of Barton was on my collar, and with a hoarse laugh, he threw me against the wall, as he called out, —

“Folly, boy! mere folly. You are quite sure of the rope without that. Here, take him off!”

As he spoke, two soldiers seized me on either side, and before a minute elapsed, pinioned my arms behind my back. In another moment the men fell in, the order was given to march, and I was led away between the files, Kelly following at the rear; while Barton’s voice might be heard issuing from the cabin, as he gave his orders for the burial of the body, and the removal of all the effects and papers to the barrack at Glencree.

We might have been about an hour on the road when Barton overtook us. He rode to the head of the party, and handing a paper to the sergeant, muttered some words, among which I could only gather the phrase, “Committed to Newgate;” then, turning round in his saddle, he fixed his eyes on Kelly, who, like a beast of prey, continued to hang upon the track of his victim.

“Well, Dan,” cried he, “you may go home again now. I am afraid you ‘ve gained nothing this time but character.”

“Home!” muttered the wretch in a voice of agony; “is it face home after this morning’s work?”

“And why not, man? Take my word for it, the neighbors will be too much afraid to meddle with you now.”

“Oh, Mister Barton! oh, darling! don’t send me back there, for the love of Heaven! Take me with you!” cried the miserable wretch, in tones of heart-moving misery.

“Oh, young gentleman,” said he, taming towards me, and catching me by the sleeve, “spake a word for me this day!”

“Don’t you think he has enough of troubles of his own to think of, Dan?” said Barton, with a tone of seeming kindliness. “Go back, man; go back! there ‘s plenty of work before you in this very county. Don’t lay your hand on me, you scoundrel; your touch would pollute a hangman.”

The man fell back as if stunned at the sound of these words; his face became livid, and his lips white as snow. He staggered a pace or two, like a drunken man, and then stood stock-still, his eyes fixed upon the road.

“Quick march!” said the sergeant.

The soldiers stepped out again; and as we turned the angle of the road, about a mile farther, I beheld Kelly still standing in the self same attitude we left him. Barton, after some order to the sergeant, soon left us, and we continued our march till near nine o’clock, when the party halted to breakfast. They pressed me to eat with every kind entreaty, but I could taste nothing, and we resumed our road after half an hour. But the day becoming oppressively hot, it was deemed better to defer our march till near sunset; we stopped, then, during the noon, in a shady thicket near the roadside, where the men, unbuckling their knapsacks and loosening their stocks, lay down in the deep grass, either chatting together or smoking. The sergeant made many attempts to draw me into conversation, but my heart was too full of its own sensations either to speak or listen; so he abandoned the pursuit with a good grace, and betook himself to his pipe at the foot of a tree, where, after its last whiff escaped, he sank into a heavy sleep.

Such of the party as were not disposed for sleep gathered together in a little knot on a small patch of green grass, in the middle of a beech clump, where, having arranged themselves with as much comfort as the place permitted, they began chatting away over their life and its adventures pleasantly and freely. I was glad to seek any distraction from my own gloomy thoughts in listening to them, as I lay only a few yards off; but though I endeavored with all my might to attend to and take interest in their converse, my thoughts always turned to him I had lost forever, – the first, the only friend I had ever known. All care for myself and what fortune awaited me was merged in my sorrow for him. If not indifferent to my fate, I was at least unmindful of it, and although the words of those near me fell upon my ear, I neither heard nor marked them.

From this dreamy lethargy I was at last suddenly aroused by the hearty bursts of laughter that broke from the party, and a loud clapping of hands that denoted their applause of something or somebody then before them.

“I say, George,” said one of the soldiers, “he’s a queer ‘un, too, that piper.”

“Yes, he ‘s a droll chap,” responded the other solemnly, as he rolled forth a long curl of smoke from the angle of his mouth.

“Can you play ‘Rule Britannia,’ then?” asked another of the men.