The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 20

“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.

Perhaps two days after, Master Ronald put in an appearance by himself. I had no hold upon the boy, and pretermitted my design till I should have laid court to him and engaged his interest. He was prodigiously embarrassed, not having previously addressed me otherwise than by a bow and blushes; and he advanced to me with an air of one stubbornly performing a duty, like a raw soldier under fire. I laid down my carving; greeted him with a good deal of formality, such as I thought he would enjoy; and finding him to remain silent, branched off into narratives of my campaigns such as Goguelat himself might have scrupled to endorse. He visibly thawed and brightened; drew more near to where I sat; forgot his timidity so far as to put many questions; and at last, with another blush, informed me he was himself expecting a commission.

“Well,” said I, “they are fine troops, your British troops in the Peninsula. A young gentleman of spirit may well be proud to be engaged at the head of such soldiers.”

“I know that,” he said; “I think of nothing else. I think shame to be dangling here at home, and going through with this foolery of education, while others, no older than myself, are in the field.”

“I cannot blame you,” said I. “I have felt the same myself.”

“There are – there are no troops, are there, quite so good as ours?” he asked.

“Well,” said I, “there is a point about them: they have a defect – they are not to be trusted in a retreat. I have seen them behave very ill in a retreat.”

“I believe that is our national character,” he said – God forgive him! – with an air of pride.

“I have seen your national character running away at least, and had the honour to run after it!” rose to my lips, but I was not so ill-advised as to give it utterance. Every one should be flattered, but boys and women without stint; and I put in the rest of the afternoon narrating to him tales of British heroism, for which I should not like to engage that they were all true.

“I am quite surprised,” he said at last. “People tell you the French are insincere. Now, I think your sincerity is beautiful. I think you have a noble character. I admire you very much. I am very grateful for your kindness to – to one so young,” and he offered me his hand.

“I shall see you again soon?” said I.

“O, now! Yes, very soon,” said he. “I – I wish to tell you. I would not let Flora – Miss Gilchrist, I mean – come to-day. I wished to see more of you myself. I trust you are not offended: you know, one should be careful about strangers.”

I approved his caution, and he took himself away: leaving me in a mixture of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one so gullible, part raging that I should have burned so much incense before the vanity of England; yet, in the bottom of my soul, delighted to think I had made a friend – or, at least, begun to make a friend – of Flora’s brother.