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

But Alain turned at bay. “One trivial point seems to have escaped you, Master Attorney, or your courage is more than I gave you credit for. The English are none too popular in Paris as yet, and this is not the most scrupulous quarter. One blast of this whistle, a cry of ‘Espion Anglais!’ and two Englishmen – ”

“Say three,” Mr. Romaine interrupted, and strode to the door. “Will Mr. Burchell Fenn be good enough to step upstairs?”

And here let me cry “Halt.” There are things in this world – or that is my belief – too pitiful to be set down in writing, and of these, Alain’s collapse was one. It may be, too, that Mr. Romaine’s British righteousness accorded rather ill with the weapon he used so unsparingly. Of Fenn I need only say, that the luscious rogue shouldered through the doorway as though he had a public duty to discharge, and only the contrariness of circumstances had prevented his discharging it before. He cringed to Mr. Romaine, who held him and the whole nexus of his villainies in the hollow of his hand. He was even obsequiously eager to denounce his fellow-traitor. Under a like compulsion, he would (I feel sure) have denounced his own mother. I saw the sturdy Dudgeon’s mouth working like a bull-terrier’s over a shrewmouse. And between them, Alain had never a chance. Not for the first time in this history, I found myself all but taking sides with him in sheer repulsion from the barbarity of the attack. It seemed that it was through Fenn that Mr. Romaine had first happened on the scent; and the greater rogue had held back a part of the evidence, and would trade it now – “having been led astray – to any gentleman that would let bygones be bygones.” And it was I, at length, who interposed when my cousin was beaten to his knees, and, having dismissed Mr. Burchell Fenn, restored the discussion to a businesslike footing. The end of it was, that Alain renounced all his claims, and accepted a yearly pension of six thousand francs. Mr. Romaine made it a condition that he should never set foot again in England; but seeing that he would certainly be arrested for debt within twenty-four hours of his landing at Dover, I thought this unnecessary.

“A good day’s work,” said the lawyer, as we stood together in the street outside.

But I was silent.

“And now, Mr. Anne, if I may have the honour of your company at dinner – shall we say Tortoni’s? – we will on our way step round to my hotel, the Quatre Saisons, behind the Hôtel de Ville, and order a calèche and four to be in readiness.”

CHAPTER XXXVI

I GO TO CLAIM FLORA

Behold me now speeding northwards on the wings of love, ballasted by Mr. Romaine. But, indeed, that worthy man climbed into the calèche with something less than his habitual gravity. He was obviously and pardonably flushed with triumph. I observed that now and again he smiled to himself in the twilight, or drew in his breath and emitted it with a martial pouf! And when he began to talk – which he did as soon as we were clear of the Saint-Denis barrier – the points of the family lawyer were untrussed. He leaned back in the calèche with the air of a man who had subscribed to the Peace of Europe, and dined well on top of it. He criticised the fortifications with a wave of his toothpick, and discoursed derisively and at large on the Emperor’s abdication, on the treachery of the Duke of Ragusa, on the prospects of the Bourbons, and on the character of M. Talleyrand, with anecdotes which made up in raciness for what they lacked in authenticity.

We were bowling through La Chapelle, when he pulled out his snuff-box and proffered it.

“You are silent, Mr. Anne.”

“I was waiting for the chorus,” said I. “’Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves: and Britons never, never, never – ’ Come, out with it!”

“Well,” he retorted: “and I hope the tune will come natural to you before long.”

“O, give me time, my dear sir! I have seen the Cossacks enter Paris, and the Parisians decorate their poodles with the Cross of the Legion of Honour. I have seen them hoist a wretch on the Vendôme column, to smite the bronze face of the man of Austerlitz. I have seen the salle of the Opera rise to applaud a blatant fat fellow singing the praises of the Prussian – and to that tune of Vive Henri Quatre! I have seen, in my cousin Alain, of what the best blood in France is capable. Also, I have seen peasant boys – unripe crops of the later levies – mown down by grapeshot – raise themselves on their elbows to cheer for France and the little man in grey. In time, Mr. Romaine, no doubt my memory will confuse these lads with their betters, and their mothers with the ladies of the salle de l’Opéra: just as in time, no doubt, I shall find myself Justice of the Peace, and Deputy-Lieutenant of the shire of Buckingham. I am changing my country, as you remind me: and, on my faith, she has no place for me. But, for the sake of her, I have explored and found the best of her – in my new country’s prisons. And I repeat, you must give me time.”

“Tut, tut!” was his comment, as I searched for tinder box and sulphur match to relight my segar. “We must get you into Parliament, Mr. Anne. You have the gift.”

As we approached Saint-Denis, the flow of his discourse sensibly slackened: and, a little beyond, he pulled his travelling cap over his ears, and settled down to slumber. I sat wide awake beside him. The spring night had a touch of chill in it, and the breath of our horses, streaming back upon the lamps of the calèche, kept a constant nimbus between me and the postillions. Above it, and over the black spires of the poplar avenues, the regiments of stars moved in parade. My gaze went up to the ensign of their noiseless evolutions, to the pole-star, and to Cassiopeia swinging beneath it, low in the north, over my Flora’s pillow —my pole-star and journey’s end.

Under this soothing reflection I composed myself to slumber; and awoke, to my surprise and annoyance, in a miserable flutter of the nerves. And this fretfulness increased with the hours, so that from Amiens to the coast Mr. Romaine must have had the devil of a time with me. I bolted my meals at the way-houses, chafing all the while at the business of the relays. I popped up and down in the calèche like a shot on a hot shovel. I cursed our pace. I girded at the lawyer’s snuff-box, and could have called him out upon Calais sands, when we reached them, to justify his vile methodical use of it. By good fortune we arrived to find the packet ready with her warps, and bundled ourselves on board in a hurry. We sought separate cabins for the night, and in mine, as in a sort of moral bath, the drastic cross seas of the Channel cleansed me of my irritable humour, and left me like a rag, beaten and hung on a clothes-line to the winds of heaven.

In the grey of the morning we disembarked at Dover; and here Mr. Romaine had prepared a surprise for me. For, as we drew to the shore, and the throng of porters and waterside loafers, on what should my gaze alight but the beaming countenance of Mr. Rowley! I declare it communicated a roseate flush to the pallid cliffs of Albion. I could have fallen on his neck. On his side the honest lad kept touching his hat and grinning in a speechless ecstasy. As he confessed to me later, “It was either hold my tongue, sir, or call for three cheers.” He snatched my valise and ushered us through the crowd, to our hotel-breakfast. And, it seemed, he must have filled up his time at Dover with trumpetings of our importance: for the landlord welcomed us on the perron, obsequiously cringing; we entered in a respectful hush that might have flattered his Grace of Wellington himself; and the waiters, I believe, would have gone on all-fours, but for the difficulty of reconciling that posture with efficient service. I knew myself at last for a Personage: a great English land-owner: and did my best to command the mien proper to that tremendous class when, the meal despatched, we passed out between the bowing ranks to the door where our chaise stood ready.

“But hullo!” said I at sight of it; and my eye sought Rowley’s.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I took it on myself to order the colour, and hoping it wasn’t a liberty.”

“Claret and invisible green – a duplicate, but for a bullet-hole wanting.”

“Which I didn’t like to go so far on my own hook, Mr. Anne.”

“We fight under the old colours, my lad.”

“And walk in and win this time, sir, strike me lucky!”

While we bowled along the first stage towards London – Mr. Romaine and I within the chaise and Rowley perched upon the dickey – I told the lawyer of our progress from Aylesbury to Kirkby-Lonsdale. He took snuff.

“Forsitan et hæc olim– that Rowley of yours seems a good-hearted lad, and less of a fool than he looks. The next time I have to travel post with an impatient lover, I’ll take a leaf out of his book and buy me a flageolet.”

“Sir, it was ungrateful of me – ”

“Tut, tut, Mr. Anne. I was fresh from my little triumph, that is all; and perhaps would have felt the better for a word of approbation – a little pat on the back, as I may say. It is not often that I have felt the need of it – twice or thrice in my life, perhaps: not often enough to justify my anticipating your example and seeking a wife betimes; for that is a man’s one chance if he wants another to taste his success.”

“And yet I dare swear you rejoice in mine unselfishly enough.”

“Why, no, sir: your cousin would have sent me to the right-about within a week of his succession. Still, I own to you that he offended something at least as deep as self-interest: the sight and scent of him habitually turned my gorge: whereas” – and he inclined to me with a dry smile – “your unwisdom at least was amiable, and – in short, sir, though you can be infernally provoking, it has been a pleasure to serve you.”

You may be sure that this did not lessen my contrition. We reached London late that night; and here Mr. Romaine took leave of us. Business waited for him at Amersham Place. After a few hours’ sleep, Rowley woke me to choose between two post-boys in blue jackets and white hats, and two in buff jackets and black hats, who were competing for the honour of conveying us as far as Barnet: and having decided in favour of the blue and white, and solaced the buff and black with a pourboire, we pushed forward once more.

We were now upon the Great North Road, along which the York mail rolled its steady ten miles an hour to the wafted music of the guard’s bugle; a rate of speed which to the more Dorian mood of Mr. Rowley’s flageolet, I proposed to better by one-fifth. But first, having restored the lad to his old seat beside me, I must cross-question him upon his adventures in Edinburgh, and the latest news of Flora and her aunt, Mr. Robbie, Mrs. McRankine, and the rest of my friends. It came out that Mr. Rowley’s surrender to my dear girl had been both instantaneous and complete. “She is a floorer, Mr. Anne. I suppose now, sir, you’ll be standing up for that knock-me-down kind of thing?”

“Explain yourself, my lad.”

“Beg your pardon, sir, what they call love at first sight.” He wore an ingenuous blush and an expression at once shy and insinuating.

“The poets, Rowley, are on my side.”

“Mrs. McRankine, sir – ”

“The Queen of Navarre, Mr. Rowley – ”

But he so far forgot himself as to interrupt. “It took Mrs. McRankine years, sir, to get used to her first husband. She told me so.”

“It took us some days, if I remember, to get used to Mrs. McRankine. To be sure, her cooking – ”

“That’s what I say, Mr. Anne: it’s more than skin-deep: and you’ll hardly believe me, sir – that is, if you didn’t take note of it – but she hev got an ankle.”

He had produced the pieces of his flageolet, and was adjusting them nervously, with a face red as a turkey-cock’s wattles. I regarded him with a new and incredulous amusement. That I served Mr. Rowley for a glass of fashion and a mould of form was of course no new discovery: and the traditions of body-service allow – nay, enjoin – that when the gentleman goes a-wooing, the valet shall take a sympathetic wound. What could be more natural than that a gentleman of sixteen should select a lady of fifty for his first essay in the tender passion? Still – Bethiah McRankine!

I kept my countenance with an effort. “Mr. Rowley,” said I, “if music be the food of love, play on.” And Mr. Rowley gave “The Girl I left behind me,” shyly at first, but anon with terrific expression. He broke off with a sigh. “Heigho!” in fact, said Rowley: and started off again while I tapped out the time, and hummed —

“But now I’m bound for Brighton camp,
Kind Heaven then pray guide me,
And send me safely back again
To the girl I left behind me!”

Thenceforward that not uninspiriting air became the motif of our progress. We never tired of it. Whenever our conversation flagged, by tacit consent Mr. Rowley pieced his flageolet together and started it. The horses lilted it out in their gallop: the harness jingled, the postillions tittuped to it. And the presto with which it wound up as we came to a post-house and a fresh relay of horses had to be heard to be believed.

So with the chaise windows open to the vigorous airs of spring, and my own breast like a window flung wide to youth and health and happy expectations, I rattled homewards; impatient as a lover should be, yet not too impatient to taste the humour of spinning like a lord, with a pocketful of money, along the road which the ci-devant M. Champdivers had so fearfully dodged and skirted in Burchell Fenn’s covered cart.

And yet so impatient that when we galloped over the Calton Hill and down into Edinburgh by the new London road, with the wind in our faces, and a sense of April in it, brisk and jolly, I must pack off Rowley to our lodgings with the valises, and stay only for a wash and breakfast at Dumbreck’s before posting on to Swanston alone.

“Whene’er my steps return that way,
Still faithful shall she find me,
And never more again I’ll stray
From the girl I left behind me.”