Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, page 239
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.
‘Oh, 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.
As I had half expected, both made their appearance the next day. I struck so fine a shade betwixt the pride that is allowed to soldiers and the sorrowful humility that befits a captive, that I declare, as I went to meet them, I might have afforded a subject for a painter. So much was high comedy, I must confess; but so soon as my eyes lighted full on her dark face and eloquent eyes, the blood leaped into my cheeks — and that was nature! I thanked them, but not the least with exultation; it was my cue to be mournful, and to take the pair of them as one.
‘I have been thinking,’ I said, ‘you have been so good to me, both of you, stranger and prisoner as I am, that I have been thinking how I could testify to my gratitude. It may seem a strange subject for a confidence, but there is actually no one here, even of my comrades, that knows me by my name and title. By these I am called plain Champdivers, a name to which I have a right, but not the name which I should bear, and which (but a little while ago) I must hide like a crime. Miss Flora, suffer me to present to you the Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier.’
‘I knew it!’ cried the boy; ‘I knew he was a noble!’
And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more persuasively. All through this interview she kept them on the ground, or only gave them to me for a moment at a time, and with a serious sweetness.
‘You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful confession,’ I continued. ‘To stand here before you, vanquished, a prisoner in a fortress, and take my own name upon my lips, is painful to the proud. And yet I wished that you should know me. Long after this, we may yet hear of one another — perhaps Mr. Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps — and it would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise.’
They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and the like. This would have been all mighty welcome, before the tunnel was ready. Now it signified no more to me than to offer the transition I required.
‘My dear friends,’ I said— ‘for you must allow me to call you that, who have no others within so many hundred leagues — perhaps you will think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but there is one service that I would beg of you before all others. You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst of your city. Even with what liberty I have, I have the opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and land. All this hostile! Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever I see the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one sits before the chimney and reads with joy of our reverses. Pardon me, dear friends, I know that you must do the same, and I do not grudge at it! With you, it is all different. Show me your house then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be not visible, the quarter of the town in which it lies! So, when I look all about me, I shall be able to say: “There is one house in which I am not quite unkindly thought of.”’
Flora stood a moment.
‘It is a pretty thought,’ said she, ‘and, as far as regards Ronald and myself, a true one. Come, I believe I can show you the very smoke out of our chimney.’
So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars. And to this she directed my attention.
‘You see these marks?’ she said. ‘We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are living with my aunt. If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am glad. We, too, can see the castle from a corner in the garden, and we go there in the morning often — do we not, Ronald? — and we think of you, M. de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not altogether make us glad.’
‘Mademoiselle!’ said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under command, ‘if you knew how your generous words — how even the sight of you — relieved the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I know, you would be glad. I will come here daily and look at that dear chimney and these green hills, and bless you from the heart, and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner. Ah! I do not say they can avail!’
‘Who can say that, M. de Saint-Yves?’ she said softly. ‘But I think it is time we should be going.’
‘High time,’ said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little forgotten.
On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground with the youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my last and somewhat too fervent speech, who should come past us but the major? I had to stand aside and salute as he went by, but his eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora.
‘Who is that man?’ she asked.
‘He is a friend of mine,’ said I. ‘I give him lessons in French, and he has been very kind to me.’
‘He stared,’ she said,— ‘I do not say, rudely; but why should he stare?’
‘If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to recommend a veil,’ said I.
She looked at me with what seemed anger. ‘I tell you the man stared,’ she said.
And Ronald added. ‘Oh, I don’t think he meant any harm. I suppose he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr — with M. Saint-Yves.’
But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix’s rooms, and after I had dutifully corrected his exercise— ‘I compliment you on your taste,’ said he to me.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said I.
‘Oh no, I beg yours,’ said he. ‘You understand me perfectly, just as I do you.’
I murmured something about enigmas.
‘Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?’ said he, leaning back. ‘That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you avenged. I do not blame you. She is a heavenly creature.’
‘With all my heart, to the last of it!’ said I. ‘And to the first also, if it amuses you! You are become so very acute of late that I suppose you must have your own way.’
‘What is her name?’ he asked.
‘Now, really!’ said I. ‘Do you think it likely she has told me?’
‘I think it certain,’ said he.
I could not restrain my laughter. ‘Well, then, do you think it likely I would tell you?’ I cried.
‘Not a bit.’ said he. ‘But come, to our lesson!’
CHAPTER VI — THE ESCAPE
The time for our escape drew near, and the nearer it came the less we seemed to enjoy the prospect. There is but one side on which this castle can be left either with dignity or safety; but as there is the main gate and guard, and the chief street of the upper city, it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners. In all other directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty. By our concurrent labours in many a dark night, working with the most anxious precautions against noise, we had made out to pierce below the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the Devil’s Elbow. I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry, the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for any length of time — the thought that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack, the mere sight of the Devil’s Elbow wrought like an emetic.
I don’t know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil’s Elbow and making estimates of the descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones. A private of pioneers remembered the formula for that — or else remembered part of it and obligingly invented the remainder. I had never any real confidence in that formula; and even had we got it from a book, there were difficulties in the way of the application that might have daunted Archimedes. We durst not drop any considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that we dropped we could not hear ourselves. We had never a watch — or none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently. In short, if any two set forth upon this enterprise, they invariably returned with two opinions, and often with a black eye in the bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without laughter, yet with impatience and disgust. I am one that cannot bear to see things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the thought that some poor devil was to hazard his bones upon such premises, revolted me. Had I guessed the name of that unhappy first adventurer, my sentiments might have been livelier still.
The designation of this personage was indeed all that remained for us to do; and even in that we had advanced so far that the lot had fallen on Shed B. It had been determined to mingle the bitter and the sweet; and whoever went down first, the whole of his shed-mates were to follow next in order. This caused a good deal of joy in Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not still remained to choose our pioneer. In view of the ambiguity in which we lay as to the length of the rope and the height of the precipice — and that this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was perhaps excusable. But it was, in our case, more than a little. The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a height; and I have myself been put, more than once, hors de combat by a less affair than the rock of Edinburgh Castle.
We discussed it in the dark and between the passage of the rounds; and it was impossible for any body of men to show a less adventurous spirit. I am sure some of us, and myself first among the number, regretted Goguelat. Some were persuaded it was safe, and could prove the same by argument; but if they had good reasons why some one else should make the trial, they had better still why it should not be themselves. Others, again, condemned the whole idea as insane; among these, as ill-luck would have it, a seaman of the fleet; who was the most dispiriting of all. The height, he reminded us, was greater than the tallest ship’s mast, the rope entirely free; and he as good as defied the boldest and strongest to succeed. We were relieved from this dead-lock by our sergeant-major of dragoons.
‘Comrades,’ said he, ‘I believe I rank you all; and for that reason, if you really wish it, I will be the first myself. At the same time, you are to consider what the chances are that I may prove to be the last, as well. I am no longer young — I was sixty near a month ago. Since I have been a prisoner, I have made for myself a little bedaine. My arms are all gone to fat. And you must promise not to blame me, if I fall and play the devil with the whole thing.’
‘We cannot hear of such a thing!’ said I. ‘M. Laclas is the oldest man here; and, as such, he should be the very last to offer. It is plain, we must draw lots.’
‘No,’ said M. Laclas; ‘you put something else in my head! There is one here who owes a pretty candle to the others, for they have kept his secret. Besides, the rest of us are only rabble; and he is another affair altogether. Let Champdivers — let the noble go the first.’
I confess there was a notable pause before the noble in question got his voice. But there was no room for choice. I had been so ill-advised, when I first joined the regiment, as to take ground on my nobility. I had been often rallied on the matter in the ranks, and had passed under the by-names of Monseigneur and the Marquis. It was now needful I should justify myself and take a fair revenge.
Any little hesitation I may have felt passed entirely unnoticed, from the lucky incident of a round happening at that moment to go by. And during the interval of silence there occurred something that sent my blood to the boil. There was a private in our shed called Clausel, a man of a very ugly disposition. He had made one of the followers of Goguelat; but, whereas Goguelat had always a kind of monstrous gaiety about him, Clausel was no less morose than he was evil-minded. He was sometimes called the General, and sometimes by a name too ill-mannered for repetition. As we all sat listening, this man’s hand was laid on my shoulder, and his voice whispered in my ear: ‘If you don’t go, I’ll have you hanged, Marquis!’
As soon as the round was past— ‘Certainly, gentlemen!’ said I. ‘I will give you a lead, with all the pleasure in the world. But, first of all, there is a hound here to be punished. M. Clausel has just insulted me, and dishonoured the French army; and I demand that he run the gauntlet of this shed.’
There was but one voice asking what he had done, and, as soon as I had told them, but one voice agreeing to the punishment. The General was, in consequence, extremely roughly handled, and the next day was congratulated by all who saw him on his new decorations. It was lucky for us that he was one of the prime movers and believers in our project of escape, or he had certainly revenged himself by a denunciation. As for his feelings towards myself, they appeared, by his looks, to surpass humanity; and I made up my mind to give him a wide berth in the future.
