St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England

‘You narrate well; vous aves la voix chaude,’ said my uncle, turning on his pillows as if to study me. ‘I have a very good account of you by Monsieur de Mauseant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some education from the Abbe de Culemberg, a man of a good house? Yes, you will do very well. You have a good manner and a handsome person, which hurts nothing. We are all handsome in the family; even I myself, I have had my successes, the memories of which still charm me. It is my intention, my nephew, to make of you my heir. I am not very well content with my other nephew, Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the flattery due to age. And there are other matters.’

I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so coldly offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an old man, and, after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in considerable straits, with a hope at heart which that inheritance might yet enable me to realise. Nor could I forget that, however icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the first with the extreme of liberality and – I was about to write, kindness, but the word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man some measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay if I were to insult him on his deathbed.

‘Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule,’ said I, bowing.

‘You have wit, monsieur mon neveu,’ said he, ‘the best wit – the wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!’ he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. ‘But to approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England, I have never studied what they call their laws. On the other hand, how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of business to be transacted – to die, and to make my will; and, however desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in favour of the second beyond a very few hours.’

‘Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before,’ said I.

‘Not so,’ said the Count. ‘I have an alternative. I have just drawn my balance at my banker’s, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less – ’ he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity that surprised me. ‘But it is necessary it should be done before witnesses. Monsieur le Vicomte is of a particular disposition, and an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a theft.’

He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the appearance of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key.

‘Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferriere,’ said he. ‘You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr. Hunter and M. l’Abbe, and request them to step for a few moments to my room.’

The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage, covered with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent old smiling priest it was passed over into my hands with a very clear statement of the disposer’s wishes; immediately after which, though the witnesses remained behind to draw up and sign a joint note of the transaction, Monsieur de Kéroual dismissed me to my own room, La Ferriere following with the invaluable box.

At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered alone. Everything had been already disposed for the night, the curtains drawn and the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with my bedclothes. He turned round as I entered with a look of welcome that did my heart good. Indeed, I had never a much greater need of human sympathy, however trivial, than at that moment when I held a fortune in my arms. In my uncle’s room I had breathed the very atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my pockets; he had starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I had received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the mere look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a boy, his heart must beat yet, he must still retain some innocence and natural feelings, he could blurt out follies with his mouth, he was not a machine to utter perfect speech! At the same time, I was beginning to outgrow the painful impressions of my interview; my spirits were beginning to revive; and at the jolly, empty looks of Mr. Rowley, as he ran forward to relieve me of the box, St. Ives became himself again.

‘Now, Rowley, don’t be in a hurry,’ said I. ‘This is a momentous juncture. Man and boy, you have been in my service about three hours. You must already have observed that I am a gentleman of a somewhat morose disposition, and there is nothing that I more dislike than the smallest appearance of familiarity. Mr. Pole or Mr. Powl, probably in the spirit of prophecy, warned you against this danger.’

‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said Rowley blankly.

‘Now there has just arisen one of those rare cases, in which I am willing to depart from my principles. My uncle has given me a box – what you would call a Christmas box. I don’t know what’s in it, and no more do you: perhaps I am an April fool, or perhaps I am already enormously wealthy; there might be five hundred pounds in this apparently harmless receptacle!’

‘Lord, Mr. Anne!’ cried Rowley.

‘Now, Rowley, hold up your right hand and repeat the words of the oath after me,’ said I, laying the despatch-box on the table. ‘Strike me blue if I ever disclose to Mr. Powl, or Mr. Powl’s Viscount, or anything that is Mr. Powl’s, not to mention Mr. Dawson and the doctor, the treasures of the following despatch-box; and strike me sky-blue scarlet if I do not continually maintain, uphold, love, honour and obey, serve, and follow to the four corners of the earth and the waters that are under the earth, the hereinafter before-mentioned (only that I find I have neglected to mention him) Viscount Anne de Kéroual de St. – Yves, commonly known as Mr. Rowley’s Viscount. So be it. Amen.’

He took the oath with the same exaggerated seriousness as I gave it to him.

‘Now,’ said I. ‘Here is the key for you; I will hold the lid with both hands in the meanwhile.’ He turned the key. ‘Bring up all the candles in the room, and range them along-side. What is it to be? A live gorgon, a Jack-in-the-box, or a spring that fires a pistol? On your knees, sir, before the prodigy!’

So saying, I turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table. At sight of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of us, between the candles, or rolled upon the floor alongside, I stood astonished.

‘O Lord!’ cried Mr. Rowley; ‘oh Lordy, Lordy, Lord!’ and he scrambled after the fallen guineas. ‘O my, Mr. Anne! what a sight o’ money! Why, it’s like a blessed story-book. It’s like the Forty Thieves.’

‘Now Rowley, let’s be cool, let’s be businesslike,’ said I. ‘Riches are deceitful, particularly when you haven’t counted them; and the first thing we have to do is to arrive at the amount of my – let me say, modest competency. If I’m not mistaken, I have enough here to keep you in gold buttons all the rest of your life. You collect the gold, and I’ll take the paper.’

Accordingly, down we sat together on the hearthrug, and for some time there was no sound but the creasing of bills and the jingling of guineas, broken occasionally by the exulting exclamations of Rowley. The arithmetical operation on which we were embarked took long, and it might have been tedious to others; not to me nor to my helper.

‘Ten thousand pounds!’ I announced at last.

‘Ten thousand!’ echoed Mr. Rowley.

And we gazed upon each other.

The greatness of this fortune took my breath away. With that sum in my hands, I need fear no enemies. People are arrested, in nine cases out of ten, not because the police are astute, but because they themselves run short of money; and I had here before me in the despatch-box a succession of devices and disguises that insured my liberty. Not only so; but, as I felt with a sudden and overpowering thrill, with ten thousand pounds in my hands I was become an eligible suitor. What advances I had made in the past, as a private soldier in a military prison, or a fugitive by the wayside, could only be qualified or, indeed, excused as acts of desperation. And now, I might come in by the front door; I might approach the dragon with a lawyer at my elbow, and rich settlements to offer. The poor French prisoner, Champdivers, might be in a perpetual danger of arrest; but the rich travelling Englishman, St. – Ives, in his post-chaise, with his despatch-box by his side, could smile at fate and laugh at locksmiths. I repeated the proverb, exulting, Love laughs at locksmiths! In a moment, by the mere coming of this money, my love had become possible – it had come near, it was under my hand – and it may be by one of the curiosities of human nature, but it burned that instant brighter.

‘Rowley,’ said I, ‘your Viscount is a made man.’

‘Why, we both are, sir,’ said Rowley.

‘Yes, both,’ said I; ‘and you shall dance at the wedding;’ and I flung at his head a bundle of bank notes, and had just followed it up with a handful of guineas, when the door opened, and Mr. Romaine appeared upon the threshold.

CHAPTER XVIII – MR. ROMAINE CALLS ME NAMES

Feeling very much of a fool to be thus taken by surprise, I scrambled to my feet and hastened to make my visitor welcome. He did not refuse me his hand; but he gave it with a coldness and distance for which I was quite unprepared, and his countenance, as he looked on me, was marked in a strong degree with concern and severity.

‘So, sir, I find you here?’ said he, in tones of little encouragement. ‘Is that you, George? You can run away; I have business with your master.’

He showed Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with uncompromising sternness.

‘I am hesitating how to begin,’ said he. ‘In this singular labyrinth of blunders and difficulties that you have prepared for us, I am positively hesitating where to begin. It will perhaps be best that you should read, first of all, this paragraph.’ And he handed over to me a newspaper.

The paragraph in question was brief. It announced the recapture of one of the prisoners recently escaped from Edinburgh Castle; gave his name, Clausel, and added that he had entered into the particulars of the recent revolting murder in the Castle, and denounced the murderer: —

‘It is a common soldier called Champdivers, who had himself escaped, and is in all probability involved in the common fate of his comrades. In spite of the activity along all the Forth and the East Coast, nothing has yet been seen of the sloop which these desperadoes seized at Grangemouth, and it is now almost certain that they have found a watery grave.’

At the reading of this paragraph, my heart turned over. In a moment I saw my castle in the air ruined; myself changed from a mere military fugitive into a hunted murderer, fleeing from the gallows; my love, which had a moment since appeared so near to me, blotted from the field of possibility. Despair, which was my first sentiment, did not, however, endure for more than a moment. I saw that my companions had indeed succeeded in their unlikely design; and that I was supposed to have accompanied and perished along with them by shipwreck – a most probable ending to their enterprise. If they thought me at the bottom of the North Sea, I need not fear much vigilance on the streets of Edinburgh. Champdivers was wanted: what was to connect him with St. Ives? Major Chevenix would recognise me if he met me; that was beyond bargaining: he had seen me so often, his interest had been kindled to so high a point, that I could hope to deceive him by no stratagem of disguise. Well, even so; he would have a competition of testimony before him: he knew Clausel, he knew me, and I was sure he would decide for honour. At the same time the image of Flora shot up in my mind’s eye with such a radiancy as fairly overwhelmed all other considerations; the blood sprang to every corner of my body, and I vowed I would see and win her, if it cost my neck.

‘Very annoying, no doubt,’ said I, as I returned the paper to Mr. Romaine.

‘Is annoying your word for it?’ said he.

‘Exasperating, if you like,’ I admitted.

‘And true?’ he inquired.

‘Well, true in a sense,’ said I. ‘But perhaps I had better answer that question by putting you in possession of the facts?’

‘I think so, indeed,’ said he.

I narrated to him as much as seemed necessary of the quarrel, the duel, the death of Goguelat, and the character of Clausel. He heard me through in a forbidding silence, nor did he at all betray the nature of his sentiments, except that, at the episode of the scissors, I could observe his mulberry face to turn three shades paler.

‘I suppose I may believe you?’ said he, when I had done.

‘Or else conclude this interview,’ said I.

‘Can you not understand that we are here discussing matters of the gravest import? Can you not understand that I feel myself weighed with a load of responsibility on your account – that you should take this occasion to air your fire-eating manners against your own attorney? There are serious hours in life, Mr. Anne,’ he said severely. ‘A capital charge, and that of a very brutal character and with singularly unpleasant details; the presence of the man Clausel, who (according to your account of it) is actuated by sentiments of real malignity, and prepared to swear black white; all the other witnesses scattered and perhaps drowned at sea; the natural prejudice against a Frenchman and a runaway prisoner: this makes a serious total for your lawyer to consider, and is by no means lessened by the incurable folly and levity of your own disposition.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ said I.

‘Oh, my expressions have been selected with scrupulous accuracy,’ he replied. ‘How did I find you, sir, when I came to announce this catastrophe? You were sitting on the hearthrug playing, like a silly baby, with a servant, were you not, and the floor all scattered with gold and bank paper? There was a tableau for you! It was I who came, and you were lucky in that. It might have been any one – your cousin as well as another.’

‘You have me there, sir,’ I admitted. ‘I had neglected all precautions, and you do right to be angry. Apropos, Mr. Romaine, how did you come yourself, and how long have you been in the house?’ I added, surprised, on the retrospect, not to have heard him arrive.

‘I drove up in a chaise and pair,’ he returned. ‘Any one might have heard me. But you were not listening, I suppose? being so extremely at your ease in the very house of your enemy, and under a capital charge! And I have been long enough here to do your business for you. Ah, yes, I did it, God forgive me! – did it before I so much as asked you the explanation of the paragraph. For some time back the will has been prepared; now it is signed; and your uncle has heard nothing of your recent piece of activity. Why? Well, I had no fancy to bother him on his death-bed: you might be innocent; and at bottom I preferred the murderer to the spy.’

No doubt of it but the man played a friendly part; no doubt also that, in his ill-temper and anxiety, he expressed himself unpalatably.

‘You will perhaps find me over delicate,’ said I. ‘There is a word you employed – ’

‘I employ the words of my brief, sir,’ he cried, striking with his hand on the newspaper. ‘It is there in six letters. And do not be so certain – you have not stood your trial yet. It is an ugly affair, a fishy business. It is highly disagreeable. I would give my hand off – I mean I would give a hundred pound down, to have nothing to do with it. And, situated as we are, we must at once take action. There is here no choice. You must at once quit this country, and get to France, or Holland, or, indeed, to Madagascar.’

‘There may be two words to that,’ said I.

‘Not so much as one syllable!’ he retorted. ‘Here is no room for argument. The case is nakedly plain. In the disgusting position in which you have found means to place yourself, all that is to be hoped for is delay. A time may come when we shall be able to do better. It cannot be now: now it would be the gibbet.’

‘You labour under a false impression, Mr. Romaine,’ said I. ‘I have no impatience to figure in the dock. I am even as anxious as yourself to postpone my first appearance there. On the other hand, I have not the slightest intention of leaving this country, where I please myself extremely. I have a good address, a ready tongue, an English accent that passes, and, thanks to the generosity of my uncle, as much money as I want. It would be hard indeed if, with all these advantages, Mr. St. Ives should not be able to live quietly in a private lodging, while the authorities amuse themselves by looking for Champdivers. You forget, there is no connection between these two personages.’

‘And you forget your cousin,’ retorted Romaine. ‘There is the link. There is the tongue of the buckle. He knows you are Champdivers.’ He put up his hand as if to listen. ‘And, for a wager, here he is himself!’ he exclaimed.

As when a tailor takes a piece of goods upon his counter, and rends it across, there came to our ears from the avenue the long tearing sound of a chaise and four approaching at the top speed of the horses. And, looking out between the curtains, we beheld the lamps skimming on the smooth ascent.

‘Ay,’ said Romaine, wiping the window-pane that he might see more clearly. ‘Ay, that is he by the driving! So he squanders money along the king’s highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving – where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor’s jail, if not a criminal prison!’

‘Is he that kind of a man?’ I said, staring on these lamps as though I could decipher in them the secret of my cousin’s character.

‘You will find him a dangerous kind,’ answered the lawyer. ‘For you, these are the lights on a lee shore! I find I fall in a muse when I consider of him; what a formidable being he once was, and what a personable! and how near he draws to the moment that must break him utterly! we none of us like him here; we hate him, rather; and yet I have a sense – I don’t think at my time of life it can be pity – but a reluctance rather, to break anything so big and figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big picture of high price. Ay, there is what I was waiting for!’ he cried, as the lights of a second chaise swam in sight. ‘It is he beyond a doubt. The first was the signature and the next the flourish. Two chaises, the second following with the baggage, which is always copious and ponderous, and one of his valets: he cannot go a step without a valet.’

‘I hear you repeat the word big,’ said I. ‘But it cannot be that he is anything out of the way in stature.’

‘No,’ said the attorney. ‘About your height, as I guessed for the tailors, and I see nothing wrong with the result. But, somehow, he commands an atmosphere; he has a spacious manner; and he has kept up, all through life, such a volume of racket about his personality, with his chaises and his racers and his dicings, and I know not what – that somehow he imposes! It seems, when the farce is done, and he locked in Fleet prison – and nobody left but Buonaparte and Lord Wellington and the Hetman Platoff to make a work about – the world will be in a comparison quite tranquil. But this is beside the mark,’ he added, with an effort, turning again from the window. ‘We are now under fire, Mr. Anne, as you soldiers would say, and it is high time we should prepare to go into action. He must not see you; that would be fatal. All that he knows at present is that you resemble him, and that is much more than enough. If it were possible, it would be well he should not know you were in the house.’

‘Quite impossible, depend upon it,’ said I. ‘Some of the servants are directly in his interests, perhaps in his pay: Dawson, for an example.’

‘My own idea!’ cried Romaine. ‘And at least,’ he added, as the first of the chaises drew up with a dash in front of the portico, ‘it is now too late. Here he is.’

We stood listening, with a strange anxiety, to the various noises that awoke in the silent house: the sound of doors opening and closing, the sound of feet near at hand and farther off. It was plain the arrival of my cousin was a matter of moment, almost of parade, to the household. And suddenly, out of this confused and distant bustle, a rapid and light tread became distinguishable. We heard it come upstairs, draw near along the corridor, pause at the door, and a stealthy and hasty rapping succeeded.

‘Mr. Anne – Mr. Anne, sir! Let me in!’ said the voice of Rowley.

We admitted the lad, and locked the door again behind him.

‘It’s him, sir,’ he panted. ‘He’ve come.’

‘You mean the Viscount?’ said I. ‘So we supposed. But come, Rowley – out with the rest of it! You have more to tell us, or your face belies you !’

‘Mr. Anne, I do,’ he said. ‘Mr. Romaine, sir, you’re a friend of his, ain’t you?’

‘Yes, George, I am a friend of his,’ said Romaine, and, to my great surprise, laid his hand upon my shoulder.

‘Well, it’s this way,’ said Rowley – ‘Mr. Powl have been at me! It’s to play the spy! I thought he was at it from the first! From the first I see what he was after – coming round and round, and hinting things! But to-night he outs with it plump! I’m to let him hear all what you’re to do beforehand, he says; and he gave me this for an arnest’ – holding up half a guinea; ‘and I took it, so I did! Strike me sky-blue scarlet?’ says he, adducing the words of the mock oath; and he looked askance at me as he did so.

I saw that he had forgotten himself, and that he knew it. The expression of his eye changed almost in the passing of the glance from the significant to the appealing – from the look of an accomplice to that of a culprit; and from that moment he became the model of a well-drilled valet.

‘Sky-blue scarlet?’ repeated the lawyer. ‘Is the fool delirious?’

‘No,’ said I; ‘he is only reminding me of something.’

‘Well – and I believe the fellow will be faithful,’ said Romaine. ‘So you are a friend of Mr. Anne’s’ too?’ he added to Rowley.

‘If you please, sir,’ said Rowley.

‘’Tis something sudden,’ observed Romaine; ‘but it may be genuine enough. I believe him to be honest. He comes of honest people. Well, George Rowley, you might embrace some early opportunity to earn that half-guinea, by telling Mr. Powl that your master will not leave here till noon to-morrow, if he go even then. Tell him there are a hundred things to be done here, and a hundred more that can only be done properly at my office in Holborn. Come to think of it – we had better see to that first of all,’ he went on, unlocking the door. ‘Get hold of Powl, and see. And be quick back, and clear me up this mess.’

Mr. Rowley was no sooner gone than the lawyer took a pinch of snuff, and regarded me with somewhat of a more genial expression.

‘Sir,’ said he, ‘it is very fortunate for you that your face is so strong a letter of recommendation. Here am I, a tough old practitioner, mixing myself up with your very distressing business; and here is this farmer’s lad, who has the wit to take a bribe and the loyalty to come and tell you of it – all, I take it, on the strength of your appearance. I wish I could imagine how it would impress a jury!’ says he.

‘And how it would affect the hangman, sir?’ I asked

‘Absit omen!’ said Mr. Romaine devoutly.

We were just so far in our talk, when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth: the sound of some one slyly trying the handle of the door. It had been preceded by no audible footstep. Since the departure of Rowley our wing of the house had been entirely silent. And we had every right to suppose ourselves alone, and to conclude that the new-comer, whoever he might be, was come on a clandestine, if not a hostile, errand.

‘Who is there?’ asked Romaine.

‘It’s only me, sir,’ said the soft voice of Dawson. ‘It’s the Viscount, sir. He is very desirous to speak with you on business.’

‘Tell him I shall come shortly, Dawson,’ said the lawyer. ‘I am at present engaged.’

‘Thank you, sir!’ said Dawson.

And we heard his feet draw off slowly along the corridor.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Romaine, speaking low, and maintaining the attitude of one intently listening, ‘there is another foot. I cannot be deceived!’