As the servants, still greatly mystified, crowded out of the sickroom door, curtseying, pulling the forelock, scraping with the foot, and so on, according to their degree, I turned and stole a look at my cousin. He had borne this crushing public rebuke without change of countenance. He stood, now, very upright, with folded arms, and looking inscrutably at the roof of the apartment. I could not refuse him at that moment the tribute of my admiration. Still more so when, the last of the domestics having filed through the doorway and left us alone with my great-uncle and the lawyer, he took one step forward towards the bed, made a dignified reverence, and addressed the man who had just condemned him to ruin.
‘My lord,’ said he, ‘you are pleased to treat me in a manner which my gratitude, and your state, equally forbid me to call in question. It will be only necessary for me to call your attention to the length of time in which I have been taught to regard myself as your heir. In that position, I judged it only loyal to permit myself a certain scale of expenditure. If I am now to be cut off with a shilling as the reward of twenty years of service, I shall be left not only a beggar, but a bankrupt.’
Whether from the fatigue of his recent exertion, or by a well-inspired ingenuity of hate, my uncle had once more closed his eyes; nor did he open them now. ‘Not with a shilling,’ he contented himself with replying; and there stole, as he said it, a sort of smile over his face, that flickered there conspicuously for the least moment of time, and then faded and left behind the old impenetrable mask of years, cunning, and fatigue. There could be no mistake: my uncle enjoyed the situation as he had enjoyed few things in the last quarter of a century. The fires of life scarce survived in that frail body; but hatred, like some immortal quality, was still erect and unabated.
Nevertheless my cousin persevered.
‘I speak at a disadvantage,’ he resumed. ‘My supplanter, with perhaps more wisdom than delicacy, remains in the room,’ and he cast a glance at me that might have withered an oak tree.
I was only too willing to withdraw, and Romaine showed as much alacrity to make way for my departure. But my uncle was not to be moved. In the same breath of a voice, and still without opening his eyes, he bade me remain.
‘It is well,’ said Alain. ‘I cannot then go on to remind you of the twenty years that have passed over our heads in England, and the services I may have rendered you in that time. It would be a position too odious. Your lordship knows me too well to suppose I could stoop to such ignominy. I must leave out all my defence — your lordship wills it so! I do not know what are my faults; I know only my punishment, and it is greater than I have the courage to face. My uncle, I implore your pity: pardon me so far; do not send me for life into a debtors’ jail — a pauper debtor.’
‘Chat et vieux, pardonnez?’ said my uncle, quoting from La Fontaine; and then, opening a pale-blue eye full on Alain, he delivered with some emphasis:
‘La jeunesse se flatte et croit tout obtenir;
La vieillesse est impitoyable.’
The blood leaped darkly into Alain’s face. He turned to Romaine and me, and his eyes flashed.
‘It is your turn now,’ he said. ‘At least it shall be prison for prison with the two viscounts.’
‘Not so, Mr. Alain, by your leave,’ said Romaine. ‘There are a few formalities to be considered first.’
But Alain was already striding towards the door.
‘Stop a moment, stop a moment!’ cried Romaine. ‘Remember your own counsel not to despise an adversary.’
Alain turned.
‘If I do not despise I hate you!’ he cried, giving a loose to his passion. ‘Be warned of that, both of you.’
‘I understand you to threaten Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,’ said the lawyer. ‘Do you know, I would not do that. I am afraid, I am very much afraid, if you were to do as you propose, you might drive me into extremes.’
‘You have made me a beggar and a bankrupt,’ said Alain. What extreme is left?’
‘I scarce like to put a name upon it in this company,’ replied Romaine. ‘But there are worse things than even bankruptcy, and worse places than a debtors’ jail.’
The words were so significantly said that there went a visible thrill through Alain; sudden as a sword-stroke, he fell pale again.
‘I do not understand you,’ said he.
‘O yes, you do,’ returned Romaine. ‘I believe you understand me very well. You must not suppose that all this time, while you were so very busy, others were entirely idle. You must not fancy, because I am an Englishman, that I have not the intelligence to pursue an inquiry. Great as is my regard for the honour of your house, M. Alain de St.-Yves, if I hear of you moving directly or indirectly in this matter, I shall do my duty, let it cost what it will: that is, I shall communicate the real name of the Buonapartist spy who signs his letters Rue Grégoire de Tours.’
I confess my heart was already almost altogether on the side of my insulted and unhappy cousin; and if it had not been before, it must have been so now, so horrid was the shock with which he heard his infamy exposed. Speech was denied him; he carried his hand to his neckcloth; he staggered; I thought he must have fallen. I ran to help him, and at that he revived, recoiled before me, and stood there with arms stretched forth as if to preserve himself from the outrage of my touch.
‘Hands off!’ he somehow managed to articulate.
‘You will now, I hope,’ pursued the lawyer, without any change of voice, ‘understand the position in which you are placed, and how delicately it behoves you to conduct yourself. Your arrest hangs, if I may so express myself, by a hair; and as you will be under the perpetual vigilance of myself and my agents, you must look to it narrowly that you walk straight. Upon the least dubiety, I will take action.’ He snuffed, looking critically at the tortured man. ‘And now let me remind you that your chaise is at the door. This interview is agitating to his lordship — it cannot be agreeable for you — and I suggest that it need not be further drawn out. It does not enter into the views of your uncle, the Count, that you should again sleep under this roof.’
As Alain turned and passed without a word or a sign from the apartment, I instantly followed. I suppose I must be at bottom possessed of some humanity; at least, this accumulated torture, this slow butchery of a man as by quarters of rock, had wholly changed my sympathies. At that moment I loathed both my uncle and the lawyer for their coldblooded cruelty.
Leaning over the banisters, I was but in time to hear his hasty footsteps in that hall that had been crowded with servants to honour his coming, and was now left empty against his friendless departure. A moment later, and the echoes rang, and the air whistled in my ears, as he slammed the door on his departing footsteps. The fury of the concussion gave me (had one been still wanted) a measure of the turmoil of his passions. In a sense, I felt with him; I felt how he would have gloried to slam that door on my uncle, the lawyer, myself, and the whole crowd of those who had been witnesses to his humiliation.
CHAPTER XX — AFTER THE STORM
No sooner was the house clear of my cousin than I began to reckon up, ruefully enough, the probable results of what had passed. Here were a number of pots broken, and it looked to me as if I should have to pay for all! Here had been this proud, mad beast goaded and baited both publicly and privately, till he could neither hear nor see nor reason; whereupon the gate had been set open, and he had been left free to go and contrive whatever vengeance he might find possible. I could not help thinking it was a pity that, whenever I myself was inclined to be upon my good behaviour, some friends of mine should always determine to play a piece of heroics and cast me for the hero — or the victim — which is very much the same. The first duty of heroics is to be of your own choosing. When they are not that, they are nothing. And I assure you, as I walked back to my own room, I was in no very complaisant humour: thought my uncle and Mr. Romaine to have played knuckle-bones with my life and prospects; cursed them for it roundly; had no wish more urgent than to avoid the pair of them; and was quite
knocked out of time, as they say in the ring, to find myself confronted with the lawyer.
He stood on my hearthrug, leaning on the chimney-piece, with a gloomy, thoughtful brow, as I was pleased to see, and not in the least as though he were vain of the late proceedings.
‘Well?’ said I. ‘You have done it now!’
‘Is he gone?’ he asked.
‘He is gone,’ said I. ‘We shall have the devil to pay with him when he comes back.’
‘You are right,’ said the lawyer, ‘and very little to pay him with but flams and fabrications, like to-night’s.’
‘To-night’s?’ I repeated.
‘Ay, to-night’s!’ said he.
‘To-night’s what?’ I cried.
‘To-night’s flams and fabrications.’
‘God be good to me, sir,’ said I, ‘have I something more to admire in your conduct than ever I had suspected? You cannot think how you interest me! That it was severe, I knew; I had already chuckled over that. But that it should be false also! In what sense, dear sir?’
I believe I was extremely offensive as I put the question, but the lawyer paid no heed.
‘False in all senses of the word,’ he replied seriously. ‘False in the sense that they were not true, and false in the sense that they were not real; false in the sense that I boasted, and in the sense that I lied. How can I arrest him? Your uncle burned the papers! I told you so — but doubtless you have forgotten — the day I first saw you in Edinburgh Castle. It was an act of generosity; I have seen many of these acts, and always regretted — always regretted! “That shall be his inheritance,” he said, as the papers burned; he did not mean that it should have proved so rich a one. How rich, time will tell.’
‘I beg your pardon a hundred thousand times, my dear sir, but it strikes me you have the impudence — in the circumstances, I may call it the indecency — to appear cast down?’
‘It is true,’ said he: ‘I am. I am cast down. I am literally cast down. I feel myself quite helpless against your cousin.’
‘Now, really!’ I asked. ‘Is this serious? And is it perhaps the reason why you have gorged the poor devil with every species of insult? and why you took such surprising pains to supply me with what I had so little need of — another enemy? That you were helpless against them? “Here is my last missile,” say you; “my ammunition is quite exhausted: just wait till I get the last in — it will irritate, it cannot hurt him. There — you see! — he is furious now, and I am quite helpless. One more prod, another kick: now he is a mere lunatic! Stand behind me; I am quite helpless!” Mr. Romaine, I am asking myself as to the background or motive of this singular jest, and whether the name of it should not be called treachery?’
‘I can scarce wonder,’ said he. ‘In truth it has been a singular business, and we are very fortunate to be out of it so well. Yet it was not treachery: no, no, Mr. Anne, it was not treachery; and if you will do me the favour to listen to me for the inside of a minute, I shall demonstrate the same to you beyond cavil.’ He seemed to wake up to his ordinary briskness. ‘You see the point?’ he began. ‘He had not yet read the newspaper, but who could tell when he might? He might have had that damned journal in his pocket, and how should we know? We were — I may say, we are — at the mercy of the merest twopenny accident.’
‘Why, true,’ said I: ‘I had not thought of that.’
‘I warrant you,’ cried Romaine, ‘you had supposed it was nothing to be the hero of an interesting notice in the journals! You had supposed, as like as not, it was a form of secrecy! But not so in the least. A part of England is already buzzing with the name of Champdivers; a day or two more and the mail will have carried it everywhere: so wonderful a machine is this of ours for disseminating intelligence! Think of it! When my father was born — but that is another story. To return: we had here the elements of such a combustion as I dread to think of — your cousin and the journal. Let him but glance an eye upon that column of print, and where were we? It is easy to ask; not so easy to answer, my young friend. And let me tell you, this sheet is the Viscount’s usual reading. It is my conviction he had it in his pocket.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said I. ‘I have been unjust. I did not appreciate my danger.’
‘I think you never do,’ said he.
‘But yet surely that public scene—’ I began.
‘It was madness. I quite agree with you,’ Mr. Romaine interrupted. ‘But it was your uncle’s orders, Mr. Anne, and what could I do? Tell him you were the murderer of Goguelat? I think not.’
‘No, sure!’ said I. ‘That would but have been to make the trouble thicker. We were certainly in a very ill posture.’
‘You do not yet appreciate how grave it was,’ he replied. ‘It was necessary for you that your cousin should go, and go at once. You yourself had to leave to-night under cover of darkness, and how could you have done that with the Viscount in the next room? He must go, then; he must leave without delay. And that was the difficulty.’
‘Pardon me, Mr. Romaine, but could not my uncle have bidden him go?’ I asked.
‘Why, I see I must tell you that this is not so simple as it sounds,’ he replied. ‘You say this is your uncle’s house, and so it is. But to all effects and purposes it is your cousin’s also. He has rooms here; has had them coming on for thirty years now, and they are filled with a prodigious accumulation of trash — stays, I dare say, and powder-puffs, and such effeminate idiocy — to which none could dispute his title, even suppose any one wanted to. We had a perfect right to bid him go, and he had a perfect right to reply, “Yes, I will go, but not without my stays and cravats. I must first get together the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine chestsfull of insufferable rubbish, that I have spent the last thirty years collecting — and may very well spend the next thirty hours a-packing of.” And what should we have said to that?’
‘By way of repartee?’ I asked. ‘Two tall footmen and a pair of crabtree cudgels, I suggest.’
‘The Lord deliver me from the wisdom of laymen!’ cried Romaine. ‘Put myself in the wrong at the beginning of a lawsuit? No, indeed! There was but one thing to do, and I did it, and burned my last cartridge in the doing of it. I stunned him. And it gave us three hours, by which we should make haste to profit; for if there is one thing sure, it is that he will be up to time again to-morrow in the morning.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘I own myself an idiot. Well do they say, an old soldier, an old innocent! For I guessed nothing of all this.’
‘And, guessing it, have you the same objections to leave England?’ he inquired.
‘The same,’ said I.
‘It is indispensable,’ he objected.
‘And it cannot be,’ I replied. ‘Reason has nothing to say in the matter; and I must not let you squander any of yours. It will be enough to tell you this is an affair of the heart.’
‘Is it even so?’ quoth Romaine, nodding his head. ‘And I might have been sure of it. Place them in a hospital, put them in a jail in yellow overalls, do what you will, young Jessamy finds young Jenny. O, have it your own way; I am too old a hand to argue with young gentlemen who choose to fancy themselves in love; I have too much experience, thank you. Only, be sure that you appreciate what you risk: the prison, the dock, the gallows, and the halter — terribly vulgar circumstances, my young friend; grim, sordid, earnest; no poetry in that!’
‘And there I am warned,’ I returned gaily. ‘No man could be warned more finely or with a greater eloquence. And I am of the same opinion still. Until I have again seen that lady, nothing shall induce me to quit Great Britain. I have besides—’
And here I came to a full stop. It was upon my tongue to have told him the story of the drovers, but at the first word of it my voice died in my throat. There might be a limit to the lawyer’s toleration, I reflected. I had not been so long in Britain altogether; for the most part of that time I had been by the heels in limbo in Edinburgh Castle; and already I had confessed to killing one man with a pair of scissors; a
nd now I was to go on and plead guilty to having settled another with a holly stick! A wave of discretion went over me as cold and as deep as the sea.
‘In short, sir, this is a matter of feeling,’ I concluded, ‘and nothing will prevent my going to Edinburgh.’
If I had fired a pistol in his ear he could not have been more startled.
‘To Edinburgh?’ he repeated. ‘Edinburgh? where the very paving-stones know you!’
‘Then is the murder out!’ said I. ‘But, Mr. Romaine, is there not sometimes safety in boldness? Is it not a common-place of strategy to get where the enemy least expects you? And where would he expect me less?’
‘Faith, there is something in that, too!’ cried the lawyer. ‘Ay, certainly, a great deal in that. All the witnesses drowned but one, and he safe in prison; you yourself changed beyond recognition — let us hope — and walking the streets of the very town you have illustrated by your — well, your eccentricity! It is not badly combined, indeed!’
‘You approve it, then?’ said I.
‘O, approve!’ said he; ‘there is no question of approval. There is only one course which I could approve, and that were to escape to France instanter.’
‘You do not wholly disapprove, at least?’ I substituted.
‘Not wholly; and it would not matter if I did,’ he replied. ‘Go your own way; you are beyond argument. And I am not sure that you will run more danger by that course than by any other. Give the servants time to get to bed and fall asleep, then take a country cross-road and walk, as the rhyme has it, like blazes all night. In the morning take a chaise or take the mail at pleasure, and continue your journey with all the decorum and reserve of which you shall be found capable.’
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 253
