Mr. Percy and the Prophet

by Wilkie Collins

  Percy took Mr Bowmore to the window, and pointed to a carriage and four horses waiting at the garden-gate.

  ‘Do you come with me, and back me with your authority as her father?’ he asked sternly. ‘Or do you leave me to go alone?’

  Mr Bowmore was famous among his admirers for his ‘happy replies.’ He made one now.

  ‘I am not Brutus,’ he said. ‘I am only Bowmore. My daughter before everything. Fetch my travelling-bag.’

  While the travellers’ bags were being placed in the chaise, Mr Bowmore was struck by an idea.

  He produced from his coat-pocket a roll of many papers thickly covered with writing.

  On the blank leaf in which they were tied up, he wrote in the largest letters: ‘Frightful domestic calamity! Vice-President Bowmore obliged to leave England! Welfare of a beloved daughter! His speech will be read at the meeting by Secretary Joskin, of the

  Club. (Private to Joskin. Have these lines printed and posted everywhere. And, when you read my speech, for God’s sake don’t drop your voice at the ends of the sentences.)’

  He threw down the pen, and embraced Mrs Bowmore in the most summary manner.

  The poor woman was ordered to send the roll of paper to the Club, without a word to comfort and sustain her from her husband’s lips. Percy spoke to her hopefully and kindly, as he kissed her cheek at parting.

  On the next morning, a letter, addressed to Mrs Bowmore, was delivered at the cottage by private messenger.

  Opening the letter, she recognised the handwriting of her husband’s old friend, and her old friend—Major Mulvany. In breathless amazement, she read these lines: Dear Mrs Bowmore:

  In matters of importance, the golden rule is never to waste words. I have performed one of the great actions of my life—I have saved your husband.

  How I discovered that my friend was in danger, I must not tell you at present. Let it be enough if I say that I have been a guest under Justice Bervie’s hospitable roof, and that I know of a Home Office spy who has taken you unawares under pretence of being your footman. If I had not circumvented him, the scoundrel would have imprisoned your husband, and another dear friend of mine. This is how I did it.

  I must begin by appealing to your memory.

  Do you happen to remember that your husband and I are as near as may be of about the same height? Very good, so far. Did you, in the next place, miss Bowmore’s travelling coat and cap from their customary peg? I am the thief, dearest lady; I put them on my own humble self. Did you hear a sudden noise in the hall? Oh, forgive me—I made the noise! And it did just what I wanted of it. It brought the spy up from the kitchen, suspecting that something might be wrong.

  What did the wretch see when he got into the hall? His master, in travelling costume, running out. What did he find when he reached the garden? His master escaping, in a post-chaise, on the road to London. What did he do, the born blackguard that he was?

  Jumped up behind the chaise, to make sure of his prisoner. It was dark when we got to London. In a hop, skip, and jump, I was Out of the carriage, and in at my own door, before he could look me in the face.

  The date of the warrant, you must know, obliged him to wait till the morning. All that night, he and the Bow Street runners kept watch. They came in with the sunrise—and who did they find? Major Mulvany snug in his bed, and as innocent as the babe unborn.

  Oh, they did their duty! Searched the place from the kitchen to the garrets—and gave it up. There’s but one thing I regret—I let the spy off without a good thrashing. No matter.

  I’ll do it yet, one of these days.

  Let me know the first good news of our darling fugitives, and I shall be more than rewarded for what little I have done.

  Your always devoted,

  TERENCE MULVANY

  XI PURSUIT AND DISCOVERY

  Feeling himself hurried away on the road to Dover, as fast as four horses could carry him, Mr Bowmore had leisure to criticise Percy’s conduct, from his own purely selfish point of view.

  ‘If you had listened to my advice,’ he said, ‘you would have treated that man Bervie like the hypocrite and villain that he is. But no! you trusted to your own crude impressions. Having given him your hand after the duel (I would have given him the contents of my pistol!) you hesitated to withdraw it again, when that slanderer appealed to your friendship not to cast him off. Now you see the consequence!’

  ‘Wait till we get to Paris!’ All the ingenuity of Percy’s travelling companion failed to extract from him any other answer than that.

  Foiled so far, Mr Bowmore began to start difficulties next. Had they money enough for the journey? Percy touched his pocket, and answered shortly, ‘Plenty.’ Had they passports? Percy sullenly showed a letter. ‘There is the necessary voucher from a magistrate,’ he said. ‘The consul at Dover will give us our passports. Mind this!’ he added, in warning tones, ‘I have pledged my word of honour to Justice Bervie, that we have no political object in view in travelling to France. Keep your politics to yourself, on the other side of the Channel.’

  Mr Bowmore listened in blank amazement.

  Charlotte’s lover was appearing in a new character—the character of a man who had lost his respect for Charlotte’s father!

  It was useless to talk to him. He deliberately checked any further attempts at conversation, by leaning back in the carriage, and closing his eyes. The truth is, Mr Bowmore’s own language and conduct were insensibly producing the salutary impression on Percy’s mind, which Bervie had vainly tried to convey, under the disadvantage of having Charlotte’s influence against him. Throughout the journey, Percy did exactly what Bervie had once entreated him to do—he kept Mr Bowmore at a distance.

  At every stage, they inquired after the fugitives. At every stage, they were answered by a more or less intelligible description of Bervie and Charlotte, and of the lady who accompanied them. No disguise had been attempted; no person had in any case been bribed to conceal the truth.

  When the first tumult of his emotions had in some degree subsided, this strange circumstance associated itself in Percy’s mind with the equally unaccountable conduct of Justice Bervie, on his arrival at the manor house.

  The old gentleman met his visitor in the hall, without expressing, and apparently without feeling, any indignation at his son’s conduct. It was even useless to appeal to him for information. He only said, ‘I am not in Arthur’s confidence; he is of age, and my daughter (who has volunteered to accompany him) is of age. I have no claim to control them. I believe they have taken Miss Bowmore to Paris; and that is all I know about it.’

  He had shown the same dense insesibility in giving his official voucher for the passports. Percy had only to satisfy him on the question of politics; and the document was drawn out as a matter of course. Such had been the father’s behaviour; and the conduct of the son now exhibited the same shameless composure. To what conclusion did this discovery point? Percy abandoned the attempt to answer that question in despair.

  They reached Dover towards two o’clock in the morning.

  At the pier-head they found a coast-guardsman on duty, and received more information.

  In 1817 the communication with France was still by sailing-vessels. Arriving long after the departure of the regular packet, Bervie had hired a lugger, and had sailed with the two ladies for Calais, having a fresh breeze in his favour. Percy’s first angry impulse was to follow him instantly. The next moment he remembered the insurmountable obstacle of the passports. The Consul would certainly not grant those essentially necessary documents at two in the morning!

  The only alternative was to wait for the regular packet, which sailed some hours later—

  between eight and nine o’clock in the forenoon. In this case, they might apply for their passports before the regular office hours, if they explained the circumstances., backed by the authority of the magistrate’s letter.

  Mr Bowmore followed Percy to the nearest inn that was open, sublimely indifferent to the delays
and difficulties of the journey. He ordered refreshments with the air of a man who was performing a melancholy duty to himself, in the name of humanity.

  ‘When I think of my speech,’ he said, at supper, ‘my heart bleeds for the people. In a few hours more, they will assemble in their thousands, eager to hear me. And what will they see? Joskin in my place! Joskin with a manuscript in his hand! Joskin, who drops his voice at the ends of his sentences! I will never forgive Charlotte. Waiter, another glass of brandy and water.’

  After an unusually quick passage across the Channel, the travellers landed on the French coast, before the defeated spy had returned from London to Dartford by stage-coach. Continuing their journey by post as far as Amiens, they reached that city in time to take their places by the diligence to Paris.

  Arrived in Paris, they encountered another incomprehensible proceeding on the part of Captain Bervie.

  Among the persons assembled in the yard to see the arrival of the diligence was a man with a morsel of paper in his hand, evidently on the look-out for some person whom he expected to discover among the travellers. After consulting his bit of paper, he looked with steady attention at Percy and Mr Bowmore, and suddenly approached them. ‘If you wish to see the Captain,’ he said, in broken English, ‘you will find him at that hotel.’ He handed a printed card to Percy, and disappeared among the crowd before it was possible to question him.

  Even Mr Bowmore gave way to human weakness, and condescended to feel astonished in the face of such an event as this. ‘What next!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Wait till we get to the hotel,’ said Percy.

  In half an hour more the landlord had received them, and the waiter had led them to the right door. Percy pushed the man aside, and burst into the room.

  Captain Bervie was alone, reading a newspaper. Before the first furious words had escaped Percy’s lips, Bervie silenced him by pointing to a closed door on the right of the fireplace.

  ‘She is in that room,’ he said; ‘speak quietly, or you may frighten her. I know what you are going to say,’ he added, as Percy stepped nearer to him. ‘Will you hear me in my own defence, and then decide whether I am the greatest scoundrel living, or the best friend you ever had?’

  He put the question kindly, with something that was at once grave and tender in his look and manner. The extraordinary composure with which he acted and spoke had its tranquillising influence over Percy. He felt himself surprised into giving Bervie a hearing.

  ‘I will tell you first what I have done,’ the Captain proceeded, ‘and next why I did it. I have taken it on myself, Mr Linwood, to make an alteration in your wedding arrangements. Instead of being married at Dartford church, you will be married (if you see no objection) at the chapel of the embassy in Paris, by my old college friend the chaplain.’

  This was too much for Percy’s self-control. ‘Your audacity is beyond belief,’ he broke out.

  ‘And beyond endurance,’ Mr Bowmore added. ‘Understand this, sir! Whatever your defence may be, I object, under any circumstances, to be made the victim of a trick.’

  ‘You are the victim of your own obstinate refusal to profit by a plain warning,’ Bervie rejoined. ‘At the eleventh hour, I entreated you, and I entreated Mr Linwood, to provide for your own safety; and I spoke in vain.

  Percy’s patience gave way once more.

  ‘To use your own language,’ he said, ‘I have still to decide whether you have behaved towards me like a scoundrel or a friend. You have said nothing to justify yourself yet.’

  ‘Very well put!’ Mr Bowmore chimed in. ‘Come to the point, sir! My daughter’s reputation is in question.’

  ‘Miss Bowmore’s reputation is not in question for a single instant,’ Bervie answered.

  ‘My sister has been the companion of her journey from first to last.’

  ‘Journey?’ Mr Bowmore repeated indignantly. ‘I want to know, sir, what the journey means. As an outraged father, I ask one plain question. Why did you run away with my daughter?’

  Bervie took a slip of paper from his pocket, and handed it to Percy with a smile.

  It was a copy of the warrant which Justice Bervie’s duty had compelled him to issue for the ‘arrest of Orlando Bowmore and Percy Linwood.’ There was no danger in divulging the secret now. British warrants were waste-paper in France, in those days.

  ‘I ran away with the bride,’ Bervie said coolly, ‘in the certain knowledge that you and Mr Bowmore would run after me. If I had not forced you both to follow me out of England on the first of April, you would have been made State prisoners on the second.

  What do you say to my conduct now?’

  ‘Wait, Percy, before you answer him,’ Mr Bowmore interposed. ‘He is ready enough at excusing himself. But, observe—he hasn’t a word to say in justification of my daughter’s readiness to run away with him.’

  ‘Have you quite done?’ Bervie asked as quietly as ever.

  Mr Bowmore reserved the right of all others which he most prized, the right of using his tongue. ‘For the present,’ he answered in his loftiest manner, ‘I have done.’

  Bervie proceeded: ‘Your daughter consented to run away with me, because I took her to my father’s house, and prevailed upon him to trust her with the secret of the coming arrests. She had no choice left but to let her obstinate father and her misguided lover go to prison—or to take her place with my sister and me in the travelling-carriage.’ He appealed once more to Percy. ‘My friend, you remember the day when you spared my life. Have I remembered it, too?’

  For once, there was an Englishman who was not contented to express the noblest emotions that humanity can feel by the commonplace ceremony of shaking hands.

  Percy’s heart overflowed. In an outburst of unutterable gratitude he threw himself on

  Bervie’s breast. As brothers the two men embraced. As brothers they loved and trusted one another, from that day forth.

  The door on the right was softly opened from within. A charming face—the dark eyes bright with happy tears, the rosy lips just opening into a smile peeped into the room. A low sweet voice, with an under-note of trembling a it, made this modest protest, in the form of an inquiry:

  ‘When you have quite done, Percy, with our good friend, perhaps you will lye something to say to ME?’

  LAST WORDS

  The persons immediately interested in the marriage of Percy and Charlotte were the only persons present at the ceremony.

  At the little breakfast afterwards, in the French hotel, Mr Bowmore insisted on making a speech to a select audience of six—namely the bride and bridegroom, the bridesmaid, the Chaplain, the Captain, and Mrs Bowmore. But what does a small audience matter?

  The English frenzy for making speeches is not to be cooled by such a trifle as that. At the end of the world, the expiring forces of Nature will hear a dreadful voice—the voice of the last Englishman delivering the last speech.

  Percy wisely made his honeymoon a long one; he determined to be quite sure of his superior influence over his wife, before he trusted her within reach of her father again.

  Mr and Mrs Bowmore accompanied Captain Bervie and Miss Bervie on their way back to England, as far as Boulogne. In that pleasant town, the banished patriot set up his tent.

  It was a cheaper place to live in than Paris, and it was conveniently close to England, when he had quite made up his mind whether to be an exile on the Continent, or to go back to his own country and be a martyr in prison. In the end, the course of events settled that question for him. Mr Bowmore returned to England, with the return of the Habeas Corpus Act.

  The years passed. Percy and Charlotte (judged from the romantic point of view) became two uninteresting married people. Bervie (always remaining a bachelor) rose steadily in his profession, through the higher grades of military rank. Mr Bowmore, wisely overlooked by a new Government, sank back again into the obscurity from which shrewd Ministers would never have assisted him to emerge. The one subject of interest left, among the persons of this
little drama, was now represented by Doctor Lagarde. Thus far, not a trace had been discovered of the French physician, who had so strangely associated the visions of his magnetic sleep with the destinies of the two men who had consulted him.

  Steadfastly maintaining his own opinion of the prediction and the fulfilment, Bervie persisted in believing that he and Lagarde (or Percy and Lagarde) were yet destined to meet, and resume the unfinished consultation at the point where it had been broken off.

  Persons, happy in the possession of ‘sound common sense,’ who declared the prediction to be skilled guess-work, and the fulfilment manifest coincidence, ridiculed the idea of finding Doctor Lagarde as closely akin to that other celebrated idea of finding the needle in the bottle of hay. But Bervie’s obstinacy was proverbial. Nothing shook his confidence in his own convictions.

  More than thirteen years had elapsed since the consultation at the Doctor’s lodgings, when Bervie went to Paris to spend a summer holiday with his friend, the chaplain to the English embassy. His last words to Percy and Charlotte when he took his leave were:

  ‘Suppose I meet with Doctor Lagarde?’

  It was then the year 1830. Bervie arrived at his friend’s rooms on the 24th of July. On the 27th of the month, the famous revolution broke out which dethroned Charles the Tenth in three days.

  On the second day, Bervie and his host ventured into the streets, watching the revolution (like other reckless Englishmen) at the risk of their lives. In the confusion around them, they were separated. Bervie, searching for his companion, found his progress stopped by a barricade, which had been desperately attacked, and desperately defended. Men in blouses and men in uniform lay dead and dying together: the tricoloured flag waved over them, in token of the victory of the people.

  Bervie had just revived a poor wretch with a drink from an overthrown bowl of water, which still had a few drops left in it, when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder from behind. He turned and discovered a National Guard, who had been watching his charitable action. ‘Give a helping hand to that poor fellow,’ said the citizen-soldier, pointing to a workman standing near, grimed with blood and gunpowder. The tears were rolling down the man’s cheeks. ‘I can’t see my way, sir, for crying,’ he said. ‘Help me to carry that sad burden into the next street.’ He pointed to a rude wooden litter, on which lay a dead or wounded man, his face and breast covered with an old cloak. ‘There is the best friend the people ever had,’ the workman said. ‘He cured us, comforted us, respected us, loved us. And there he lies, shot dead while he was binding up the wounds of friends and enemies alike!’