CHAPTER XXXV

MR. TOLLEMACHE AS A LINGUIST

(1)

The full-rigged ship, in oils, embedded in a solid sea of the same medium resembling a newly ploughed ultramarine field, which hung over the chest of drawers in the Bishop's bedroom (he having taken the little house furnished, and feeling, with his fine courtesy, that he had no right to change the place of anything therein), perplexed La Vireville not at all. Almost his last memory had been of the sea. There was, too, a stuffed trout in a glass case which might also, with a little difference, have been a denizen of the deep. . . . But his mind, still, after ten days' care, somewhat confused, was not at all cleared by lying and gazing, as he often did, at the little triptych of the Assumption which the Bishop had succeeded in bringing away from his private chapel in France, and which hung not far from the other painting. La Vireville could not have told why, but the triptych seemed to him, as it did to the Grand Vicar, incongruous with the stuffed trout. He used to speculate how it got there.

At first he had remembered very little about Quiberon, either about the surrender or his own abortive execution, but he had a vivid, detached memory of what came after the latter event. He could recall how, just as the little boat plunged into the breakers of Houat, he had suddenly regained his senses, brought back, no doubt, from the borders of unconsciousness by the never-dying instinct of the seaman. Too late though it was to save himself then, that instinct kept his nerveless hand on the tiller in an attempt to guide what he could no longer control. . . . He remembered the crash, the swirling, foaming water that sucked him down twice, struggling desperately, from the rock which, crippled as he was, he could neither gain nor cling to, the water that beat him against it like a cork, and that then, in a great wave, finally engulfed him, to bear him back and fling him senseless on the pebbles. He remembered, too, waking once more to a brief, semi-animate existence, to find himself lying face downwards on the wet shingle, his hair in a salt pool that seemed half blood--or was it merely tinged with the light of the red sunset that towered over Houat? Close by the surge still thundered, drenching his cold, half-naked body with spray. He was bleeding and battered from head to foot, yet, though he knew he saw death face to face at last, he contrived to drag himself up the shingle a few inches farther from the furious breakers. . . . After that, darker oblivion than before. . . .

Of his finding next morning by two of his compatriots, refugees like himself from Quiberon, in time to save his life but not his arm, he knew nothing, and most of the memories of his slow and painful struggle back to existence in that bleak, scarcely habitable islet, among the human débris of the great disaster, were confused, and--except one--in no way desirable as reminiscences.

Yet now, whether as the result of better care and conditions, or because the strain of the voyage to England had worn itself off, brain and body alike were recovering fast, and Monseigneur, very much pleased, intimated that he should shortly set up in practice as a physician. His best medicine, however, was still to come--from Jersey.

(2)

Fortuné was sound asleep when his mother at last bent over him, one frosty December afternoon, her heart brimming with mingled thankfulness and tears. For indeed the face on the pillow, always lean, had passed far beyond mere leanness now. . . . Yet here he was, her son, whom she had mourned as slain, sleeping just as he used to sleep twenty years ago, a boy at Kerdronan, with one hand under his head--no, not just as he had used to sleep, for this was not of those days, this evidence, very marked in repose, of the pitiable victory that weakness had won over vigour. He was alive, would live, but he looked broken. And achingly it went to her heart, how thin his wrist was--all she could see, at the moment, of that once strong, sunburnt hand of his. Involuntarily she looked about for the other hand. . . . And it was then, and then only, that the full realisation of what the Bishop had told her came down upon her. Under that avalanche her fortitude gave way, and sinking down on the chair by the bedside she hid her face in her hands.

The slight movement had wakened the sleeper, and he opened his eyes, and lay a few seconds looking at her, without stirring. He had known that she was coming.

"What are you crying for, petite mère?" he said at last, in his changed voice. "Are you so sorry, then, to see me again?"

"Oh, my son, my son!" she cried.

* * * * *

"You know about this?" he asked abruptly, after a little, indicating his left arm.

Mme. de la Vireville nodded, unable, for all her courage, to trust herself to speak for a moment.

"I shall have a hook," went on Fortuné, with a faint smile. "Like old Yves, the ferryman at Coatquen, when I was a boy. . . . Do you remember? He always said that he could do more with it than with a hand. . . . I used to envy him that hook. And I should never have had an elbow again, you know."

Mme. de la Vireville swallowed something in her throat. "Since Monseigneur told me," she said, sufficiently firmly, "I have not ceased to thank God that it is your left arm."

"I also," replied her son, with an effort. "And for Monseigneur's charity, and now, for your coming, my heart. . . . Sit close to the bed, and I shall sleep again."

(3)

Several times during the next two or three weeks did the Grand Vicar congratulate the Bishop on having sent for Mme. de la Vireville. There was no room for her in the little house, but she lodged near, and spent all her days at her son's bedside. That son no longer looked quite so much like the wreck of his former hardy self, and, but for the fact that his memory still played him obstinate tricks over names, he had regained his normal mental condition. But he seemed to his mother to have something on his mind. One day, half in jest, she taxed him with it.

He looked at her from his pillows with a smile.

"If I had a mind, little mother, there might be something on it. Even my head is not as hard as I have been accustomed to boast, for either that confounded bullet last spring, or the rocks of Houat, have played the deuce with the inside of it."

"But, my son, you are daily recovering your memory," said Mme. de la Vireville encouragingly.

"Yes," agreed Fortuné, "and one thing I remember is this--that I promised poor René de Flavigny to look after Anne if he were killed. And I am convinced that he was killed."

His mother looked at his gaunt visage and hollow eyes.

"Fortuné, you are scarcely in a fit state to look after anyone at present, you must admit that. And as to the fate of M. de Flavigny, surely that could be ascertained by inquiry?"

"Doubtless, if I had not entirely forgotten his address in London, and even the name of his father-in-law with whom he lived. I have tried times without number to remember it," said La Vireville, frowning. "It was a square, and there was a statue of a general on horseback in it. . . . Perhaps Monseigneur would know?"

As the Bishop, however, had not once set foot in London he was not of much topographical assistance.

But now, having elicited what her son had on his mind, Mme. de la Vireville soon perceived what edifices he was ready to build on the subject of Anne-Hilarion's bereavement. Anne should come and stay with them in Jersey when his grandfather could spare him; Anne should do this, that, and the other. . . . She could not doubt the stimulus it was to Fortuné to feel that Anne would have a real claim on him, and he on the boy. He had long ago made up his mind that the Marquis could not have survived, and though his death caused him real sorrow, so many friends and acquaintances had come to violent ends since '89 that there was little sensation of shock about the loss.

Fortuné did not tell his mother, for fear of wounding her, that, but for Anne and his own promise to René he might possibly never have tried to escape that night, but she was not far from guessing it. It would have needed a miracle to enable her to guess that the thought of another person had also counted for something in that episode--and this fact he was still further from revealing to her.

(4)

The required information about M. de Flavigny was supplied, in the end, from a quite unexpected source. For, walking down High Street one morning, Mme. de la Vireville saw two British naval officers in front of her. One of the backs seemed familiar. So, rather shamefacedly, she hurried after it, and breathed behind it an apologetic, "De grâce, Monsieur!"

Mr. Francis Tollemache checked, looked over his shoulder, stopped altogether, turned round, and saluted. His companion did the same.

"At your service, Madame," he responded. "Madame de la Vireville, I believe?"

"Oui, M. le Lieutenant," said she, a little breathlessly. "Et si Monsieur voudrait, il pourrait me rendre un grand, un très grand service!"

The ready colour suffused M. le Lieutenant's ingenuous countenance. He turned to his comrade. "Could you take her on, Carleton?" he asked.

Mr. Carleton shook his head. "Don't know a word of the lingo," he replied unhelpfully.

Mme. de la Vireville saw what was wrong. She pulled herself together for an effort. "You do not speak French, Messieurs, is it not? Eh bien, it is that my son is very ill, and he want to know if the little boy Anne de Flavigny--no, if ze fazzer of the little boy is . . . vivant . . . or kill'. Il le croit mort . . . and he have forgot"--she touched her forehead--"where he live in Londres. Cela le tracasse tant! You per'aps know it, Messieurs?"

"Le petit garçon--oh, hang it! Madame, vous comprendre un peu anglais, don't you? The little boy lives with his grandfather, Mr. Elphinstone, in Cavendish Square, but his father--père, isn't it--ain't killed." Thus Mr. Tollemache, in the same bilingual style.

"Mais . . . my son, he was sure . . ."

"I've the best of reasons for knowing that de Flavigny is alive," said Mr. Tollemache stoutly, casting the French tongue momentarily to the winds. "I went to see them all last week, and he's getting on famously--can walk now. Porter bien . . . marcher . . . vous comprendre, Madame?"

"Tollemache here saved his life," put in Mr. Carleton. "Pulled him out of that affair under the very noses of the sans-culottes. A deuced fine piece of work." But this information was couched in language too idiomatic for Mme. de la Vireville's comprehension.

"M. de Flavigny n'est pas mort, alors?" said she, the conversation being evidently about to end in each party speaking his own tongue.

"Non, pas mort," responded Mr. Tollemache. "Jolly as a sandboy--at least he will be. So's the little 'un. And the address is Cavendish Square. Shall I write it down . . . er . . . écrivez pour vous, Madame?"

"Ah, M. le Lieutenant, if you could come to see my son a little five minute, to tell him about M. de Flavigny! Cela lui ferait tant de bien!" said Mme. de la Vireville, turning the wistful battery of her eyes on the young officer. And he capitulated unconditionally.

(5)

La Vireville was sitting that day, wrapped in a flowered dressing-gown, in the little bow window of the bedroom. It was promotion for him, yet Mr. Tollemache gave an exclamation when he entered.

"By gad, you look as if you had been through a good deal!" he said, and then saw the empty sleeve, and was dumb.

La Vireville stretched out his hand to him. "You behold in me, M. le Lieutenant," he observed, with rather a grim smile, "a twice condemned criminal. I have no right to be anywhere but underground. But what is the news you have to tell me, Monsieur?"

Mr. Tollemache sat down beside him and told him. The wounded man heard him through to the end without comment, his face shielded by the thin hand on which he leant it. At the end he said under his breath, "Thank God!" and held out that hand again to the narrator. "You are a brave man, Mr. Tollemache."

But the sailor, not a very keen observer, was struck by the added pallor which had come over the already haggard face during his brief recital, and which he assigned to the well-known emotional nature of the French, manifested as readily, apparently, at the hearing of good news as of bad. Besides, the poor devil looked very weak. Mr. Tollemache was sorry about that arm.

* * * * *

"Well, my son," said little Mme. de la Vireville, coming in with a smile a few minutes after the visitor had gone. "Did not our guest bring excellent news, both for you and for the little boy?"

"Yes, indeed," replied the invalid. "René's escape was nearly as miraculous as mine. And," he added slowly, "a miracle to more purpose."

There was something so unusual in his voice that she stood with all her gladness--that was mostly for his sake--turning cold.

"Anne will not come and stay with us in Jersey now," said Fortuné, looking out of the window. "There will be no need; thank God again for that."

Was it as strong as that then? Something that was half-hope, half-anguish, leapt up in Mme. de la Vireville's heart. She knelt down beside her son's chair, and looked at his averted profile.

"Fortuné," she began, in a voice that shook, "if only you could put that . . . memory . . . away! My dear, my dear, what is the use of keeping it all these years? You have only to stretch out your hand to grasp what you want. . . ."

"What is it that I want?" asked her son, turning his head and looking at her. He was even paler than Mr. Tollemache had seen him. "There is nothing left for a cripple and a failure like me to want, except rest, and you, ma mère. I have both--too much, God knows, of the first--but of you I can never have too much. There is nothing else that I need." He bent his head and kissed her.

But from the day of the good news which Mr. Tollemache had brought him, he began perceptibly to go downhill again.

He was always, on the surface, his old jesting, courageous, disillusioned self, but underneath was a listlessness which Mme. de la Vireville had never known in him. It terrified her. He had previously looked forward to walking a little with her in the garden one day; now it was enough for him to sit apathetically in the window. Sometimes he seemed to have neither strength nor inclination even for that. The surgeon talked, as he had talked before, of the effects of suffering and exposure on an exceptionally strong and vigorous constitution; the Bishop said to the Grand Vicar that he thought it was something that came very near to being a broken heart--broken, like so much else, at Quiberon; and Mme. de la Vireville, despairing, bewildered, and sometimes even a little wounded, carried her knowledge of the past like a heap of ashes amid her slowly dying hopes for the future. Had Fortuné, who had recked so little of blows and hardships and disappointments, come through so much to end like this?