Chapter 5

He stood there, his feet buried in the blanched corn--I could see the long yellowish-white blades--the torch throwing shadows about him, his back against the wall. I looked carefully round my dungeon. There was no a sign of a window; I was to live in darkness. Yet if I were but allowed candles, or a lantern, or a torch, some books, paper, pencil, and tobacco, and the knowledge that I had not killed Juste Duvarney, I could abide the worst with some sort of calmness. How much might have happened, must have happened, in all these hours of sleep! My letter to Alixe should have been delivered long ere this; my trial, no doubt, had been decided on. What had Voban done? Had he any word for me? Dear Lord! here was a mass of questions tumbling one upon the other in my head, while my heart thumped behind my waistcoat like a rubber ball to a prize-fighter's fist. Misfortunes may be so great and many that one may find grim humour and grotesqueness in their impossible conjunction and multiplicity. I remembered at that moment a friend of mine in Virginia, the most unfortunate man I ever knew. Death, desertion, money losses, political defeat, flood, came one upon the other all in two years, and coupled with this was loss of health. One day he said to me:

"Robert, I have a perforated lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his--plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God--and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing, and I gave him a glass of spirits, which eased him.

"That's better," said I cheerily to him.

"It's robbing Peter to pay Paul," he answered; "for I owed it to my head to put the quid refert there, and here it's gone to my lungs to hurry up my breathing. Did you ever think, Robert," he added, "that this breathing of ours is a labor, and that we have to work every second to keep ourselves alive? We have to pump air in and out like a blacksmith's boy." He said it so drolly, though he was deadly ill, that I laughed for half an hour at the stretch, wiping away my tears as I did it; for his pale gray face looked so sorry, with its quaint smile and that odd, dry voice of his.

As I sat there in my dungeon, with Gabord cocking his head and his eyes rolling, that scene flashed on me, and I laughed freely--so much so that Gabord sulkily puffed out his lips, and flamed like bunting on a coast-guard's hut. The more he scowled and spluttered, the more I laughed, till my wounded side hurt me and my arm had twinges. But my mood changed suddenly, and I politely begged his pardon, telling him frankly then and there what had made me laugh, and how I had come to think of it. The flame passed out of his cheeks, the revolving fire of his eyes dimmed, his lips broke into a soundless laugh, and then, in his big voice, he said:

"You've got your knees to pray on yet, and crack my bones, but you'll have need to con your penitentials if tattle in the town be true."

"Before you tell of that," said I, "how is young Monsieur Duvarney? Is--is he alive?" I added, as I saw his face look lower.

"The Beast was at door again last night, wild to be off, and foot of young Seigneur was in the stirrup, when along comes sister with drug got from an Indian squaw who nursed her when a child. She gives it him, and he drinks; they carry him back, sleeping, and Beast must stand there tugging at the leathers yet."

"His sister--it was his sister," said I, "that brought him back to life?"

"Like that--aho! They said she must not come, but she will have her way. Straight she goes to the palace at night, no one knowing but--guess who? You can't--but no!"

A light broke in on me. "With the Scarlet Woman--with Mathilde," I said, hoping in my heart that it was so, for somehow I felt even then that she, poor vagrant, would play a part in the history of Alixe's life and mine.

"At the first shot," he said. "'Twas the crimson one, as quiet as a baby chick, not hanging to ma'm'selle's skirts, but watching and whispering a little now and then--and she there in Bigot's palace, and he not knowing it! And maids do not tell him, for they knew the poor wench in better days--aho!"

I got up with effort and pain, and made to grasp his hand in gratitude, but he drew back, putting his arms behind him.

"No, no," said he, "I am your jailer. They've put you here to break your high spirits, and I'm to help the breaking."

"But I thank you just the same," I answered him; "and I promise to give you as little trouble as may be while you are my jailer--which, with all my heart, I hope may be as long as I'm a prisoner."

He waved out his hands to the dungeon walls, and lifted his shoulders as if to say that I might as well be docile, for the prison was safe enough. "Poom!" said he, as if in genial disdain of my suggestion.

I smiled, and then, after putting my hands on the walls here and there to see if they were, as they seemed, quite dry, I drew back to my couch and sat down. Presently I stooped to tip the earthen jar of water to my lips, for I could not lift it with one hand, but my humane jailer took it from me and held it to my mouth. When I had drunk, "Do you know," asked I as calmly as I could, "if our barber gave the letter to Mademoiselle?"

"M'sieu', you've travelled far to reach that question," said he, jangling his keys as if he enjoyed it. "And if he had--?"

I caught at his vague suggestion, and my heart leaped.

"A reply," said I, "a message or a letter," though I had not dared to let myself even think of that.

He whipped a tiny packet from his coat. "'Tis a sparrow's pecking--no great matter here, eh?"--he weighed it up and down on his fingers--"a little piping wren's par pitie."

I reached out for it. "I should read it," said he. "There must be no more of this. But new orders came AFTER I'd got her dainty a m'sieu'! Yes, I must read it," said he--"but maybe not at first," he added, "not at first, if you'll give word of honour not to tear it."

"On my sacred honour," said I, reaching out still.

He looked it all over again provokingly, and then lifted it to his nose, for it had a delicate perfume. Then he gave a little grunt of wonder and pleasure, and handed it over.

I broke the seal, and my eyes ran swiftly through the lines, traced in a firm, delicate hand. I could see through it all the fine, sound nature, by its healthy simplicity mastering anxiety, care, and fear.

"Robert," she wrote, "by God's help my brother will live, to repent with you, I trust, of Friday night's ill work. He was near gone, yet we have held him back from that rough-rider, Death.

"You will thank God, will you not, that my brother did not die? Indeed, I feel you have. I do not blame you; I know--I need not tell you how--the heart of the affair; and even my mother can see through the wretched thing. My father says little, and he has not spoken harshly; for which I gave thanksgiving this morning in the chapel of the Ursulines. Yet you are in a dungeon, covered with wounds of my brother's making, both of you victims of others' villainy, and you are yet to bear worse things, for they are to try you for your life. But never shall I believe that they will find you guilty of dishonour. I have watched you these three years; I do not, nor ever will, doubt you, dear friend of my heart.

"You would not believe it, Robert, and you may think it fanciful, but as I got up from my prayers at the chapel I looked towards a window, and it being a little open, for it is a sunny day, there sat a bird on the sill, a little brown bird that peeped and nodded. I was so won by it that I came softly over to it. It did not fly away, but hopped a little here and there. I stretched out my hand gently on the stone, and putting its head now this side, now that, at last it tripped into it, and chirped most sweetly. After I had kissed it I placed it back on the window-sill, that it might fly away again. Yet no, it would not go, but stayed there, tipping its gold-brown head at me as though it would invite me to guess why it came. Again I reached out my hand, and once more it tripped into it. I stood wondering and holding it to my bosom, when I heard a voice behind me say, 'The bird would be with thee, my child. God hath many signs.' I turned and saw the good Mere St. George looking at me, she of whom I was always afraid, so distant is she. I did not speak, but only looked at her, and she nodded kindly at me and passed on.

"And, Robert, as I write to you here in the Intendant's palace (what a great wonderful place it is! I fear I do not hate it and its luxury as I ought!), the bird is beside me in a cage upon the table, with a little window open, so that it may come out if it will. My brother lies in the bed asleep; I can touch him if I but put out my hand, and I am alone save for one person. You sent two messengers: can you not guess the one that will be with me? Poor Mathilde, she sits and gazes at me till I almost fall weeping. But she seldom speaks, she is so quiet--as if she knew that she must keep a secret. For, Robert, though I know you did not tell her, she knows--she knows that you love me, and she has given me a little wooden cross which she said will make us happy.

"My mother did not drive her away, as I half feared she would, and at last she said that I might house her with one of our peasants. Meanwhile she is with me here. She is not so mad but that she has wisdom too, and she shall have my care and friendship.

"I bid thee to God's care, Robert. I need not tell thee to be not dismayed. Thou hast two jails, and one wherein I lock thee safe is warm and full of light. If the hours drag by, think of all thou wouldst do if thou wert free to go to thine own country--yet alas that thought!--and of what thou wouldst say if thou couldst speak to thy ALIXE.

"Postscript.--I trust that they have cared for thy wounds, and that thou hast light and food and wine. Voban hath promised to discover this for me. The soldier Gabord, at the citadel, he hath a good heart. Though thou canst expect no help from him, yet he will not be rougher than his orders. He did me a good service once, and he likes me, and I him. And so fare thee well, Robert. I will not languish; I will act, and not be weary. Dost thou really love me?"

V. THE DEVICE OF THE DORMOUSE

When I had read the letter, I handed it up to Gabord without a word. A show of trust in him was the only thing, for he had enough knowledge of our secret to ruin us, if he chose. He took the letter, turned it over, looking at it curiously, and at last, with a shrug of the shoulders, passed it back.

"'Tis a long tune on a dot of a fiddle," said he, for indeed the letter was but a small affair in bulk. "I'd need two pairs of eyes and telescope! Is it all Heart-o'-my-heart, and Come-trip-in-dewy-grass--aho? Or is there knave at window to bear m'sieu' away?"

I took the letter from him. "Listen," said I, "to what the lady says of you." And then I read him that part of her postscript which had to do with himself.

He put his head on one side like a great wise magpie, and "H'm--ha!" said he whimsically, "aho! Gabord the soldier, Gabord, thou hast a good heart--and the birds fed the beast with plums and froth of comfits till he died, and on his sugar tombstone they carved the words, 'Gabord had a good heart.'"

"It was spoken out of a true spirit," said I petulantly, for I could not bear from a common soldier even a tone of disparagement, though I saw the exact meaning of his words. So I added, "You shall read the whole letter, or I will read it to you and you shall judge. On the honour of a gentleman, I will read all of it!"

"Poom!" said he, "English fire-eater! corn-cracker! Show me the 'good heart' sentence, for I'd see how it is written--how GABORD looks with a woman's whimsies round it."

I traced the words with my fingers, holding the letter near the torch. "'Yet he will not be rougher than his orders,'" said he after me, and "'He did me a good service once.'"

"Comfits," he continued; "well, thou shalt have comfits, too," and he fished from his pocket a parcel. It was my tobacco and my pipe.

Truly, my state might have been vastly worse. Little more was said between Gabord and myself, but he refused bluntly to carry message or letter to anybody, and bade me not to vex him with petitions. But he left me the torch and a flint and steel, so I had light for a space, and I had my blessed tobacco and pipe. When the doors clanged shut and the bolts were shot, I lay back on my couch.

I was not all unhappy. Thank God, they had not put chains on me, as Governor Dinwiddie had done with a French prisoner at Williamsburg, for whom I had vainly sought to be exchanged two years before, though he was my equal in all ways and importance. Doltaire was the cause of that, as you shall know. Well, there was one more item to add to his indebtedness. My face flushed and my fingers tingled at thought of him, and so I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere, and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when going from sleep to waking--a long lane of half-numb life, before the open road of full consciousness is reached.

At last I was aroused by the sudden cracking of a knot in the torch. I saw that it would last but a few hours more. I determined to put it out, for I might be allowed no more light, and even a few minutes of this torch every day would be a great boon. So I took it from its place, and was about to quench it in the moist earth at the foot of the wall, when I remembered my tobacco and my pipe. Can you think how joyfully I packed full the good brown bowl, delicately filling in every little corner, and at last held it to the flame, and saw it light? That first long whiff was like the indrawn breath of the cold, starved hunter, when, stepping into his house, he sees food, fire, and wife on his hearthstone. Presently I put out the torchlight, and then went back to my couch and sat down, the bowl shining like a star before me.

There and then a purpose came to me--something which would keep my brain from wandering, my nerves from fretting and wearing, for a time at least. I determined to write to my dear Alixe the true history of my life, even to the point--and after--of this thing which now was bringing me to so ill a pass. But I was in darkness, I had no paper, pens, nor ink. After a deal of thinking I came at last to the solution. I would compose the story, and learn it by heart, sentence by sentence, as I so composed it.

So there and then I began to run back over the years of my life, even to my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to last in a sort of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew now that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or feels, it has begun life.

I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it shall be set down forthwith and in little space, though it took me so very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a fixed place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase of that story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it must not be thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a few things, but you shall find in them the spirit of the whole. I will come at once to the body of the letter.

VI. MORAY TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE

"...I would have you know of what I am and whence I came, though I have given you glimpses in the past. That done, I will make plain why I am charged with this that puts my life in danger, which would make you blush that you ever knew me if it were true. And I will show you first a picture as it runs before me, sitting here, the corn of my dungeon garden twining in my fingers:--

"A multiplying width of green grass spotted with white flowers, an upland where sheep browsed on a carpet of purple and gold and green, a tall rock on a hill where birds perched and fluttered, a blue sky arching over all. There, sprawling in a garden, a child pulled at long blades of grass, as he watched the birds flitting about the rocks, and heard a low voice coming down the wind. Here in my dungeon I can hear the voice as I have not heard it since that day in the year 1730--that voice stilled so long ago. The air and the words come floating down (for the words I knew years afterwards):

'Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun? That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie. Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag? That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie. Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn? That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie. Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood? That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie. Sae I'll gang awa' hame, to the shine o' the fire, To the cot where I lie wi' my bairnie.'

"These words came crooning over the grass of that little garden at Balmore which was by my mother's home. There I was born one day in June, though I was reared in the busy streets of Glasgow, where my father was a prosperous merchant and famous for his parts and honesty.

"I see myself, a little child of no great strength, for I was, indeed, the only one of my family who lived past infancy, and my mother feared she should never bring me up. She, too, is in that picture, tall, delicate, kind yet firm of face, but with a strong brow, under which shone grave gray eyes, and a manner so distinguished that none might dispute her kinship to the renowned Montrose, who was lifted so high in dying, though his gallows was but thirty feet, that all the world has seen him there. There was one other in that picture, standing near my mother, and looking at me, who often used to speak of our great ancestor--my grandfather, John Mitchell, the Gentleman of Balmore, as he was called, out of regard for his ancestry and his rare merits.

"I have him well in mind: his black silk breeches and white stockings and gold seals, and two eyes that twinkled with great humour when, as he stooped over me, I ran my head between his calves and held him tight. I recall how my mother said, 'I doubt that I shall ever bring him up,' and how he replied (the words seem to come through great distances to me), 'He'll live to be Montrose the second, rascal laddie! Four seasons at the breast? Tut, tut! what o' that? 'Tis but his foolery, his scampishness! Nae, nae! his epitaph's no for writing till you and I are tucked i' the sod, my Jeanie. Then, like Montrose's, it will be--

'Tull Edinburrow they led him thair, And on a gallows hong; They hong him high abone the rest, He was so trim a boy.'

"I can hear his laugh this minute, as he gave an accent to the words by stirring me with his stick, and I caught the gold head of it and carried it off, trailing it through the garden, till I heard my mother calling, and then forced her to give me chase, as I pushed open a little gate and posted away into that wide world of green, coming quickly to the river, where I paused and stood at bay. I can see my mother's anxious face now, as she caught me to her arms; and yet I know she had a kind of pride, too, when my grandfather said, on our return, 'The rascal's at it early. Next time he'll ford the stream and skirl at ye, Jeanie, from yonder bank.'

"This is the first of my life that I remember. It may seem strange to you that I thus suddenly recall not only it, but the words then spoken too. It is strange to me, also. But here it comes to me all on a sudden in this silence, as if another self of me were speaking from far places. At first all is in patches and confused, and then it folds out--if not clearly, still so I can understand--and the words I repeat come as if filtered through many brains to mine. I do not say that it is true--it may be dreams; and yet, as I say, it is firmly in my mind.

"The next that I remember was climbing upon a chair to reach for my grandfather's musket, which hung across the chimney. I got at last upon the mantelshelf, and my hands were on the weapon, when the door opened, and my grandfather and my father entered. I was so busy I did not hear them till I was caught by the legs and swung to a shoulder, where I sat kicking. 'You see his tastes, William,' said my grandfather to my father; 'he's white o' face and slim o' body, but he'll no carry on your hopes.' And more he said to the point, though what it was I knew not. But I think it to have been suggestion (I heard him say it later) that I would bring Glasgow up to London by the sword (good doting soul!) as my father brought it by manufactures, gaining honour thereby.

"However that may be, I would not rest till my grandfather had put the musket into my arms. I could scarcely lift it, but from the first it had a charm for me, and now and then, in spite of my mother's protests, I was let to handle it, to learn its parts, to burnish it, and by-and-bye--I could not have been more than six years old--to rest it on a rock and fire it off. It kicked my shoulder roughly in firing, but I know I did not wink as I pulled the trigger. Then I got a wild hunger to fire it at all times; so much so, indeed, that powder and shot were locked up, and the musket was put away in my grandfather's chest. But now and again it was taken out, and I made war upon the unresisting hillside, to the dismay of our neighbours in Balmore. Feeding the fever in my veins, my grandfather taught me soldiers' exercises and the handling of arms: to my dear mother's sorrow, for she ever fancied me as leading a merchant's quiet life like my father's, hugging the hearthstone, and finding joy in small civic duties, while she and my dear father sat peacefully watching me in their decline of years.

"I have told you of that river which flowed near my father's house. At this time most of my hours were spent by it in good weather, for at last my mother came to trust me alone there, having found her alert fears of little use. But she would very often come with me and watch me as I played there. I loved to fancy myself a miller, and my little mill-wheel, made by my own hands, did duty here and there on the stream, and many drives of logs did I, in fancy, saw into piles of lumber, and loads of flour sent away to the City of Desire. Then, again, I made bridges, and drove mimic armies across them; and if they were enemies, craftily let them partly cross, to tumble them in at the moment when part of the forces were on one side of the stream and part on the other, and at the mercy of my men.