Kitabı oku: «Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience», sayfa 36
To desert the side of the room where I sat, and leave me in a marked isolation, was their first move; but seeing that I rather assumed this as a token of victory, they resorted to another tactic, – they occupied all the tables, save one at the very door, and thus virtually placed me in a position of obloquy and humiliation. For a night or two I held my ground without flinching; but I felt that I could not continue a merely defensive warfare, and determined, at any hazard, to finish the struggle. Instead, therefore, of resuming the humble place they had assigned me, I carried my coffee with me, and set the cup on a table at which a lieutenant-colonel was seated, reading his newspaper by the fire. He started up as he saw me, and called out, “What means this insolence? Is this a place for you?”
“The general instructions of the army declare that a sous-officer has the entrée to all public cafés and restaurants frequented by regimental officers, although not to such as are maintained by them as clubs and messrooms. I am, therefore, only within the limits of a right, Monsieur Colonel,” said I, offering a military salute as I spoke.
“Leave the room, sir, and report yourself to your captain,” said he, boiling over with rage.
I arose, and prepared to obey his command.
“If that fellow be not reduced to the ranks on to-morrow’s parade, I ‘ll leave the service,” said he to an officer at his side.
“If I have your permission to throw him out of the window, Monsieur Colonel, I ‘ll promise to quit the army if I don’t do it,” said a young lieutenant of cuirassiers. He was seated at a table near me, and with his legs in such a position as to fill up the space I had to pass out by.
Without any apology for stepping across him, I moved forward, and slightly – I will not say unintentionally – struck his foot with my own. He sprang up with a loud oath, and knocked my shako off my head. I turned quickly and struck him to the ground with my clenched hand. A dozen swords were drawn in an instant. Had it not been for the most intrepid interference, I should have been cut to pieces on the spot. As it was, I received five or six severe sabre wounds, and one entirely laid my cheek open from the eye to the mouth.
I was soon covered with blood from head to foot; but I stood calmly, until faintness came on, without stirring; then I staggered back, and sat down upon a chair. A surgeon bandaged my wrist, which had been cut across, and my face; and, a carriage being sent for, I was at once conveyed to hospital. The loss of blood perhaps saved me from fever. At all events, I was calm and self-possessed; and, strangest of all, the excitement which for months back had taken possession of me was gone, and I was once again myself, – in patience and quiet submission calmly awaiting the sentence which I well knew must be my death. We frequently hear that great reverses of fortune elicit and develop resources of character which under what are called happier circumstances had remained dormant and unknown. I am strongly disposed to attribute much of this result to purely physical changes, and that our days of prosperity are seasons of inordinate excitement, with all the bodily ills that accompany such a state. If it be so hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, is it not that his whole nature has been depraved and perverted by the consummate selfishness that comes of power? What hardeners of the heart are days of pleasure and nights of excess! And how look for the sympathy that consoles and comforts, from him whose greatest sufferings are the jarring contrarieties of his own nature?
I have said I was again myself, but with this addition, that a deep and sincere sorrow was over me for my late life, and an honest repentance for the past. I was eleven weeks in hospital; two severe relapses had prolonged my malady; and it was nigh three months after the occurrence I have detailed, that I was pronounced fit to be sent forward for trial by court-martial.
There were a considerable number awaiting their trial at the same time. Men had been drafted to Strasburg from various places, and a commission sat en permanence, to dispose of them. There was little formality, and even less time, wasted in these proceedings. The prisoner defended himself if he were able; if not, the reading of the charge and some slight additions of testimony completed the investigation; the sentence being, for form sake, reserved for a later period. Occasionally it would happen that some member of the court would interpose a few favorable words, or endeavor to throw a pretext over the alleged crime; but these cases were rare, and usually nothing was heard but the charge of the accuser.
Having determined to make no defence, my whole effort was to accustom my mind to the circumstances of my fate, and so steel my heart to bear up manfully to the last. My offence was one never pardoned. This I well knew, and it only remained for me to meet the penalty like a brave man. Few, indeed, could quit the world with less ties to break, – few could leave it with less to regret; and yet, such is the instinctive love of life, and so powerful are the impulses to struggle against fate, that as the time of my trial drew nigh, I would have dared any danger with the hope of escape, and accepted any commutation of a sentence short of death. I believe that this is a stage of agony to which all are exposed, and that every criminal sentenced to the scaffold must pass through this terrible period. In my case it was prolonged, my name being one of the very last for trial; and already five weeks had gone over before I was called. Even then a postponement took place, for the Emperor had arrived on his way to Germany, and a great review of the garrison superseded all other duties.
Never had all the pomp and circumstance of war seemed so grand and so splendid to my eyes as when, through the grating of my prison-cell, I strained my glances after the dense columns and the clanking squadrons, as they passed. The gorgeous group of staff-officers and the heavy-rolling artillery had all a significance and a meaning that they had never possessed for me before. They seemed to shadow forth great events for the future, portentous changes in time to come, gigantic convulsions in the condition of the world, kingdoms rocking, and thrones overturned. The shock of battle was, too, present to my eyes, – the din, the crash, and the uproar of conflict, with all its terrors and all its chivalry. What a glorious thing must life be to those about to enter on such a career! How high must beat the hearts of all who joined in this enthusiasm!
That day was to me like whole years of existence, filled with passages of intensest excitement and moments of the very saddest depression. My brain, hitherto calm and collected, struggled in vain against a whole torrent of thoughts without coherence or relation, and at length my faculties began to wander. I forgot where I was, and the fate that impended over me. I spoke of all that had happened to me long before, – of my infancy, my boyhood, my adventures as a man, and those with whom I lived in intimacy. The turnkey, an invalided sergeant of artillery and a kind-hearted fellow, tried to recall me to myself, by soothing and affectionate words. He even affected an interest in what I said, to try and gain some clew to my wanderings, and caught eagerly at anything that promised a hope of obtaining an influence over me. He fetched the surgeon of the jail to my cell at last, and he pronounced my case the incipient stage of a brain fever. I heard the opinion as he whispered it, and understood its import thoroughly. I was in that state where reason flashes at moments across the mind, but all powers of collected thought are lost. Amongst the names that I uttered in my ravings one alone attracted their attention: it was that of Ysaffich, the Pole, of whom I spoke frequently.
“Do you know the Colonel Ysaffich?” said the doctor to me.
“Yes,” said I, slowly; “he is a Russian spy.”
“That answer scarcely denotes madness,” whispered the doctor to the turnkey, with a smile, as he turned away from the bed.
“Should you like to see him?” said he, in a kind tone.
“Of all things,” replied I, eagerly; “tell him to come to me.”
I conclude that this question was asked simply to amuse my mind, and turn it from other painful thoughts, for he shortly after retired, without further allusion to it; but from that hour my mind was riveted on the one idea; and to everybody that approached my sick bed, my first demand was, “Where was Count Ysaffich, and when was he coming to see me?”
I had been again conveyed back to the military hospital, in which I was lying when the Emperor came to make his customary visit. The prisoners’ ward was, however, one exempted from the honor he bestowed on the rest; and one could only hear the distant sounds of the procession as it passed from room to room.
I was lying, with my eyes half closed, lethargic and dull, when I heard a voice say, —
“Yes, Colonel, he has spoken of you constantly, and asks every day when you mean to come and see him.”
“He never served in the Legion, notwithstanding,” replied another voice, “nor do I remember ever to have seen him before.”
The tones of the speaker recalled me suddenly to myself. I looked up, and beheld Count Ysaffich before me. Though dressed in the lancer uniform of the Garde, his features were too marked to be forgotten, and I accosted him at once.
“Have you forgotten your old colleague, Paul Gervois?” said I, trying to appear calm and at ease.
“What! – is this – can you be my old friend Gervois?” cried be, laying a hand on my shoulder, and staring hard at my face. But I could not utter a word; shame and sorrow overcame me, and I covered my face with both my hands.
Ysaffich was not permitted to speak more with me at the time; but he returned soon, and passed hours with me every day to the end of my illness. He was intimate with the officer I had insulted; and, by immense efforts, and the kind assistance of the medical authorities, succeeded in establishing a plea of temporary insanity for my offence, by which I escaped punishment, and was dismissed the service. This was a period of much suffering to me, mentally as well as bodily. I felt all the humiliation at which my life had been purchased, and more than once did the price appear far too great a one.
CHAPTER XLVI. YSAFFICH
I was now domesticated with Ysaffich, who occupied good quarters in Kehl, where the Polish Legion, as it was called, was garrisoned. He treated me with every kindness, and presented me to his comrades as an old and valued friend. I was not sorry to find myself at once amongst total strangers, – men of a country quite new to me, and who themselves had seen reverses and misfortunes enough to make them lenient in their judgments of narrow fortune. They were, besides, a fine, soldier-like race of fellows, – good horsemen, excellent swordsmen, reckless as all men who have neither home nor country, and ready for any deed of daring or danger. There was a jealousy between them and the French officers which prevented any social intercourse; and duels were by no means a rare event whenever they had occasion to meet. The Imperial laws were tremendously severe on this offence; and he who killed his adversary in a duel was certain of death by the law. To evade the consequences of such a penalty, the most extravagant devices were practised, and many a deadly quarrel was decided in a pretended fencing-match. It was in one of these mock trials of skill that Colonel le Brun was killed, an officer of great merit, and younger brother of the general of that name.
From that time the attention of the military authorities was more closely drawn to this practice; and such meetings were for the future always attended by several gendarmes, who narrowly scrutinized every detail of the proceeding. With such perfect good faith, however, was the secret maintained on both sides that discovery was almost impossible. Not only was every etiquette of familiar intimacy strictly observed on these occasions, but a most honorable secrecy by all concerned.
I was soon to be a witness of one of these adventures. Ysaffich, whose duties required him to repair frequently to Strasburg, had been grossly and, as I heard, wantonly outraged by a young captain of the Imperial staff who, seeing his name on a slip of paper on a military table d’hôte, added with his pencil the words Espion Musse after it. Of course a meeting was at once arranged, and it was planned that Challendrouze, the captain, and four of his brother officers were to come over and visit the fortifications at Kehl, breakfasting with us, and being our guests for the morning. Two only of Ysaffich’s friends were intrusted with the project, and invited to meet the others.
I cannot say that I ever felt what could be called a sincere friendship for Ysaffich. He was one of those men who neither inspire such attachments, nor need them in return. It was not that he was cold and distant, repelling familiarity and refusing sympathy. It was exactly the opposite. He revealed everything, even to the minutest particle of his history, and told you of himself every emotion and every feeling that moved him. He was frankness and candor itself; but it was a frankness that spoke of utter indifference, – perfect recklessness as to your judgment on him, and what opinion you should form of his character. He told you of actions that reflected on his good faith, and uttered sentiments that arraigned his sense of honor, not only without hesitation, but with an air of assumed superiority to all the prejudices that sway other men in similar cases. Even in the instance of the approaching duel, he avowed that Challendrouze’s offence was in the manner, and not the matter, of the insult. His whole theory of life was that every one was false, not only to others, but to himself; that no man really felt love, patriotism, or religion in his heart, but that he assumed one or more of these affections as a cloak to whatever vices were most easily practised under such a disguise. It was a code to stifle every generous feeling of the heart, and make a man’s nature barren as a desert.
He never fully disclosed these sentiments until the evening before the duel. It was then, in the midst of preparations for the morrow, that he revealed to me all that he felt and thought. There was, throughout these confessions, a tone of indifference that shocked me more, perhaps, than actual levity; and I own I regarded him with a sense of terror, and as one whose very contact was perilous.
“I have married since I saw you last,” said he to me, after a long interval of silence. “My wife was a former acquaintance of yours. You must go and see her, if this event turn out ill, and ‘break the tidings,’ as they call it, – not that the task will demand any extraordinary display of skill at your hands,” said he, laughing. “Madame the Countess will bear her loss with becoming dignity; and as I have nothing to bequeath, the disposition of my property cannot offend her. If, however,” added he, with more energy of manner, “if, however, the Captain should fall, we must take measures to fly. I ‘ll not risk a cour militaire in such a cause, so that we must escape.”
All his arrangements had been already made for this casualty; and I found that relays of horses had been provided to within a short distance of Mannheim, where we were to cross the Rhine, and trust to chances to guide us through the Luxembourg territory down to Namur, at a little village in the neighborhood of which town his wife was then living. My part in the plan was to repair by daybreak to Erlauch, a small village on the Rhine, three leagues from Kehl, and await his arrival, or such tidings as might recall me to Kehl.
“If I be not with you by seven o’clock at the latest,” said he, “it is because Challendrouze has viséd my passports for another route.”
These were his last words to me ere I started, with, it is not too much to say, a far heavier heart than he had who uttered them.
It was drawing towards evening, and I was standing watching the lazy drift of a timber-raft as it floated down the river, when I heard the clattering of a horse’s hoofs approaching at a full gallop. I turned, and saw Ysaffich, who was coming at full speed, waving his handkerchief by way of signal.
I hurried back to the inn to order out the horses at once, and ere many minutes we were in the saddle, side by side, not a word having passed between us till, as we passed out into the open country, Ysaffich said, —
“We must ride for it, Gervois.”
“It’s all over, then?” said I.
“Yes, all over,” said he while, pressing his horse to speed, he dashed on in front of me; nor was I sorry that even so much of space separated us at that moment.
Through that long, bright, starry night we rode at the top speed of our horses, and, as day was breaking, entered Rostadt, where we ate a hasty breakfast, and again set out. Ysaffich reported himself at each military station as the bearer of despatches, till, on the second morning, we arrived at Hellsheim, on the Bergstrasse, where we left our horses, and proceeded on foot to the Rhine by a little pathway across the fields. We crossed the river, and, hiring a wagon, drove on to Erz, a hamlet on the Moselle, at which place we found horses again ready for us. I was terribly fatigued by this time, but Ysaffich seemed fresh as when we started. Seeing, however, my exhaustion, he proposed to halt for a couple of hours, – a favor I gladly accepted. The interval over, we remounted, and so on to Namur, where we arrived on the sixth day, having scarcely interchanged as many words with each other from the moment of our setting out.
CHAPTER XLVII. TOWARDS HOME
Ysaffich’s retreat was a small cottage about two miles from Dinant, and on the verge of the Ardennes forest. He had purchased it from a retired “Garde Chasse” some years before, “seeing,” as he said, “it was exactly the kind of place a man may lie concealed in, whenever the time comes, as it invariably does come, that one wants to escape from recognition.”
I have already said that he was not very communicative as we went along; but as we drew nigh to Dinant he told me in a few words the chief events of his career since we had parted.
“I have made innumerable mistakes in life, Gervois, but my last was the worst of all. I married! Yes, I persuaded your old acquaintance Madame von Geysiger to accept me at last. She yielded, placed her millions and tens of millions at my disposal, and three months after we were beggared. Davoust found, or said he found, that I was a Russian spy; swore that I was carrying on a secret correspondence with Sweden; confiscated every sou we had in the world, and threw me into jail at Lubeck, from which I managed to escape, and made my way to Paris. There I preferred my claim against the marshal: at first before the cour militaire, then to the minister, then to the Emperor. They all agreed that Davoust was grossly unjust; that my case was one of the greatest hardship, and so on; that the money was gone, and there was no help for it. In fact, I was pitied by some, and laughed at by others; and out of sheer disgust at the deplorable spectacle I presented, a daily supplicant at some official antechamber, I agreed to take my indemnity in the only way that offered, – a commission in the newly raised Polish Legion, where I served for two years, and quitted three days ago in the manner you witnessed.”
His narrative scarcely occupied more words than I have given it. He told me the story as we led our horses up a narrow bridle-path that ascended from the river’s side to a little elevated terrace where a cottage stood.
“There,” said he, pointing with his whip, “there is my pied à terre, all that I possess in the world, after twenty years of more persevering pursuit of wealth than any man in Europe. Ay, Gervois, for us who are not born to the high places in this world, there is but one road open to power, and that is money! It matters not whether the influence be exerted by a life of splendor or an existence of miserable privation, – money is power, and the only power that every faction acknowledges and bows down to. He who lends is the master, and he who borrows is the slave. That is a doctrine that monarchs and democrats all agree in. The best proof I can afford you that my opinion is sincere lies in the simple fact that he who utters the sentiment lives here;” and with these words he tapped with the head of his riding-whip at the door of the cottage.
Although only an hour after the sun set, the windows were barred and shuttered for the night, and all within seemingly had retired to rest. The Count repeated his summons louder; and at last the sounds of heavy sabots were heard approaching the door. It was opened at length, and a sturdy-looking peasant woman, in the long-eared cap and woollen jacket of the country, asked what we wanted.
“Don’t you know me, Lisette?” said the Count. “How is madame?”
The brown cheeks of the woman became suddenly pale, and she had to grasp the door for support before she could speak.
“Eh heu!” said he, accosting her familiarly in the patois of the land, “what is it? what has happened here?”
The woman looked at me and then at him, as though to say that she desired to speak to him apart. I understood the glance, and fell back to a little distance, occupying myself with my horse, ungirthing the saddle, and so on. The few minutes thus employed were passed in close whispering by the others, at the end of which the Count said aloud, —
“Well, who is to look after the beasts? Is Louis not here?”
“He was at Dinant, but would return presently.”
“Be it so,” said the Count; “we ‘ll stable them ourselves. Meanwhile, Lisette, prepare something for our supper. – Lisette has not her equal for an omelet,” said he to me, “and when the Meuse yields us fresh trout, you ‘ll acknowledge that her skill will not discredit them.”
The woman’s face, as he spoke these words in an easy, jocular tone, was actually ghastly. It seemed as if she were contending against some sickening sensation that was over-powering her, for her eyes lost all expression, and her ruddy lips grew livid. The only answer was a brief nod of her head as she turned away and re-entered the house. I watched the Count narrowly as we busied ourselves about our horses, but nothing could be possibly more calm, and to all seeming unconcerned, than his bearing and manner. The few words he spoke were in reference to objects around us, and uttered with careless ease.
When we entered the cottage we found Lisette had already spread a cloth, and was making preparations for our supper; and Ysaffich, with the readiness of an old campaigner, proceeded to aid her in these details. At last she left the room, and, looking after her for a second or two in silence, he said compassionately, —
“Poor creature! she takes this to heart far more heavily than I could have thought;” and then, seeing that the words were not quite intelligible to me, he added, “Yes, mon cher Grégoire, I am a bachelor once more; Madame the Countess has left me! Weary of a life of poverty to which she had been so long unaccustomed, she has returned to the world again – to the stage, perhaps – who knows?” added he, with a careless indifference, and as though dismissing the theme from his thoughts forever.
I had never liked him, but at no time of our intercourse did he appear so thoroughly odious to me as when he uttered these words.
There is some strange fatality in the way our characters are frequently impressed by circumstances and intimacies which seem the veriest accidents. We linger in some baneful climate till it has made its fatal inroad on our health; and so we as often dally amidst associations fully as dangerous and deadly. In this way did I continue to live on with Ysaffich, daily resolving to leave him, and yet, by some curious chain of events, bound up inseparably with his fortunes. At one moment his poverty was the tie between us We supported ourselves by the chasse, a poor and most precarious livelihood, and one which we well knew would fail us when the spring came. At other moments he would gain an influence over me by the exercise of that sanguine, hopeful spirit which seemed never to desert him. He saw, or affected to see, that the great drama of revolution which closed the century in France must yet be played out over the length and breadth of Europe, and that in this great piece the chief actors would be those who had all to gain and nothing to lose by the convulsion. “We shall have good parts in the play, Grégoire,” would he repeat to me, time after time, till he thoroughly filled my mind with ambitions that rose far above the region of all probability, and, worse still, that utterly silenced every whisper of conscience within me.
Had he attempted to corrupt me by the vulgar ideas of wealth, – by the splendor of a life of luxurious ease and enjoyment, with all the appliances of riches, – it is more than likely he would have failed. He however assailed me by my weak side: the delight I always experienced in acts of protection and benevolence – the pleasure I felt in being regarded by others as their good genius – this was a flattery that never ceased to sway me! The selfishness of such a part lay so hidden from view; there was a plausibility in one’s conviction of being good and amiable, – that the enjoyment became really of a higher order than usually waits on mere egotism. I had been long estranged from the world, so far as the ties of affection and friendship existed. For me there was neither home nor family, and yet I yearned for what would bind me to the cause of my fellow-men. All my thoughts were now centred on this object, and innumerable were the projects by which I amused my imagination about it. Ysaffich perhaps detected this clew to my confidence. At all events, he made it the pivot of all reasonings with me. To be powerless with good intentions – to have the “will” to work for good, and yet want the “way” – was, he would say, about the severest torture poor humanity could be called on to endure. When he had so far imbued my mind with these notions that he found me not only penetrated with his own views, but actually employing his own reasonings, his very expressions, to maintain them, he then advanced a step further; and this was to demonstrate that to every success in life there was a compromise attached, as inseparable as were shadow and substance.
“Was there not,” he would say, “a compensation attached to every great act of statesmanship, to every brilliant success in war, – in fact, to every grand achievement, wherever and however accomplished? It is simply a question of weighing the evil against the good, whatever we do in life; and he is the best of us who has the largest balance in the scales of virtue.”
When a subtle theory takes possession of the mind, it is curious to mark with what ingenuity examples will suggest themselves to sustain and support it. Ysaffich possessed a ready memory, and never failed to supply me with illustrations of his system. There was scarcely a good or great name of ancient or modern times that he could not bring within this category; and many an hour have we passed in disputing the claims of this one or that to be accounted as the benefactor or the enemy of mankind. If I recall these memories now, it is simply to show the steps by which a mind far more subtle and acute than my own succeeded in establishing its influence over me.
I have said that we were very poor; our resources were derived from the scantiest of all supplies; and even these, as the spring drew nigh, showed signs of failure. If I at times regarded our future with gloomy anticipations, my companion never did so. On the contrary, his hopeful spirit seemed to rise under the pressure of each new sufferance, and he constantly cheered me by saying, “The tide must ebb soon.” It is true, this confidence did not prevent him suggesting various means by which we might eke out a livelihood.
“It is the same old story over again,” said he to me one day, as we sat at our meal of dry bread and water. “Archimedes could have moved the world had he had a support whereon to station his lever, and so with me; I could at» this very moment rise to wealth and power, could I but find a similar appliance. There is a million to be made on the Bourse of Amsterdam any morning, if one only could pay for a courier who should arrive at speed from the Danube with the news of a defeat of the French army. A lighted tar-barrel in the midst of the English fleet at Spithead would n’t cost a deal of money, and yet might do great things towards changing the fortunes of mankind. And even here,” added he, taking a letter from his pocket, “even here are the means of wealth and fortune to both of us, if I could rely on you for the requisite energy and courage to play your part.”
“I have at least had courage to share your fortunes,” said I, half angrily; “and even that much might exempt me from the reproach of cowardice.”
Not heeding my taunt in the slightest, he resumed his speech with slow and deliberate words: —
“I found this paper last night by a mere accident, when looking over some old letters; but, unfortunately, it is not accompanied by any other document which could aid us, though I have searched closely to discover such.”
So often had it been my fate to hear him hold forth on similar themes – on incidents which lacked but little, the veriest trifle, to lead to fortune – that I confess I paid slight attention to his words, and scarcely heard him as he went on describing how he had chanced upon his present discovery, when he suddenly startled me by saying, —
“And yet, even now, if you were of the stuff to dare it, there is wherewithal in that letter to make you a great man, and both of us rich ones.”
Seeing that he had at least secured my attention, he went on: —
