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CHAPTER II
A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS
I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that discharged our visitors into the street. Our little market was no sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according to fancy in any part of our quarters.
I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed – as the sightseers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were susceptible beyond reason. Some of these old whiskerandos, originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies, and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations, could ill brook their change of circumstance. There was one man of the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was otherwise unfitted – that of maréchal des logis in the 22nd of the line. In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a brawling, bruising, ignorant pillar of low pothouses. As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often on myself.
It was so now. Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near. He wore an air of hateful mirth, a set of young fools, among whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable pleasantries. He took a place beside me, spread out his rations, drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began. What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel. For my part, I thought at first I should have died. I had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by her name. Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a volume of living anger that surprised myself.
“Are you nearly done?” I asked. “Because if you are, I am about to say a word or two myself.”
“O, fair play!” said he. “Turnabout! The Marquis of Carabas to the tribune.”
“Very well,” said I. “I have to inform you that I am a gentleman. You do not know what that means, hey? Well, I will tell you. It is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings. The lion is a gentleman; he will not touch carrion. I am a gentleman, and I cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt. Sit still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and, do not say a word, or I shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us. Here is your health!” said I, and pledged him in the prison beer. “You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,” I continued, “who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to me and some others of us mendicants. If the Emperor” – saluting – “if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from your gross body. I cannot do that; I cannot take away what his Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you – I promise you, Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.”
I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed. But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself. Whatever the cause, at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing (to do him justice) handsomely.
“And I promise you, by the devil’s horns, that you shall have the chance!” said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him scrupulous honour.
The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the speed of wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of the spectators at a horse-race; and indeed you must first have tasted the active life of a soldier, and then mouldered for a while in the tedium of a gaol, in order to understand, perhaps even to excuse, the delight of our companions. Goguelat and I slept in the same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee of honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates. They chose for president a sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the army, an excellent military subject, and a good man. He took the most serious view of his functions, visited us both, and reported our replies to the committee. Mine was of a decent firmness. I told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken had on several occasions given me alms. I reminded him that, if we were now reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill boxes for charity, it was something very new for soldiers of the Empire. We had all seen bandits standing at a corner of a wood truckling for copper halfpence, and after their benefactors were gone spitting out injuries and curses. “But,” said I, “I trust that none of us will fall so low. As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support that of the army. You are my elder and my superior: tell me if I am not right.”
He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three fingers on the back. “C’est bien, mon enfant,” says he, and returned to his committee.
Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself. “I do not like apologies nor those that make them,” was his only answer. And there remained nothing but to arrange the details of the meeting. So far as regards place and time we had no choice; we must settle the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round had passed by, and in the open middle of the shed under which we slept. The question of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined twine – the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe. It was a strange thing to feel in one’s hand this weapon, which was no heavier than a riding-rod, and which it was difficult to suppose would prove more dangerous. A general oath was administered and taken, that no one should interfere in the duel nor (suppose it to result seriously) betray the name of the survivor. And with that, all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment.
The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its further passage. Laclas, the sergeant-major, set us in our stations, engaged our wands, and left us. To avoid blood-stained clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In the inky blackness of the shed it was impossible to see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the same moment. It was to play my life upon one card: should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults, and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most readily expose.
“Allez!” said the sergeant-major.
Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my manœuvre both had certainly been spitted. As it was, he did no more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.
When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads crowded around me. I sat up. “What is it?” I exclaimed.
“Hush!” said the sergeant-major. “Blessed be God, all is well.” I felt him clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice. “’Tis but a scratch, my child; here is papa, who is taking good care of you. Your shoulder is bound up; we have dressed you in your clothes again, and it will all be well.”
At this I began to remember. “And Goguelat?” I gasped.
“He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; ’tis a bad business,” said the sergeant-major.
The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a pair of scissors seemed to turn my stomach. I am sure I might have killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse. And to this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on the twine, appeared to contribute. I ran to my fallen adversary, kneeled by him, and could only sob his name.
He bade me compose myself. “You have given me the key of the fields, comrade,” said he. “Sans rancune!”
At this my horror redoubled. Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts. Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with something of the spirit of a Bayard. I insisted that the guards should be summoned and a doctor brought. “It may still be possible to save him,” I cried.
The sergeant-major reminded me of our engagement. “If you had been wounded,” said he, “you must have lain there till the patrol came by and found you. It happens to be Goguelat – and so must he! Come, child, time to go to by-by.” And as I still resisted, “Champdivers!” he said, “this is weakness. You pain me.”
“Ay, off to your beds with you!” said Goguelat, and named us in a company with one of his jovial gross epithets.
Accordingly the squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late. The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of wheels and feet and lively voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay Goguelat, and could not always withhold himself from groaning.
We heard the round far off; heard it draw slowly nearer. Last of all, it turned the corner and moved into our field of vision: two file of men and a corporal with a lantern, which he swung to and fro, so as to cast its light in the recesses of the yards and sheds.
“Hullo!” cried the corporal, pausing as he came by Goguelat.
He stooped with his lantern. All our hearts were flying.
“What devil’s work is this?” he cried, and with a startling voice summoned the guard.
We were all afoot upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers crowded in front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in. In the midst was the big naked body, soiled with blood. Some one had covered him with his blanket; but as he lay there in agony, he had partly thrown it off.
“This is murder!” cried the officer. “You wild beasts, you will hear of this to-morrow.”
As Goguelat was raised and laid upon a stretcher, he cried to us a cheerful and blasphemous farewell.
CHAPTER III
MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY AND GOGUELAT GOES OUT
There was never any talk of a recovery, and no time was lost in getting the man’s deposition. He gave but the one account of it: that he had committed suicide because he was sick of seeing so many Englishmen. The doctor vowed it was impossible, the nature and direction of the wound forbidding it. Goguelat replied that he was more ingenious than the other thought for, and had propped up the weapon in the ground and fallen on the point – “just like Nebuchadnezzar,” he added, winking to the assistants. The doctor, who was a little, spruce, ruddy man of an impatient temper, pished and pshawed and swore over his patient. “Nothing could be made of him!” he cried. “A perfect heathen. If we could only find the weapon!” But the weapon had ceased to exist. A little resined twine was perhaps blowing about in the Castle gutters; some bits of broken stick may have trailed in corners; and behold, in the pleasant air of the morning, a dandy prisoner trimming his nails with a pair of scissors!
Finding the wounded man so firm, you may be sure the authorities did not leave the rest of us in peace. No stone was left unturned. We were had in again and again to be examined, now singly, now in twos and threes. We were threatened with all sorts of impossible severities and tempted with all manner of improbable rewards. I suppose I was five times interrogated, and came off from each with flying colours. I am like old Souvaroff: I cannot understand a soldier being taken aback by any question: he should answer, as he marches on the fire, with an instant briskness and gaiety. I may have been short of bread, gold, or grace; I was never found wanting in an answer. My comrades, if they were not all so ready, were none of them less staunch; and I may say here at once that the inquiry came to nothing at the time, and the death of Goguelat remained a mystery of the prison. Such were the veterans of France! And yet I should be disingenuous if I did not own this was a case apart; in ordinary circumstances, some one might have stumbled or been intimidated into an admission; and what bound us together with a closeness beyond that of mere comrades was a secret to which we were all committed and a design in which all were equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its nature: there is only one desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in prisons. And the fact that our tunnel was near done supported and inspired us.
I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the sittings of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one listens to; and yet I was unmasked – I, whom my very adversary defended, as good as confessed, as good as told the nature of the quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in the future a most anxious, disagreeable adventure. It was the third morning after the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round for me to give Major Chevenix a lesson. I was fond of this occupation; not that he paid me much – no more, indeed, than eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a miser in the grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some extent) himself. At least, he was a man of education; and of the others with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not have held a book upside down would have torn the pages out for pipe-lights. For I must repeat again that our body of prisoners was exceptional: there was in Edinburgh Castle none of that educational busyness that distinguished some of the other prisons, so that men entered them unable to read, and left them fit for high employments. Chevenix was handsome, and surprisingly young to be a major: six feet in his stockings, well set up, with regular features and very clear grey eyes. It was impossible to pick a fault in him, and yet the sum-total was displeasing. Perhaps he was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him the smell of soap. Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man’s nails to seem japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold. There was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the soldier, in this young officer. His kindness was cold, and cruel cold; his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps it was from this character, which is very much the opposite of my own, that even in these days, when he was of service to me, I approached him with suspicion and reserve.
I looked over his exercise in the usual form, and marked six faults.
“H’m. Six,” says he, looking at the paper. “Very annoying! I can never get it right.”
“O, but you make excellent progress!” I said. I would not discourage him, you understand, but he was congenitally unable to learn French. Some fire, I think, is needful, and he had quenched his fire in soapsuds.
He put the exercise down, leaned his chin upon his hand, and looked at me with clear, severe eyes.
“I think we must have a little talk,” said he.
“I am entirely at your disposition,” I replied; but I quaked, for I knew what subject to expect.
“You have been some time giving me these lessons,” he went on, “and I am tempted to think rather well of you. I believe you are a gentleman.”
“I have that honour, sir,” said I.
“You have seen me for the same period. I do not know how I strike you; but perhaps you will be prepared to believe that I also am a man of honour,” said he.
“I require no assurances; the thing is manifest,” and I bowed.
“Very well, then,” said he. “What about this Goguelat?”
“You heard me yesterday before the court,” I began. “I was awakened only – ”
“O yes; I ‘heard you yesterday before the court,’ no doubt,” he interrupted, “and I remember perfectly that you were ‘awakened only.’ I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I believed you for a moment?”
“Neither would you believe me if I were to repeat it here,” said I.
“I may be wrong – we shall soon see,” says he; “but my impression is that you will not ‘repeat it here.’ My impression is that you have come into this room, and that you will tell me something before you go out.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Let me explain,” he continued. “Your evidence, of course, is nonsense. I put it by, and the court put it by.”
“My compliments and thanks!” said I.
“You must know – that’s the short and the long,” he proceeded. “All of you in Shed B are bound to know. And I want to ask you where is the common sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining this cock-and-bull story between friends. Come, come, my good fellow, own yourself beaten, and laugh at it yourself.”
“Well, I hear you – go ahead,” said I. “You put your heart in it.”
He crossed his legs slowly. “I can very well understand,” he began, “that precautions have had to be taken. I dare say an oath was administered. I can comprehend that perfectly.” (He was watching me all the time with his cold, bright eyes.) “And I can comprehend that, about an affair of honour, you would be very particular to keep it.”
“About an affair of honour?” I repeated, like a man quite puzzled.
“It was not an affair of honour, then?” he asked.
“What was not? I do not follow,” said I.
He gave no sign of impatience; simply sat a while silent, and began again in the same placid and good-natured voice: “The court and I were at one in setting aside your evidence. It could not deceive a child. But there was a difference between myself and the other officers, because I knew my man and they did not. They saw in you a common soldier, and I knew you for a gentleman. To them your evidence was a leash of lies, which they yawned to hear you telling. Now, I was asking myself, how far will a gentleman go? Not surely so far as to help hush a murder up? So that – when I heard you tell how you knew nothing of the matter, and were only awakened by the corporal, and all the rest of it – I translated your statements into something else. Now, Champdivers,” he cried, springing up lively and coming towards me with animation, “I am going to tell you what that was, and you are going to help me to see justice done: how, I don’t know, for of course you are under oath – but somehow. Mark what I’m going to say.”
At that moment he laid a heavy, hard grip upon my shoulder; and whether he said anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am sure I could not tell you to this day. For, as the devil would have it, the shoulder he laid hold of was the one Goguelat had pinked. The wound was but a scratch; it was healing with the first intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony. My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have grown deadly pale.
He removed his hand as suddenly as he had laid it there.
“What is wrong with you?” said he.
“It is nothing,” said I. “A qualm. It has gone by.”
“Are you sure?” said he. “You are as white as a sheet.”
“O no, I assure you! Nothing whatever. I am my own man again,” I said, though I could scarce command my tongue.
“Well, shall I go on again?” says he. “Can you follow me?”
“O, by all means!” said I, and mopped my streaming face upon my sleeve, for you may be sure in those days I had no handkerchief.
“If you are sure you can follow me. That was a very sudden and sharp seizure,” he said doubtfully. “But if you are sure, all right, and here goes. An affair of honour among you fellows would, naturally, be a little difficult to carry out; perhaps it would be impossible to have it wholly regular. And yet a duel might be very irregular in form, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, loyal enough in effect. Do you take me? Now, as a gentleman and a soldier.”
His hand rose again at the words and hovered over me. I could bear no more, and winced away from him. “No,” I cried, “not that. Do not put your hand upon my shoulder. I cannot bear it. It is rheumatism,” I made haste to add. “My shoulder is inflamed and very painful.”
He returned to his chair and deliberately lighted a cigar.
“I am sorry about your shoulder,” he said at last. “Let me send for the doctor.”
“Not in the least,” said I. “It is a trifle. I am quite used to it. It does not trouble me in the smallest. At any rate, I don’t believe in doctors.”
“All right,” said he, and sat and smoked a good while in a silence which I would have given anything to break. “Well,” he began presently, “I believe there is nothing left for me to learn. I presume I may say that I know all.”
“About what?” said I boldly.
“About Goguelat,” said he.
“I beg your pardon. I cannot conceive,” said I.
“O,” says the major, “the man fell in a duel, and by your hand! I am not an infant.”
“By no means,” said I. “But you seem to me to be a good deal of a theorist.”
“Shall we test it?” he asked. “The doctor is close by. If there is not an open wound on your shoulder, I am wrong. If there is – ” He waved his hand. “But I advise you to think twice. There is a deuce of a nasty drawback to the experiment – that what might have remained private between us two becomes public property.”
“O, well!” said I, with a laugh, “anything rather than a doctor! I cannot bear the breed.”
His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far from comfortable.
Major Chevenix smoked a while, looking now at his cigar ash, now at me. “I’m a soldier myself,” he says presently, “and I’ve been out in my time and hit my man. I don’t want to run any one into a corner for an affair that was at all necessary or correct. At the same time, I want to know that much, and I’ll take your word of honour for it. Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor must be called in.”
“I neither admit anything nor deny anything,” I returned. “But if this form of words will suffice you, here is what I say: I give you my parole, as a gentleman and a soldier, there has nothing taken place amongst us prisoners that was not honourable as the day.”
“All right,” says he. “That was all I wanted. You can go now, Champdivers.”
And as I was going out he added, with a laugh: “By the bye, I ought to apologise: I had no idea I was applying the torture!”
The same afternoon the doctor came into the courtyard with a piece of paper in his hand. He seemed hot and angry, and had certainly no mind to be polite.
“Here!” he cried. “Which of you fellows knows any English? O!” – spying me – “there you are, what’s your name! You’ll do. Tell these fellows that the other fellow’s dying. He’s booked; no use talking; I expect he’ll go by evening. And tell them I don’t envy the feelings of the fellow who spiked him. Tell them that first.”
I did so.
“Then you can tell ’em,” he resumed, “that the fellow, Goggle – what’s his name? – wants to see some of them before he gets his marching orders. If I got it right, he wants to kiss or embrace you, or some sickening stuff. Got that? Then here’s a list he’s had written, and you’d better read it out to them – I can’t make head or tail of your beastly names – and they can answer present, and fall in against that wall.”
It was with a singular movement of incongruous feelings that I read the first name on the list. I had no wish to look again on my own handiwork; my flesh recoiled from the idea; and how could I be sure what reception he designed to give me? The cure was in my own hand; I could pass that first name over – the doctor would not know – and I might stay away. But to the subsequent great gladness of my heart, I did not dwell for an instant on the thought, walked over to the designated wall, faced about, read out the name “Champdivers,” and answered myself with the word “Present.”
There were some half-dozen on the list, all told; and as soon as we were mustered, the doctor led the way to the hospital, and we followed after, like a fatigue-party, in single file. At the door he paused, told us “the fellow” would see each of us alone, and, as soon as I had explained that, sent me by myself into the ward. It was a small room, whitewashed; a south window stood open on a vast depth of air and a spacious and distant prospect; and from deep below, in the Grassmarket, the voices of hawkers came up clear and far away. Hard by, on a little bed, lay Goguelat. The sunburn had not yet faded from his face, and the stamp of death was already there. There was something wild and unmannish in his smile, that took me by the throat; only death and love know or have ever seen it. And when he spoke, it seemed to shame his coarse talk.
He held out his arms as if to embrace me. I drew near with incredible shrinkings, and surrendered myself to his arms with overwhelming disgust. But he only drew my ear down to his lips.
“Trust me,” he whispered. “Je suis bon bougre, moi. I’ll take it to hell with me and tell the devil.”
Why should I go on to reproduce his grossness and trivialities? All that he thought, at that hour, was even noble, though he could not clothe it otherwise than in the language of a brutal farce. Presently he bade me call the doctor; and when that officer had come in, raised himself a little up in his bed, pointed first to himself and then to me, who stood weeping by his side, and several times repeated the expression, “Frinds – frinds – dam frinds.”
To my great surprise the doctor appeared very much affected. He nodded his little bob-wigged head at us, and said repeatedly, “All right, Johnny – me comprong.”
Then Goguelat shook hands with me, embraced me again, and I went out of the room sobbing like an infant.
How often have I not seen it, that the most unpardonable fellows make the happiest exits! It is a fate we may well envy them. Goguelat was detested in life; in the last three days, by his admirable staunchness and consideration, he won every heart; and when word went about the prison the same evening that he was no more, the voice of conversation became hushed as in a house of mourning.
For myself, I was like a man distracted; I cannot think what ailed me: when I awoke the following day, nothing remained of it; but that night I was filled with a gloomy fury of the nerves. I had killed him; he had done his utmost to protect me; I had seen him with that awful smile. And so illogical and useless is this sentiment of remorse that I was ready, at a word or a look, to quarrel with somebody else. I presume the disposition of my mind was imprinted on my face; and when, a little after, I overtook, saluted, and addressed the doctor, he looked on me with commiseration and surprise.
I had asked him if it was true.
“Yes,” he said, “the fellow’s gone.”
“Did he suffer much?” I asked.
“Devil a bit; passed away like a lamb,” said he. He looked on me a little, and I saw his hand go to his fob. “Here, take that! no sense in fretting,” he said, and, putting a silver twopenny-bit in my hand, he left me.
I should have had that twopenny framed to hang upon the wall, for it was the man’s one act of charity in all my knowledge of him. Instead of that I stood looking at it in my hand and laughed out bitterly, as I realised his mistake; then went to the ramparts, and flung it far into the air like blood-money. The night was falling; through an embrasure and across the gardened valley I saw the lamp-lighters hasting along Princes Street with ladder and lamp, and looked on moodily. As I was so standing a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and I turned about. It was Major Chevenix, dressed for the evening, and his neckcloth really admirably folded. I never denied the man could dress.
“Ah!” said he, “I thought it was you, Champdivers. So he’s gone?”
I nodded.
