And, besides, to run so fast was contrary to my interests. We could not run long without arriving somewhere. At any moment we might turn a corner and find ourselves at the lodge-gate of some Squire Merton, in the midst of a village whose constable was sober, or in the hands of a patrol. There was no help for it—I must finish with him on the spot, as long as it was possible. I looked about me, and the place seemed suitable; never a light, never a house—nothing but stubble-fields, fallows, and a few stunted trees. I stopped and eyed him in the moonlight with an angry stare.

“Enough of this foolery!” said I.

He had turned, and now faced me full, very pale, but with no sign of shrinking.

“I am quite of your opinion,” said he. “You have tried me at the running; you can try me next at the high jump. It will be all the same. It must end the one way.”

I made my holly whistle about my head.

“I believe you know what way!” said I. “We are alone, it is night, and I am wholly resolved. Are you not frightened?”

“No,” he said, “not in the smallest. I do not box, sir; but I am not a coward, as you may have supposed. Perhaps it will simplify our relations if I tell you at the outset that I walk armed.”

Quick as lightning I made a feint at his head; as quickly he gave ground, and at the same time I saw a pistol glitter in his hand.

“No more of that, Mr. French-Prisoner!” he said. “It will do me no good to have your death at my door.”

“Faith, nor me either!” said I; and I lowered my stick and considered the man, not without a twinkle of admiration. “You see,” I said, “there is one consideration that you appear to overlook: there are a great many chances that your pistol may miss fire.”

“I have a pair,” he returned. “Never travel without a brace of barkers.”

“I make you my compliment,” said I. “You are able to take care of yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look at this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be, to keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now, I put it to you pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your continued and—excuse me—highly impudent ingérence into my private affairs?”

“Another French word,” says he composedly.

“O! damn your French words!” cried I. “You seem to be a Frenchman yourself!”

“I have had many opportunities by which I have profited,” he explained. “Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences, whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages.”

“You are a pompous fellow, too!” said I.

“O, I can make distinctions, sir,” says he. “I can talk with Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in the company of a gentleman of education like yourself.”

“If you set up to be a gentleman——” I began.

“Pardon me,” he interrupted: “I make no such claim. I only see the nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person.”

“For the Lord’s sake,” I exclaimed, “set my mind at rest upon one point. In the name of mystery, who and what are you?”

“I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir,” said he, “nor yet my trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir.”

It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.

“Romaine?” I cried. “Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and a big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!”

“Keep back, I say!” said Dudgeon weakly.

I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that he carried with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my advance.

“Keep back, or I declare I will fire,” he was crying. “Have a care, for God’s sake! My pistol——”

He might scream as he pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all’s well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing and whistling on the streets:—

“There!” said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands on his shoulders, “je vous ai bel et bien embrassé—and, as you would say, there is another French word.” With his wig over one eye, he looked incredibly rueful and put out. “Cheer up, Dudgeon; the ordeal is over, you shall be embraced no more. But do, first of all, for God’s sake, put away your pistol; you handle it as if you were a cockatrice; some time or other, depend upon it, it will certainly go off. Here is your hat. No, let me put it on square, and the wig before it. Never suffer any stress of circumstances to come between you and the duty you owe to yourself. If you have nobody else to dress for, dress for God!

Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark, I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the outpourings of a dilettante.”

“But, my dear sir!” he exclaimed.

“But, my dear sir!” I echoed, “I will allow no man to interrupt the flow of my ideas. Give me your opinion on my quatrain, or I vow we shall have a quarrel of it.”

“Certainly you are quite an original,” he said.

“Quite,” said I; “and I believe I have my counterpart before me.”

“Well, for a choice,” says he, smiling, “and whether for sense or poetry, give me

“Oh, but that’s not fair—that’s Pope! It’s not original, Dudgeon. Understand me,” said I, wringing his breast-button, “the first duty of all poetry is to be mine, sir—mine. Inspiration now swells in my bosom, because—to tell you the plain truth, and descend a little in style—I am devilish relieved at the turn things have taken. So, I dare say, are you yourself, Dudgeon, if you would only allow it. And à propos, let me ask you a home question. Between friends, have you ever fired that pistol?”

“Why, yes, sir,” he replied. “Twice—at hedge-sparrows.”

“And you would have fired at me, you bloody-minded man?” I cried.

“If you go to that, you seemed mighty reckless with your stick,” said Dudgeon.

“Did I indeed? Well, well, ’tis all past history; ancient as King Pharamond—which is another French word, if you cared to accumulate more evidence,” says I. “But happily we are now the best of friends, and have all our interests in common.”

“You go a little too fast, if you’ll excuse me, Mr.——: I do not know your name, that I am aware,” said Dudgeon.

“No, to be sure!” said I. “Never heard of it!”

“A word of explanation——” he began.

“No, Dudgeon!” I interrupted. “Be practical; I know what you want, and the name of it is supper. Rien ne creuse comme l’émotion. I am hungry myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike palpitations than you, who are but a hunter of hedge-sparrows. Let me look at your face critically: your bill of fare is three slices of cold rare roast beef, a Welsh rabbit, a pot of stout, and a glass or two of sound tawny port, old in bottle—the right milk of Englishmen.” Methought there seemed a brightening in his eye and a melting about his mouth at this enumeration.

“The night is young,” I continued; “not much past eleven, for a wager. Where can we find a good inn? And remark that I say good, for the port must be up to the occasion—not a headache in a pipe of it.”

“Really, sir,” he said, smiling a little, “you have a way of carrying things——”

“Will nothing make you stick to the subject?” I cried; “you have the most irrelevant mind! How do you expect to rise in your profession? The inn?”

“Well, I will say you are a facetious gentleman!” said he. “You must have your way, I see. We are not three miles from Bedford by this very road.”

“Done!” cried I. “Bedford be it!”

I tucked his arm under mine, possessed myself of the valise, and walked him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of country lying a thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of ice, the moonshine thin and bright over the meadows and the leafless trees. I was now honestly done with the purgatory of the covered cart; I was close to my great-uncle’s; I had no more fear of Mr. Dudgeon: which were all grounds enough for jollity. And I was aware, besides, of us two as of a pair of tiny and solitary dolls under the vast frosty cupola of the midnight; the rooms decked, the moon burnished, the least of the stars lighted, the floor swept and waxed, and nothing wanting but for the band to strike up and the dancing to begin. In the exhilaration of my heart I took the music on myself—

I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about Dudgeon’s waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like balm—what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given me in the immediate past.

Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My puritanic companion stopped and disengaged himself.

“This is a trifle infra dig., sir, is it not?” said he. “A party might suppose we had been drinking.”

“And so you shall be, Dudgeon,” said I. “You shall not only be drinking, you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk—dead drunk, sir—and the boots shall put you to bed! We’ll warn him when we go in. Never neglect a precaution; never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day!”

But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt severity which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a side-table, close to the fire and in a blaze of candle-light, with such a meal as I had been dreaming of for days past. For days, you are to remember, I had been skulking in the covered cart, a prey to cold, hunger, and an accumulation of discomforts that might have daunted the most brave; and the white table napery, the bright crystal, the reverberation of the fire, the red curtains, the Turkey carpet, the portraits on the coffee-room wall, the placid faces of the two or three late guests who were silently prolonging the pleasures of digestion, and (last, but not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light dry port, put me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought of the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and roaring fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth, lingered on my palate, amari aliquid, like an after-taste, but was not able—I say it with shame—entirely to dispel my self-complacency. After all, in this world every dog hangs by its own tail. I was a free adventurer, who had just brought to a successful end—or, at least, within view of it—an adventure very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as the port rose to his cheeks, and a smile, that was semi-confidential and a trifle foolish, began to play upon his leathery features, not only with composure, but with a suspicion of kindness. The rascal had been brave, a quality for which I would value the devil; and if he had been pertinacious in the beginning, he had more than made up for it before the end.

“And now, Dudgeon, to explain,” I began. “I know your master, he knows me, and he knows and approves of my errand. So much I may tell you, that I am on my way to Amersham Place.”

“Oho!” quoth Dudgeon, “I begin to see.”

“I am heartily glad of it,” said I, passing the bottle, “because that is about all I can tell you. You must take my word for the remainder. Either believe me or don’t. If you don’t, let’s take a chaise; you can carry me to-morrow to High Holborn, and confront me with Mr. Romaine; the result of which will be to set your mind at rest—and to make the holiest disorder in your master’s plans. If I judge you aright (for I find you a shrewd fellow), this will not be at all to your mind. You know what a subordinate gets by officiousness; if I can trust my memory, old Romaine has not at all the face that I should care to see in anger; and I venture to predict surprising results upon your weekly salary—if you are paid by the week, that is. In short, let me go free, and ’tis an end of the matter; take me to London, and ’tis only a beginning—and, by my opinion, a beginning of troubles. You can take your choice.”

“And that is soon taken,” said he. “Go to Amersham to-morrow, or go to the devil if you prefer—I wash my hands of you and the whole transaction. No, you don’t find me putting my head in between Romaine and a client! A good man of business, sir, but hard as millstone grit. I might get the sack, and I shouldn’t wonder! But, it’s a pity, too,” he added, and sighed, shook his head, and took his glass off sadly.

“That reminds me,” said I. “I have a great curiosity, and you can satisfy it. Why were you so forward to meddle with poor Mr. Dubois? Why did you transfer your attentions to me? And generally, what induced you to make yourself such a nuisance?”

He blushed deeply.

“Why, sir,” says he, “there is such a thing as patriotism, I hope.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY’S VISCOUNT

By eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting. By that time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very willingly have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham Place. But it appeared he was due at the public-house where we had met, on some affairs of my great-uncle the Count, who had an outlying estate in that part of the shire. If Dudgeon had had his way the night before, I should have been arrested on my uncle’s land and by my uncle’s agent, a culmination of ill-luck.

A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. “You’re probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may ’ave better accounts of his lordship’s ’elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble gentleman; and I’m sure nobody more polite! They do say, sir, his wealth is enormous, and before the Revolution, quite a prince in his own country! But I beg your pardon, sir; ’ow I do run on, to be sure; and doubtless all beknown to you already! For you do resemble the family, sir. I should have known you anywheres by the likeness to the dear viscount. Ha, poor gentleman, he must ’ave a ’eavy ’eart these days!”

In the same place I saw out of the inn-windows a man-servant passing in the livery of my house, which you are to think I had never before seen worn, or not that I could remember. I had often enough, indeed, pictured myself advanced to be a Marshal, a Duke of the Empire, a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and some other kickshaws of the kind, with a perfect rout of flunkeys correctly dressed in my own colours. But it is one thing to imagine, and another to see; it would be one thing to have these liveries in a house of my own in Paris—it was quite another to find them flaunting in the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should have made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something illusory in this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil; something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home.

From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have gone abroad, and the women curtsied and the men louted to me by the wayside. As I came near I began to appreciate the roots of this widespread respect. The look of my uncle’s park wall, even from the outside, had something of a princely character; and when I came in view of the house itself, a sort of madness of vicarious vainglory struck me dumb and kept me staring. It was about the size of the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last rays of the sun, that was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous gathering of snow-clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of windows. A portico of Doric columns adorned the front, and would have done honour to a temple. The servant who received me at the door was civil to a fault—I had almost said, to offence; and the hall to which he admitted me through a pair of glass doors was warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal chimney heaped with the roots of beeches.

“Vicomte Anne de Saint-Yves,” said I, in answer to the man’s question; whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping upon one side introduced me to the truly awful presence of the major-domo. I have seen many dignitaries in my time, but none who quite equalled this eminent being; who was good enough to answer to the unassuming name of Dawson. From him I learned that my uncle was extremely low, a doctor in close attendance, Mr. Romaine expected at any moment, and that my cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves, had been sent for the same morning.

“It was a sudden seizure, then?” I asked.

Well, he would scarcely go as far as that. It was a decline, a fading away, sir; but he was certainly took bad the day before, had sent for Mr. Romaine, and the major-domo had taken it on himself a little later to send word to the Viscount. “It seemed to me, my lord,” said he, “as if this was a time when all the fambly should be called together.”

I approved him with my lips, but not in my heart. Dawson was plainly in the interests of my cousin.

“And when can I expect to see my great-uncle, the Count?” said I.

In the evening, I was told; in the meantime he would show me to my room, which had been long prepared for me, and I should be expected to dine in about an hour with the doctor, if my lordship had no objections.

My lordship had not the faintest.

“At the same time,” I said, “I have had an accident: I have unhappily lost my baggage, and am here in what I stand in. I don’t know if the doctor be a formalist, but it is quite impossible I should appear at table as I ought.”

He begged me to be under no anxiety. “We have been long expecting you,” said he. “All is ready.”

Such I found to be the truth. A great room had been prepared for me; through the mullioned windows the last flicker of the winter sunset interchanged with the reverberation of a royal fire; the bed was open, a suit of evening clothes was airing before the blaze, and from the far corner a boy came forward with deprecatory smiles. The dream in which I had been moving seemed to have reached its pitch. I might have quitted this house and room only the night before; it was my own place that I had come to; and for the first time in my life I understood the force of the words home and welcome.

“This will be all as you would want, sir?” said Mr. Dawson. “This ’ere boy, Rowley, we place entirely at your disposition. E’s not exactly a trained vallet, but Mosha Powl, the Viscount’s gentleman, ’ave give him the benefick of a few lessons, and it is ’oped that he may give sitisfection. Hanythink that you may require, if you will be so good as to mention the same to Rowley, I will make it my business myself, sir, to see you sitisfied.”

So saying, the eminent and already detested Mr. Dawson took his departure, and I was left alone with Rowley. A man who may be said to have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among those ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair, awaiting the hour of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I had never known the luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life. To be attended on by servants I had only been accustomed to in inns. My toilet had long been military, to a moment, at the note of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side. And it need not be wondered at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence. But I remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his first trial as a master. Cheered by which consideration, I demanded my bath in a style of good assurance. There was a bath-room contiguous; in an incredibly short space of time the hot water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a shawl dressing-gown and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was reclined in an easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of pride and anxiety which I could well understand, laid out his razors.

“Hey, Rowley?” I asked, not quite resigned to go under fire with such an inexperienced commander. “It’s all right, is it? You feel pretty sure of your weapons?”

“Yes, my lord,” he replied. “It’s all right, I assure your lordship.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Rowley, but for the sake of shortness, would you mind not belording me in private?” said I. “It will do very well if you call me Mr. Anne. It is the way of my country, as I dare say you know.”

Mr. Rowley looked blank.

“But you’re just as much a Viscount as Mr. Powl’s, are you not?” he said.

“As Mr. Powl’s Viscount?” said I, laughing. “O, keep your mind easy, Mr. Rowley’s is every bit as good. Only, you see, as I am of the younger line, I bear my Christian name along with the title. Alain is the Viscount; I am the Viscount Anne. And in giving me the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you you will be quite regular.”

“Yes, Mr. Anne,” said the docile youth. “But about the shaving, sir, you need be under no alarm. Mr. Powl says I ’ave excellent dispositions.”

“Mr. Powl?” said I. “That doesn’t seem to me very like a French name.”

“No, sir, indeed, my lord,” said he, with a burst of confidence. “No, indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely. I should say now, it was more like Mr. Pole.”

“And Mr. Powl is the Viscount’s man?”

“Yes, Mr. Anne,” said he. “He ’ave a hard billet, he do. The Viscount is a very particular gentleman. I don’t think as you’ll be, Mr. Anne?” he added, with a confidential smile in the mirror.

He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled face, and a pair of dancing eyes. There was an air at once deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised. There came to me from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead. I remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I would have died for them, how much greater and handsomer than life they had appeared. And, looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the light of my own youth. I have always contended (somewhat against the opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the last thing that I would care to throw away is that very valuable piece of property—a boy’s hero-worship.

“Why,” said I, “you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!”

“Thank you, my lord,” says he. “Mr. Powl had no fear of me. You may be sure, sir, I should never ’ave had this berth if I ’adn’t ’ave been up to Dick. We been expecting of you this month back. My eye! I never see such preparations. Every day the fires has been kep’ up, the bed made, and all! As soon as it was known you were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and I’ve been up and down since then like a Jack-in-the-box. A wheel couldn’t sound in the avenue but what I was at the window! I’ve had a many disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the shay, I knew it was my—it was you. O, you had been expected! Why, when I go down to supper, I’ll be the ’ero of the servants’ ’all: the ’ole of the staff is that curious!”

“Well,” said I, “I hope you may be able to give a fair account of me—sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a first-rate character from my last place?”

He laughed an embarrassed laugh. “Your hair curls beautiful,” he said, by way of changing the subject. “The Viscount’s the boy for curls, though; and the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his don’t curl no more than that much twine—by nature. Gettin’ old, the Viscount is. He ’ave gone the pace, ’aven’t ’e, sir?”

“The fact is,” said I, “that I know very little about him. Our family has been much divided, and I have been a soldier from a child.”

“A soldier, Mr. Anne, sir?” cried Rowley, with a sudden feverish animation. “Was you ever wounded?”

It is contrary to my principles to discourage admiration for myself; and, slipping back the shoulder of the dressing-gown, I silently exhibited the scar which I had received in Edinburgh Castle. He looked at it with awe.

“Ah, well!” he continued, “there’s where the difference comes in! It’s in the training. The other Viscount have been horse-racing, and dicing, and carrying on all his life. All right enough, no doubt; but what I do say is that it don’t lead to nothink. Whereas——”

“Whereas Mr. Rowley’s?” I put in.

“My Viscount?” said he. “Well, sir, I did say it; and now that I’ve seen you, I say it again!”

I could not refrain from smiling at this outburst, and the rascal caught me in the mirror and smiled to me again.

“I’d say it again, Mr. Hanne,” he said. “I know which side my bread’s buttered. I know when a gen’leman’s a gen’leman. Mr. Powl can go to Putney with his one! Beg your pardon, Mr. Anne, for being so familiar,” said he, blushing suddenly scarlet. “I was especially warned against it by Mr. Powl.”

“Discipline before all,” said I. “Follow your front-rank man.”

With that we began to turn our attention to the clothes. I was amazed to find them fit so well: not à la diable, in the haphazard manner of a soldier’s uniform or a ready-made suit; but with nicety, as a trained artist might rejoice to make them for a favourite subject.

“’Tis extraordinary,” cried I: “these things fit me perfectly.”

“Indeed, Mr. Anne, you two be very much of a shape,” said Rowley.

“Who? What two?” said I.

“The Viscount,” he said.

“Damnation! Have I the man’s clothes on me, too?” cried I.

But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my coming the Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of his own and my cousin’s tailors; and on the rumour of our resemblance, my clothes had been made to Alain’s measure.

“But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be certain the Count would never do nothing by ’alf: fires kep’ burning; the finest of clothes ordered, I’m sure, and a body-servant being trained a-purpose.”

“Well,” said I, “it’s a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes; and what a valet, Mr. Rowley! And there’s one thing to be said for my cousin—I mean for Mr. Powl’s Viscount—he has a very fair figure.”

“O, don’t you be took in, Mr. Anne,” quoth the faithless Rowley: “he has to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!”

“Come, come, Mr. Rowley,” said I, “this is telling tales out of school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Cæsar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain’s, to follow his example. ’Tis a misfortune common to all; and really,” said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, “when the result is so successful as this, who would do anything but applaud?”

My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber, my new valet, and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner, the soup, the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers there are in man. I had not supposed it lay in the genius of any cook to create, out of common beef and mutton, things so different and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the doctor a most agreeable companion; nor could I help reflecting on the prospect that all this wealth, comfort, and handsome profusion might still very possibly become mine. Here were a change, indeed, from the common soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations, the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart!

CHAPTER XVII

THE DESPATCH-BOX

The doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count. You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of the émigrés could never expect a good word in the society in which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed, as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than a sigh.

“I bid you welcome, Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,” said he, looking at me hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. “I have sent for you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been reasonably well entertained?”

“Monsieur mon oncle,” I said, bowing very low, “I am come at the summons of the head of my family.”

“It is well,” he said. “Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news—if that can be called news that is already twenty years old—of how I have the pleasure to see you here.”

By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.

“That is soon told, monseigneur,” said I. “I understand that I need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the lost dog.”

“You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be advised,” said he. “Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself.”

“I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the beginning,” said I, with a bitter smile, “because my story begins at the foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name was there, I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience, to understand the extent of my misfortune. She——” I paused. “Enough that she arranged with a friend, Madame de Chasseradès, that she should take charge of me, and by the favour of our gaolers I was suffered to remain in the shelter of the Abbaye. That was my only refuge; there was no corner of France that I could rest the sole of my foot upon except the prison. Monsieur le Comte, you are as well aware as I can be what kind of a life that was, and how swiftly death smote in that society. I did not wait long before the name of Madame de Chasseradès succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She passed me on to Madame de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de Braye; and there were others. I was the one thing permanent; they were all transient as clouds; a day or two of their care, and then came the last farewell and—somewhere far off in that roaring Paris that surrounded us—the bloody scene. I was the cherished one, the last comfort, of these dying women. I have been in pitched fights, my lord, and I never knew such courage. It was all done smiling, in the tone of good society; belle maman was the name I was taught to give to each; and for a day or two the new ‘pretty mamma’ would make much of me, show me off, teach me the minuet, and to say my prayers; and then, with a tender embrace, would go the way of her predecessors, smiling. There were some that wept too. There was a childhood! All the time Monsieur de Culemberg kept his eye on me, and would have had me out of the Abbaye and in his own protection, but my ‘pretty mammas’ one after another resisted the idea. Where could I be safer? they argued; and what was to become of them without the darling of the prison? Well, it was soon shown how safe I was! The dreadful day of the massacre came; the prison was overrun; none paid attention to me, not even the last of my ‘pretty mammas,’ for she had met another fate. I was wandering distracted, when I was found by some one in the interests of Monsieur de Culemberg. I understand he was sent on purpose; I believe, in order to reach the interior of the prison, he had set his hand to nameless barbarities; such was the price paid for my worthless, whimpering little life! He gave me his hand; it was wet, and mine was reddened; he led me unresisting. I remember but the one circumstance of my flight—it was my last view of my last ‘pretty mamma.’ Shall I describe it to you?” I asked the Count, with a sudden fierceness.

“Avoid unpleasant details,” observed my great-uncle gently.

At these words a sudden peace fell upon me. I had been angry with the man before; I had not sought to spare him; and now, in a moment, I saw that there was nothing to spare. Whether from natural heartlessness or extreme old age, the soul was not at home; and my benefactor, who had kept the fire lit in my room for a month past—my only relative except Alain, whom I knew already to be a hired spy—had trodden out the last sparks of hope and interest.

“Certainly,” said I; “and, indeed, the day for them is nearly over. I was taken to Monsieur de Culemberg’s,—I presume, sir, that you know the Abbé de Culemberg?”

He indicated assent without opening his eyes.

“He was a very brave and a very learned man——”

“And a very holy one,” said my uncle civilly.

“And a very holy one, as you observe,” I continued. “He did an infinity of good, and through all the Terror kept himself from the guillotine. He brought me up and gave me such education as I have. It was in his house in the country at Dammarie, near Melun, that I made the acquaintance of your agent, Mr. Vicary, who lay there in hiding, only to fall a victim at the last to a gang of chauffeurs.”

“That poor Mr. Vicary!” observed my uncle. “He had been many times in my interests to France, and this was his first failure. Quel charmant homme, n’est-ce pas?”

“Infinitely so,” said I. “But I would not willingly detain you any further with a story, the details of which it must naturally be more or less unpleasant for you to hear. Suffice it that, by M. de Culemberg’s own advice, I said farewell at eighteen to that kind preceptor and his books, and entered the service of France; and have since then carried arms in such a manner as not to disgrace my family.”

“You narrate well; vous avez la voix chaude,” said my uncle, turning on his pillows as if to study me. “I have a very good account of you by Monsieur de Mauséant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some education, from the Abbé de Culemberg, a man of good house? Yes, you will do very well. You have a good manner and a handsome person, which hurts nothing. We are all handsome in the family; even I myself, I have had my successes, the memories of which still charm me. It is my intention, my nephew, to make of you my heir. I am not very well content with my other nephew, Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the flattery due to age. And there are other matters.”

I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so coldly offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an old man, and, after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in considerable straits, with a hope at heart which that inheritance might yet enable me to realise. Nor could I forget that, however icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the first with the extreme of liberality and—I was about to write, kindness, but the word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man some measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay if I were to insult him on his deathbed.

“Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule,” said I, bowing.

“You have wit, monsieur mon neveu,” said he, “the best wit—the wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!” he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. “But to approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England, I have never studied what they call their laws. On the other hand, how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of business to be transacted—to die, and to make my will; and, however desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in favour of the second beyond a very few hours.”

“Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before,” said I.

“Not so,” said the Count. “I have an alternative. I have just drawn my balance at my banker’s, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less——” he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity that surprised me. “But it is necessary it should be done before witnesses. Monsieur le Vicomte is of a particular disposition, and an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a theft.”

He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the appearance of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key.

“Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferrière,” said he. “You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr. Hunter and M. l’Abbé, and request them to step for a few moments to my room.”

The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage, covered with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent old smiling priest it was passed over into my hands with a very clear statement of the disposer’s wishes; immediately after which, though the witnesses remained behind to draw up and sign a joint note of the transaction, Monsieur de Kéroual dismissed me to my own room, La Ferrière following with the invaluable box.

At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered alone. Everything had been already disposed for the night, the curtains drawn and the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with my bed-clothes. He turned round as I entered with a look of welcome that did my heart good. Indeed, I had never a much greater need of human sympathy, however trivial, than at that moment when I held a fortune in my arms. In my uncle’s room I had breathed the very atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my pockets; he had starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I had received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the mere look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a boy, his heart must beat yet, he must still retain some innocence and natural feelings, he could blurt out follies with his mouth, he was not a machine to utter perfect speech! At the same time I was beginning to outgrow the painful impressions of my interview; my spirits were beginning to revive; and at the jolly, empty looks of Mr. Rowley, as he ran forward to relieve me of the box, St. Ives became himself again.

“Now, Rowley, don’t be in a hurry,” said I. “This is a momentous juncture. Man and boy, you have been in my service about three hours. You must already have observed that I am a gentleman of a somewhat morose disposition, and there is nothing that I more dislike than the smallest appearance of familiarity. Mr. Pole or Mr. Powl, probably in the spirit of prophecy, warned you against this danger.”

“Yes, Mr. Anne,” said Rowley blankly.

“Now there has just arisen one of those rare cases in which I am willing to depart from my principles. My uncle has given me a box—what you would call a Christmas box. I don’t know what’s in it, and no more do you: perhaps I’m an April fool, or perhaps I am already enormously wealthy; there might be five hundred pounds in this apparently harmless receptacle!”

“Lord, Mr. Anne!” cried Rowley.

“Now, Rowley, hold up your right hand and repeat the words of the oath after me,” said I, laying the despatch-box on the table. “Strike me blue if I ever disclose to Mr. Powl, or Mr. Powl’s Viscount, or anything that is Mr. Powl’s, not to mention Mr. Dawson and the doctor, the treasures of the following despatch-box; and strike me sky-blue scarlet if I do not continually maintain, uphold, love, honour, and obey, serve, and follow to the four corners of the earth and the waters that are under the earth, the hereinafter before-mentioned (only that I find I have neglected to mention him) Viscount Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, commonly known as Mr. Rowley’s Viscount. So be it. Amen.”

He took the oath with the same exaggerated seriousness as I gave it to him.

“Now,” said I. “Here is the key for you; I will hold the lid with both hands in the meanwhile.” He turned the key. “Bring up all the candles in the room, and range them alongside. What is it to be? A live gorgon, a Jack-in-the-box, or a spring that fires a pistol? On your knees, sir, before the prodigy!”

So saying, I turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table. At sight of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of us between the candles, or rolled upon the floor alongside, I stood astonished.

“O Lord!” cried Mr. Rowley; “O Lordy, Lordy, Lord!” and he scrambled after the fallen guineas. “O my, Mr. Anne! what a sight o’ money! Why, it’s like a blessed story-book. It’s like the Forty Thieves.”

“Now, Rowley, let’s be cool, let’s be business-like,” said I. “Riches are deceitful, particularly when you haven’t counted them; and the first thing we have to do is to arrive at the amount of my—let me say modest competency. If I’m not mistaken, I have enough here to keep you in gold buttons all the rest of your life. You collect the gold, and I’ll take the paper.”

Accordingly, down we sat together on the hearthrug, and for some time there was no sound but the creasing of bills and the jingling of guineas, broken occasionally by the exulting exclamations of Rowley. The arithmetical operation on which we were embarked took long, and it might have been tedious to others; not to me nor to my helper.

“Ten thousand pounds!” I announced at last.

“Ten thousand!” echoed Mr. Rowley.

And we gazed upon each other.

The greatness of this fortune took my breath away. With that sum in my hands I need fear no enemies. People are arrested in nine cases out of ten, not because the police are astute, but because they themselves run short of money; and I had here before me in the despatch-box a succession of devices and disguises that ensured my liberty. Not only so; but, as I felt with a sudden and overpowering thrill, with ten thousand pounds in my hand, I was become an eligible suitor. What advances I had made in the past, as a private soldier in a military prison, or a fugitive by the wayside, could only be qualified or, indeed, excused as acts of desperation. And now, I might come in by the front door; I might approach the dragon with a lawyer at my elbow, and rich settlements to offer. The poor French prisoner, Champdivers, might be in a perpetual danger of arrest; but the rich travelling Englishman, St. Ives, in his post-chaise, with his despatch-box by his side, could smile at fate and laugh at locksmiths. I repeated the proverb, exulting, Love laughs at locksmiths! In a moment, by the mere coming of this money, my love had become possible—it had come near, it was under my hand—and it may be by one of the curiosities of human nature, but it burned that instant brighter.

“Rowley,” said I, “your Viscount is a made man.”

“Why, we both are, sir,” said Rowley.

“Yes, both,” said I; “and you shall dance at the wedding”; and I flung at his head a bundle of bank notes, and had just followed it up with a handful of guineas, when the door opened, and Mr. Romaine appeared upon the threshold.

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. ROMAINE CALLS ME NAMES

Feeling very much of a fool to be thus taken by surprise, I scrambled to my feet and hastened to make my visitor welcome. He did not refuse me his hand; but he gave it with a coldness and distance for which I was quite unprepared, and his countenance, as he looked on me, was marked in a strong degree with concern and severity.

“So, sir, I find you here?” said he, in tones of little encouragement. “Is that you, George? You can run away; I have business with your master.”

He showed Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with uncompromising sternness.

“I am hesitating how to begin,” said he. “In this singular labyrinth of blunders and difficulties that you have prepared for us, I am positively hesitating where to begin. It will perhaps be best that you should read, first of all, this paragraph.” And he handed over to me a newspaper.

The paragraph in question was brief. It announced the recapture of one of the prisoners recently escaped from Edinburgh Castle; gave his name Clausel, and added that he had entered into the particulars of the recent revolting murder in the Castle, and denounced the murderer: