Robert Louis Stevenson

“ I am going to see my daughter at last, and it is my only concern lest I should have delayed too long. She is ill, and very ill,—at death’s door. Nothing is left me but my daughter, my Emperor, and my honour; and I give my honour, blame me for it who dare!’
At this my heart smote me.
‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ‘think no more of what I have said! A parole? what is a parole against life and death and love? I ask your pardon; this gentleman’s also. As long as I shall be with you, you shall not have cause to complain of me again. ”

“ I am not making a deception fit to last for thirty years; I do not found a palace in the living granite for the night. This is a shelter tent—a flying picture—seen, admired, and gone again in the wink of an eye. What is wanted, in short, is a trompe-l’œil that shall be good enough for twelve hours at an inn: is it not so?’
‘It is, and the objection holds. Rowley is but another danger,’ said Romaine.
‘Rowley,’ said I, ‘will pass as a servant from a distance—as a creature seen poised on the dicky of a bowling chaise. ”

“ Ramornie paid seventy guineas for a chaise,’ said the fellow. ‘That’s all well and good; but who’s to prove to me that you are Mr. Ramornie?’
‘Fellow!’ cried I.
‘O, fellow as much as you please!’ said he. ‘Fellow, with all my heart! That changes nothing. I am fellow, of course—obtrusive fellow, impudent fellow, if you like—but who are you? I hear of you with two names; I hear of you running away with young ladies, and getting cheered for a Frenchman, which seems odd; and one thing I will go bail for, that you were in a blue fright when the post-boy began to tell tales at my door. ”

“ 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? ”

“ And, looking out between the curtains, we beheld the lamps skimming on the smooth ascent.
‘Ay,’ said Romaine, wiping the window-pane that he might see more clearly. ‘Ay, that is he by the driving! So he squanders money along the king’s highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving—where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor’s jail, if not a criminal prison!’
‘Is he that kind of a man?’ I said, staring on these lamps as though I could decipher in them the secret of my cousin’s character.
‘You will find him a dangerous kind,’ answered the lawyer. ”

“ We came, at last, a little before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know. So that we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in its most luxurious forms of despatch and comfort. ”

“ Rowley and I bowled into Edinburgh to the stirring sound of the guard’s bugle and the clattering team. I was here upon my field of battle; on the scene of my former captivity, escape and exploits; and in the same city with my love. My heart expanded; I have rarely felt more of a hero. All down the Bridges I sat by the driver with my arms folded and my face set, unflinchingly meeting every eye, and prepared every moment for a cry of recognition. ”

“ 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 jail, 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. ”

“ Ronald was nothing loath to escape from his aunt’s neighbourhood, and left the room and the cottage with a silent expedition that was more like flight than mere obedience. Meanwhile the old lady turned to her niece.
‘And I would like to know what we are to do with him the night!’ she cried.
‘Ronald and I meant to put him in the hen-house,’ said the encrimsoned Flora.
‘And I can tell you he is to go to no such a place,’ replied the aunt. ‘Hen-house, indeed! If a guest he is to be, he shall sleep in no mortal hen-house. ”

“ A likely thing, indeed, that a beggar-man, a private soldier, a prisoner in a yellow travesty, was to awake the interest of this fair girl! I would not despair; but I saw the game must be played fine and close. It must be my policy to hold myself before her, always in a pathetic or pleasing attitude; never to alarm or startle her; to keep my own secret locked in my bosom like a story of disgrace, and let hers (if she could be induced to have one) grow at its own rate; to move just so fast, and not by a hair’s-breadth any faster, than the inclination of her heart. ”

“ And told me just what you did—that it was an affair of honour, and no blame attached to you. O, I must say I like that Major Chevenix!’
At this I was seized with a great pang of jealousy. I remembered the first time that he had seen her, the interest that he seemed immediately to conceive; and I could not but admire the dog for the use he had been ingenious enough to make of our acquaintance in order to supplant me. All is fair in love and war. For all that, I was now no less anxious to do the speaking myself than I had been before to hear Flora. ”

“ Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair and that white elephant, the seventy-pounds-worth of claret-coloured chaise.
Meanwhile I was ashamed to look Rowley in the face. The young shaver had contrived to put me wholly in the wrong; he had cost me a night’s rest and a severe and healthful humiliation; and I was grateful and embarrassed in his society. This would never do; it was contrary to all my ideas of discipline; if the officer has to blush before the private, or the master before the servant, nothing is left to hope for but discharge or death. ”

“ I may say that I was quite prepared, that I already knew what to expect; but at sight of the cold print my heart stopped beating. There it was: the fulfilment of Romaine’s apprehension was before me; the paper was laid open at the capture of Clausel. I felt as if I could take a little curacoa myself, but on second thoughts called for brandy. It was badly wanted; and suddenly I observed the waiter’s eye to sparkle, as it were, with some recognition; made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me and Alain; and became aware—as by a revelation—of the fool’s part I had been playing. ”

“ At the door I was nearly blown back by the unbridled violence of the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words. All the way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me behind and screamed in my ears. The city was flushed with bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean. It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the gusts. Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive, re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and make darkness sparingly visible. ”

“ Chevenix was his name. He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as an Englishman, but a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly upright man. Little did I suppose that his ramrod body and frozen face would, in the end, step in between me and all my dearest wishes; that upon this precise, regular, icy soldier-man my fortunes should so nearly shipwreck! I never liked, but yet I trusted him; and though it may seem but a trifle, I found his snuff-box with the bean in it come very welcome.
For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back in life ”

“ I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering countrymen. I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future should have the chance to think I had looked at her with admiration. You cannot imagine any one of a more resolute and independent spirit, or whose bosom was more wholly mailed with patriotic arrogance, than I. Before I dropped asleep, I had remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an overwhelming column to Flora. ”

“ He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his double burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or so susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an open piano tempts the musician.
‘Nothing of the sort, Rowley,’ I continued, in a churchyard voice. ‘These are appearances, petty appearances. I am in peril, homeless, hunted. I count scarce any one in England who is not my enemy. ”

“ Rowley was a pretty boy; you will pardon me if I also remembered that I was a favourable-looking young man. When we grow elderly, how the room brightens, and begins to look as it ought to look, on the entrance of youth, grace, health, and comeliness! You do not want them for yourself, perhaps not even for your son, but you look on smiling; and when you recall their images—again, it is with a smile. I defy you to see or think of them and not smile with an infinite and intimate, but quite impersonal, pleasure. Well, either I know nothing of women, or that was the case with Bethiah McRankine. ”

“ 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 insured my liberty. Not only so; but, as I felt with a sudden and overpowering thrill, with ten thousand pounds in my hands I was become an eligible suitor. ”

“ For a choice, I would a hundred times sooner be returned to Edinburgh Castle and my corner in the bastion, than to leave my foot in a steel trap or have to digest the contents of an automatic blunderbuss. There was but one chance left—that Ronald or Flora might be the first to come abroad; and in order to profit by this chance if it occurred, I got me on the cope of the wall in a place where it was screened by the thick branches of a beech, and sat there waiting. ”

“ Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of liberty and the fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded; the hum of the town declined by little and little. On all sides of us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchman cry the hours along the street. Often enough, during my stay in England, have I listened to these gruff or broken voices; or perhaps gone to my window when I lay sleepless, and watched the old gentleman hobble by upon the causeway with his cape and his cap, his hanger and his rattle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had been tended and caressed by a succession of the daughters of France, the fairest, the most ill-starred; and I had fought and conquered shoulder to shoulder with her sons. A soldier, a noble, of the proudest and bravest race in Europe, it had been left to the prattle of a hobbledehoy lackey in an English chaise to recall me to the consciousness of duty. ”

“ Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it’s a defect they are rather prone to) , I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority—and take a thimbleful of brandy for the stomach’s sake.
I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going to bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-fashioned English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a pretty chambermaid. ”

“ Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured chaise, a couple of correctly dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with the niceties and civilities of drill. We would pass through the little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation, inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and disappear within, followed by the envy and admiration of the bystanders, a model master and servant, point-device in every part. ”

“ We were just walking away arm in arm, when I spied my friend the Major approaching, stiff as a ramrod and, as usual, obtrusively clean.
‘Oh! there’s a man I want to know,’ said I, taking the bull by the horns. ‘Won’t you introduce me to Major Chevenix?’
‘At a word, my dear fellow,’ said Robbie; and ‘Major!’ he cried, ‘come here and let me present to you my friend Mr. Ducie, who desires the honour of your acquaintance.’
The Major flushed visibly, but otherwise preserved his composure. He bowed very low. ”

“ But God has been wiser than you; and the most steadfast of your heroes may prove human, after all. We appeal to the queen for judgment,’ I added, turning and bowing before Flora.
‘And how shall the queen judge?’ she asked. ‘I must give you an answer that is no answer at all. “The wind bloweth where it listeth”: she goes where her heart goes.’
Her face flushed as she said it; mine also, for I read in it a declaration, and my heart swelled for joy. But Chevenix grew pale.
‘You make of life a very dreadful kind of lottery, ma’am,’ said he. ‘But I will not despair. ”

“ You will only make yourself ridiculous; you will only squander money, of which you have none too much, and reap public mortification.’
‘Ah, but there you make the common mistake, Mr. Romaine!’ returned Alain. ‘You despise your adversary. Consider, if you please, how very disagreeable I could make myself, if I chose. Consider the position of your protégé—an escaped prisoner! But I play a great game. I condemn such petty opportunities.’
At this Romaine and I exchanged a glance of triumph. It seemed manifest that Alain had as yet received no word of Clausel’s recapture and denunciation. ”

“ 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 yet 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. ”