Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  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 Mossho 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 bathroom 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. ‘Oh, 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. Oh, 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.’

  ‘Oh, 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 Caesar 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 Chasserades, that she should take charge of me, and by the favour of our jailers 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 Chasserades 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 Abbe 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 uncl
e 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 aves 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 Mauseant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some education from the Abbe de Culemberg, a man of a 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.