The Seats of the Mighty Part 7

I got up with effort and pain, and made to grasp his hand in grat.i.tude, but he drew back, putting his arms behind him.

"No, no," said he, "I am your jailer. They've put you here to break your high spirits, and I'm to help the breaking."

"But I thank you just the same," I answered him; "and I promise to give you as little trouble as may be while you are my jailer--which, with all my heart, I hope may be as long as I'm a prisoner."

He waved out his hands to the dungeon walls, and lifted his shoulders as if to say that I might as well be docile, for the prison was safe enough. "Poom!" said he, as if in genial disdain of my suggestion.

I smiled, and then, after putting my hands on the walls here and there to see if they were, as they seemed, quite dry, I drew back to my couch and sat down. Presently I stooped to tip the earthen jar of water to my lips, for I could not lift it with one hand, but my humane jailer took it from me and held it to my mouth. When I had drunk, "Do you know,"

asked I as calmly as I could, "if our barber gave the letter to Mademoiselle?"

"M'sieu', you've travelled far to reach that question," said he, jangling his keys as if he enjoyed it. "And if he had--?"

I caught at his vague suggestion, and my heart leaped.

"A reply," said I, "a message or a letter," though I had not dared to let myself even think of that.

He whipped a tiny packet from his coat. "'Tis a sparrow's pecking--no great matter here, eh?"--he weighed it up and down on his fingers--"a little piping wren's par pitie."

I reached out for it. "I should read it," said he. "There must be no more of this. But new orders came AFTER I'd got her dainty a m'sieu'!

Yes, I must read it," said he--"but maybe not at first," he added, "not at first, if you'll give word of honour not to tear it."

"On my sacred honour," said I, reaching out still.

He looked it all over again provokingly, and then lifted it to his nose, for it had a delicate perfume. Then he gave a little grunt of wonder and pleasure, and handed it over.

I broke the seal, and my eyes ran swiftly through the lines, traced in a firm, delicate hand. I could see through it all the fine, sound nature, by its healthy simplicity mastering anxiety, care, and fear.

"Robert," she wrote, "by G.o.d's help my brother will live, to repent with you, I trust, of Friday night's ill work. He was near gone, yet we have held him back from that rough-rider, Death.

"You will thank G.o.d, will you not, that my brother did not die? Indeed, I feel you have. I do not blame you; I know--I need not tell you how--the heart of the affair; and even my mother can see through the wretched thing. My father says little, and he has not spoken harshly; for which I gave thanksgiving this morning in the chapel of the Ursulines. Yet you are in a dungeon, covered with wounds of my brother's making, both of you victims of others' villainy, and you are yet to bear worse things, for they are to try you for your life. But never shall I believe that they will find you guilty of dishonour. I have watched you these three years; I do not, nor ever will, doubt you, dear friend of my heart.

"You would not believe it, Robert, and you may think it fanciful, but as I got up from my prayers at the chapel I looked towards a window, and it being a little open, for it is a sunny day, there sat a bird on the sill, a little brown bird that peeped and nodded. I was so won by it that I came softly over to it. It did not fly away, but hopped a little here and there. I stretched out my hand gently on the stone, and putting its head now this side, now that, at last it tripped into it, and chirped most sweetly. After I had kissed it I placed it back on the window-sill, that it might fly away again. Yet no, it would not go, but stayed there, tipping its gold-brown head at me as though it would invite me to guess why it came. Again I reached out my hand, and once more it tripped into it. I stood wondering and holding it to my bosom, when I heard a voice behind me say, 'The bird would be with thee, my child. G.o.d hath many signs.' I turned and saw the good Mere St. George looking at me, she of whom I was always afraid, so distant is she. I did not speak, but only looked at her, and she nodded kindly at me and pa.s.sed on.

"And, Robert, as I write to you here in the Intendant's palace (what a great wonderful place it is! I fear I do not hate it and its luxury as I ought!), the bird is beside me in a cage upon the table, with a little window open, so that it may come out if it will. My brother lies in the bed asleep; I can touch him if I but put out my hand, and I am alone save for one person. You sent two messengers: can you not guess the one that will be with me? Poor Mathilde, she sits and gazes at me till I almost fall weeping. But she seldom speaks, she is so quiet--as if she knew that she must keep a secret. For, Robert, though I know you did not tell her, she knows--she knows that you love me, and she has given me a little wooden cross which she said will make us happy.

"My mother did not drive her away, as I half feared she would, and at last she said that I might house her with one of our peasants. Meanwhile she is with me here. She is not so mad but that she has wisdom too, and she shall have my care and friendship.

"I bid thee to G.o.d's care, Robert. I need not tell thee to be not dismayed. Thou hast two jails, and one wherein I lock thee safe is warm and full of light. If the hours drag by, think of all thou wouldst do if thou wert free to go to thine own country--yet alas that thought!--and of what thou wouldst say if thou couldst speak to thy ALIXE.

"Postscript.--I trust that they have cared for thy wounds, and that thou hast light and food and wine. Voban hath promised to discover this for me. The soldier Gabord, at the citadel, he hath a good heart. Though thou canst expect no help from him, yet he will not be rougher than his orders. He did me a good service once, and he likes me, and I him. And so fare thee well, Robert. I will not languish; I will act, and not be weary. Dost thou really love me?"

V. THE DEVICE OF THE DORMOUSE

When I had read the letter, I handed it up to Gabord without a word. A show of trust in him was the only thing, for he had enough knowledge of our secret to ruin us, if he chose. He took the letter, turned it over, looking at it curiously, and at last, with a shrug of the shoulders, pa.s.sed it back.

"'Tis a long tune on a dot of a fiddle," said he, for indeed the letter was but a small affair in bulk. "I'd need two pairs of eyes and telescope! Is it all Heart-o'-my-heart, and Come-trip-in-dewy-gra.s.s--aho? Or is there knave at window to bear m'sieu' away?"

I took the letter from him. "Listen," said I, "to what the lady says of you." And then I read him that part of her postscript which had to do with himself.

He put his head on one side like a great wise magpie, and "H'm--ha!"

said he whimsically, "aho! Gabord the soldier, Gabord, thou hast a good heart--and the birds fed the beast with plums and froth of comfits till he died, and on his sugar tombstone they carved the words, 'Gabord had a good heart.'"

"It was spoken out of a true spirit," said I petulantly, for I could not bear from a common soldier even a tone of disparagement, though I saw the exact meaning of his words. So I added, "You shall read the whole letter, or I will read it to you and you shall judge. On the honour of a gentleman, I will read all of it!"

"Poom!" said he, "English fire-eater! corn-cracker! Show me the 'good heart' sentence, for I'd see how it is written--how GABORD looks with a woman's whimsies round it."

I traced the words with my fingers, holding the letter near the torch.

"'Yet he will not be rougher than his orders,'" said he after me, and "'He did me a good service once.'"

"Comfits," he continued; "well, thou shalt have comfits, too," and he fished from his pocket a parcel. It was my tobacco and my pipe.

Truly, my state might have been vastly worse. Little more was said between Gabord and myself, but he refused bluntly to carry message or letter to anybody, and bade me not to vex him with pet.i.tions. But he left me the torch and a flint and steel, so I had light for a s.p.a.ce, and I had my blessed tobacco and pipe. When the doors clanged shut and the bolts were shot, I lay back on my couch.

I was not all unhappy. Thank G.o.d, they had not put chains on me, as Governor Dinwiddie had done with a French prisoner at Williamsburg, for whom I had vainly sought to be exchanged two years before, though he was my equal in all ways and importance. Doltaire was the cause of that, as you shall know. Well, there was one more item to add to his indebtedness. My face flushed and my fingers tingled at thought of him, and so I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere, and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives.

I seemed hung in s.p.a.ce, as one feels when going from sleep to waking--a long lane of half-numb life, before the open road of full consciousness is reached.

At last I was aroused by the sudden cracking of a knot in the torch. I saw that it would last but a few hours more. I determined to put it out, for I might be allowed no more light, and even a few minutes of this torch every day would be a great boon. So I took it from its place, and was about to quench it in the moist earth at the foot of the wall, when I remembered my tobacco and my pipe. Can you think how joyfully I packed full the good brown bowl, delicately filling in every little corner, and at last held it to the flame, and saw it light? That first long whiff was like the indrawn breath of the cold, starved hunter, when, stepping into his house, he sees food, fire, and wife on his hearthstone.

Presently I put out the torchlight, and then went back to my couch and sat down, the bowl shining like a star before me.

There and then a purpose came to me--something which would keep my brain from wandering, my nerves from fretting and wearing, for a time at least. I determined to write to my dear Alixe the true history of my life, even to the point--and after--of this thing which now was bringing me to so ill a pa.s.s. But I was in darkness, I had no paper, pens, nor ink. After a deal of thinking I came at last to the solution. I would compose the story, and learn it by heart, sentence by sentence, as I so composed it.

So there and then I began to run back over the years of my life, even to my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to last in a sort of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with cl.u.s.ters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew now that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or feels, it has begun life.

I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it shall be set down forthwith and in little s.p.a.ce, though it took me so very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a fixed place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase of that story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it must not be thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a few things, but you shall find in them the spirit of the whole. I will come at once to the body of the letter.

VI. MORAY TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE

"...I would have you know of what I am and whence I came, though I have given you glimpses in the past. That done, I will make plain why I am charged with this that puts my life in danger, which would make you blush that you ever knew me if it were true. And I will show you first a picture as it runs before me, sitting here, the corn of my dungeon garden twining in my fingers:--

"A multiplying width of green gra.s.s spotted with white flowers, an upland where sheep browsed on a carpet of purple and gold and green, a tall rock on a hill where birds perched and fluttered, a blue sky arching over all. There, sprawling in a garden, a child pulled at long blades of gra.s.s, as he watched the birds flitting about the rocks, and heard a low voice coming down the wind. Here in my dungeon I can hear the voice as I have not heard it since that day in the year 1730--that voice stilled so long ago. The air and the words come floating down (for the words I knew years afterwards):

'Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun?

That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie.

Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag?

That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie.

Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn?

That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie.

Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood?

That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie.

Sae I'll gang awa' hame, to the shine o' the fire, To the cot where I lie wi' my bairnie.'