The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 20

He informed me of it, and while thanking me for my succour, refused to accept it. 'Very well done,' say you as a Doctor of Morality.

But meanwhile I was searching the young officer, and finding a letter upon him from the Duke of Ragusa, broke the seal. 'Not so well done,'

say you: but again wait a moment. This letter was addressed to the Governor of Bayonne, and gave orders that Captain McNeill, as a spy and a dangerous man, should be forwarded to Paris in irons. There was also a hint that a request for his execution might accompany him to Paris.

And this was a prisoner who, on promise of clemency, had given his parole! Now what, in your opinion, was a fair course for our friend here, on proof of this dirty treachery?"

"We will reserve this as Question Number Two," answered the Doctor gravely, "and proceed with the narrative, which (I opine) goes on to say that Captain McNeill preferred his oath to the excuse for considering it annulled, collected his escort, shook hands with you, and went forward to his fate."

"A man must save his soul," Captain McNeill explained modestly.

"You are to me, sir, a heretic (pardon my saying it); which prevents me from taking as cheerful a view as I could wish concerning your soul.

But a.s.suredly you saved your honour."

"Well, I hope so," the Captain answered, picking up the story: "but really, in the sequel, I had to take some decisions which, obvious as they seemed at the time, have since caused me grave searchings of heart, and upon which I shall be grateful for your opinion."

"Am I appealed to as a priest?"

"Most certainly not, but as a Professor--a t.i.tle for which, by the way, we have in Scotland an extraordinary reverence. I rode on, sir, with my escort, and that night we reached Tolosa, where the young Lieutenant-- his name was Gerard--found a surgeon to set his bone. He suffered considerable pain, yet insisted next morning upon proceeding with me.

I imagine his motives to have been mixed; but please myself with thinking that a latent desire to serve me made one of them. On the other hand, the seal of Marmont's letter had been broken in his keeping; a serious matter for a young officer, and one which he would naturally desire to defer explaining. At Tolosa he accounted for his wound by some tale of brigands and a chance shot at long range. On the morrow we rode to Irun and crossed the Bida.s.soa. We were now on French soil.

Throughout the morning he had spoken little, and I too had preferred my own thoughts. But now, as we broke our fast and cracked a bottle together at the first tavern on the French sh.o.r.e, I opened fire by asking him if he yet carried the Marshal's letter with the broken seal.

'To be sure,' said he. 'And what will you do with it?' I went on.

'Why, deliver it, I suppose, to the Governor of Bayonne, to whom it is addressed.' 'And, when asked to account for the broken seal, you will tell him the exact truth about it and the rescue?' 'I must,'

he answered; 'and I hope my report will help you, sir. It will not be my fault if it does not.' 'You are an excellent fellow,' said I; 'but it will help me little. You do not know the contents of that letter as I do--not willingly, but because it was read aloud in my presence by the man who opened it.' And, before he could remonstrate, I had told him its purport. Now, sir, that was not quite fair to the young man, and I am not sure that it was strictly honourable?"

Captain McNeill paused with a question in his voice."

"Proceed, sir," said the Doctor: "I reserve this as Question Number Three, remarking only that the young man owed you something for having saved his life."

"Just so; and that is where the unfairness came in. He was inexpressibly shocked. 'Why,' he cried, 'the Marshal had put you under parole!' 'So far as the frontier,' said I. 'The promise upon which I swore was that I would not consent to be released by the _partidas_ on my journey through Spain. Once in France, I could not escape his vengeance. Now for this very reason I have a right to interpret my promise strictly, and I consider that during the past half-hour my parole has expired.' 'I cannot deny it,' he allowed, and took a pace or two up and down the room, then halted in front of me. 'You would suggest, sir, that since this letter was taken from me by the _partidas_, and you and I alone know that it was restored, I owe you the favour of suppressing it.' 'Good Heavens! my young friend,' I exclaimed, 'I suggest nothing of the sort. I may ask you to risk for my sake a professional ambition which is very dear to you, but certainly not to imperil your young soul by a falsehood. No, sir, if you will deliver me to the Governor of Bayonne as a prisoner on honourable parole--which I will renew here and extend to the gates of that city only--and will then request an interview for the purpose of delivering your letter and explaining how the seal came to be broken, with Joly'-- this was the trooper--'for witness, you will gain me all the time I hope to need.' 'That will be little enough,' objected he. 'I must make the most of it,' said I; 'and we must manage to time our arrival for the evening, when the Governor will either be supping or at the theatre, that the delay, if possible, may be of his creating.' 'I owe you more than this,' said the ingenuous youth. 'And I, sir, am even ashamed of myself for asking so much,' I answered.

"Well, so we contrived it; entered Bayonne at nightfall, presented ourselves at the Citadel, and were, to our inexpressible joy, received by the Deputy-Governor, who heard the Lieutenant's report and endorsed the false paper of parole which Marmont had given me, and which, in fact, had now expired. The fatal letter Lieutenant Gerard kept in his pocket, while demanding an interview with the Governor himself.

This (he was told) could not be granted until the morning--'the Governor was entertaining that night'--and with a well-feigned reluctance he saluted and withdrew. Outside the Deputy's door we parted without a word, and at the Citadel gate, having shown my pa.s.s, which left me free to seek lodgings in the city, I halted, and, under the sentry's nose, dropped a note into the Governor's letter-box. I had written it at Hendaye, and addressed it to the Duke of Ragusa; and it ran--

"MONSIEUR LE MARECHAL,--I send this under cover of the Governor from the city of Bayonne, out of which I hope to escape to-night, having come so far in obedience to my word, which appears to be more sacred than that of a Marshal of France. My escort having been overpowered between Vittoria and Tolosa, I declined the rescue offered me, but not before your letter to the Governor had been broken open and its contents read, in my presence.

This letter also I saw restored to its bearer, who during its perusal lay unconscious, of a severe and painful wound in his sword-arm. I beg to a.s.sure you that he has behaved in all respects as a gentleman of courage and honour: and, conceiving that you owe me some reparation, I shall rely on you that his prospects as a soldier are not in any way compromised by the miscarriage of your benevolent plans concerning me."

I laughed aloud, and even the Doctor relaxed his features.

"Bravo, kinsman!" said I. "If Marmont hates one thing more than another it's to see his majestic image diminished in the looking-gla.s.s. But-- faith! I'd have kept that letter in my pocket until I was many miles south of Bayonne."

"South? You don't suppose I had any intention of escaping towards the Pyrenees? Why, my dear fellow, that's the very direction in which they were bound to search."

"Oh, very well," said I--a trifle nettled, I will confess--"perhaps you preferred Paris!"

"Precisely," was the cool answer. "I preferred Paris: and having but an hour or two to spare before the hotels closed, I at once inquired at the chief hotels if any French officer were starting that night for the capital. The first-named, if I remember, the _Hotel du Sud_--I drew blank. At the second, the _Trois Couronnes_, I was informed that a chaise and four had been ordered by no less a man than General Souham, who would start that night as soon as he returned from supping with the Governor. I waited: the General arrived a few minutes before ten o'clock: I introduced myself--"

"General Souham," I groaned. "Reverend father, I have not yet tasted the wine of Rueda: it appears to me that the fumes are strong enough.

He tells me he introduced himself to General Souham!"

"--and, I a.s.sure you, found him excellent company. We travelled three in the chaise--the General, his aide-de-camp, and your fortunate kinsman. A second chaise followed with the General's baggage.

He and the aide-de-camp at times beguiled the road with a game of picquet: for myself, I disapprove of cards."

"Doubtless you told them so at an early stage?" I suggested, with a last effort at irony.

"I was obliged to, seeing that the General challenged me to a _partie_; but I did not, I hope, adopt a tone inconsistent with good fellows.h.i.+p.

We travelled through to Paris, with a few hours' break at Orleans--an opportunity which I seized to purchase a suit of clothes more congruous than my uniform with the part I had to play in Paris. I had ventured to ask General Souham's advice, and he a.s.sured me that a British officer, though a prisoner on parole, might incur some risk from the Parisian mob by wearing his uniform in public."

"Cousin," said I, "henceforth pursue your tale without interruption.

There was a time when, in my folly, I presumed to criticise your methods. I apologise."

"On leaving the tailor's shop I was accosted by a wretched creature who had seen me alight from the chaise in His Majesty's uniform, and had followed, but did not venture to introduce himself until I emerged in a less compromising garb. He was, it appeared, a British agent--and a traitor to his own country--and I gathered that a part of his dirty trade lay in a.s.sisting British prisoners to break their parole.

He a.s.sumed that I travelled on parole, and insinuated that I might have occasion to break it: and, with all the will in the world to crack his head, I let the mistake and suspicion pa.s.s. For a napoleon I received the address of a Parisian agent in the Rue Carca.s.sonne, whose name I will confide in you, in case you should ever require his services.

For truly, although I had some difficulty in persuading him that I broke no faith in seeking to escape from France (a point in which self-respect obliged me to insist, though he himself treated it with irritating nonchalance), this agent proved a zealous fellow, and served me well.

"He fell in, too, with my proposals, complimented me on their boldness, and advanced me money to further them. I took a lodging _au troisieme_ in the Faubourg St. Honore, and for a fortnight walked Paris without an attempt at concealment, frequenting the cafes, and spending my evenings at the theatre. Once or twice I encountered Souham himself, with whom I had parted on the friendliest terms: but he did not choose to recognise me--perhaps he had his good-natured suspicions. I lived unchallenged, though walking all the while on a razor's edge. I had reckoned on two fair chances in my favour. There was a chance that the Governor of Bayonne, on finding himself tricked, would for his own security suppress Marmont's letter, trusting that the affair would pa.s.s without inquiry: and there was the further chance that Marmont himself, on receipt of my note, would remember the magnanimity which (to do him justice) he usually has at call, and give orders whistling off the pursuit.

At any rate, I spent a fortnight in Paris; and no man questioned or troubled me.

"On the same morning that I paid my second weekly bill the agent called on me with a capital plan of escape, which (being a facetious fellow) he announced as follows: 'I wish you good morning, Mr. Buck,' he began.

'Sir,' I answered, 'I have no claim to such a designation. My pleasures in Paris have been entirely respectable, and I dislike familiarity.'

'Mr. Jonathan Buck, I should have said.' 'Sir,' I corrected him, 'if your clients are so numerous that you confuse their names, I must remind you that mine is McNeill.' 'Pardon me,' he replied, 'you have this morning inherited that of an American citizen who died suddenly last evening in an obscure lodging near the Barriere de Pantin; and, in addition, a pa.s.sport now waiting for him at the Foreign Office, if you have the courage to claim it. You resemble the deceased sufficiently to answer a pa.s.sport's description: and if you secure it, I advise a speedy departure, with Nantes for your objective.' Accordingly, that same evening I left Paris for the Loire."

"You had the coolness to apply for that pa.s.sport?"

"And the good fortune to obtain it. If anything, my dear fellow, deserves the degree of astonishment your face expresses, it should rather be my consenting to use disguise, and so breaking through a self-denying ordinance on which you have sometimes rallied me.

Suspense--the danger from Bayonne hourly antic.i.p.ated--had perhaps shaken my nerves. To be brief, I travelled to Nantes as Mr. Jonathan Buck, and in that name took pa.s.sage in a vessel bound for Philadelphia and on the point (as I understood) of lifting anchor.

"I slept that night on board the _Minnie Dwight_--this was the vessel's name--in full hope that my troubles were at an end. But next morning her captain came to me with a long face and a report that some hitch had occurred between him and the port authorities over his clearing-papers.

'And how long will this detain us?' I asked, cutting short an explanation too technical for my understanding. He answered that he had been to his Consul to protest, but could promise nothing short of a week's delay.

"Well, I saw nothing for it but to shut the cabin-door, make a clean breast of my fears, and desire him to help me in devising some new plan.

He was a good fellow, and ingenious too; for after he had dashed up my hopes with the news that a similar embargo lay on all foreign s.h.i.+ps in the port, his face cleared, and, said he, 'There's no help for it, but you must play the sea-lawyer and I the brutal tyrant. It's hard, too, upon a man who treats his crew like his own children, and victuals his s.h.i.+p like an eating-house: but a seaman's rig and forty dollars is all you need, and with this you'll fare off to the American Consul's and swear that I've made life a burden to you.' 'Why forty dollars?' I asked. He winked. 'That's earnest money that when you reach the United States you'll have the law of me for ill-usage.' 'And what shall I get in exchange?' 'You will get a certificate enabling you to pa.s.s from port as a discharged sailor seeking a s.h.i.+p.' I thanked him warmly, and agreed; climbed down the s.h.i.+p's side in my new rig, waved an affecting farewell to my benevolent tyrant, and sought the American Consul who (it seemed) was used to discontented seamen. At all events, he accepted without suspicion his share in the dishonouring comedy, took my forty dollars, and made out my certificate."

Here the Captain glanced at Doctor Gonsalvez, who blinked.

Said I: "Even a Protestant must sometimes understand the relief of confession."

"Armed with this," he went on, "I made my way to the mouth of the Loire, to St. Nazaire, between which and Le Croisic lies a small island where, in the present weakness of the French marine, English s.h.i.+ps of war are suffered to water unmolested. For ten napoleons I bribed an old fisherman to row me out at night to this island, which we reached at daybreak, and to our dismay found the anchorage empty. We cast our nets, however, for a blind, and taking a few fish on our way, worked slowly down to the south-west, where my comrade (and a faithful one he proved) had heard reports of an English frigate nosing about the coast.

Sure enough, between breakfast and noon we caught sight of her topmasts: but to reach her we must pa.s.s in full view and almost within point-blank range of a coast battery. We were scarcely abreast of it when a round-shot plumped into the sea ahead of us and brought us to, and almost at once a boatful of soldiers put off to board us.

"Their object, it turned out, was merely to warn us not to pa.s.s the battery, or the chances were five to one that the Englishman would capture us. In no way discomposed, my friend maintained that we (he pa.s.sed me off as his son) must either fish or starve; that we had come a long distance, knew every inch of the coast, and ran no danger.

He backed this up by bribing the soldiers with our whole morning's catch, and in the end they contented themselves by insisting that we should wait under the battery until nightfall and so depart. And this we did: but in the meanwhile, pretending our anxiety to avoid her, we cross-questioned the soldiers so precisely on the Englishman's bearings that, when darkness fell and we slipped our anchor, we ran straight down on her without the slightest difficulty. She was the _Agile_ sloop of twenty-four guns, and from her deck I waved good-bye to the fisherman, scarcely more delighted by my safety than he by his napoleons, which in my grat.i.tude I had raised to fifteen.

"The _Agile_ landed me in Plymouth without mishap: and so end my adventures. I ought to add, however, that, though my own conscience held no reproach for my trick upon Marmont, I sought and obtained permission from the War Office to select a prisoner of my own rank and exchange him with France; and with him I sent a precise account, which will afford some amus.e.m.e.nt to the Duke of Ragusa's enemies if he happen to have any at headquarters. You, my cousin, will doubtless consider this mere supererogation, but I should be glad of the reverend Doctor's opinion."

"We will reserve this," said the Doctor, "as Question Number Five."

"And you promptly res.h.i.+pped for Lisbon, followed the army to Salamanca, and resumed your work?" said I.

"Even so: but I suspect that these adventures have rattled me. I am not the man I was: else I had not succ.u.mbed so easily to a mere _coup-de-soleil_. Will the reverend Doctor complete the narrative by describing how he found me?"

"In a ditch," said the reverend Doctor placidly. "My college was destroyed: my beloved Salamanca in ruins. 'To a philosopher,' said I, 'all the world is a home; but especially such wine-vaults as are found in Rueda.' I saddled, therefore, my mule; loaded her with a very few books and still fewer sticks of furniture; more frugal even than Juvenal's friend Umbricius, _cui tota domus redo, componitur una_.