St Ives

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Transcribed 1898 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

ST. IVES
BEING
THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER I--A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT

It was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at
last into the hands of the enemy. My knowledge of the English
language had marked me out for a certain employment. Though I
cannot conceive a soldier refusing to incur the risk, yet to be
hanged for a spy is a disgusting business; and I was relieved to be
held a prisoner of war. Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in
the midst of that city on the summit of an extraordinary rock, I
was cast with several hundred fellow-sufferers, all privates like
myself, and the more part of them, by an accident, very ignorant,
plain fellows. My English, which had brought me into that scrape,
now helped me very materially to bear it. I had a thousand
advantages. I was often called to play the part of an interpreter,
whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in relations,
sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the
officers in charge. A young lieutenant singled me out to be his
adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and
would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars. The major of
the battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast,
and was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal.
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; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after
all the next thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in
the most pitiful, childish interests, and a sugar biscuit or a
pinch of snuff become things to follow after and scheme for!

We made but a poor show of prisoners. The officers had been all
offered their parole, and had taken it. They lived mostly in
suburbs of the city, lodging with modest families, and enjoyed
their freedom and supported the almost continual evil tidings of
the Emperor as best they might. It chanced I was the only
gentleman among the privates who remained. A great part were
ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had suffered heavily in
Catalonia. The rest were mere diggers of the soil, treaders of
grapes or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and violently
preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but the one
interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers
passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and
articles of Paris; and the prison was daily visited at certain
hours by a concourse of people of the country, come to exult over
our distress, or--it is more tolerant to suppose--their own
vicarious triumph. Some moved among us with a decency of shame or
sympathy. Others were the most offensive personages in the world,
gaped at us as if we had been baboons, sought to evangelise us to
their rustic, northern religion, as though we had been savages, or
tortured us with intelligence of disasters to the arms of France.
Good, bad, and indifferent, there was one alleviation to the
annoyance of these visitors; for it was the practice of almost all
to purchase some specimen of our rude handiwork. This led, amongst
the prisoners, to a strong spirit of competition. Some were neat
of hand, and (the genius of the French being always distinguished)
could place upon sale little miracles of dexterity and taste. Some
had a more engaging appearance; fine features were found to do as
well as fine merchandise, and an air of youth in particular (as it
appealed to the sentiment of pity in our visitors) to be a source
of profit. Others again enjoyed some acquaintance with the
language, and were able to recommend the more agreeably to
purchasers such trifles as they had to sell. To the first of these
advantages I could lay no claim, for my fingers were all thumbs.
Some at least of the others I possessed; and finding much
entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages to
rust. I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a
national boast that every Frenchman should excel. For the approach
of particular sorts of visitors, I had a particular manner of
address, and even of appearance, which I could readily assume and
change on the occasion rising. I never lost an opportunity to
flatter either the person of my visitor, if it should be a lady,
or, if it should be a man, the greatness of his country in war.
And in case my compliments should miss their aim, I was always
ready to cover my retreat with some agreeable pleasantry, which
would often earn me the name of an 'oddity' or a 'droll fellow.'
In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out
to be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many
little delicacies and alleviations, such as children or prisoners
desire.

I am scarcely drawing the portrait of a very melancholy man. It is
not indeed my character; and I had, in a comparison with my
comrades, many reasons for content. In the first place, I had no
family: I was an orphan and a bachelor; neither wife nor child
awaited me in France. In the second, I had never wholly forgot the
emotions with which I first found myself a prisoner; and although a
military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still
preferable to a gallows. In the third, I am almost ashamed to say
it, but I found a certain pleasure in our place of residence:
being an obsolete and really mediaeval fortress, high placed and
commanding extraordinary prospects, not only over sea, mountain,
and champaign but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital
city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of
the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps. And lastly,
although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the
scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite
as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen
leagues into the bargain. The first of my troubles, indeed, was
the costume we were obliged to wear. There is a horrible practice
in England to trick out in ridiculous uniforms, and as it were to
brand in mass, not only convicts but military prisoners, and even
the children in charity schools. I think some malignant genius had
found his masterpiece of irony in the dress which we were condemned
to wear: jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard
yellow, and a shirt or blue-and-white striped cotton. It was
conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter--we, who
were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble
scars,--like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair. The old name of
that rock on which our prison stood was (I have heard since then)
the Painted Hill. Well, now it was all painted a bright yellow
with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who guarded us
being of course the essential British red rag, we made up together
the elements of a lively picture of hell. I have again and again
looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and
choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as
I have said, were peasants, somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill-
sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more
than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed, you could
have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in
this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and
blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but point the
insult of the travesty. And I remembered the days when I wore the
coarse but honourable coat of a soldier; and remembered further
back how many of the noble, the fair, and the gracious had taken a
delight to tend my childhood. . . . But I must not recall these
tender and sorrowful memories twice; their place is further on, and
I am now upon another business. The perfidy of the Britannic
Government stood nowhere more openly confessed than in one
particular of our discipline: that we were shaved twice in the
week. To a man who has loved all his life to be fresh shaven, can
a more irritating indignity be devised? Monday and Thursday were
the days. Take the Thursday, and conceive the picture I must
present by Sunday evening! And Saturday, which was almost as bad,
was the great day for visitors.

Those who came to our market were of all qualities, men and women,
the lean and the stout, the plain and the fairly pretty. Sure, if
people at all understood the power of beauty, there would be no
prayers addressed except to Venus; and the mere privilege of
beholding a comely woman is worth paying for. Our visitors, upon
the whole, were not much to boast of; and yet, sitting in a corner
and very much ashamed of myself and my absurd appearance, I have
again and again tasted the finest, the rarest, and the most
ethereal pleasures in a glance of an eye that I should never see
again--and never wanted to. The flower of the hedgerow and the
star in heaven satisfy and delight us: how much more the look of
that exquisite being who was created to bear and rear, to madden
and rejoice, mankind!

There was one young lady in particular, about eighteen or nineteen,
tall, of a gallant carriage, and with a profusion of hair in which
the sun found threads of gold. As soon as she came in the
courtyard (and she was a rather frequent visitor) it seemed I was
aware of it. She had an air of angelic candour, yet of a high
spirit; she stepped like a Diana, every movement was noble and
free. One day there was a strong east wind; the banner was
straining at the flagstaff; below us the smoke of the city chimneys
blew hither and thither in a thousand crazy variations; and away
out on the Forth we could see the ships lying down to it and
scudding. I was thinking what a vile day it was, when she
appeared. Her hair blew in the wind with changes of colour; her
garments moulded her with the accuracy of sculpture; the ends of
her shawl fluttered about her ear and were caught in again with an
inimitable deftness. You have seen a pool on a gusty day, how it
suddenly sparkles and flashes like a thing alive? So this lady's
face had become animated and coloured; and as I saw her standing,
somewhat inclined, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes, I
could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
her a genuine daughter of the winds. What put it in my head, I
know not: perhaps because it was a Thursday and I was new from the
razor; but I determined to engage her attention no later than that
day. She was approaching that part of the court in which I sat
with my merchandise, when I observed her handkerchief to escape
from her hands and fall to the ground; the next moment the wind had
taken it up and carried it within my reach. I was on foot at once:
I had forgot my mustard-coloured clothes, I had forgot the private
soldier and his salute. Bowing deeply, I offered her the slip of
cambric.

'Madam,' said I, 'your handkerchief. The wind brought it me.'

I met her eyes fully.

'I thank you, sir,' said she.

'The wind brought it me,' I repeated. 'May I not take it for an
omen? You have an English proverb, "It's an ill wind that blows
nobody good."'

'Well,' she said, with a smile, '"One good turn deserves another."
I will see what you have.'

She followed me to where my wares were spread out under lee of a
piece of cannon.

'Alas, mademoiselle!' said I, 'I am no very perfect craftsman.
This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry.
You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my
tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and
find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my
signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.' I
cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and
instantly became grave. 'Strange, is it not,' I added, 'that a
grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a
sad heart produce anything so funny to look at?'

An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of
Flora, and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party.

A few days after she came again. But I must first tell you how she
came to be so frequent. Her aunt was one of those terrible British
old maids, of which the world has heard much; and having nothing
whatever to do, and a word or two of French, she had taken what she
called an INTEREST IN THE FRENCH PRISONERS. A big, bustling, bold
old lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable
airs of patronage and condescension. She bought, indeed, with
liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass,
and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any
gratitude. She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old
gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an
oracle. 'This one can really carve prettily: is he not a quiz
with his big whiskers?' she would say. 'And this one,' indicating
myself with her gold eye-glass, 'is, I assure you, quite an
oddity.' The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth. She
had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and addressing
us in what she imagined to be French: 'Bienne, hommes! ca va
bienne?' I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo: Bienne,
femme! ca va couci-couci tout d'meme, la bourgeoise!' And at that,
when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was
entirely civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in
triumph. Needless to say, these passages were before I had
remarked the niece.

The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more
than usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the
market and lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with
rather less than her accustomed tact. I kept my eyes down, but
they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain. The
aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like
caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the
crowd and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at
last as she had come, without a sign. Closely as I had watched
her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant;
and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness. I tore
out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I
laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I
lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and
gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the
night. How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man
might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would
wholly blind them to his merits. 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.

The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was
some one standing near; and behold, it was herself! I kept my
seat, at first in the confusion of my mind, later on from policy;
and she stood, and leaned a little over me, as in pity. She was
very still and timid; her voice was low. Did I suffer in my
captivity? she asked me. Had I to complain of any hardship?

'Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,' said I. 'I am a
soldier of Napoleon.'

She sighed. 'At least you must regret La France,' said she, and
coloured a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a
pretty strangeness of accent.

'What am I to say?' I replied. 'If you were carried from this
country, for which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains
and winds seem to become you like ornaments, would you regret, do
you think? We must surely all regret! the son to his mother, the
man to his country; these are native feelings.'

'You have a mother?' she asked.

'In heaven, mademoiselle,' I answered. 'She, and my father also,
went by the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and
brave: they followed their queen upon the scaffold. So, you see,
I am not so much to be pitied in my prison,' I continued: 'there
are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world. 'Tis a different
case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap. His bed
is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself.
He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments;
and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me
apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart. Do you know
what made him take me for a confidant?'

She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak. The look
burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.

'Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his
village!' I continued. 'The circumstance is quaint enough. It
seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts
that make life beautiful, and people and places dear--and from
which it would seem I am cut off!'

I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground. I
had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry
she should go: an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and
so easy to overthrow! Presently she seemed to make an effort.

'I will take this toy,' she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in
my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her.

I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun. The
beauty, the expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled
there, the compassion in her voice, and a kind of wild elegance
that consecrated the freedom of her movements, all combined to
enslave my imagination and inflame my heart. What had she said?
Nothing to signify; but her eyes had met mine, and the fire they
had kindled burned inextinguishably in my veins. I loved her; and
I did not fear to hope. Twice I had spoken with her; and in both
interviews I had been well inspired, I had engaged her sympathies,
I had found words that she must remember, that would ring in her
ears at night upon her bed. What mattered if I were half shaved
and my clothes a caricature? I was still a man, and I had drawn my
image on her memory. I was still a man, and, as I trembled to
realise, she was still a woman. Many waters cannot quench love;
and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side. I closed
my eyes, and she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more
beautiful than in life. 'Ah!' thought I, 'and you too, my dear,
you too must carry away with you a picture, that you are still to
behold again and still to embellish. In the darkness of night, in
the streets by day, still you are to have my voice and face,
whispering, making love for me, encroaching on your shy heart. Shy
as your heart is, IT is lodged there--_I_ am lodged there; let the
hours do their office--let time continue to draw me ever in more
lively, ever in more insidious colours.' And then I had a vision
of myself, and burst out laughing.

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. I was the
man, and yet I was passive, tied by the foot in prison. I could
not go to her; I must cast a spell upon her at each visit, so that
she should return to me; and this was a matter of nice management.
I had done it the last time--it seemed impossible she should not
come again after our interview; and for the next I had speedily
ripened a fresh plan. A prisoner, if he has one great disability
for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage: there is nothing
to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love
and preparing its manifestations. I had been then some days upon a
piece of carving,--no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion
Rampant. This I proceeded to finish with what skill I was
possessed of; and when at last I could do no more to it (and, you
may be sure, was already regretting I had done so much), added on
the base the following dedication. -

A LA BELLE FLORA
LE PRISONNIER RECONNAISSANT
A. D. ST. Y. D. K.

I put my heart into the carving of these letters. What was done
with so much ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should
behold with indifference; and the initials would at least suggest
to her my noble birth. I thought it better to suggest: I felt
that mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my rank
and manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that
she could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all
tend to increase her interest and engage her heart.

This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope.
And there is nothing further from my character: in love and in
war, I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting
made my purgatory. It is a fact that I loved her a great deal
better at the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a
perpetual rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of
fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my
empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the
major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the
market, or a halfpenny addition to the prison fare?

Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and
to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was
there. At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about
her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother.

I rose and bowed in silence.

'This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist,' said she. 'I have told
him of your sufferings. He is so sorry for you!'

'It is more than I have the right to ask,' I replied; 'but among
gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural. If your brother
and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but
when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his
animosity.' (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless
champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.) 'Ah, my dear young
lady,' I continued, 'there are many of your countrymen languishing
in my country, even as I do here. I can but hope there is found
some French lady to convey to each of them the priceless
consolation of her sympathy. You have given me alms; and more than
alms--hope; and while you were absent I was not forgetful. Suffer
me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to make a
return; and for the prisoner's sake deign to accept this trifle.'

So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some
embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke
out with a cry.

'Why, how did you know my name?' she exclaimed.

'When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,'
said I, bowing. 'But indeed, there was no magic in the matter. A
lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I
was quick to remark and cherish it.'

'It is very, very beautiful,' said she, 'and I shall be always
proud of the inscription.--Come, Ronald, we must be going.' She
bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could
have sworn) with a heightened colour.

I was overjoyed: my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my
gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace
till she had made it up to me. No greenhorn in matters of the
heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at
the court of my lady. The lion might be ill chiselled; it was
mine. My hands had made and held it; my knife--or, to speak more
by the mark, my rusty nail--had traced those letters; and simple as
the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was
grateful and that I found her fair. The boy had looked like a
gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he
regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a
figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy.
And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I
could not sufficiently admire it. It seemed to me finer than wit,
and more tender than a caress. It said (plain as language), 'I do
not and I cannot know you. Here is my brother--you can know him;
this is the way to me--follow it.'

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