[Dickens' introduction to this story describes his going to
Rochester on Christmas Eve and seeing there a quaint old charity,
which provided for the entertainment of "six poor travelers who not
being rogues or proctors might receive gratis for one night
lodging, entertainment and fourpence each." In honor of the day a
special meal is provided for the travelers then in the charity.
After the meal, when the travelers have gathered around the fire,
their entertainer gives them the reason for the unwonted feast as
"Christmas Eve, my friends, when the Shepherds, who were poor
travelers, too, in their way, heard the Angels sing, 'On earth,
peace: Good will toward men.'" Then each traveler was invited to
relate a story, and among those told was the following.]
In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, a relative of
mine came limping down, on foot, to the town of Chatham. He was a poor
traveler, with not a farthing in his pocket.
My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regiment, if a
cavalry regiment would have him; if not, to take King George's shilling
from any corporal or sergeant who would put a bunch of ribbons in his
hat. His object was to get shot; but he thought he might as well ride to
death as be at the trouble of walking.
My relative's Christian name was Richard, but he was better known as
Dick. He dropped his own surname on the road down, and took up that of
Doubledick. He was passed as Richard Doubledick; age, twenty-two;
height, five foot ten; native place, Exmouth, which he had never been
near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham when he limped over
the bridge with half a shoe to his dusty feet, so he enlisted into a
regiment of the line, and was glad to get drunk and forget all about it.
You are to know that this relative of mine had gone wrong, and run wild.
His heart was in the right place, but it was sealed up. He had been
betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had loved better than
she--or perhaps even he--believed; but in an evil hour he had given her
cause to say to him solemnly, "Richard, I will never marry any other
man. I will live single for your sake, but Mary Marshall's lips"--her
name was Mary Marshall--"never address another word to you on earth. Go,
Richard! Heaven forgive you!" This finished him. This brought him down
to Chatham. This made him Private Richard Doubledick, with a
determination to be shot.
There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in Chatham
barracks, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, than
Private Richard Doubledick. He associated with the dregs of every
regiment; he was as seldom sober as he could be, and was constantly
under punishment. It became clear to the whole barracks that Private
Richard Doubledick would very soon be flogged.
Now the Captain of Richard Doubledick's company was a young gentleman
not above five years his senior, whose eyes had an expression in them
which affected Private Richard Doubledick in a very remarkable way. They
were bright, handsome, dark eyes,--what are called laughing eyes
generally, and, when serious, rather steady than severe,--but they were
the only eyes now left in his narrowed world that Private Richard
Doubledick could not stand. Unabashed by evil report and punishment,
defiant of everything else and everybody else, he had but to know that
those eyes looked at him for a moment, and he felt ashamed. He could
not so much as salute Captain Taunton in the street like any other
officer. He was reproached and confused,--troubled by the mere
possibility of the Captain's looking at him. In his worst moments, he
would rather turn back, and go any distance out of his way, than
encounter those two handsome, dark, bright eyes.
One day, when Private Richard Doubledick came out of the Black hole,
where he had been passing the last eight and forty hours, and in which
retreat he spent a good deal of his time, he was ordered to betake
himself to Captain Taunton's quarters. In the stale and squalid state of
a man just out of the Black hole, he had less fancy than ever for being
seen by the Captain; but he was not so mad yet as to disobey orders, and
consequently went up to the terrace overlooking the parade-ground, where
the officers' quarters were; twisting and breaking in his hands, as he
went along, a bit of the straw that had formed the decorative furniture
of the Black hole.
"Come in!" cried the Captain, when he knocked with his knuckles at the
door. Private Richard Doubledick pulled off his cap, took a stride
forward, and felt very conscious that he stood in the light of the dark,
bright eyes.
There was a slight pause. Private Richard Doubledick had put the straw
in his mouth, and was gradually doubling it up into his windpipe and
choking himself.
"Doubledick," said the Captain, "do you know where you are going to?"
"To the devil, sir," faltered Doubledick.
"Yes," returned the Captain. "And very fast."
Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the Black hole in his
mouth, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence.
"Doubledick," said the Captain, "since I entered his Majesty's service,
a boy of seventeen, I have been pained to see many men of promise going
that road; but I have never been so pained to see a man determined to
make the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you joined the
regiment, to see you."
Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over the floor
at which he looked; also to find the legs of the Captain's
breakfast-table turning crooked, as if he saw them through water.
"I am only a common soldier, sir," said he. "It signifies very little
what such a poor brute comes to."
"You are a man," returned the Captain, with grave indignation, "of
education and superior advantages; and if you say that, meaning what you
say, you have sunk lower than I had believed. How low that must be, I
leave you to consider, knowing what I know of your disgrace, and seeing
what I see."
"I hope to get shot soon, sir," said Private Richard Doubledick; "and
then the regiment and the world together will be rid of me."
The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. Doubledick, looking up
to steady his vision, met the eyes that had so strong an influence over
him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and the breast of his
disgrace-jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder.
"I would rather," said the young Captain, "see this in you, Doubledick,
than I would see five thousand guineas counted out upon this table for a
gift to my good mother. Have you a mother?"
"I am thankful to say she is dead, sir."
"If your praises," returned the Captain, "were sounded from mouth to
mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army, through the
whole country, you would wish she had lived to say, with pride and joy,
'He is my son!'"
"Spare me, sir," said Doubledick. "She would never have heard any good
of me. She would never have had any pride and joy in owning herself my
mother. Love and compassion she might have had, and would have always
had, I know; but not--Spare me, sir! I am a broken wretch, quite at your
mercy!" And he turned his face to the wall, and stretched out his
imploring hand.
"My friend--" began the Captain.
"God bless you, sir!" sobbed Private Richard Doubledick.
I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick's own lips, that he dropped
down upon his knee, kissed that officer's hand, arose, and went out of
the light of the dark, bright eyes, an altered man.
In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the French
were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, where not? Napoleon Bonaparte had
likewise begun to stir against England in India, and most men could read
the signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In the very next
year, when we formed an alliance with Austria against him. Captain
Taunton's regiment was on service in India. And there was not a finer
non-commissioned officer in it,--no, nor in the whole line,--than
Corporal Richard Doubledick.
* * * * *
In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on the coast of Egypt.
Next year was the year of the proclamation of the short peace, and they
were recalled. It had then become well known to thousands of men, that
wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, led, there, close
to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, true as the sun, and brave as
Mars, would be certain to be found, while life beat in their hearts,
that famous soldier, _Sergeant_ Richard Doubledick.
Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year of Trafalgar,
was a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such wonders done by
a Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed through a solid mass of
men, recovered the colors of his regiment, which had been seized from
the hand of a poor boy shot through the heart, and rescued his wounded
Captain, who was down, and in a very jungle of horses' hoofs and
sabres,--saw such wonders done, I say, by this brave Sergeant-Major,
that he was specially made the bearer of the colors he had won; and
_Ensign_ Richard Doubledick had risen from the ranks.
Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest of
men,--for the fame of following the old colors, shot through and
through, which Ensign Richard Doubledick had saved, inspired all
breasts,--this regiment fought its way through the Peninsular war, up to
the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve. Again and
again it had been cheered through the British ranks until the tears had
sprung into men's eyes at the mere hearing of the mighty British voice,
so exultant in their valor; and there was not a drummer boy but knew the
legend, that wherever the two friends, Major Taunton, with the dark,
bright eyes, and Ensign Richard Doubledick, who was devoted to him, were
seen to go, there the boldest spirits in the English army became wild to
follow.
One day, at Badajos,--not in the great storming, but in repelling a hot
sally of the besieged upon our men at work in the trenches, who had
given way,--the two officers found themselves hurrying forward, face to
face, against a party of French infantry, who made a stand. There was an
officer at their head, encouraging his men,--a courageous, handsome,
gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whom Doubledick saw hurriedly,
almost momentarily, but saw well. He particularly noticed this officer
waving his sword, and rallying his men with an eager and excited cry,
when they fired in obedience to his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped.
It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to the spot
where he had laid the best friend man ever had, on a coat spread upon
the wet clay. Major Taunton's uniform was opened at the breast, and on
his shirt were three little spots of blood.
"Dear Doubledick," said he, "I am dying."
"For the love of Heaven, no!" exclaimed the other, kneeling down beside
him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head. "Taunton! My
preserver, my guardian angel, my witness! Dearest, truest, kindest of
human beings! Taunton! For God's sake!"
The bright, dark eyes--so very, very dark, now, in the pale face--smiled
upon him; and the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago laid itself
fondly on his breast.
"Write to my mother. You will see home again. Tell her how we became
friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me."
He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment toward his hair as it
fluttered in the wind. The Ensign understood him. He smiled again when
he saw that, and, gently turning his face over on the supporting arm as
if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast in which he had revived
a soul.
No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that melancholy day. He
buried his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved man. Beyond
his duty he appeared to have but two remaining cares in life,--one, to
preserve the little packet of hair he was to give to Taunton's mother;
the other, to encounter that French officer who had rallied the men
under whose fire Taunton fell. A new legend now began to circulate
among our troops; and it was, that when he and the French officer came
face to face once more, there would be weeping in France.
The war went on--and through it went the exact picture of the French
officer on the one side, and the bodily reality upon the other--until
the battle of Toulouse was fought. In the returns sent home appeared
these words: "Severely wounded, but not dangerously, _Lieutenant_
Richard Doubledick."
At midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and fourteen, Lieutenant
Richard Doubledick, now a browned soldier, seven-and-thirty years of
age, came home to England invalided. He brought the hair with him, near
his heart. Many a French officer had he seen since that day; many a
dreadful night, in searching with men and lanterns for his wounded, had
he relieved French officers lying disabled; but the mental picture and
the reality had never come together.
Though he was weak and suffered pain, he lost not an hour in getting
down to Frome in Somersetshire, where Taunton's mother lived. In the
sweet, compassionate words that naturally present themselves to the mind
to-night, "he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow."
It was a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet garden-window,
reading the Bible; reading to herself, in a trembling voice, that very
passage in it, as I have heard him tell. He heard the words: "Young man,
I say unto thee, arise!"
He had to pass the window; and the bright, dark eyes of his debased time
seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was; she came to the
door quickly, and fell upon his neck.
"He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, won me from infamy and
shame. O God, forever bless him! As He will, He will!"
"He will!" the lady answered. "I know he is in heaven!" Then she
piteously cried, "But O my darling boy, my darling boy!"
Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick enlisted at Chatham
had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant-Major, Ensign, or
Lieutenant breathed his right name, or the name of Mary Marshall, or a
word of the story of his life, into any ear except his reclaimer's. That
previous scene in his existence was closed. He had firmly resolved that
his expiation should be to live unknown; to disturb no more the peace
that had long grown over his old offences; to let it be revealed, when
he was dead, that he had striven and suffered, and had never forgotten;
and then, if they could forgive him and believe him--well, it would be
time enough--time enough!
But that night, remembering the words he had cherished for two years,
"Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts
me," he related everything. It gradually seemed to him as if in his
maturity he had recovered a mother; it gradually seemed to her as if in
her bereavement she had found a son. During his stay in England, the
quiet garden into which he had slowly and painfully crept, a stranger,
became the boundary of his home; when he was able to rejoin his regiment
in the spring, he left the garden, thinking was this indeed the first
time he had ever turned his face toward the old colors with a woman's
blessing!
He followed them--so ragged, so scarred and pierced now, that they would
scarcely hold together--to Quatre Bras and Ligny. He stood beside them,
in an awful stillness of many men, shadowy through the mist and drizzle
of a wet June forenoon, on the field of Waterloo. And down to that hour
the picture in his mind of the French officer had never been compared
with the reality.
The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, and received its
first check in many an eventful year, when he was seen to fall. But it
swept on to avenge him, and left behind it no such creature in the world
of consciousness as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.
Through pits of mire and pools of rain; along deep ditches, once roads,
that were pounded and ploughed to pieces by artillery, heavy wagons,
tramp of men and horses, and the struggle of every wheeled thing that
could carry wounded soldiers; jolted among the dying and the dead, so
disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardly recognizable for humanity;
dead, as to any sentient life that was in it, and yet alive,--the form
that had been Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, with whose praises England
rang, was conveyed to Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in
hospital; and there it lay, week after week, through the long, bright
summer days, until the harvest, spared by war, had ripened and was
gathered in.
Slowly laboring, at last, through a long, heavy dream of confused time
and place, presenting faint glimpses of army surgeons whom he knew, and
of faces that had been familiar to his youth,--dearest and kindest among
them, Mary Marshall's, with a solicitude upon it more like reality than
anything he could discern,--Lieutenant Richard Doubledick came back to
life. To the beautiful life of a calm autumn evening sunset, to the
peaceful life of a fresh, quiet room with a large window standing open;
a balcony beyond, in which were moving leaves and sweet-smelling
flowers; beyond, again, the clear sky, with the sun full in his sight,
pouring its golden radiance on his bed.
It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had passed into
another world. And he said in a faint voice, "Taunton, are you near me?"
A face bent over him. Not his, his mother's.
"I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. You were moved here
long ago. Do you remember nothing?"
"Nothing."
The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing him.
"Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let me call you mother. What
has happened, mother?"
"A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the
bravest in the field."
His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran down
his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand.
From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately
wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some
little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to
converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton
always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his
preserver's dying words, and thought, "It comforts her."
One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to
him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she always
drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the
bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a woman's voice
spoke, which was not hers.
"Can you bear to see a stranger?" it said softly. "Will you like to see
a stranger?"
"Stranger!" he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before the days
of Private Richard Doubledick.
"A stranger now, but not a stranger once," it said in tones that
thrilled him. "Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years, my
name--"
He cried out her name "Mary," and she held him in her arms, and his
head lay on her bosom.
* * * * *
Well! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were happy
through it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the birds were
singing in the leafless thickets of the early spring, when those three
were first able to ride out together, and when people flocked about the
open carriage to cheer and congratulate _Captain_ Richard Doubledick.
But even then it became necessary for the Captain, instead of returning
to England, to complete his recovery in the climate of Southern France.
They found a spot upon the Rhone, within a ride of the old town of
Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, which was all they could
desire; they lived there, together, six months; then returned to
England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after three years--though not so old
as that her bright, dark eyes were dimmed--and remembering that her
strength had been benefited by the change, resolved to go back for a
year to those parts. So she went with a faithful servant, who had often
carried her son in his arms; and she was to be rejoined and escorted
home, at the year's end, by Captain Richard Doubledick.
She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them now), and they
to her. She went to the neighborhood of Aix; and there, in their own
chateau near the farmer's house she rented, she grew into intimacy with
a family belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began in her
often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, a girl with a most
compassionate heart, who was never tired of listening to the solitary
English lady's stories of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family
were as gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them so well
that she accepted their invitation to pass the last month of her
residence abroad under their roof. All this intelligence she wrote home,
piecemeal as it came about, from time to time; and at last enclosed a
polite note, from the head of the chateau, soliciting, on the occasion
of his approaching mission to that neighborhood, the honor of the
company of that man so justly celebrated, Captain Richard Doubledick.
Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the full vigor of life,
broader across the chest and shoulders than he had ever been before,
dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person. Traveling
through all that extent of country after three years of peace, he
blessed the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn was
golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound in sheaves for food,
not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from
peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with the fair
fruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had so often
seen the terrible reverse, these things were beautiful indeed; and they
brought him in a softened spirit to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep
blue evening.
It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round
towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more windows than
Aladdin's palace. The entrance doors stood open, as doors often do in
that country when the heat of the day is past; and the Captain saw no
bell or knocker, and walked in.
He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomy after
the glare of a Southern day's travel. Extending along the four sides of
this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms; and it was lighted
from the top. Still no bell was to be seen.
"Faith," said the Captain, halting, ashamed of the clanking of his
boots, "this is a ghostly beginning!"
He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the gallery, looking
down at him, stood the French officer--the officer whose picture he had
carried in his mind so long and so far. Compared with the original, at
last--in every lineament how like it was!
He moved and disappeared, and Captain Richard Doubledick heard his steps
coming quickly down into the hall. He entered through an archway. There
was a bright, sudden look upon his face, much such a look as it had worn
in that fatal moment.
Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick? Enchanted to receive him!
"He has not remembered me, as I have remembered him; he did not take
such a note of my face, that day, as I took of his," thought Captain
Richard Doubledick. "How shall I tell him?"
"You were at Waterloo," said the French officer.
"I was," said Captain Richard Doubledick. "And at Badajos."
Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat
down to consider. What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At that
time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between English
and French officers arising out of the recent war; and these duels, and
how to avoid this officer's hospitality, were the uppermost thought in
Captain Richard Doubledick's mind.
"His mother, above all," the Captain thought. "How shall I tell _her_?"
"Spirit of my departed friend," said he, "is it through thee these
better thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it thou who hast shown me, all
the way I have drawn to meet this man, the blessings of the altered
time? Is it thou who hast sent thy stricken mother to me, to stay my
angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that this man did his
duty as thou didst,--and as I did, through thy guidance, which has
wholly saved me here on earth,--and that he did no more?"
He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, when he rose up,
made the second strong resolution in his life,--that neither to the
French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to any
soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathe what only he
knew. And when he touched that French officer's glass with his own, that
day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of the Divine
Forgiver of Injuries.