IN THE RUE DES BEGUINES.
'Everyone has a romance in their life,' Dalton had said to Goring one
day referring, no doubt, to the romance that formed a part of his
own; 'to some it comes early, to others late.'
Goring thought of that remark when he found that his abrupt visitor
was an officer of gendarmes come to arrest and carry him before a
magistrate. For what?
Was this a bit of his romance, or a disgusting reality? We fear he
found it the latter eventually.
'For what am I wanted?' he asked, haughtily.
'You will learn that soon enough, monsieur.'
'And to where must I accompany you?'
'To the police station--first.'
'First--and where afterwards?'
'That is as may be--but I have not come here to answer your
questions--especially if asked in such a tone.'
'I am an officer in Her Britannic Majesty's service.'
'Officers in Her Britannic Majesty's service do not usually come to
Belgium with such papers as have been found among your baggage.'
'The fellow is mad!' exclaimed Goring, on which the gendarme uttered
a growl and struck the brass hilt of his sword significantly with his
left hand.
'If monsieur is a British officer perhaps he has his cards about
him?' he said, after a little pause.
'Of course I have,' replied Goring, and proceeded in haste to
investigate, but in vain, the pockets of his coat.
'The case is gone; I have dropped it somehow,' he exclaimed, in
perplexity and confusion.
'Bah!' exclaimed the gendarme; 'I thought so--come along; we are but
wasting time.'
A voiture was summoned. A gendarme mounted on the box beside the
driver, other two stepped inside with Goring, who, thus escorted, was
driven in silence through several streets, just as the lamps were
being lighted, to a police station in a narrow alley, near the
Rempart Saint Catharine, where he was conducted into a species of
office, over the mantelpiece of which were the ancient arms of the
city of Antwerp, like those of Edinburgh, a castle triple-towered
with three banners, each bearing a human hand, and there he found
himself before a Juge de Paix or Préfet he knew not which; but a
portly individual armed with considerable authority, and determined
apparently to use it.
'For what purpose or reason am I brought here, monsieur?' asked
Goring, haughtily and angrily.
The man in authority--the Préfet, we shall call him--drew from his
pocket a bronze medal attached to a ribbon, and shook it in his face,
saying brusquely,
'I will teach you to know the Belgian colours when you see them.
Gardez-vous!' he added.
Goring was too much of a soldier and gentleman to insult or resist
any constituted authority, and, believing the whole affair to be, if
not a joke, some explainable mistake, waited the next move with
patience.
A whispered conversation went on in French between his captors and
the Préfet, who made several entries in a large book, looking through
his large, round spectacles at their prisoner from time to time, and
then most severely at a little roll of printed papers, which the
officer of gendarmes laid before him.
'What is all this about--what is the meaning of this absurdity, this
outrage?' demanded Goring.
'No outrage at all,' replied the official, knitting his brows.
'Why has my baggage been seized!'
'You will learn in good time. _Sapristi_.'
'Why not now?'
'Well, it contained what it should not.'
'My baggage?'
'Yes.'
'It was duly inspected by the _douanier_ at the quay and passed.'
'Yes; your portmanteau, as he is here ready to affirm,' replied the
Préfet; 'but not your roll of railway rugs?'
'And what the deuce was in it?'
'That which you were too cunning to have in your portmanteau.'
'Too cunning to put in my portmanteau!' said Goring, in utter
bewilderment, and almost inclined to laugh now.
'_Sapristi_!' exclaimed the other, using that exclamation which is
for ever on a Belgian tongue; 'don't repeat my words, insolent! You
concealed there these revolutionary papers, the existence of which
and your object in coming to Belgium were duly and fortunately
reported to the police the moment you stepped upon the Quai Van Dyck.'
'My object--reported--and by whom?'
'I do not precisely know--one of your countrymen, however; it was
reported to the gendarme on duty there, and the report proved a true
one. Here is a roll of nearly fifty circulars issued by the chiefs
of the late French Commune in three languages, one of them being
Flemish, inciting a rising against kings and all constituted
authorities, which no doubt you intended to distribute here in the
cause of liberty, equality, fraternity, and social democracy.'
Goring was so confounded by all this that he remained for a moment or
two silent, and then he laughed heartily.
'You will find this no laughing matter--Sapristi?' exclaimed the
other, dipping a pen in the ink-bottle. 'Your name, coquin?'
Goring's brow knit at this epithet; so he replied sternly, giving his
name and rank.
'Calls himself a British officer, does he?' said the magistrate to
the gendarmes, who laughed at it as a joke.
'Were you ever in Belgium before?'
'No.'
'What is your profession or occupation?'
'I have already told you.'
'Are you married?'
'Really, monsieur, your questions border on the impertinent.'
'You are an Englishman?'
'I am glad to say I am.'
'But well acquaint with Lester Squarr, I doubt not, where all the
foreign _canaille_ do congregate?'
'You are an insolent fool.'
'We shall teach you to play tricks in Belgium, however.'
'D--n Belgium!' exclaimed Goring, losing patience utterly at last.
'I wish it was a few inches under the sea, instead of being a few
inches out of it.'
'_C'est excellent, c'est excellent! Je déclare qu'il est
incorrigible. Gendarmes, remenez-le à Prison--Rue des Beguines_,'
exclaimed the Préfet, furiously.
'This is beyond a joke now, by Jove; it is as well the mess don't
know of it,' was Goring's first thought. 'I should be quizzed to
death as the agitator of Republican principles in Belgium. And this
cursed confusion and detention will prevent me from discovering
Alison.'
He was now deprived of her ring, in spite of all his protestations
and supplications that it might be left with him; his watch and purse
were also taken from him; but all were carefully put past, however,
and in a few minutes more, escorted by gendarmes with drawn swords,
and followed by a crowd of fellows in blue blouses and wooden sabots,
he was conducted past the church of St. Augustine, in the Rue des
Beguines, to the great towering prison, the walls of which overshadow
the centre of the Rue des Beguines; and there, after being formally
handed over to the care of the _concierge_ in a little chamber
scantily furnished, with a strongly grated window, he found himself
left to his own reflections.
Pride of his position as an English gentleman, and as a British
officer bearing the Royal commission, rose in revolt in his heart at
the grotesque insult put upon him through some extraordinary mistake;
and though he was conscious that the rascally valet Gaskins had
deceived him as to the address of his master, and was aware that the
latter and Sir Ranald too would now be put upon their guard and shift
their quarters, thus making approaches to Alison more difficult,
Goring never for a moment connected him with his present predicament,
the escape from which, by some legal and constitutional measure,
would have to be seen to at once. Doubtless with morning the whole
folly of the affair would be brought to light, and in the meanwhile
he could but resort to patience, while the hours were chimed and
carillons rung in the adjacent church of St. André, wherein a
portrait of Mary Queen of Scots now marks the grave of two English
ladies, her attendants, one of whom received her last embrace
previous to her execution.
He could also hear the artillery trumpets sounding tattoo in the
Caserne des Predicateurs, and the sound made him think of the
merriment and luxury prevailing at that very hour in the mess-room at
Atdershot, and of his regiment now far away on the billow in the
transport then steaming along the western coast of Africa.
Then his adopted patience deserted him, and he started to his feet,
only to anathematise the people of Antwerp generally, their
authorities in particular, and to seat himself hopelessly again on a
somewhat hard chair.
Morning came; the day passed on and the evening also, and again he
heard the shrill trumpets pealing out tattoo in the echoing square of
the artillery barracks; and many days and nights followed each other,
till he was well-nigh mad with exasperation and anxiety, but no token
came of release or further examination.
If some absurd or misleading paragraph appeared in the Belgian
papers, and from these found its way into the English journals, what
strange views of his predicament might not be taken by his friends
and the military authorities at home!
But the Belgian police, like other similar forces on the Continent,
are very reticent with reference to their own movements and affairs;
and, as yet, they prevented him from communicating with our consul at
Antwerp, our ambassador at Brussels, or by letter with his
solicitors, Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, & Scrawly, Gray's Inn Square, the
presence of one of whom in Antwerp might have proved of vast service
to him just then. So the weary days passed on, and Bevil Goring
thought with truth that he would have cause to remember long the
bitter coffee and onion soup--or _soupe-maigre_--and the _Ratatouil_,
Flemish for a ragout made of scraps of meat, during his enforced
abode in the Rue des Beguines!