Transcribed 1898 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pflaf.org
St. Ives
Being
The Adventures of a French Prisoner
in England
By
Robert Louis Stevenson
* * * * *
_SECOND EDITION_
* * * * *
London
William Heinemann
1898
* * * * *
_First Edition_, _May_ 5, 1897; _Reprinted May_ 6, 1897
* * * * *
_All rights reserved_
* * * * *
_The following tale was taken down from Mr. Stevenson’s dictation by his
stepdaughter and amanuensis_, _Mrs. Strong_, _at intervals between
January_ 1893 _and October_ 1894 (_see_ Vailima Letters, _pp._ 242–246,
299, 324 _and_ 350). _About six weeks before his death he laid the story
aside to take up_ Weir of Hermiston. _The thirty chapters of_ St. Ives
_which he had written_ (_the last few of them apparently unrevised_)
_brought the tale within sight of its conclusion_, _and the intended
course of the remainder was known in outline to Mrs. Strong_. _For the
benefit of those readers who do not like a story to be left unfinished_,
_the delicate task of supplying the missing chapters has been entrusted
to Mr. Quiller-Couch_, _whose work begins at Chap. XXXI._ {0}
[_S. C._]
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_! _ça va bienne_?’ I took the freedom to
reply in the same lingo: _Bienne_, _femme_! _ça va couci-couci tout
d’même_, _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.—
À 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.’