“Do you now?” I said quietly. “Such an escape could hardly come within
your calculations, I think.”
“What do you mean?” he began loudly, and as instantly collapsed again.
“You had no right to be there at all,” he said.
“Nor should I,” I replied, “but to show you that virtue may have a
familiar as well as vice, and one, too, capable of answering to a
wicked challenge.”
I got to my feet as I spoke. He stared at me utterly disconcerted,
and, as I withdrew, followed me like a scourged dog.
From that time he sought rather to preserve than to destroy me, and I
found myself, as one of the elect, locked into my room at night. He
had realised, I suppose, that wickedness could over-reach itself in
the chance entertainment of spirits potent beyond the worst it could
of itself evoke; and, though he still clung to me as a sort of hostage
for his own miserable salvation, made many abject efforts towards my
conciliation, amongst which I had great reason to reckon a relaxation
in the watchfulness which had hitherto dogged my every movement.
XIV.
I AM RESCUED BY MY MONSTER
Have you not noticed, my little friend, how the wicked are always
the superstitious? It is because life is to them full of dark corners,
in which the unsuspected hides. The atheist will still be for baiting
a deity whose existence he denies; he will wring a response from a
vacuum, which failing, he fears to canvass emptiness for the reason.
Dr. Peel knew well the impotence of virtue to conquer. He saw it of
such poor force in the world as to figure of no moment at all in a
contest with vice. He did not fear God, but he feared that the devil
was God, and vindictive where the harming of his protégées--of whom
he had no thought but that I must be one--was concerned. He had been
eye-witness of the, to him unaccountable, foiling of his project; and
it struck him as if he had fallen upon an ambush in one of those dark
corners. He shrunk back terrified, and thenceforth exchanged his
noisome attentions to me for an attitude of propitiation which was as
unwelcome, and even more stultifying, in seeming, to my hopes,
inasmuch as it included an increased jealous concern for my
safeguarding. But there, in the end, his service of his dark master
was made to recoil upon his own head, through his very scepticism of
the more divinely cunning power which works for good. He would lock
me, as I said, into my room at night, thereby securing me not only
from prowling evils, but an asylum in which I might ponder undisturbed
what plans I could of escape. And it was that security from
interruption which enabled me presently to realise on an opportunity
of which I was quite unexpectedly made the mistress.
It fell early very cold and wintry that November, but the chill in my
heart was colder than any hailstones. Presently such an apathy of
despair found me that I would hardly leave my room all day, but would
sit in a sullen misery gazing, gazing from my unbarred open window
upon the fraction of stiffening world it commanded. It was at a front
angle of the house, pretty high above the ground; and under it the
stony drive went round an elbow of lofty trees to the fatal unseen
gates of the entrance beyond.
One morning, after breakfast, I was seated there, when a chaise rolled
up to the steps of the door below, and a moment later Dr. Peel entered
and was driven rapidly away, on some fresh marauding devilry, I
conjectured. The vehicle, sped by a heart-whole curse from my lips,
had disappeared scarce a minute, when round the bend of the shrubs it
had taken came striding the oddest figure--an interloper by way of the
open portals, it seemed. Such an event had never, in my knowledge,
happened before. I stared, and roused myself, elate even over this
momentary grotesque vision from the world beyond. It was just a
stilt-walker, a monstrous pierrot, with floured absurd face and
conical cap, his legs, cased in linen trousers, rising an immense
height from the ground. As he came on, ridiculously gyrating, he blew
a pipe, and rattled at a little tabor that hung from his neck. In the
same moment he saw me where I stood, and danced up, rolling and
wallowing--for he was an incomprehensibly great creature for such a
trade--and broke into a mad, jerky little chaunt, half French, half
English, as he approached--
“_O-ha, mamselle! Je vous trouve, je vous salue! A la fin çà, çà,
çà!_
“‘Be’old the mountaineer,
He sik for edelweiss,
I have found my dear
Very high and very nice--_çà, çà, çà!_’”
He flicked off his cap--with a grin that showed, though against the
flour, a set of perfect teeth--and in three strides was at the window,
his eyes and huge white face above the level of the sill. Even in the
instant, as if the former were a cypher momentarily isolated for my
reading, I understood, and was stricken to stone.
“The graveyard!” whispered the pierrot in that instant: “be at the
wall over against it at ten o’clock to-night”--and reeled away, to a
pantomime of grins and pirouettes, as the lodge-keeper came raging
round the corner in pursuit.
“_O que nenni dà!_” cried the intruder, twisting and turning and
affecting to bend with laughter. “O, madame! O, fie! I am very
honourable z’jentlemans. Wat, I say! I make you good proposals to
marry. I display my parts, _v’là_!”
He contorted himself, with absurd coquetry. “Wat!” he protested,
pausing; “madame declines of the ravishment? She does not move herself
to fly with me? Vair well”-- He pretended of a sudden to espy his
pursuer, and pressing his cap to his breast, waltzed up to him.
“Hey, my little fellow,” he cried (the lodge-keeper was at least as
big as Daniel Lambert), “it is for you, then. You know the best wat is
good. I will not abduct madame: I will not marry at all. It is vair
much satisfaction. You see me dance, _hein_? Come on, jolly
_garçon_!--
“‘Love miscarries--heh?
When a man marries--heh?’
When a man’s single he live at his is--you spik French, but yes?”
The lodge-keeper hawked up a glair of oaths, and discharged them. He
swore by all his gods that he would cut off the intruder by the legs,
unless he went out, and double quick, the way he had come. Then ensued
a comical scene. The pierrot, affecting to retreat after a brief
altercation, swerved suddenly and seated himself on the branch of a
tree--
“O-ho!” he said, as the other came lumbering up, “it is vair well, but
I make up my mind. I refuse madame, it is true. You know to marry,
what it is? Listen, then--
“‘At the end of one year one baby:
That is jolly-fun!’”
The lodge-keeper, cursing, made a snatch at the man’s stilts; but,
incredibly strong, he whipped them up out of reach, and held them so
horizontal.
“‘At the end of two year two baby--
How it is a little serious!’”
he sang.
The lodge-keeper swore and jumped, till he was running wet for all the
cold; but he was too fat a fox for these grapes.
“‘At the end of three year three baby--
But that is the very devil,’”
bawled the pierrot ferociously, and clashed the stilts like great
castanets.
Then he settled himself firmly.
“‘One asks for bread,’” bellowed he; and suddenly flourishing his
right stilt, caught the lodge-keeper a stinging smack across the head
with it--
“‘Another for soup,’” he yelled, and gave such a counter blow with his
left, that the lodge-keeper fairly reeled and went rolling over--
“‘_L’aut’ qui demande à téter,_
_Et les seins sont tarie,_’”
shouted the pierrot, and was up and out of sight in a moment, striding
like Talus. The infuriate lodge-keeper rose, when he had recovered
himself, to pursue; but he was too late. The pierrot had got clean
away.
Not till all had been vanished many minutes did I awake from the
stunned trance into which I had been thrown by those few whispered
words. Then, still by the window, I sank upon the floor, and,
simultaneously, into a very reel and passion of ecstasy.
How had he traced me? Whence devised this strange method of procuring
speech? Ah! as to that, there were no doubt experiences in his past
life still unrelated; and, after all, did he not always in a
measure--strictly in a measure--walk on stilts? This was only to
extend his wooden legs indefinitely. But after what secret practices,
and suspicions averted? For I held him still the creature of his
despicable master. My Gogo--for it was he! My Gogo, the great
resourceful, affectionate, crippled giant! It was inexpressibly
touching to me to know myself, the poor persecuted, wistful dupe of
Fate, still the cynosure of this burning soul--not forgotten, schemed
for, held the sacred object of its desire. All the time I had thought
myself abandoned, he had been weaving a ladder for my despair. Good
Gogo! Dear, kind, honest Caliban! He would save me yet--he would save
me; and the tears flowed from my eyes. How was he such an actor? It
was true I had known hitherto only one side of him--the saturnine--the
shadow of the great fallen rock. Ah, he could show a lighter for my
sake--little roguish sparklets twinkling in the sun of his hot
yearning. I loved him at that moment, and my tears fell for him and
myself.
But, stay! What had he whispered? I must remember. At ten o’clock--the
wall over against the graveyard? Why had he so chosen--so nicely
specified? Did he know nothing of the patrol? Yes, likely; but it was
a desperate expedient, calculated upon a possible superstition, upon a
presumptive avoidance of so haunted a spot. I pressed my hands to my
wet forehead and tangled hair. He had dared and done all he could: the
rest was for me, whom he knew and could trust. I would not be
unworthy. I would answer to him wit for wit.
Half an hour later, serene and wicked as he could have wished, I took
my way, singing, into the grounds, and, unaccosted, sought that remote
quarter where the graveyard was situated. Still softly singing, I
pushed between the trees, and came out into the waste interval against
the boundary wall which was devoted to the watch. Stooping here to
pick some chance berries, I had not to wait a minute before the local
sentinel, as I had calculated, was upon me. I dropped my spray, with
an aspect of alarm that struggled into piteousness.
“O, I am so sorry!” I said.
The man--he was personable enough to make my task the less
nauseous--eyed me, insolent and masterful.
“All right,” he said. “Blow me if you ain’t done it now. Why, don’t
you know as this here’s Prisoner’s Base, and you’re out of bounds?”
I went up to him fearlessly, and taking his hands, muffled in great
hairy gloves, looked up into his face. I saw a spot of deeper colour
come into his cheeks, and he breathed fast.
“Shall I confess,” I said, low and urgent, and glancing quickly about
me, “that I wanted to be caught?”
“Ah!” he said, and showed his teeth in a twitching grin.
“Hush!” I whispered. “I am in great despair. You know perfectly well I
am sane; I shall die if I am detained here longer.”
“O! will you?” he responded.
“Listen,” I said, flushing and hanging my head. “I offer you no money,
which I have not got. But there are things--other things--sold here,
which”--
I tore my hands away, and, putting them to my face, fell back from
him.
“Hey!” he said, in a thick whisper, and pursued me. “Why do you pick
_me_ out for your favours, you little beauty?”