SOME RESULTS OF LISTENING TO POETRY
(1)
Mathieu Pourcelles had now definitely become a nuisance to the
habitués of that old-established house of entertainment, the _Hôtel
du Faisan et de la Constitution_ at Abbeville. To the patron indeed
he was more than a nuisance; he was a source of frenzy. But since
Mathieu's elder brother, the notary, was the patron's creditor to
the extent of some two thousand francs, the patron had to suffer him,
and all the clients of the _Faisan_ had to suffer him too--unless
they removed their custom to another hostelry. And this, to be exact,
was what they were gradually doing, for there are limits even to the
patience of a decent citizen who has for years played his nightly
little game of draughts at the same tavern and does not favour
changes.
It shall briefly be revealed what was the matter with Mathieu
Pourcelles. He was a poet. Nor was he a good poet; nay, not even
an indifferent poet. But his muse was both prolific and patriotic,
giving birth to some abortion at almost every public event, and
though all good citizens of Abbeville were properly interested in
such occurrences as, say, the repeal of the Law of the Maximum,
they preferred a plain newspaper account of it to Mathieu's rhythmical
rendering. Yet if they showed undue restiveness under the poet's
outpourings it was just conceivable that, seeing the subject of his
verse, they might be suspected of 'incivisme.' And thus there
was little help for them.
On a certain evening, then, in April 1795, Mathieu entered the
_Faisan_ a little earlier than usual. In his hand was a fresh,
untumbled manuscript. Several citizens incontinently rose, paid
their scores, and went out. The patron cast an agonised look at
their retreating backs, and one full of venom at Mathieu's. The
poet, a lanky personage, sat down, gave the smallest possible order
for refreshments, and, after scandalously few preliminaries and a
marked absence of any kind of encouragement, unrolled his manuscript.
"I have here, fellow-citizens, some verses which I should like to
submit to your valued judgment." Such was Mathieu's formula to-night.
"These verses deal with the present situation of the arms of our
beloved country, being, in fact, an 'Ode on the Peace recently
concluded between the glorious Republic and Prussia.'"
All present resigned themselves, except one man who ostentatiously
buried himself in a news-sheet. Mathieu, than whom was no happier
mortal at that moment between the English Channel and the Pyrenees,
began joyfully to roll forth his periods and his execrable rhymes.
And, weedy though he was of aspect, his own outpourings soon began
increasingly to inflate his not inconsiderable voice, so that
presently the room rang with his bellowings, and the table before
him jumped as he pounded it.
Among all his unwilling listeners he had none a tenth part as
interested as a small, tired-looking boy who sat, a spoon in his
hand, at a table some distance away. With him was a neat man of
forty who, in the midst of his own repast, attended to his small
companion's wants. Since the opening of Mathieu's performance the
child had more or less neglected his meal to listen with an attention
distinctly strained, his eyes anxiously fixed on the orator. Nor
did Mathieu fail, after a while, to observe the flattering behaviour
of his youngest auditor, and at last broke off and apostrophised
him, trusting, he said, that his young friend would profit by
these lessons, and remember them in years to come.
The young friend, on whom all eyes were immediately turned, shrank
back, looking terrified. But Mathieu lost no time in continuing
his reading. He was approaching a favourite passage, a purple
patch directed against "crowned tyrants," "perfidious Albion,"
and "those vipers, the émigrés," and so he unleashed fully the
voice which was so much at variance with his physique. A man yawned,
another banged approval--and the small boy, overcome by emotion or
fatigue, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. His
companion tried to quiet him, but the child drew away from him,
and the man, evidently annoyed, and muttering, "He is overtired;
excuse him, my friends!" picked him up, and carried him out of
the room.
Mathieu was not unaccustomed to exits during his performances, but
this retreat was rather flattering than otherwise, since it could
only be attributed to his power of moving the heart. He paused a
moment, smirked, and proceeded.
(2)
Half an hour later, however, he had succeeded in clearing the room
in earnest. Yet did he not himself depart, having regard to the
possible advent of other guests, but remained awhile, running his
hand through his dank hair, and casting up his eyes to the ceiling
whenever the patron, scowling, looked in at the door.
His patience was duly rewarded when, at about five minutes to eight,
the host ushered in a tall man in a cloak, evidently a traveller.
The newcomer ordered a meal, and went to sit at a table in a far
corner. Mathieu took stock of him, and finally arose and approached
him.
"You are travelling, citizen?"
La Vireville looked carefully at the speaker. He himself desired
rather to ask than to answer questions, but the poet appeared
harmless. Moreover, having traced Anne-Hilarion and his companion
as far as Abbeville, and having already drawn blank at two inns
in that town, he was glad of the chance of information. So he
said quietly, "Yes, citizen. And you?"
"Ah no; I inhabit Abbeville. You will not have heard of me,
citizen, but I am not quite unknown, even in Paris. My name is
Pourcelles--Mathieu Pourcelles. I write a little--verse. I wonder
if I might presume? . . . You have the look of a lover of letters"
(the phrase with which Mathieu was wont to approach any victim not
absolutely bucolic). "I may?" And out came the manuscript of the Ode.
La Vireville endured it, eating his omelette, and thinking fast.
He was beginning to feel a little baffled. Anne and his escort had
certainly come to Abbeville; the point was, had they already left
it? It appeared, from the cautious inquiries which he had made
along the road from Calais, that the travellers were but little
ahead of him--a fact which, in spite of the nearly incredible haste
which he had made, seemed almost too good to be true, and which,
considering their twenty-four hours' start, he found it difficult
to account for. It was risky to ask direct questions, yet he would
shortly be driven to that course. But he had not reckoned for the
vanity of an author.
"I now come," said the gifted poet, simpering, "to a passage which,
as recently as three-quarters of an hour ago, inspired tears in a
member of my little audience. It is true that he was very young,
but who shall say whether the pure heart of childhood----"
"A child, eh?" interrupted his hearer, continuing to eat, but
fixing Mathieu with a very keen gaze. "An infant prodigy, I suppose?"
"No; just a little boy with his father or uncle. But he was overcome,
and had to be taken away. His companion has indeed left his own
meal unfinished, no doubt in order to soothe the terror which my
description of tyranny had awaked in the childish breast."
"Is this susceptible infant staying in the inn?" inquired La
Vireville carelessly.
"I believe so," replied the poet, who had already lost interest
in his young hearer, and was itching to declaim the purple passage
in question, of which he again stood on the brink. La Vireville
made a gesture to intimate that he should do so, and diplomatically
neglected his meal to listen.
"Bravo!" he exclaimed at the end. "Magnificent, citizen! You have
the foes of our beloved country on the hip, indeed. Those lines
about the émigrés, now!"
Mathieu smirked. Then he glowed. "I declare to you, citizen, that
if I were to meet one of those scorpions--those vipers, as I have
termed them--I would not hesitate a moment to----"
"To denounce him, of course," said La Vireville, helping himself
to wine.
"No, citizen, to kill him with these hands!"
"Ma foi," said La Vireville gravely, "if you ply the sword, citizen,
as ably as the pen, France may well be proud of you."
Mathieu, much flattered, was beginning an answer, when the door
opened and the little boy's guardian reappeared. The poet turned
round.
"I trust your charge is recovered!" said he ingratiatingly. "A
most interesting child!"
"Thank you," replied the other rather coldly, as he returned to
his place; "my nephew was merely overtired." And he ordered coffee,
while La Vireville secretly studied him. He looked, thought the
Chouan, a person who could neither be bullied nor flustered, a man
in whose veins ran some unusually cold liquid. How was he to get
him out of the way? Besides, was it certain that the little boy
with him was Anne-Hilarion? That he _must_ know.
Absorbed in these speculations he paid scant attention to the
conclusion of the Ode, which its author had the obligingness to
read again for his benefit and for that of the returned guest,
who drank his coffee very slowly, but appeared to be interested
in neither of his companions. And before very long the Citizen
Pourcelles, seeing no fresh worlds to conquer, drifted out, followed,
after a moment's hesitation, by La Vireville, who buttonholed him
at the door of the hostelry, to say that he could not let him go
without thanking him for the pleasure which he had afforded him.
A very little of this balm, dexterously applied, sufficed to get
out of the poet a description of the little boy upstairs sufficiently
detailed to satisfy La Vireville that he was indeed Anne-Hilarion.
And then, Mathieu having at last taken his departure, La Vireville
was left at the door of the inn, revolving plans. It was tempting
to go upstairs now, while the man was below, and (if he could find
the right room) slip out of the place with the child. But he would
be tracked at once. No plan was sound which did not provide, somehow,
for the disposal of Anne's captor. La Vireville was not in the least
inclined to boggle at the idea of putting a knife into that gentleman
if an opportunity occurred; the difficulty was less to provide that
opportunity than to get rid of the ensuing corpse. To go in and
quarrel with the man would only lead to tumult and imprisonment.
Yet if he delayed and followed the two to-morrow, waiting for
fortune to smile upon him, they would all three, with every hour,
be nearing Paris and leaving the coast farther behind them, and
adding thereby to the length and risk of the return journey.
At any rate he would, he decided, stay at the inn for the night,
that is, unless Anne and his 'uncle' were proceeding.
"I want a quiet room," he said to the patron. "You can give me
one at the back if you choose." And, the apartment in question
being shown to him, he further expressed a hope that there was no
one near who would come late to bed and disturb him.
"There is no other guest in the _Hôtel du Faisan_," replied the
landlord, "but the citizen downstairs and his little nephew, and
they sleep in Number Nine, which is at the other end of the corridor,
as you see. And probably the citizen will retire to bed early,
because of the child."
"Tiresome," commented the émigré, "to share a room with a child,
and to have to regulate your hours of repose accordingly."
"That," said the landlord, with a slightly offended air, "is not
really necessary in this case. Number Nine has an inner room opening
out of it."
(3)
The fruits of the reflections to which, after this colloquy, the
Chevalier de la Vireville abandoned himself in his bedroom were
manifested between one and two in the morning, when he stood outside
the door which the patron had pointed out at the end of the passage.
He had groped his way thither in the darkness, not venturing to
bring a candle. At this door he now knocked with extreme gentleness,
then again a little louder, and, still receiving no answer, he
tried the handle. To his surprise it turned, and the door opened.
"Odd!" thought the intruder. "Mme. de Chaulnes' emissary is of a
singularly trustful nature." And he slipped in with great caution.
The room was absolutely dark, but not silent. A heavy snoring
proceeded from the bed, and was, indeed, the only evidence of its
whereabouts. "I had not somehow thought him a snorer," reflected
La Vireville. "At any rate one knows that he sleeps. Now I wonder
whereabouts is that inner room?" Very softly he breathed Anne's
name in the close darkness. Nothing but snores answered him.
It was obvious that by feeling round the walls he would arrive in
time at the door, shut or open, of the other room, for whose presence
the landlord had vouched. La Vireville began this circumnavigation
(so he discovered) in the neighbourhood of the washstand; proceeded
a little--going very slowly and quietly, and feeling carefully with
his hands--passed a hanging press, the fireplace, and began to be
conscious that he was approaching the bed. He stopped, not wishing
to collide with it, and at that moment found his hands resting on
something thrown over the back of a chair. And that something
was--yes, there could be no doubt--a pair of corsets.
"Ciel!" exclaimed the petrified émigré below his breath. Wild ideas
scurried instantly through his brain, as that Anne's companion was
really of the corset-wearing sex, or that he had a woman with him,
or---- Then a simpler explanation visited him; he had, in the
darkness without, mistaken the room, and his present business was
to get out of this apartment, whoever were its tenant, as quickly
and as quietly as possible. If the snoring fair one should wake!
. . . It was a very long minute before he found himself outside
the door again.
* * * * *
He set forth the second time with a candle, and found that he had,
indeed, mistaken the number. Number Nine was two doors farther on.
He could only hope that the snorer would continue the sound sleep
in which he had left her, since what he contemplated doing in
Number Nine might cause some noise.
He knocked gently at the door of that apartment.
There was instantly a movement within, followed by a sound as of
someone getting out of or off the bed. He knocked again, and then
the door was unlocked, and opened a foot or two by the man whom
La Vireville sought. He was half-dressed, and had a pistol in his
hand. There was a lamp burning in the room.
"May I come in, citizen?" asked La Vireville mildly, facing the
barrel with all the appearance of innocent intent. "I wish to speak
with you on important business."
The occupant of Number Nine looked at him straight and searchingly
with his strange light eyes. Then, still keeping his visitor covered,
he moved aside for him to enter, and closed the door behind him,
locking it.
La Vireville's immediate dread, on entering, was of finding
Anne-Hilarion there, or at least awake in the inner room,--whose
door he saw ajar in front of him,--to recognise him, as he surely
would, with a cry, and spoil everything. "Shall I close this door?"
he suggested, and, turning his back on the pistol, he shut the door
which faced him. "We do not want to wake the boy, and it is about
him that I have come to speak to you."
"You choose a very strange time for the errand, citizen," observed
M. Duchâtel, but he lowered the pistol.
"Yet you were expecting me, were you not?" queried La Vireville,
glancing at the bed and the book lying open on it. "_She_ told you,
of course, that she might send me? On the whole it seemed best,
though to be sure he--you know whom I mean--will suffer by it."
Anne's gaoler was, he trusted, gravelled by this pronouncement,
which was devoid of meaning even to himself; but it was impossible
to tell. The man with the goat's eyes merely said curtly:
"I saw you downstairs with that fool of a versifier. Why did you
not speak to me then?"
"Juste ciel!" exclaimed the émigré, putting down his candle. "What
imprudence! You know her recommendation!"
"I don't know your business--or your credentials!" snapped the other.
"I will show you both," quoth La Vireville sweetly; and, opening
his coat, he pulled out the thin leather case in which he had put
the passports. From this he carefully drew forth Anne-Hilarion's,
and spread enough of it before his adversary's vision to show him
the boy's name.
"Why, what have you there?" exclaimed M. Duchâtel, shaken out of
his self-possession. And he added something under his breath about
a trick and an old vixen, while, eager for a fuller sight or complete
possession of the document, he hastily laid down the pistol on
the mantelpiece.
It was the moment for which the Chouan had been waiting. He gave
the passport bodily into those incautious hands, and a second
later smote their owner with exceeding force on the point of the
jaw. M. Duchâtel staggered back, his arms going wide, and the
passport flew half across the room as La Vireville followed up
with a smashing blow over the heart. The tall mahogany bedpost,
which the kidnapper's head next violently encountered, finished
La Vireville's work for him with much completeness, but before the
inanimate body could slide to the floor La Vireville had grabbed at
it and pulled it on to the bed.
"If I have killed him!" he thought, as he bent over his victim, for
it looked rather like it. "No; that kind does not die of a good
honest blow." With luck, however, he might be unconscious for hours,
but it was as well to be on the safe side; so, since it repelled
him to cut the throat of a senseless man, he tied his feet with
the bell-pull, which he hacked down for the purpose, his hands
with the curtain cords. Then he stuffed a towel into his mouth,
tied it in position with another, and flung the quilt entirely
over him.
He had already possessed himself of M. Duchâtel's papers, reserving
their perusal, however, for a more favourable opportunity, and
now, picking up Anne-Hilarion's passport, he tiptoed to the door
of the inner room, and listened for a moment. Singularly little
noise, on the whole, had attended his assault on Anne's guardian,
and there was complete silence the other side of the door, yet
La Vireville's heart was nearer his mouth than it had yet been,
for a child's shrill scream either of joy or terror--and Anne must
be thoroughly unnerved by this time--might bring the house about
them. However, the possibility had to be faced, so he opened the
door a little and called the boy's name softly. There was no answer,
and as the room was in darkness the rescuer had perforce to take
the lamp from the larger apartment, and to enter, shading it with
one hand.
The Comte de Flavigny was fast asleep in the wide bed, which looked
large in the little room, and in which he himself appeared very
small, lonely, and pathetic, with one hand under a flushed cheek
and the other clutching fast the edge of the patchwork quilt.
"The poor baby!" thought La Vireville, but had no time to spend
upon sentiment. The main thing, for both their sakes, was to wake
him without startling him.
"If I were really the nurse whose duties I now seem to be taking
upon myself," thought the Chouan, "I should know better what to do."
He put down the lamp and stooped over the child, shaking the small
shoulder very gently, and calling him by name, a hand ready to
clap over his mouth if he should scream. At the third or fourth
repetition of his name Anne-Hilarion stirred.
"It is not time, Elspeth," he murmured rather crossly, and buried
his face in the pillow. "It is not time to get up, I tell you!"
"But it is," asserted La Vireville; "high time. Anne, my little
one. . . ." He put his arms under him and lifted him up a trifle.
Anne gave a great sigh and opened his eyes. "Is it thou, Papa?
I dreamed--I had such a horrible dream. . . ." Then he returned
more fully to waking life. "Who is it?" he said shrilly, beginning
to struggle in the strong arms like a captured bird.
"It is I, my child--your friend the Chevalier," said La Vireville,
kissing him. "Don't make a noise, little cabbage! See, I am going
to take you back to England. But you must be quiet, above all things!"
Anne-Hilarion looked up into his face, the fear in his eyes changed
to an almost incredulous joy. "Oh, M. le Chevalier!" he exclaimed.
Then he threw his arms round his friend's neck and held him very
tight. "Oh, how glad I am! how good of you to come!" he whispered
fervently. "But the--that other man in there?"
"He will not trouble us--not, at least, if we are quick. Get into
your clothes, Anne, faster than you have ever done in your life.
_Can_ you get into them?" asked the Chouan a little doubtfully,
setting the half-clothed figure down upon the bed, and looking
round in the lamplight for more garments.
"Already it is many weeks since I can dress myself," announced
the Comte de Flavigny proudly. "But this is my shirt that I have
on. I have no nightshirt. He said it did not matter, but I have
never before gone to bed in----"
"Never mind," said La Vireville, pitching a few garments on to the
bed. They seemed to him ridiculously minute. "How does this go on?"
"That is the wrong way round!" observed Anne, so hilariously that
the émigré glanced at the open door and put his finger to his
lip. Evidently Anne's faith in him was so great that his mere
presence was to him the equivalent of safety.
"Now wait here a moment in the dark," said La Vireville when,
between them, a rapid toilet had been effected. "It is only for
an instant." He returned with the lamp to the outer room, satisfied
himself that Mme. de Chaulnes's emissary was still soundly unconscious
under the counterpane, and, unlocking the door, stole out into the
passage and listened. There was neither sound nor light anywhere.
He went back to Anne-Hilarion.
And, five minutes later, by the simple expedient of letting themselves
out of its back door, the Chevalier de la Vireville and his small
charge found themselves free of the _Hôtel du Faisan et de la
Constitution_, and standing, under the April stars, between high
walls in an unsavoury back lane of Abbeville. It was not, indeed,
a propitious hour for the walks abroad of a reputable citizen,
still less for those of a boy of tender years, but there was now
excellent reason why the open air should appeal strongly to them
both. Wherefore La Vireville prayed that fate and the darkness
should so favour him, that by six or seven o'clock he should find
himself at the little port of St. Valéry-sur-Somme, thirteen miles
or so down the river, and that there a still further indulgence of
the gods would enable him to hire a boat to return across the
Channel. For to go back to Boulogne or Calais would be madness, and
the chief recommendation of St. Valéry, besides the fact of its
being a harbour, was that it lay off all the main roads between
those greater ports and Paris. Even then it would be hard enough
to get a boat without exciting suspicion. But the Fates had been
hitherto so kind that he must go on trusting them.
"I shall have to carry you most of the way, child, so I had best
begin now," he whispered, and picked up his half-sleepy, half-excited
charge.