MR. TOLLEMACHE AS AN ARCHANGEL
(1)
"Grandpapa," said Anne-Hilarion, "please to tell me what is
'ven-al-ity'?"
Mr. Elphinstone looked up. "Eh, what, child?"
"I read in this great book," proceeded Anne-Hilarion, "This
ven-al-ity co-in-cid-ing with the spirit of in-de-pend-ence and
en-cro-ach-ment common to all the Pol-y-gars pro-cur-ed them----"
"God bless my soul, what book have you got hold of?" demanded
the old man; but before he could pull himself out of his arm-chair
to see, there was a knock at the library door, and Elspeth stood
revealed.
"Maister Anne's bedtime," she observed severely, and stood waiting.
Almost at the same moment Baptiste appeared at her side, in his
hands a salver, and on the salver a china bowl. "M. le Comte
mangera-t-il avant de monter, ou dans sa chambre?" he inquired.
M. le Comte looked from his retainers to his grandfather. His
preference was so clearly visible in his expression that Mr.
Elphinstone, whipping off his spectacles, said:
"He will have his bread-and-milk down here to-night, Baptiste.
I will ring for you, Elspeth, when he has finished."
Mrs. Saunders retired, with a tightening of her tight lips, and
the old valet, advancing victoriously, placed the steaming bowl
on the table beside the volume of Orme's _British India_ which
had been engaging the child's attention. Anne-Hilarion, who had
screwed himself round in his chair, turned his dangling legs
once more tablewards.
For a few minutes nothing was heard in the large, book-lined room,
this July evening, but the noise of a spoon stirring the contents
of a bowl, and the old gentleman by the fireless hearth went on
with his reading. But presently the spoon grew slower in its rounds,
and Mr. Elphinstone, looking up, beheld a large silent tear on its
way to join the bread-and-milk.
"My child, what is the matter?" he exclaimed in dismay. "Is it
too hot?"
The Comte de Flavigny produced a handkerchief, not too clean.
"I think," he said falteringly, "that I want Papa to-night."
"My poor lamb!" murmured the old man. "I wish to God that I could
give him to you. See now, my bairn, if you were to bring your bowl
here and sit on Grandpapa's knee?" He held out his arms, and the
small boy slipped from his chair, went to him, and, climbing to
his lap, wept a little silently, while his bread-and-milk steamed
neglected on the table, and the deep frilled muslin collar round
his neck was crumpled, unregarded, against Mr. Elphinstone's breast.
"I wish I could go to France and see Papa!" said Anne-Hilarion
presently.
"My lamb!" repeated Mr. Elphinstone, his cheek pressed against
his grandson's head. He did not think it necessary to combat
this aspiration.
"If M. le Chevalier were here he could find him, Grandpapa. M.
le Chevalier is so clever at finding people, is he not?"
"Yes, indeed," assented the old man. "But you know, Anne, that
M. le Chevalier too is fighting for the King over there." And he
did not explain that, so far as he knew, it was hardly a question
of 'finding' the Marquis de Flavigny.
Anne-Hilarion gave a great sigh. "Perhaps M. le Chevalier will come
back with Papa," he suggested. "And I can show him my new goldfish."
"And your memoirs, my bairn, with all the pictures you have made
of him!"
"Yes," agreed the artist. "But, Grandpapa, when _will_ they come
back?"
_They!_ Mr. Elphinstone seemed to see a tall figure standing by
the door, with a face full of grief--alone. Of the two men who
shared, in different degrees, this child's heart, one might return,
but it would not be the better loved. Why had he this conviction
about René, if not to prepare him for the reality? He made a great
effort over himself, and said, "They will come back when it pleases
God to send them, my child. Now eat up your bread-and-milk."
Anne raised a doubtful face. "Perhaps," he objected, "it will not
please God for a very long time."
"If He sends Papa back in the end, we should not mind waiting
even a very long time, should we?"
"No-o-o," said the little boy, still dubiously. He got down from
his grandfather's knee, and went slowly back to the table. Yet,
as he gained his chair, by a means peculiar to himself, he murmured
again, "But I _should_ like to see Papa soon."
And, with his eyes fixed on some vision of his own, he resumed
operations on the contents of his bowl, now somewhat cooled by
time and tears.
(2)
It was not till next day that Anne-Hilarion, sitting on the
window-seat of his nursery, revolving anew the question of seeing
his father, hit upon the idea of consulting M. de Soucy. For M. de
Soucy, lame, as always, from the wound he had received at Thionville
when he fought in the army of the Princes three years ago, had not
been able to join the expedition, and he was still in his lodgings
in Golden Square eking out a living by teaching music. And it
appeared to Anne that M. de Soucy, who had seemed so disappointed
at having to remain behind, might be induced to go, privately as it
were, and to take him, Anne-Hilarion, with him--not, of course, to
fight, but merely to see Papa. They might even see M. le Chevalier
as well. . . . Having already travelled on the Continent, Anne felt
that the actual journey presented few difficulties; but it would,
he supposed, cost money, and the Vicomte de Soucy, ruined by the
Revolution, was very poor. Grandpapa said so, and indeed M. de
Soucy himself, always with a laugh. But if he, Anne-Hilarion,
proposed such an expedition, it was surely his duty to defray its
cost. Could he do this? He had, in his money-box, a crown piece
which would not go through the hole in the lid, and which Grandpapa
had introduced by means less legitimate, means which had revealed
the presence of many other coins in the receptacle. There might
be as much as a guinea there by this time. This wealth was not
exactly accessible to Anne-Hilarion, since he could not open the
repository, but if he went to interview M. de Soucy he could take
the box with him, and doubtless M. le Vicomte would unfasten it.
The preliminary step was certainly to consult M. de Soucy. But how
was he to do that? How was he to get to Golden Square without the
escort of Elspeth or of Baptiste? Elspeth in particular had, as he
knew only too well, a wary eye and a watchful disposition. He looked
at her now, as she sat not far from him mending a little tear in
his coat, with so meditative an air that Mrs. Saunders asked him
what he was thinking of--and was no wiser when he replied, truthfully
enough, "M. le Vicomte de Soucy." Yet before he returned to his
contemplation of the Duke of Cumberland's equestrian statue in the
Square, Anne-Hilarion had come to the conclusion that the only way
to evade Elspeth was to call in celestial intervention.
Little, however, did Elspeth Saunders, that staunch Calvinist,
imagine, as she impatiently surveyed the child at his 'Popish
exercises' that evening, what it was which caused their unusual
prolongation, nor what forces were being invoked against her.
Little did she realise to what heavenly interposition was due, at
least to Anne-Hilarion's thinking, the fact that next afternoon,
at half-past one precisely, she slipped on the stairs and twisted
her ankle rather severely, so that she had to be conveyed to her
room and Baptiste despatched to fetch the doctor. M. le Comte had
not in his orisons specified the hour of the miracle--nor, of
course, the form that it should take--but he was on the alert. Mr.
Elphinstone was nowhere about, so his grandson slipped into the
library, and penned, not without labour, the following note:
"DEAR GRANDPAPA,--I think to go to France with M. le Vte. de
Soucy, if God permits and there is mony suffisant in my box,
to see Papa. I will not be gone for long dere Grandpapa. I
love you alwaies."
He stood upon a chair and put this communication on the library
mantelpiece; then, clutching his money-box, he struggled successfully
with the front door, and set out towards the hackney coaches
standing for hire on the other side of the Square.
(3)
Anne-Hilarion met no dragons on his adventurous way--which, after
all, was very short. The hackney-coachman--who may have had qualms
about accepting so immature a passenger--was most agreeable, and
willingly agreed to wait, on arrival at Golden Square, in case
he should be wanted again. The only obstacle to progress was the
purely physical barrier of a stout and slatternly woman who, at
that unusual hour, was washing down the dingy staircase, and whom
Anne-Hilarion was obliged to ask to let him pass.
"Bless my soul!" ejaculated she, turning in clumsy surprise. "And
what are you doing here by yourself, my little gentleman?"
"I have come to see M. le Vicomte de Soucy," answered Anne-Hilarion.
"He is above, is he not?"
"The French gentleman? Yes, he is. I'll go first, dearie; mind the
pail, now. To come alone--I never did! And who shall I say?"
"The Comte de Flavigny," responded the little boy, with due gravity.
Strange to say, M. de Soucy, in his attic room, did not hear the
announcement, nor even the shutting of the door. He was sitting
at a table, with his back to the visitor, his head propped between
his hands, a letter open before him. There was that in his attitude
which gave Anne-Hilarion pause; but he finally advanced, and said
in his clear little voice:
"M. le Vicomte!"
The émigré started, removed his hands, and turned round. "Grand
Dieu, c'est toi, Anne!"
His worn face looked, thought Anne-Hilarion, as if he had been
crying--if grown-up people ever did cry, about which he sometimes
speculated. But he was too well bred to remark on this, and he
merely said, in his native tongue, "I have come to ask you, M. le
Vicomte, to take me to France to see my Papa."
M. de Soucy, putting his hand to his throat, stared at him a moment.
Then he seemed to swallow something, and said, "I am afraid I
cannot do that, my child."
Anne-Hilarion knew that grown-up people do not always fall in at
once with your ideas, and he was prepared for a little opposition.
"Your health is perhaps not re-established?" he suggested politely
(for he was master of longer words in French than in English). He
did not like to refer to M. le Vicomte's lameness in so many words.
But M. le Vicomte made a gesture signifying that his health was
of no account, so Anne-Hilarion proceeded.
"I have brought my money-box," he said, with a very ingratiating
smile, and, giving his treasury a shake, he laid it on the table
at the Vicomte's elbow. "I do not know how much is in it. Will
you open it for me?"
M. de Soucy snatched up the letter that was lying before him, got
up from his chair, and limped to the window. He stood as if he
were looking out over the chimney-pots, but as he had put his hand
over his eyes he could not, thought Anne-Hilarion, have seen very
much. And gradually it began to dawn upon the little boy that the
Vicomte must be offended. He remembered having heard Grandpapa
once say how impossible it was to offer to assist him with money,
and he felt very hot all over. Had he, in merely mentioning the
money-box, done something dreadful?
But M. de Soucy suddenly swung round from the window. His face
was as white as paper.
"Anne," he said, in a queer voice, "money will not bring you to
see your father. He . . . my God, I can't tell him. . . . Come
here, child. Bring your money-box!"
Anne obeyed.
"First, we must see whether there is enough in it, must we not?
It costs a great deal of money to go to France, and, as you know,
I am poor."
"I think there is a great deal, but a great deal, in it," said
Anne reassuringly, shaking his bank. "Will you not open it and
see, M. le Vicomte?"
"Yes, I will open it," replied M. de Soucy. "And if there is enough,
we will go to France. But if there is not enough, Anne--and I fear
that there may not be--we cannot go. Will you abide by my decision?"
"Foi de Flavigny," promised the child gravely, giving him his hand.
How wonderful are grown-up people! M. le Vicomte had the strong-box
open in no time. Together they counted its contents.
"Seventeen shillings and fourpence--no, fivepence," announced M.
de Soucy. "I am afraid, Anne . . ."
M. le Comte drew a long breath. The muscles pulled at the corners
of his mouth.
"It is not enough?" he inquired rather quaveringly.
"Not nearly. Anne, you are a soldier's son, and you must learn
to bear disappointment--worse things perhaps. We cannot help your
father in that way." Again M. de Soucy struggled with something in
his speech. "I do not know, Anne, how we can help him."
It was, fortunately, not given to the Comte de Flavigny to read
his friend's mind, but he perceived sufficiently from his manner
that something was not right. He reflected a moment, and then,
remembering the celestial intervention of the afternoon, said:
"Perhaps I had better ask la Très-Sainte Vierge to take care of
him. I do ask her every day, but I mean especially."
"You could ask her," said de Soucy, bitter pain in his eyes.
"You have no picture of our Lady, no statue?"
"Not one."
"It does not matter," said the little boy. "Elspeth sometimes
takes away my image of her too. They do not know her over here,
but that," he added, with his courteous desire to excuse, "is
because she is French. . . . M. le Vicomte, I think that after all
I had better ask St. Michel, because he is a soldier. It would
be more fitting for him, do you not think? Yes, I will pray St.
Michel to take great care of my Papa, and then I shall not mind that
the money is not enough and that I cannot go to France to see him."
So, standing where he was, his eyes tight shut, he besought the
leader of the heavenly cohorts to that end, concluding politely
if mysteriously, "Perhaps I ought to thank you about Elspeth."
"I had better go back to Grandpapa?" he then suggested.
M. de Soucy nodded. "I will come with you," he said.
(4)
Anne-Hilarion had been gone for so short a time that he had not
even been missed, for the domestics were still occupied about
Elspeth's accident, and Mr. Elphinstone, though returned to the
library, had not found the farewell letter. The only surprise,
therefore, which the old gentleman showed was that his grandson
should be accompanied by M. de Soucy. He got up from a drawing of
one of the gates of Delhi that he was making for his memoirs, and
welcomed the intruders.
"Anne has been paying me a visit," said the Frenchman. "He wanted
to go to France again, but I have persuaded him to put it off for
a little. Can I have a word alone with you, sir?"
"Did you not get my letter, Grandpapa?" broke in Anne-Hilarion,
clinging to Mr. Elphinstone's hand. "I left it on the mantelpiece,
behind the little heathen god. I did not run away, foi de gentilhomme!"
"Send him out of the room!" signalled the émigré. But Anne-Hilarion,
having perceived his grandfather's occupation, was now in great
spirits. "Let me look at the livre des Indes, Grandpapa!" he
exclaimed. "I so much love the pictures. Faites-moi voir les
éléphants!" And he jumped up and down, holding on to the arm of
his grandfather's chair.
But the old man had followed M. de Soucy to the window.
"What is it, Monsieur?" he whispered. "Bad news from France?"
"Read this," said the Vicomte, thrusting the letter into his hands.
"It could hardly be worse. D'Hervilly attacked the Republican
position at Ste. Barbe five days ago, and was beaten off with
frightful loss. God knows what has happened by now, what has happened
to René--the worst, I have small doubt. . . ."
Mr. Elphinstone unfolded the letter with shaking hands. But ere
he had got to the bottom of the first page, Anne-Hilarion was at
his side, pulling at his sleeve.
"Grandpapa, I want to tell you a secret!"
"In a moment, child," said Mr. Elphinstone, his eyes on the letter.
"But it is very important," persisted Anne. "It is about Papa--at
least it is about Elspeth."
For once he was not to be put off. The old man yielded.
"Well, my bairn?"
"I want to whisper," said Anne.
So his grandfather bent down and received the following revelation,
"I prayed to my ange gardien about Elspeth."
"To make her better, do you mean?"
"No--it was before she fell down--to make her let me go and see
M. de Soucy."
"Well?" said Mr. Elphinstone, still more perplexed.
"Eh bien, he arranged it," said the successful petitioner, in a
tone of satisfaction. "He pushed Elspeth, no doubt, that she slipped
on the stairs, and so I was able to go. I did not _ask_ him to make
her slip, Grandpapa," he hastened to add.
But still the old man did not realise whither all this was tending.
The Vicomte de Soucy also, his threadbare coat showing very greenish
in the strong light near the window, was looking at the little boy
with puzzled, unhappy eyes.
"So now," proceeded Anne, "since I have asked St. Michel himself
to take care of Papa--did I not, M. le Vicomte?--he will be quite
safe, and I do not want any more to go to France. That is the secret,
Grandpapa--and when you have finished reading that letter will you
show me the elephants?"
"If Elspeth can be disposed of by the heavenly powers, even the
Blues are not beyond their control--is that it?" observed M. de
Soucy with a grating laugh, half to Mr. Elphinstone and half to
the child. "Good God, if only one could believe it!"
As Anne, his mind at ease, climbed up into his grandfather's chair
by the table with a view to the elephants, Mr. Elphinstone finished
and let fall the letter, his apple cheeks gone grey. Then he turned
without a word to the window and stood there, his back to the
room, while into the silence came, with a strange little effect
of calamity, the sound of a scud of summer rain beating against
the glass.
(5)
And the rain was falling steadily on the white sand of Quiberon
Bay also, on the low dunes, on Hoche's triumphant grenadiers, on
the little fort, now abandoned, on the useless English ships, and
on the upturned face of René de Flavigny, who lay, wrapped in a
cloak, a short stone's cast from the rising tide. All about him
were the evidences of the great disaster, but he had never heeded
them, lying where the two soldiers had left him, by a little spur
of rock that had its extremity in the sea. It had proved impossible
to get him off to a boat; there was no chance for an unconscious
man when even good swimmers perished. So his bearers had laid him
down by the rock; he was no worse off than hundreds of others, and
neither the cries of the drowning nor the boom of the English
cannon had wakened him.
But now he had drifted back to pain, and the thirst of the stricken,
and the numbing remembrance of catastrophe. He had tried to raise
his head, but desisted from the distress of the effort. The fingers
of his left hand ploughed idly into the sand. As it dribbled through
them, white as lime, he remembered everything. . . . His eyes, so
like Anne-Hilarion's, darkened. Since there was no one to make an
end of him, he would do it himself, not so much to ease the pain
and to hasten an otherwise lingering death as because everything
was lost. And he would go to Jeannette.
Yet his senses were playing him tricks again. One moment he was
here, a piece of driftwood in the great wreck; the next, he was
kneeling by Anne-Hilarion's bed, going again through that dreadful
parting, promising that he would soon return, and the boy was
clinging to him, swallowing his sobs. He could hear them now, blent
with the plunge of the tide. He could not keep that promise. Better
end it all, and go to Jeannette.
René thrust down a hand, tugged a pistol out of his belt, cocked
it, and put it to his head.
But ere the cold rim touched his temple, sky and sea had gone black.
Flashes of radiance shot through the humming darkness, steadying
at last to a wide sunflower of light, and then . . . he saw
distinctly Anne-Hilarion's terrified face, his little outstretched
hands. His own sank powerless to the sand, and he was swept out
again on the flood of unconsciousness.
(6)
"Not a single blessed patrol, by gad!" thought Mr. Francis Tollemache
to himself. "That means they have got at the port wine and beer we
landed at Fort Penthièvre: trust the sans-culottes for scenting it
out! But, O gemini, what luck for us!"
For Mr. Tollemache was at that moment--midnight--steering a small
boat along the shore of Quiberon. On his one hand were the lights
of the English squadron, still in the bay; on the other, the
Republican camp-fires among the sandhills. The files of Royalist
prisoners had started hours ago on their march up the peninsula,
but Sir John Warren was still hoping to pick up a fugitive or two
under cover of darkness, and Mr. Tollemache's was not the only boat
employed on this errand of mercy. But it was emphatically the most
daring; nor had Sir John the least idea that Mr. Tollemache was
hazarding his own, a midshipman's, and half a dozen other lives in
the search for one particular Royalist. Mr. Tollemache, indeed,
never intended that he should have.
A rescued Frenchman sat already in the sternsheets--the sergeant
of du Dresnay, picked up earlier in the day, who had helped to
carry de Flavigny down the beach. Truth to tell, Mr. Tollemache
had smuggled him into the boat as a guide, for the task of finding
the wounded man in the dark would otherwise have been hopeless.
But the sergeant could direct them to the little rock by which
his officer had been laid, and, rocks being uncommon on that long
sandy shore, he did so direct them. Unfortunately, since Mr.
Tollemache, no expert in tongues, could not always follow his
meaning, they had not yet found it. Already, indeed, had they
made hopefully for some dark object at the water's edge, only to
ascertain that it was a dead horse, and Mr. Tollemache's flowers
of speech at the discovery had not withered till the body of a
drowned Royalist slid and bumped along the boat's side. But meanwhile,
even though the shore was unguarded, it was getting momentarily
more difficult to see, the tide was rising once again, the men
were becoming impatient. After all, it _was_ rather like looking
for the proverbial needle.
The French soldier tugged suddenly at the Englishman's arm. "V'là,
m'sieur!" he whispered. "There is the place--that is the rock!"
The young lieutenant peered through the gloom, gave a curt order
or two, and then, lifted on the swell, the _Pomone's_ boat greeted
the sand of Quiberon Bay. Another moment, and Englishman and Frenchman
had found what they sought. But only Mr. Dibdin's special maritime
cherub averted the discharge of the cocked pistol which the Marquis
de Flavigny still grasped in a senseless hand, and which Mr.
Tollemache had some difficulty in disengaging before they got him
into the boat.
The middy, now in charge of the tiller, desired, as they pulled
away, to be informed why his superior officer had been so set on
saving this particular poor devil.
"Oh, I met him once in England," replied Mr. Tollemache carelessly,
and, as far as the bare statement went, quite truthfully. "Here,
give me the tiller now! It makes a difference when you have actually
known a man, you see."
For he was ashamed to avow the real motive power--his acquaintance,
much more intimate and cogent, with a younger member of the family.
At any rate, it was not a safe thing to let a midshipman know.
* * * * *
They were nearing the _Pomone_ when the Marquis de Flavigny, his
head in his compatriot's lap, began to mutter something. The middy
bent down.
"The poor beggar thinks he's talking to his wife--or his sweetheart,"
said he, pleased at being able to recognise a word of French.
"'Anne,' her name seems to be."
Mr. Tollemache, in the darkness and the sea-wind, turned away
his head and smiled.