Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (333 page)

He proceeded to give me a sketch of one or two eligible young ladies’ whom I might expect to meet.  ‘And then there’s my parteecular friend, Miss Flora,’ said he.  ‘But I’ll make no attempt of a description.  You shall see her for yourself.’

It will be readily supposed that I accepted his invitation; and returned home to make a toilette worthy of her I was to meet and the good news of which I was the bearer.  The toilette, I have reason to believe, was a success.  Mr. Rowley dismissed me with a farewell: ‘Crikey!  Mr. Anne, but you do look prime!’  Even the stony Bethiah was — how shall I say? — dazzled, but scandalised, by my appearance; and while, of course, she deplored the vanity that led to it, she could not wholly prevent herself from admiring the result.

‘Ay, Mr. Ducie, this is a poor employment for a wayfaring Christian man!’ she said.  ‘Wi’ Christ despised and rejectit in all pairts of the world and the flag of the Covenant flung doon, you will be muckle better on your knees!  However, I’ll have to confess that it sets you weel.  And if it’s the lassie ye’re gaun to see the nicht, I suppose I’ll just have to excuse ye!  Bairns maun be bairns!’ she said, with a sigh.  ‘I mind when Mr. McRankine came courtin’, and that’s lang by-gane — I mind I had a green gown, passementit, that was thocht to become me to admiration.  I was nae just exactly what ye would ca’ bonny; but I was pale, penetratin’, and interestin’.’  And she leaned over the stair-rail with a candle to watch my descent as long as it should be possible.

It was but a little party at Mr. Robbie’s — by which, I do not so much mean that there were few people, for the rooms were crowded, as that there was very little attempted to entertain them.  In one apartment there were tables set out, where the elders were solemnly engaged upon whist; in the other and larger one, a great number of youth of both sexes entertained themselves languidly, the ladies sitting upon chairs to be courted, the gentlemen standing about in various attitudes of insinuation or indifference.  Conversation appeared the sole resource, except in so far as it was modified by a number of keepsakes and annuals which lay dispersed upon the tables, and of which the young beaux displayed the illustrations to the ladies.  Mr. Robbie himself was customarily in the card-room; only now and again, when he cut out, he made an incursion among the young folks, and rolled about jovially from one to another, the very picture of the general uncle.

It chanced that Flora had met Mr. Robbie in the course of the afternoon.  ‘Now, Miss Flora,’ he had said, ‘come early, for I have a Phoenix to show you — one Mr. Ducie, a new client of mine that, I vow, I have fallen in love with’; and he was so good as to add a word or two on my appearance, from which Flora conceived a suspicion of the truth.  She had come to the party, in consequence, on the knife-edge of anticipation and alarm; had chosen a place by the door, where I found her, on my arrival, surrounded by a posse of vapid youths; and, when I drew near, sprang up to meet me in the most natural manner in the world, and, obviously, with a prepared form of words.

‘How do you do, Mr. Ducie?’ she said.  ‘It is quite an age since I have seen you!’

‘I have much to tell you, Miss Gilchrist,’ I replied.  ‘May I sit down?’

For the artful girl, by sitting near the door, and the judicious use of her shawl, had contrived to keep a chair empty by her side.

She made room for me, as a matter of course, and the youths had the discretion to melt before us.  As soon as I was once seated her fan flew out, and she whispered behind it:

‘Are you mad?’

‘Madly in love,’ I replied; ‘but in no other sense.’

‘I have no patience!  You cannot understand what I am suffering!’ she said.  ‘What are you to say to Ronald, to Major Chevenix, to my aunt?’

Your aunt?’ I cried, with a start.  ‘
Peccavi
! is she here?’

‘She is in the card-room at whist,’ said Flora.

‘Where she will probably stay all the evening?’ I suggested.

‘She may,’ she admitted; ‘she generally does!’

‘Well, then, I must avoid the card-room,’ said I, ‘which is very much what I had counted upon doing.  I did not come here to play cards, but to contemplate a certain young lady to my heart’s content — if it can ever be contented! — and to tell her some good news.’

‘But there are still Ronald and the Major!’ she persisted.  ‘They are not card-room fixtures!  Ronald will be coming and going.  And as for Mr. Chevenix, he — ’

‘Always sits with Miss Flora?’ I interrupted.  ‘And they talk of poor St. Ives?  I had gathered as much, my dear; and Mr. Ducie has come to prevent it!  But pray dismiss these fears!  I mind no one but your aunt.’

‘Why my aunt?’

‘Because your aunt is a lady, my dear, and a very clever lady, and, like all clever ladies, a very rash lady,’ said I.  ‘You can never count upon them, unless you are sure of getting them in a corner, as I have got you, and talking them over rationally, as I am just engaged on with yourself!  It would be quite the same to your aunt to make the worst kind of a scandal, with an equal indifference to my danger and to the feelings of our good host!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘and what of Ronald, then?  Do you think
he
is above making a scandal?  You must know him very little!’

‘On the other hand, it is my pretension that I know him very well!’ I replied.  ‘I must speak to Ronald first — not Ronald to me — that is all!’

‘Then, please, go and speak to him at once!’ she pleaded.  He is there — do you see? — at the upper end of the room, talking to that girl in pink.’

‘And so lose this seat before I have told you my good news?’ I exclaimed.  ‘Catch me!  And, besides, my dear one, think a little of me and my good news!  I thought the bearer of good news was always welcome!  I hoped he might be a little welcome for himself!  Consider!  I have but one friend; and let me stay by her!  And there is only one thing I care to hear; and let me hear it!’

‘Oh, Anne,’ she sighed, ‘if I did not love you, why should I be so uneasy?  I am turned into a coward, dear!  Think, if it were the other way round — if you were quite safe and I was in, oh, such danger!’

She had no sooner said it than I was convicted of being a dullard.  ‘God forgive me, dear!’  I made haste to reply.  ‘I never saw before that there were two sides to this!’  And I told her my tale as briefly as I could, and rose to seek Ronald.  ‘You see, my dear, you are obeyed,’ I said.

She gave me a look that was a reward in itself; and as I turned away from her, with a strong sense of turning away from the sun, I carried that look in my bosom like a caress.  The girl in pink was an arch, ogling person, with a good deal of eyes and teeth, and a great play of shoulders and rattle of conversation.  There could be no doubt, from Mr. Ronald’s attitude, that he worshipped the very chair she sat on.  But I was quite ruthless.  I laid my hand on his shoulder, as he was stooping over her like a hen over a chicken.

‘Excuse me for one moment, Mr. Gilchrist!’ said I.

He started and span about in answer to my touch, and exhibited a face of inarticulate wonder.

 ’Yes!’ I continued, ‘it is even myself!  Pardon me for interrupting so agreeable a
tête-à-tête
, but you know, my good fellow, we owe a first duty to Mr. Robbie.  It would never do to risk making a scene in the man’s drawing-room; so the first thing I had to attend to was to have you warned.  The name I go by is Ducie, too, in case of accidents.’

‘I — I say, you know!’ cried Ronald.  ‘Deuce take it, what are you doing here?’

‘Hush, hush!’ said I.  ‘Not the place, my dear fellow — not the place.  Come to my rooms, if you like, to-night after the party, or to-morrow in the morning, and we can talk it out over a segar.  But here, you know, it really won’t do at all.’

Before he could collect his mind for an answer, I had given him my address in St. James Square, and had again mingled with the crowd.  Alas!  I was not fated to get back to Flora so easily!  Mr. Robbie was in the path: he was insatiably loquacious; and as he continued to palaver I watched the insipid youths gather again about my idol, and cursed my fate and my host.  He remembered suddenly that I was to attend the Assembly Ball on Thursday, and had only attended to-night by way of a preparative.  This put it into his head to present me to another young lady; but I managed this interview with so much art that, while I was scrupulously polite and even cordial to the fair one, I contrived to keep Robbie beside me all the time and to leave along with him when the ordeal was over.  We were just walking away arm in arm, when I spied my friend the Major approaching, stiff as a ramrod and, as usual, obtrusively clean.

‘Oh! there’s a man I want to know,’ said I, taking the bull by the horns.  ‘Won’t you introduce me to Major Chevenix?’

‘At a word, my dear fellow,’ said Robbie; and ‘Major!’ he cried, ‘come here and let me present to you my friend Mr. Ducie, who desires the honour of your acquaintance.’

The Major flushed visibly, but otherwise preserved his composure.  He bowed very low.  ‘I’m not very sure,’ he said: ‘I have an idea we have met before?’

‘Informally,’ I said, returning his bow; ‘and I have long looked forward to the pleasure of regularising our acquaintance.’

‘You are very good, Mr. Ducie,’ he returned.  ‘Perhaps you could aid my memory a little?  Where was it that I had the pleasure?’

‘Oh, that would be telling tales out of school,’ said I, with a laugh, ‘and before my lawyer, too!’

‘I’ll wager,’ broke in Mr. Robbie, ‘that, when you knew my client, Chevenix — the past of our friend Mr. Ducie is an obscure chapter full of horrid secrets — I’ll wager, now, you knew him as St. Ivey,’ says he, nudging me violently.

‘I think not, sir,’ said the Major, with pinched lips.

‘Well, I wish he may prove all right!’ continued the lawyer, with certainly the worst-inspired jocularity in the world.  ‘I know nothing by him!  He may be a swell mobsman for me with his aliases.  You must put your memory on the rack, Major, and when ye’ve remembered when and where ye met him, be sure ye tell me.’

‘I will not fail, sir,’ said Chevenix.

‘Seek to him!’ cried Robbie, waving his hand as he departed.

The Major, as soon as we were alone, turned upon me his impassive countenance.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have courage.’

‘It is undoubted as your honour, sir,’ I returned, bowing.

‘Did you expect to meet me, may I ask?’ said he.

‘You saw, at least, that I courted the presentation,’ said I.

‘And you were not afraid?’ said Chevenix.

‘I was perfectly at ease.  I knew I was dealing with a gentleman.  Be that your epitaph.’

‘Well, there are some other people looking for you,’ he said, ‘who will make no bones about the point of honour.  The police, my dear sir, are simply agog about you.’

‘And I think that that was coarse,’ said I.

‘You have seen Miss Gilchrist?’ he inquired, changing the subject.

‘With whom, I am led to understand, we are on a footing of rivalry?’ I asked.  ‘Yes, I have seen her.’

‘And I was just seeking her,’ he replied.

I was conscious of a certain thrill of temper; so, I suppose, was he.  We looked each other up and down.

‘The situation is original,’ he resumed.

‘Quite,’ said I.  ‘But let me tell you frankly you are blowing a cold coal.  I owe you so much for your kindness to the prisoner Champdivers.’

‘Meaning that the lady’s affections are more advantageously disposed of?’ he asked, with a sneer.  ‘Thank you, I am sure.  And, since you have given me a lead, just hear a word of good advice in your turn.  Is it fair, is it delicate, is it like a gentleman, to compromise the young lady by attentions which (as you know very well) can come to nothing?’

I was utterly unable to find words in answer.

‘Excuse me if I cut this interview short,’ he went on.  ‘It seems to me doomed to come to nothing, and there is more attractive metal.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘as you say, it cannot amount to much.  You are impotent, bound hand and foot in honour.  You know me to be a man falsely accused, and even if you did not know it, from your position as my rival you have only the choice to stand quite still or to be infamous.’

‘I would not say that,’ he returned, with another change of colour.  ‘I may hear it once too often.’

With which he moved off straight for where Flora was sitting amidst her court of vapid youths, and I had no choice but to follow him, a bad second, and reading myself, as I went, a sharp lesson on the command of temper.

It is a strange thing how young men in their teens go down at the mere wind of the coming of men of twenty-five and upwards!  The vapid ones fled without thought of resistance before the Major and me; a few dallied awhile in the neighbourhood — so to speak, with their fingers in their mouths — but presently these also followed the rout, and we remained face to face before Flora.  There was a draught in that corner by the door; she had thrown her pelisse over her bare arms and neck, and the dark fur of the trimming set them off.  She shone by contrast; the light played on her smooth skin to admiration, and the colour changed in her excited face.  For the least fraction of a second she looked from one to the other of her pair of rival swains, and seemed to hesitate.  Then she addressed Chevenix: —

‘You are coming to the Assembly, of course, Major Chevenix?’ said she.

‘I fear not; I fear I shall be otherwise engaged,’ he replied.  ‘Even the pleasure of dancing with you, Miss Flora, must give way to duty.’

For awhile the talk ran harmlessly on the weather, and then branched off towards the war.  It seemed to be by no one’s fault; it was in the air, and had to come.

‘Good news from the scene of operations,’ said the Major.

‘Good news while it lasts,’ I said.  ‘But will Miss Gilchrist tell us her private thought upon the war?  In her admiration for the victors, does not there mingle some pity for the vanquished?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ she said, with animation, ‘only too much of it!  War is a subject that I do not think should be talked of to a girl.  I am, I have to be — what do you call it? — a non-combatant?  And to remind me of what others have to do and suffer: no, it is not fair!’