Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (300 page)

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 HumorousMuseum.’  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.’