St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England. Роберт Стивенсон

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СКАЧАТЬ said I, looking about me on the battlements by which we sat surrounded, ‘this is a case in which Mahomet must certainly come to the mountain.’

      ‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Romaine; ‘you know already your uncle is an aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up, and his death shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about it – it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet.’

      ‘From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,’ said I; ‘but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men’s secrets, and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a truculent patriotism, to say the least.’

      ‘I am first of all the lawyer of your family!’ says he.

      ‘That being so,’ said I, ‘I can perhaps stretch a point myself. This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the bottom. Once at the bottom I am helpless.’

      ‘And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,’ returned the lawyer. ‘Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess, and on which I offer no opinion – ’

      But here I interrupted him. ‘One word ere you go further. I am under no parole,’ said I.

      ‘I understood so much,’ he replied, ‘although some of you French gentry find their word sit lightly on them.’

      ‘Sir, I am not one of those,’ said I.

      ‘To do you plain justice, I do not think you one,’ said he. ‘Suppose yourself, then, set free and at the bottom of the rock,’ he continued, ‘although I may not be able to do much, I believe I can do something to help you on your road. In the first place I would carry this, whether in an inside pocket or my shoe.’ And he passed me a bundle of bank notes.

      ‘No harm in that,’ said I, at once concealing them.

      ‘In the second place,’ he resumed, ‘it is a great way from here to where your uncle lives – Amersham Place, not far from Dunstable; you have a great part of Britain to get through; and for the first stages, I must leave you to your own luck and ingenuity. I have no acquaintance here in Scotland, or at least’ (with a grimace) ‘no dishonest ones. But further to the south, about Wakefield, I am told there is a gentleman called Burchell Fenn, who is not so particular as some others, and might be willing to give you a cast forward. In fact, sir, I believe it’s the man’s trade: a piece of knowledge that burns my mouth. But that is what you get by meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue now extant, M. de Saint-Yves, is your cousin, M. Alain.’

      ‘If this be a man of my cousin’s,’ I observed, ‘I am perhaps better to keep clear of him?’

      ‘It was through some paper of your cousin’s that we came across his trail,’ replied the lawyer. ‘But I am inclined to think, so far as anything is safe in such a nasty business, you might apply to the man Fenn. You might even, I think, use the Viscount’s name; and the little trick of family resemblance might come in. How, for instance, if you were to call yourself his brother?’

      ‘It might be done,’ said I. ‘But look here a moment? You propose to me a very difficult game: I have apparently a devil of an opponent in my cousin; and, being a prisoner of war, I can scarcely be said to hold good cards. For what stakes, then, am I playing?’

      ‘They are very large,’ said he. ‘Your great-uncle is immensely rich – immensely rich. He was wise in time; he smelt the revolution long before; sold all that he could, and had all that was movable transported to England through my firm. There are considerable estates in England; Amersham Place itself is very fine; and he has much money, wisely invested. He lives, indeed, like a prince. And of what use is it to him? He has lost all that was worth living for – his family, his country; he has seen his king and queen murdered; he has seen all these miseries and infamies,’ pursued the lawyer, with a rising inflection and a heightening colour; and then broke suddenly off, – ‘In short, sir, he has seen all the advantages of that government for which his nephew carries arms, and he has the misfortune not to like them.’

      ‘You speak with a bitterness that I suppose I must excuse,’ said I; ‘yet which of us has the more reason to be bitter? This man, my uncle, M. de Kéroual, fled. My parents, who were less wise perhaps, remained. In the beginning, they were even republicans; to the end they could not be persuaded to despair of the people. It was a glorious folly, for which, as a son, I reverence them. First one and then the other perished. If I have any mark of a gentleman, all who taught me died upon the scaffold, and my last school of manners was the prison of the Abbaye. Do you think you can teach bitterness to a man with a history like mine?’

      ‘I have no wish to try,’ said he. ‘And yet there is one point I cannot understand: I cannot understand that one of your blood and experience should serve the Corsican. I cannot understand it: it seems as though everything generous in you must rise against that – domination.’

      ‘And perhaps,’ I retorted, ‘had your childhood passed among wolves, you would have been overjoyed yourself to see the Corsican Shepherd.’

      ‘Well, well,’ replied Mr. Romaine, ‘it may be. There are things that do not bear discussion.’

      And with a wave of his hand he disappeared abruptly down a flight of steps and under the shadow of a ponderous arch.

      CHAPTER V – ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE

      The lawyer was scarce gone before I remembered many omissions; and chief among these, that I had neglected to get Mr. Burchell Fenn’s address. Here was an essential point neglected; and I ran to the head of the stairs to find myself already too late. The lawyer was beyond my view; in the archway that led downward to the castle gate, only the red coat and the bright arms of a sentry glittered in the shadow; and I could but return to my place upon the ramparts.

      I am not very sure that I was properly entitled to this corner. But I was a high favourite; not an officer, and scarce a private, in the castle would have turned me back, except upon a thing of moment; and whenever I desired to be solitary, I was suffered to sit here behind my piece of cannon unmolested. The cliff went down before me almost sheer, but mantled with a thicket of climbing trees; from farther down, an outwork raised its turret; and across the valley I had a view of that long terrace of Princes Street which serves as a promenade to the fashionable inhabitants of Edinburgh. A singularity in a military prison, that it should command a view on the chief thoroughfare!

      It is not necessary that I should trouble you with the train of my reflections, which turned upon the interview I had just concluded and the hopes that were now opening before me. What is more essential, my eye (even while I thought) kept following the movement of the passengers on Princes Street, as they passed briskly to and fro – met, greeted, and bowed to each other – or entered and left the shops, which are in that quarter, and, for a town of the Britannic provinces, particularly fine. My mind being busy upon other things, the course of my eye was the more random; and it chanced that I followed, for some time, the advance of a young gentleman with a red head and a white great-coat, for whom I cared nothing at the moment, and of whom it is probable I shall be gathered to my fathers without learning more. He seemed to have a large acquaintance: his hat was for ever in his hand; and I daresay I had already observed him exchanging compliments with half a dozen, when he drew up at last before a young man and a young lady whose tall persons and gallant carriage I thought I recognised.

      It was impossible at such a distance that I could be sure, but the thought was sufficient, and I craned out of the embrasure to follow them as long as possible. To think that such emotions, that such a concussion СКАЧАТЬ