The Refugees. Arthur Conan Doyle

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СКАЧАТЬ would that I could give you into your father’s charge first, for I fear to leave you alone when these troopers may come. And yet no excuse will avail me if I am not at Versailles. But see, a horseman has stopped before the door. He is not in uniform. Perhaps he is a messenger from your father.”

      The girl ran eagerly to the window, and peered out, with her hand resting upon her cousin’s silver-corded shoulder.

      “Ah!” she cried, “I had forgotten. It is the man from America. Father said that he would come today.”

      “The man from America!” repeated the soldier, in a tone of surprise, and they both craned their necks from the window. The horseman, a sturdy, broad-shouldered young man, clean-shaven and crop-haired, turned his long, swarthy face and his bold features in their direction as he ran his eyes over the front of the house. He had a soft-brimmed gray hat of a shape which was strange to Parisian eyes, but his sombre clothes and high boots were such as any citizen might have worn. Yet his general appearance was so unusual that a group of townsfolk had already assembled round him, staring with open mouth at his horse and himself. A battered gun with an extremely long barrel was fastened by the stock to his stirrup, while the muzzle stuck up into the air behind him. At each holster was a large dangling black bag, and a gaily coloured red-slashed blanket was rolled up at the back of his saddle. His horse, a strong-limbed dapple-gray, all shiny with sweat above, and all caked with mud beneath, bent its fore knees as it stood, as though it were overspent. The rider, however, having satisfied himself as to the house, sprang lightly out of his saddle, and disengaging his gun, his blanket, and his bags, pushed his way unconcernedly through the gaping crowd and knocked loudly at the door.

      “Who is he, then?” asked De Catinat. “A Canadian? I am almost one myself. I had as many friends on one side of the sea as on the other. Perchance I know him. There are not so many white faces yonder, and in two years there was scarce one from the Saguenay to Nipissing that I had not seen.”

      “Nay, he is from the English provinces, Amory. But he speaks our tongue. His mother was of our blood.”

      “And his name?”

      “Is Amos—Amos—ah, those names! Yes, Green, that was it—Amos Green. His father and mine have done much trade together, and now his son, who, as I understand, has lived ever in the woods, is sent here to see something of men and cities. Ah, my God! what can have happened now?”

      A sudden chorus of screams and cries had broken out from the passage beneath, with the shouting of a man and the sound of rushing steps. In an instant De Catinat was half-way down the stairs, and was staring in amazement at the scene in the hall beneath.

      Two maids stood, screaming at the pitch of their lungs, at either side. In the centre the aged man-servant Pierre, a stern old Calvinist, whose dignity had never before been shaken, was spinning round, waving his arms, and roaring so that he might have been heard at the Louvre. Attached to the gray worsted stocking which covered his fleshless calf was a fluffy black hairy ball, with one little red eye glancing up, and the gleam of two white teeth where it held its grip. At the shrieks, the young stranger, who had gone out to his horse, came rushing back, and plucking the creature off, he slapped it twice across the snout, and plunged it head-foremost back into the leather bag from which it had emerged.

      “It is nothing,” said he, speaking in excellent French; “it is only a bear.”

      “Ah, my God!” cried Pierre, wiping the drops from his brow. “Ah, it has aged me five years! I was at the door, bowing to monsieur, and in a moment it had me from behind.”

      “It was my fault for leaving the bag loose. The creature was but pupped the day we left New York, six weeks come Tuesday. Do I speak with my father’s friend, Monsieur Catinat?”

      “No, monsieur,” said the guardsman, from the staircase. “My uncle is out, but I am Captain de Catinat, at your service, and here is Mademoiselle Catinat, who is your hostess.”

      The stranger ascended the stair, and paid his greetings to them both with the air of a man who was as shy as a wild deer, and yet who had steeled himself to carry a thing through. He walked with them to the sitting-room, and then in an instant was gone again, and they heard his feet thudding upon the stairs. Presently he was back, with a lovely glossy skin in his hands. “The bear is for your father, mademoiselle,” said he. “This little skin I have brought from America for you. It is but a trifle, and yet it may serve to make a pair of mocassins or a pouch.”

      Adele gave a cry of delight as her hands sank into the depths of its softness. She might well admire it, for no king in the world could have had a finer skin. “Ah, it is beautiful, monsieur,” she cried; “and what creature is it? and where did it come from?”

      “It is a black fox. I shot it myself last fall up near the Iroquois villages at Lake Oneida.”

      She pressed it to her cheek, her white face showing up like marble against its absolute blackness. “I am sorry my father is not here to welcome you, monsieur,” she said; “but I do so very heartily in his place. Your room is above. Pierre will show you to it, if you wish.”

      “My room? For what?”

      “Why, monsieur, to sleep in!”

      “And must I sleep in a room?”

      De Catinat laughed at the gloomy face of the American.

      “You shall not sleep there if you do not wish,” said he.

      The other brightened at once and stepped across to the further window, which looked down upon the court-yard. “Ah,” he cried. “There is a beech-tree there, mademoiselle, and if I might take my blanket out yonder, I should like it better than any room. In winter, indeed, one must do it, but in summer I am smothered with a ceiling pressing down upon me.”

      “You are not from a town then?” said De Catinat.

      “My father lives in New York—two doors from the house of Peter Stuyvesant, of whom you must have heard. He is a very hardy man, and he can do it, but I—even a few days of Albany or of Schenectady are enough for me. My life has been in the woods.”

      “I am sure my father would wish you to sleep where you like and to do what you like, as long as it makes you happy.”

      “I thank you, mademoiselle. Then I shall take my things out there, and I shall groom my horse.”

      “Nay, there is Pierre.”

      “I am used to doing it myself.”

      “Then I will come with you,” said De Catinat, “for I would have a word with you. Until tomorrow, then, Adele, farewell!”

      “Until tomorrow, Amory.”

      The two young men passed downstairs together, and the guardsman followed the American out into the yard.

      “You have had a long journey,” he said.

      “Yes; from Rouen.”

      “Are you tired?”

      “No; I am seldom tired.”

      “Remain with the lady, then, until her father comes back.”

      “Why do you say that?”

      “Because СКАЧАТЬ