Fiction > Serialisations > London, 1896-1897 - St. Ives > Volume 10

3i8 THE PALL MALL MAGAZINE.
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 L " 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.
" A\'hat am I to say ? " I replied. " If you were carried from this countr\', 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 ? A\'e 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 lather 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 " 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 retu-ed 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. \Vhat
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. ^\"hat 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 I " thought