Chapter III: Preface (3)

The night closed over the road as he caught the wizard bells. The moonlight turned the peaks to fire. The dark firs shook down their burdens of snow. There were cries of wild beasts from the ravines below. The post-houses were red with firelight. The steed floundered through the snow-drifts driven by blow and halloo. It was a fearful ride upon the high Alps; the sublimity of nature bowed down to the mystery of crime!

Bright noon, on the third day succeeding, saw the fugitive emerge from the railway station at Dieppe. He had escaped the Swiss frontier with his life, but had failed to make sure that escape by reaching the harbor at the appointed time. Broken in spirit, grown old already, he faltered toward the town, and, stopping on the fosse-bridge, looked sorrowfully across the shipping in the dock. Something caught his regard amid the cloud of tri-color; he looked again, shading his eye with a tremulous palm. There could not be a doubt--it was the Confederate standard--the Stars and Bars.

The Planter had been delayed; she waited with steam up and an expectant crew; her slender masts leaned against the sky; her anchor was lifted; a knot of idlers watched her from the quay.

In a moment Mr. Plade was on board. He asked for the commander, and a short, gristly, sunburnt personage being indicated, he introduced himself with that plausible speech which had wooed so many to their fall.

"I am a Charlestonian," said Plade; "a Yankee insulted me at the Grand Hotel; we met in the Bois de Boulogne, and I ran him through the body. His friends in Paris conspire against my life. I ask to save it now, only to die on your deck, that it may be worth something to my country."

They went below, and the privateer put the applicant through a rigid examination.

"This vessel must get to sea to night," he said. "I will not hazard trouble with the French authorities by keeping you here. Spend the afternoon ashore; we sail at eleven o'clock precisely; if at that time you come aboard, I will take you."

Plade protested his gratitude, but the skipper motioned him to peace.

"You seem to be a gentleman," he added; "if I find you so, you shall be my purser. But, hark!" he looked keenly at the other, and laid his hand upon his throat--"I am under the espionage of the Yankee ambassador. There are spies who seek to join my crew for treasonable ends; if I find you one of these, you shall hang to my yard-arm!"

The felon walked into the dim old city, and seated himself in a wine-shop. Some market folks were chanting in _patois_, and their light-heartedness enraged him. He turned up a crooked street, and stopped before an ancient church, grotesque with broken buttresses, pinnacles, and gargoyles. The portal was wide open, and, as he entered, some scores of school-children burst suddenly into song. It seemed to him an accusation, shouted by a choir of angels.

At the end of the city, facing the sea, rose a massive castle. He scaled its stairs, and passed through the courtyard, and, crossing the farther moat, stood upon a grassy hill--once an outwork--whence the blue channel was visible half way to England.

A knot of soldiers came out to regard him, and his fears magnified their curiosity; he ran down the parapet, to their surprise, and re-entered the town by a roundabout way. "I will take a chamber," he said, "and shun observation."

An old woman, in a starched cap, who talked incessantly, showed him a number of rooms in a great stone building. He chose a garret among the chimney-stacks, and lit a fire, and ordered a newspaper and a bottle of brandy. He sat down to read in loneliness. As he surmised, the murder was printed among the "_Faits Divers_;" it gave his name and the story of the tragedy. His chair rattled upon the tiles as he read, and the tongs, wherewith he touched the fire, clattered in his nervous fingers.

The place was not more composed than himself; the flame was the noisiest in the world; it crackled and crashed and made horrible shadows on the walls. There were rats under the floor whose gnawings were like human speech, and the old house appeared to settle now and then with a groan as if unwilling to shelter guilt. As he looked down upon the clustering roofs of the town they seemed wonderfully like a crowd of people gazing up at his retreat. All the dormer-windows were so many pitiless eyes, and the chimney-pots were guns and cannon to batter down his eyrie.

When night fell upon the city and sea, his fancies were not less alarming. He could not rid himself of the idea that the dead man was at his side. In vain he called upon his victim to appear, and laughed till the windows shook. It was there, _there_, always THERE! He did not see it--but it was _there_! He felt its breath, its eye, its influence. It leaned across his shoulder; it gossiped with the shadows; it laid its hand heavily upon his pocket where lay the unholy gold. Some prints of saints and the Virgin upon the wall troubled him; their faces followed him wherever he turned; he tore them down at length, and tossed them in the fire, but they blazed with so great flame that he cried out for fear.

The town-bells struck the hours; how far apart were the strokes! They tolled rather than pealed, as if for an execution, and the lamps of some passing carriages made a journey as of torches upon the ceiling.

After nine o'clock there was a heavy tread upon the stairs. It kept him company, and he was glad of its coming; but it drew so close, at length, that he stood upright, with the cold sweat upon his forehead.

The steps halted at his threshold; the door swung open; a corporal and a soldier stood without, and the former saluted formally:

"Monsieur the stranger, will remain in his chamber under guard. I grieve to say that he is an object of grave suspicion. _Au revoir!_"

The corporal retired without waiting for a reply; the soldier entered, and, leaning his musket against the wall, drew a chair before the door and sat down. The firelight fell upon his face after a moment, and revealed to Mr. Plade his old associate, Pisgah!

The former uttered a cry of hope and surprise; the soldier waved him back with a menace.

"I know you," he said; "but I am here upon duty; besides, I have no friendship with a murderer."

"We are both victims of a mistake! This accusation is not true. Will you take my hand?"

"I am forbidden to speak upon guard," answered Pisgah, sullenly. "Resume your chair."

"At least join me in a glass."

"There is blood in it," said Pisgah.

"I swear to you, no! Let me ring for your old beverage, absinthe."

The soldier halted, irresolutely; the liquor came before he could refuse. When once his lips touched the vessel, Mr. Plade knew that there was still a chance for life.

In an hour Mr. Pisgah was impotent from intoxication; his musket was flung down the stairway, the door was bolted upon him, and the prisoner was gone.

He gained the Planter's deck as the screw made its first revolution; they turned the channel-piles with a good-by gun; the motley crew cheered heartily as they cleared the mole.

The pirate was at sea on her mission of plunder--the murderer was free!

The engines stopped abreast the city; the steamer lay almost motionless, for there were lights upon the beach; a shrill "Ahoy!" broke over the intervening waters, and the dip of oars indicated some pursuit. The crew, half drunken, rallied to the edge of the vessel; knives glittered amid the confusion of oaths and the click of pistols, while Mr. Plade hastened to the skipper's side, and urged him for pity and mercy to hasten seaward.

The other motioned him back, coldly, and the boatswain piped all hands upon deck. Lafitte nor Kidd never looked down such desperate faces as this gristly privateer, when his buccaneers were around him.

"Seamen," he spoke aloud, "you are afloat! Gold and glory await you; you shall glut yourselves by the ruin of your enemy, and count your plunder by the light of his burning merchantmen."

The knives flickered in the torchlight, and a cheer, like the howl of the damned, went up.

"On the brink of such fortune, you find yourselves imperilled; treason is with you; this pursuit, which we attend, is a part of its programme! There is, within the sound of my voice, a spy!--a Yankee!"

The weapons rang again; the desperadoes pressed forward, demanding with shrieks and imprecations that the man should be named.

"He is here," answered the captain, turning full upon the astonished fugitive. "He came to me with a story of distress. I pitied him, and gave him shelter; but I telegraphed to Paris to test his veracity, and I find that he lied. No man has been slain in a duel as he states. I believe him to be a Federal emissary, and he is in our power."

A dozen rough hands struck Plade to the deck; he staggered up, with blood upon his face, and called Heaven to witness that he was no traitor.

"Did you speak the truth to me to-day?" cried the accuser.

"I did not; had I done so, you would have refused me relief."

"What are you then? Speak!"

The murderer cowered, with a face so blanched that the blood ceased to flow at its gashes.

"I cannot, I dare not tell!" he muttered.

The skipper made a sign to an attendant. A rope from the yard-arm was flung about the felon's neck, and made fast in a twinkling. He struggled desperately, but the fierce buccaneers held him down; his clothing was rent, and his hairs dishevelled; he made three frantic struggles for speech; but the loud cheers mocked his words as they brandished their cutlasses in his eyes.

Then began that strange lifetime of reminiscence; that trooping of sins and cruelties, in sure, unbroken continuity, through the reeling brain; that moment of years; that great day of judgment, in a thought; that last winkful of light, which flashes back upon time, and makes its frailties luminous. And, higher than all offences, rose that of the fair young wife deserted abroad, left to the alternatives of shame or starvation. Her wail came even now, from the bed of the crowded hospital, to follow him into the world of shadows.

"Monsieur the Commander," hailed the spokesman in the launch, "the government of his Imperial Majesty does not wish to interpose any obstacle to the departure of the Confederate cruiser. It is known, however, that a person guilty of an atrocious crime is concealed on board. In this paper, Monsieur the Capitaine will find all the specifications. The name of the person, Plade. The crime of the person, murder, with premeditation. The giving up of said person is essential to the departure of the cruiser from his Imperial Majesty's waters."

There was blank silence on the deck of the privateer; the torches in the launch threw a glare upon the water and sky. They lit up something struggling between both at the tip of the rocking yard-arm. It was the effigy of a man, bound and suspended, around which swept timidly the bats and gulls, and the sea wind beat it with a shrill, jubilant cry.

"I have done justice unconsciously," said the privateer; "may it be remembered for me when I shall do injustice consciously!"

X.

THE SURVIVING COLONISTS.

The catastrophe of the Colony and the episode having been attained, we have only to leave Mr. Pisgah in Algiers, whither court-martial consigned him, with the penalty of hard labor, and Mr. Risque on the stage route he was so eminently fitted to adorn. The unhappy Freckle continued in the prison of Clichy, and, having nothing else to do, commenced the novel process of thinking. The prison stood high up on Clichy Hill, walled and barred and guarded, like other jails, but within it a fair margin of liberty was allowed the bankrupts, just sufficient to make their fate terrible by temptation. Some good soul had endowed it with a library; newspapers came every day; a café was attached to it, where spirituous liquors were prohibited, to the wrath of the dry throats and raging thirsts of the captives; there was a garden behind it, and a billiard saloon, but these luxuries were not gratuitous; poor Freckle could not even pay his one sou per diem to cook his rations, so that the Prisoners' Relief Association had to make him a present of it. He spent his time between his bare, cheerless bedroom and the public hall. There were many Americans in the place; but none of them were friendly with him when he was found to have no cash. Yet he heard them speak together of their countrymen who had lain in the same jail years before. Yonder was the room of Horace Greeley, incarcerated for a debt which was not his own; here the blood-stains of the Pennsylvania youth who looked out of the window, heedless of warning, and was shot dead by the guard; there the ancient chair, in which Hallidore, the Creole, sat so often, possessor of a million francs, but too obstinate to pay his tailor's bill and go free. While Freckle thought of these, it was suggested to him that he was a very wicked man. The tuitions of his patriarchal father came to mind; he was seen on his knees, to the infinite amusement of the other debtors, who were, however, quite too polite to laugh in his face, and he no longer staked his ration of wine at cards, whereby he had commonly lost it, but held long conversations with an ardent old priest who visited the jail. The priest gave Freckle _breviaries_ and catechisms, and told him that there was no peace of mind outside of the apostolic fold.

So Freckle diligently embraced the ancient Romish faith, renounced the tenets of his plain old sire as false and heretical, and earnestly prepared himself to enter the priesthood.

In this frame of mind he was found by Mr. Simp, who had unexpectedly returned to Paris, and, finding himself again prosperous, came to release Freckle from the toils of Clichy.

The latter waved him away. "I wish to know none of you," he said. "I shall serve out this term, and never again speak to an American abroad."

He was firm, and achieved his purpose. Enthusiasm often answers for brains, and Freckle's religious zeal made him a changed man. He entered a Jesuits' school after his discharge, and in another fashion became as stern, severe, and self-denying as had been his father. He sometimes saw his old comrade, Simp, driving down the Champs Elysées as Freckle came from church in Paris, but the gallant did not recognize the young priest in his dark gown and hose, and wide-rimmed hat.

They followed their several directions, and in the end, with the lessening fortunes of the Confederacy, grew more moody, and yet more ruined by the consciousness that after once suffering the agony of expatriation, they had not improved the added chance to make of themselves men, not Colonists.

It is not the pleasantest phase of our human nature to depict, but since we have essayed it, let it close with its own surrounding shadow.

If we have given no light touch of womanhood to relieve its sombre career, we have failed to be artistic in order to be true.

But that which made the Colonists weak has passed away. There are no longer slaves at home--may there be no exiles abroad!

LITTLE GRISETTE.

Little Grisette, you haunt me yet;
My passion for you was long ago,
Before my head was heavy with snow,
Or mine eye had lost its lustre of jet.
In the dim old Quartier Latin we met;
We made our vows one night in June,
And all our life was honeymoon;
We did not ask if it were sin,
We did not go to kirk to know,
We only loved and let the world
Hum on its pelfish way below;
Marked from our castle in the air,
How pigmy its triumphal cars:
Eight stories from the entry stair,
But near the stars!

Little Grisette, rich or in debt,
We were too fond to chide or sigh--
Never so poor that I could not buy
A sweet, sweet kiss from my little Grisette.
If I could nothing gain or get,
By hook, or crook, or song, or story,
Along the starving road to glory,
I marvelled how your nimble thimble,
As to a tune, danced fast and fleeting,
And stopped my pen to catch the music,
But only heard my heart a-beating;
The quaint old roofs and gables airy
Flung down the light for you to wear it,
And made my love a queen in faery,
To haunt my garret.

Little Grisette, the meals you set
Were sweeter to me than banquet feast;
Your face was a blessing fit for a priest,
At your smile the candle went out in a pet;
The wonderful chops I shall never forget!
If the wine was a trifle too sharp or rank,
We kissed each time before we drank.
The old gilt clock, aye wrong, was swinging
The waxen floor your feet reflected;
And dear Béranger's _chansons_ singing,
You tricked at _picquet_ till detected.
You fill my pipe;--is it your eyes
Whereat I light your cigarette?
On all but me the darkness lies
And my Grisette!

Little Grisette, the soft sunset
Lingered a long while, that we might stay
To mark the Seine from the breezy quay
Around the bridges foam and fret;
How came it that your eyes were wet
When I ambitiously would be
A man renowned across the sea?
I told you I should come again--
It was but half way round the globe--
To bring you diamonds for your faith,
And for your gray a silken robe:
You were more wise than lovers are;
I meant, sweetheart, to tell you true,
I said a tearful "_Au revoir_;"
You said, "_Adieu!_"

Little Grisette, we both regret,
For I am wedded more than wived;
Those careless days in thought revived
But teach me I cannot forget.
Perhaps old age must pay the debt
Young sin contracted long ago--
I only know, I only know,
That phantoms haunt me everywhere
By busy day, in peopled gloam--
They rise between me and my prayer,
They mar the holiness of home!
My wife is proud, my boy is cold,
I dare not speak of what I fret:
'Tis my fond youth with thee I fold,
Little Grisette!

MARRIED ABROAD.

AN AMERICAN ROMANCE OF THE QUARTIER LATIN.