Chapter XIV: I Am Rescued by My Monster

Have you not noticed, my little friend, how the wicked are always the superstitious? It is because life is to them full of dark corners, in which the unsuspected hides. The atheist will still be for baiting a deity whose existence he denies; he will wring a response from a vacuum, which failing, he fears to canvass emptiness for the reason.

Dr. Peel knew well the impotence of virtue to conquer. He saw it of such poor force in the world as to figure of no moment at all in a contest with vice. He did not fear God, but he feared that the devil was God, and vindictive where the harming of his protégées--of whom he had no thought but that I must be one--was concerned. He had been eye-witness of the, to him unaccountable, foiling of his project; and it struck him as if he had fallen upon an ambush in one of those dark corners. He shrunk back terrified, and thenceforth exchanged his noisome attentions to me for an attitude of propitiation which was as unwelcome, and even more stultifying, in seeming, to my hopes, inasmuch as it included an increased jealous concern for my safeguarding. But there, in the end, his service of his dark master was made to recoil upon his own head, through his very scepticism of the more divinely cunning power which works for good. He would lock me, as I said, into my room at night, thereby securing me not only from prowling evils, but an asylum in which I might ponder undisturbed what plans I could of escape. And it was that security from interruption which enabled me presently to realise on an opportunity of which I was quite unexpectedly made the mistress.

It fell early very cold and wintry that November, but the chill in my heart was colder than any hailstones. Presently such an apathy of despair found me that I would hardly leave my room all day, but would sit in a sullen misery gazing, gazing from my unbarred open window upon the fraction of stiffening world it commanded. It was at a front angle of the house, pretty high above the ground; and under it the stony drive went round an elbow of lofty trees to the fatal unseen gates of the entrance beyond.

One morning, after breakfast, I was seated there, when a chaise rolled up to the steps of the door below, and a moment later Dr. Peel entered and was driven rapidly away, on some fresh marauding devilry, I conjectured. The vehicle, sped by a heart-whole curse from my lips, had disappeared scarce a minute, when round the bend of the shrubs it had taken came striding the oddest figure--an interloper by way of the open portals, it seemed. Such an event had never, in my knowledge, happened before. I stared, and roused myself, elate even over this momentary grotesque vision from the world beyond. It was just a stilt-walker, a monstrous pierrot, with floured absurd face and conical cap, his legs, cased in linen trousers, rising an immense height from the ground. As he came on, ridiculously gyrating, he blew a pipe, and rattled at a little tabor that hung from his neck. In the same moment he saw me where I stood, and danced up, rolling and wallowing--for he was an incomprehensibly great creature for such a trade--and broke into a mad, jerky little chaunt, half French, half English, as he approached--

“_O-ha, mamselle! Je vous trouve, je vous salue! A la fin çà, çà, çà!_

“‘Be’old the mountaineer,
He sik for edelweiss,
I have found my dear
Very high and very nice--_çà, çà, çà!_’”

He flicked off his cap--with a grin that showed, though against the flour, a set of perfect teeth--and in three strides was at the window, his eyes and huge white face above the level of the sill. Even in the instant, as if the former were a cypher momentarily isolated for my reading, I understood, and was stricken to stone.

“The graveyard!” whispered the pierrot in that instant: “be at the wall over against it at ten o’clock to-night”--and reeled away, to a pantomime of grins and pirouettes, as the lodge-keeper came raging round the corner in pursuit.

“_O que nenni dà!_” cried the intruder, twisting and turning and affecting to bend with laughter. “O, madame! O, fie! I am very honourable z’jentlemans. Wat, I say! I make you good proposals to marry. I display my parts, _v’là_!”

He contorted himself, with absurd coquetry. “Wat!” he protested, pausing; “madame declines of the ravishment? She does not move herself to fly with me? Vair well”-- He pretended of a sudden to espy his pursuer, and pressing his cap to his breast, waltzed up to him.

“Hey, my little fellow,” he cried (the lodge-keeper was at least as big as Daniel Lambert), “it is for you, then. You know the best wat is good. I will not abduct madame: I will not marry at all. It is vair much satisfaction. You see me dance, _hein_? Come on, jolly _garçon_!--

“‘Love miscarries--heh?
When a man marries--heh?’

When a man’s single he live at his is--you spik French, but yes?”

The lodge-keeper hawked up a glair of oaths, and discharged them. He swore by all his gods that he would cut off the intruder by the legs, unless he went out, and double quick, the way he had come. Then ensued a comical scene. The pierrot, affecting to retreat after a brief altercation, swerved suddenly and seated himself on the branch of a tree--

“O-ho!” he said, as the other came lumbering up, “it is vair well, but I make up my mind. I refuse madame, it is true. You know to marry, what it is? Listen, then--

“‘At the end of one year one baby:
That is jolly-fun!’”

The lodge-keeper, cursing, made a snatch at the man’s stilts; but, incredibly strong, he whipped them up out of reach, and held them so horizontal.

“‘At the end of two year two baby--
How it is a little serious!’”

he sang.

The lodge-keeper swore and jumped, till he was running wet for all the cold; but he was too fat a fox for these grapes.

“‘At the end of three year three baby--
But that is the very devil,’”

bawled the pierrot ferociously, and clashed the stilts like great castanets.

Then he settled himself firmly.

“‘One asks for bread,’” bellowed he; and suddenly flourishing his right stilt, caught the lodge-keeper a stinging smack across the head with it--

“‘Another for soup,’” he yelled, and gave such a counter blow with his left, that the lodge-keeper fairly reeled and went rolling over--

“‘_L’aut’ qui demande à téter,_
_Et les seins sont tarie,_’”

shouted the pierrot, and was up and out of sight in a moment, striding like Talus. The infuriate lodge-keeper rose, when he had recovered himself, to pursue; but he was too late. The pierrot had got clean away.

Not till all had been vanished many minutes did I awake from the stunned trance into which I had been thrown by those few whispered words. Then, still by the window, I sank upon the floor, and, simultaneously, into a very reel and passion of ecstasy.

How had he traced me? Whence devised this strange method of procuring speech? Ah! as to that, there were no doubt experiences in his past life still unrelated; and, after all, did he not always in a measure--strictly in a measure--walk on stilts? This was only to extend his wooden legs indefinitely. But after what secret practices, and suspicions averted? For I held him still the creature of his despicable master. My Gogo--for it was he! My Gogo, the great resourceful, affectionate, crippled giant! It was inexpressibly touching to me to know myself, the poor persecuted, wistful dupe of Fate, still the cynosure of this burning soul--not forgotten, schemed for, held the sacred object of its desire. All the time I had thought myself abandoned, he had been weaving a ladder for my despair. Good Gogo! Dear, kind, honest Caliban! He would save me yet--he would save me; and the tears flowed from my eyes. How was he such an actor? It was true I had known hitherto only one side of him--the saturnine--the shadow of the great fallen rock. Ah, he could show a lighter for my sake--little roguish sparklets twinkling in the sun of his hot yearning. I loved him at that moment, and my tears fell for him and myself.

But, stay! What had he whispered? I must remember. At ten o’clock--the wall over against the graveyard? Why had he so chosen--so nicely specified? Did he know nothing of the patrol? Yes, likely; but it was a desperate expedient, calculated upon a possible superstition, upon a presumptive avoidance of so haunted a spot. I pressed my hands to my wet forehead and tangled hair. He had dared and done all he could: the rest was for me, whom he knew and could trust. I would not be unworthy. I would answer to him wit for wit.

Half an hour later, serene and wicked as he could have wished, I took my way, singing, into the grounds, and, unaccosted, sought that remote quarter where the graveyard was situated. Still softly singing, I pushed between the trees, and came out into the waste interval against the boundary wall which was devoted to the watch. Stooping here to pick some chance berries, I had not to wait a minute before the local sentinel, as I had calculated, was upon me. I dropped my spray, with an aspect of alarm that struggled into piteousness.

“O, I am so sorry!” I said.

The man--he was personable enough to make my task the less nauseous--eyed me, insolent and masterful.

“All right,” he said. “Blow me if you ain’t done it now. Why, don’t you know as this here’s Prisoner’s Base, and you’re out of bounds?”

I went up to him fearlessly, and taking his hands, muffled in great hairy gloves, looked up into his face. I saw a spot of deeper colour come into his cheeks, and he breathed fast.

“Shall I confess,” I said, low and urgent, and glancing quickly about me, “that I wanted to be caught?”

“Ah!” he said, and showed his teeth in a twitching grin.

“Hush!” I whispered. “I am in great despair. You know perfectly well I am sane; I shall die if I am detained here longer.”

“O! will you?” he responded.

“Listen,” I said, flushing and hanging my head. “I offer you no money, which I have not got. But there are things--other things--sold here, which”--

I tore my hands away, and, putting them to my face, fell back from him.

“Hey!” he said, in a thick whisper, and pursued me. “Why do you pick _me_ out for your favours, you little beauty?”

I did not answer.

“Why?” he insisted.

“If it has to be,” I muttered from my refuge, “you--O, don’t ask me!”

“Why?” he said.

“Well, of twenty evils, choose the best-looking.”

He gave a low chuckle.

“Come along, where we can be private,” said he, and put a hand on me; but I started back, affecting an agony of shame.

“O! what have I said--what promised? Let me go. Don’t think any more of it.”

“Won’t I?” he said; and added threateningly: “You’ve given your promise, remember.”

I looked about me, and again upon my twined fingers.

“To-night, then, at--at ten o’clock.”

“Where?”

“In the workshop.”

“You can get out?”

“Yes; I have a way.”

“That you have,” he said, coveting me with his eyes; “and a pretty one, my darling.”

I entreated him once more, in a passion of emotion--

“If--if I consent, you’ll hold to your part of the bargain?”

“Eh?” he questioned.

“Help me to escape?”

“No fear o’ my forgetting,” he answered. “You may lay to that.”

I knew he meant to betray me in the double sense, and would have given more than I feigned to barter at that moment for the leave to beguile him to me, and slip a knife into his lying throat. But I tasted part of my revenge in the thought of his freezing alone there by and by, in the rendezvous to which my wits had decoyed him, while I went to my other undisturbed.

He was jealous of me, and suspicious still of so light a surrender. But the prize was worth the risking; and in the end he let me go, gloating over my stealthy retreat, as a cruel schoolmaster might watch the slinking away of a delinquent whom he had ordered up for punishment later.

That night fell a harder frost, with glittering stars but no moon. Early secured in my sanctum, I awaited the great moment in such an indescribable agony of mind as I have never felt before or since. Every step near my door was a tread upon a nerve. The stable clock, when it rang out, clear and sonorous, the last quarter after nine, seemed to brain me with its every stroke. I stole to the open window, took intent stock of the quiet, seated myself, poised to spring, on the sill, and passed my duck-stone at a little distance under my nostrils. The next instant I had alighted safely on my feet, and reeling against the wall beneath, stood a minute to recover. The next, I was round the angle of the house, and sped into the dark shrubberies, where were safety and concealment.

Going very softly in my stockinged feet, and careful of my knowledge not to penetrate the thicket until close upon the appointed place, I reached my goal upon the stroke of the hour.

“Well!” whispered a voice from the starlight. “I could trust you.”

He had been stretched recumbent on the wall top, and now rose cautiously to my view, no longer the whitened fool, but the true Gogo of my affections. I looked up at him as from a well; and he swung his long stilts over, as he sat, so that they rested on the ground beneath.

“Quick!” he muttered; “without a moment lost--swarm! I can’t bend.”

Heaven knows how I did it--with no better show of grace than Lady Sophia, I fear. But somehow I scrambled up, until he could reach my hands, and haul me with a mighty power beside him. Then, once more, swing went his legs, and there was the ladder for my descent on the other side.

I clung to him convulsively; I kissed his hands; I could not refrain from sobbing.

“O, Gogo!” I said; “what you have saved me from--O, Gogo, what!”

His breath caught like a wounded lion’s.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “There is far to go first!”

“Put me down, then,” I answered, alert in the stress of things.

“No,” he said. “On my back--quick!”

“You are going to carry me?”

“There are bloodhounds,” he replied. “There must be no tracks but the stilts’--no scent for them to follow.”

Then I understood the fulness of his plan; but still I lingered, amazed.

“I am not a child. What strength, though yours, could bear me so?”

He showed me a long staff that leaned to him against the outer wall.

“There is my third prop,” he said. “When I am driven, I can still seat you upon a branch, and save the scent. The ground is iron, and”--he struck his chest--“these ribs. Come, and let me wear my heart upon my sleeve.”

The next moment we were off. The great creature swayed beneath me like a tree; but he never staggered or faltered, save periodically to rest himself and me. The sweet night wind blew upon my face, cold and colder. I snuggled from it into the vast nape of his neck, which was like a mat for warmth. I had no idea or care whither he was taking me, and the knowledge only that it was by roads deserted at this silent hour. Still he held on, and, when frost and weariness threatened to numb my brain, could spare a strong hand to imprison both mine lest I fell. And still the flight endured, and I asked, could ask, no question, not even when I grew penetrated by a dull consciousness of ascent--of my comrade straining and toiling beneath me like a stricken Sisyphus--of the groaning of the giant spirit in him who would not be subdued. Then, at last, came a pause, and darkness and release; and I felt myself swung gently down to rest upon a mat of scented leaves, whose warmth and fragrance wooed me to such a sleep as I had never known before.