Читать книгу By Right of Sword - Arthur W. Marchmont - Страница 8

I walked with my sister to her home, and then returned to my rooms and sat down to think out seriously and in detail the extraordinary position into which I had fallen.

The more I considered it the more I liked it, and I am bound to add the more dangerous it seemed. Obviously it was one thing to be mistaken for a man and to pass for him for a few minutes or hours: but it was quite another to take up his life where he had dropped it and play the part day by day and week after week. There must be a thousand threads of the existence of which no one but himself could know, yet each would have to be laid correctly in continuation of the due pattern of his life; or discovery would follow.

Here lay my difficulty, and for a time I did not see a way round it or through it or under it. So far as I could judge by all that my sister had told me, the resemblance between the real Alexis and myself was strictly limited to physical qualities. A freak of nature had made us counterparts of one another in size, look, complexion, voice, and certain gestures. But it stopped there. My other self was a subtle, cunning, intriguing, traitorous conspirator, and very much of a coward: while I—well, I was not that.

I come of a very old Cornish family with many of the Celtic characteristics most strongly developed. I believe that I have a certain amount of mother wit or shrewdness, but no process that was ever known or tried with me was sufficient to drive into me even sufficient learning to enable me to scrape through a career. I was the despair first of the Russian schoolmasters for over ten years, and next of all the English tutors who took me in hand during the next ten. I went to a large English school, and was expelled, after a hundred scrapes, because I learnt nothing. I tried to cram for Oxford, but never could get through Smalls; and the good old Master, who loved a strong man, almost cried when, after two years of ploughs, he had to send me down, when I was the best oar in the eight, the smartest field and hardest hitter in the eleven, the fastest mile and half-mile in the Varsity, and one of the three strongest men in all Oxford.

But I had to go, and I went to an army crammer to try and be stuffed for the service. I never had a chance with the books; but I carried all before me in every possible form of sport. It was there I picked up my fencing and revolver shooting. It became a sort of passion with me. I could use the revolver like a trickster and shoot to a hair's breadth; while with either broadsword or rapier I could beat the fencing master all over the school. However, I was beaten by the examiners and my couple of years' work succeeded only in giving my muscles the hardness of steel and flexibility of whipcord. I am not a big man, nearly two inches under 6ft, but at that time I had never met anyone who could beat me in any trial where strength, endurance, or agility was needed. But these would not satisfy the examiners, so I gave up all thought of getting into the army that way.

I tried the ranks, therefore, and joined a regiment in which a couple of brainless family men had enlisted, as a step toward a commission. But I was only in for six months: and my surprise is that I stopped so long. There was a beast of a sergeant—a strong fellow in his way who had been cock of the dunghill until I came—and after I'd thrashed him first with the single-sticks, and then with the gloves, and in a wrestling bout had given him a taste of our Cornish methods, he marked me out for special petty illtreatment. It came to a climax one day when a couple of dozen of us were sent off on a train journey. I left on the platform some bit of the gear. He noticed it and bringing it to the carriage window, flung it in at me and, with a sneer and a big coarse oath, cried:—"D'ye think I'm here to wet-nurse you, you damnation great baby?" And he waited a moment with the sneer still on his face: and he didn't wait in vain, either. Forgetting all about discipline and thinking only of his insult, I flung out my left and hit him fair on the mouth, sending him down like a ninepin. Then I picked up my things and went straight away to report myself to the officer in charge of us. There was a big row, with the result that the sergeant was reduced to the ranks, and I was allowed to buy myself out, being given plainly to understand that if I stayed in, my chance of a commission was as good as lost. This closed my army career.

For a few years I was at a loose end altogether—a man of action without a sphere. Then the natural result followed. I fell madly in love with my best friend's sister, Edith Balestier. I cursed my folly in having wasted my life, and filled the air with vows that I would set to work to increase my income of £250 a year to an amount such as would let me give her a home worthy of her. She loved me. I know that. But her mother didn't; and in the end, the mother won. Edith tossed me over ruthlessly, while I was away for a couple of months; and all in a hurry she married another man for his title and money.

It was only the old tale. I knew that well enough; but it seemed to break my last hope. Everything I'd ever really wanted, I'd always failed to get. I was like a lunatic; and vowed I'd kill myself after I'd punished the woman who'd done worse than kill me.

I thought out a scheme and played it shrewdly enough. I shut the resolve out of sight, and laughed and jibed as though I felt no wound. And I waited. The chance came surely enough. I went down to a dance at a place a bit out of town and took my revolver with me. After a waltz I led my Lady Cargill out into the shrubbery and when she least suspected what I was about, whipped out the weapon and told her what I was going to do. She knew me well enough to feel I was in deadly earnest; but she made no scene, such as another woman might. Her white beauty held my hand an instant, and in that time her husband, Sir Philip, came up. Then I had a flash of genius. I knew he was as jealous as a man could be and as he had known nothing of my relations with Edith, like many another self-sufficient idiot, he imagined she had loved him and no one else. I opened his eyes that night. Keeping him in control with the pistol, I made him hear the whole passionful story of her love for me from her own lips; and I shall never forget how the white of his craven fear changed to the dull grey of a sickened heart as he heard. At a stroke it killed my desire to kill. I had had a revenge a thousand times more powerful. I had made the wife see the husband's craven poltroonery, and the husband the wife's heart infidelity; and I let them live for their mutual distrust and punishment.

A month later I stood on the Moscow platform, my back turned on England for ever, my face turned war-wards, and my heart ready for any devilment that might offer, when my fate was tossed topsy-turvy into a cauldron of welcome dangers, promising death and certainly calculated to give me that distraction from my own troubles which I desired so keenly.

I was thus ready enough to take up my new character in earnest and play it to the end. If I were discovered, it could not mean more than death; while there were possibilities in it which might have very different results. War with Turkey was a certainty, and at such a time I should be able to find my sphere, and might be able to carve for myself a position.

It was clear that Alexis had so far been known as a very different man from the kind that produces good soldiers: but men sometimes reform suddenly, and the new Alexis would be cast in a quite different mould. The difficulty was to invent a pretext for the sudden change; and in regard to this a good idea occurred to me.

I resolved to say that I had had an ugly accident and a great fright, and to connect this with the shaving of my beard and moustache. To pretend that the mishap had effected as complete a change in my nature as in my appearance: as if my brain had been in some way affected. I mapped out a very boldly defined course of eccentric conduct which would be not altogether inconsistent with some such mental disturbance. I would be moody, silent, reserved, and yet subject to gusts and fits of uncontrollable passion and anger: desperate in all matters touching courage, and contemptuously intolerant of any kind of interference. I knew that my skill with the sword and pistol would soon win me respect and a reputation, while any mistakes I made would be set down to eccentricity. I was drawing from life—a French officer whom I had known stationed at Rouen: evidently a man with a past which no one even dared to question. I calculated that in this way I should make time to choose my permanent course.

I soon had an opportunity of setting to work.

The officer who, as Olga had told me, was to be my chief second in the morning, Lieutenant Essaieff, came to see me. He was immensely surprised at the change in my appearance, scanned me very curiously and indeed suspiciously, and asked the cause.

"Drink or madness?" he put it laconically, in that tone of contempt with which one speaks to a distrusted servant or a disliked acquaintance.

Even my friends held me cheap, it seemed.

"Neither drink nor madness, if you please," said I, very sternly, eyeing him closely. "But a miracle."

"And which of the devils is it this time, Petrovitch?" he asked, laughing lightly. "Gad, he must have been hard put to it. Or is it one of the she-devils, eh? You know plenty of those. Let's have the tale." He laughed again; but the mirth was not so genuine that time, and I could see that the effect of the fixed stare with which I regarded him began to tell.

"I'm in no mood for this folly," said I, very curtly. "Save for a miracle, I should now be a dead man. That's all. And I'll thank you not to jest about it."

He was serious now and asked:—"How did it happen?"

I made no answer, but sat staring moodily out in front of me, and yet contriving to watch him as he eyed me furtively now and again, in surprise at the change in me.

"Are you ill, Petrovitch?" he asked at length.

"Hell!" I burst out with the utmost violence, springing to my feet. "What is it to you?" And then with complete inconsequence I added:—"I was praying, and in answer a light flashed on me and would have consumed me wholly, but for a miracle. Half my clothes and my face-hair were consumed—and I was changed."

"Ah, prayer's a dangerous thing when you've a lot of arrears to make up," he said with a sneer.

I turned and looked at him coldly and threateningly.

"Lieutenant Essaieff, you have been good enough to lend me your services for this business to-morrow morning, but that gives you no title to insult me. After to-morrow you will be good enough to give me an explanation of your words."

He had risen and stood looking at me so earnestly that I half thought he suspected the change. But he did not.

"You will not be alive to demand it," he said, at length, contemptuously, clipping the words short in a manner that shewed me how angry he was and how much he despised me. "I'm only sorry I was fool enough to be persuaded to act for you," he added as he swung out of the room.

I laughed to myself when he had gone, for I saw that I had imposed on him. He thought I was half beside myself with fear. Evidently I had an evil-smelling reputation. But I would soon change all that, I thought, as I set to work to examine all the papers and possessions in the rooms. I was engaged in this work when my other second arrived. He was named Ugo Gradinsk, and was a very different kind of man, and had been a much more intimate friend. He had heard of my accident and had come for news.

A glance at him filled me with instinctive disgust.

"What's up, Alexis?" was his greeting. "That prig Essaieff, has just told me you're in a devil of a funny mood, and thinks you're about out of your mind with fear. What the devil have you done to yourself?" He touched his chin as he spoke.

"Can't I be shaved without setting you all cackling with curiosity? I had half my hair burnt off and shaved the other half." He started at my surly tone and I saw in his eyes a reflection of the other man's thoughts.

"D'ye think you'll be a smaller mark for Devinsky's sword? It's made a devil of a difference in your looks, I must say. And in your manners too." I heard him mutter this last sentence into his moustache.

"Do you think I mean for an instant to allow that bully's sword to touch me?" I asked scowling angrily.

"Well, you thought so last night when I was giving you that wrinkle with the foils—and that was certainly why you got this infernal duel put off for a day."

"Ah, well, I've been fooling you, that's all," said I, shortly. "I've played the fool long enough too, and I mean business. I've taken out a patent." I laughed grimly.

"What the devil d'ye mean? What patent?"

"A new sword stroke. The sabre stroke, I call it. Every first-rank swordsman has one," I cried boastfully.

"First-rank swordsman be hanged. Why, you can't hold a candle to me. And I would not stand before Devinsky's weapon for the promise of a colonelcy. Don't be an ass."

"My cut's with the flat of the sword across the face directly I've disarmed my man."

"And a devilish effective cut too no doubt—when you have disarmed him. But you'd better be making your will and putting your things in order, instead of talking this sort of swaggering rubbish to keep your courage up. You know jolly well that Devinsky means mischief; and what always happens when he does. I don't want to frighten you, but hang it all, you know what he is."

"I'm going to pass the night in prayer," said I: and my visitor laughed boisterously at this.

"If you confess all we've done together, old man, you'll want a full night," he said.

"The prayers are for him, not for me," and at that he laughed more boisterously than before: and he began to talk of a hundred dissipated experiences we had had together. I let him talk freely as it was part of my education, and he rattled on about such a number of shameful things that I was disgusted alike with him and with the beast I was supposed to be. At length to my relief he stopped and asked me to go across to the club for the last night.

I resolved to go, thinking that if I were in his company it would seem appropriate, and I wished to paint in more of the garish colours of my new character among my fellow-officers. I made myself very offensive the moment I was inside the place. I swaggered about the rooms with an assumption of insufferable insolence. Whenever I found a man looking askance at me—and this was frequent enough—I picked him out for some special insult. I spoke freely of the "miracle" that had happened to me, and the change that had been effected. I repeated my coarse silly jest about praying all night for my antagonist: and I so behaved that before I had been in the place an hour, I had laid the foundations of enough quarrels to last me a month if I wished to have a meeting every morning.

"Ah, he knows well enough he's going to die to-morrow morning," said one man in my hearing. "It's no good challenging a man under sentence of death," said another; while a number of others held to Essaieff's view—that I was beside myself with fear, or drink, or both combined. I placed myself at the disposal of every man who had a word to say; but the main answer I received was an expression of thanks that after that night I should trouble them no more.

I left the place, hugely pleased with the result of the night's work. I had created at a stroke a new part for Alexis Petrovitch: and prepared everyone to expect and think nothing of any fresh eccentricities or further change they might observe in me in the future.

I reached my rooms in high spirits, and sat down to overhaul the place for papers, and to learn something more of myself than I at present knew.