Читать книгу Sir Isumbras at the Ford - D. K. Broster - Страница 24

In a cheap little room, not much more than a garret, at the top of a house off Tottenham Court Road, the Chevalier de la Vireville was shaving himself before a cracked mirror. As he did so he hummed, experimentally, the 'Marseillaise,' which it amused him at times to render, fitting to it, however, when he actually sang it, the burlesque words of Royalist invention, 'le jour de boire est arrivé,' 'c'est pour nous que le boudin grille,' and the rest. The light filtered through the dirty, uncurtained window on to his strong, aquiline features, the bold chin with a cleft in it, the mouth with its lines of recklessness and humour; and threw up too the marks of stress of some kind—it was difficult to tell of what kind—which had bitten into it too deeply for it to be altogether a handsome or an attractive countenance. Even as it was, when Fortuné de la Vireville's smile was merely devil-may-care and not cynical, it had its charm. Yet something had marred his expression, though neither women nor wine held any attraction for him. He followed danger, a commerce which no doubt has purifying effects on some characters, but which in others is apt to breed consequences not altogether commendable; and he followed it intemperately, as though life had very little value for him. With life indeed he possessed only one enduring tie—his mother in Jersey—and, so his friends whispered, the remembrance of another, most untimely snapped. Yet for all this he certainly seemed to find a relish in an existence of the most constant and varied peril, and envisaged his hazards with an unfailing and sometimes inconvenient humour.

The ways in which he 'lived dangerously' were these: He was, first and foremost, a Chouan chief, leading, in a ceaseless guerrilla warfare of sudden attacks and ambushes, among the broom and hedgerows of Brittany, those stubborn little long-haired men of an elder race whose devotion to their religion and their King was almost fanaticism. Secondly, he was intermittently an 'agent de la correspondance'—that is to say, he was in constant personal communication with Jersey, the centre whence set forth all the small Royalist descents on the coast of Brittany and Normandy. Here Captain Philip d'Auvergne, the Jerseyman, titular Prince de Bouillon and captain in His Britannic Majesty's Navy, watched over the interests of the French émigrés and directed the various gun-running expeditions to France. When, therefore, as at the present time, La Vireville was not risking his life amongst Republican bullets, he was venturing it in a little boat, crossing to and fro from Jersey to the Breton coast, liable to be shot at sight by a patrol as he landed, liable to be wrecked on his passage, because secrecy demanded so small a vessel. It was true that the 'Jersey correspondence' had three luggers and a brig of its own, but these were generally used for transporting whole parties of returning émigrés, and in any case they never came right in to shore.

And always, in whatever capacity La Vireville trod his native soil, his head was forfeit, since he was an émigré, and in his own person, as the Chevalier Charles-Marie-Thérèse-Fortuné de la Vireville, liable to summary execution. It really needed not that a couple of months ago the Convention had also issued the large reward of five thousand francs for the body, dead or alive, of 'Augustin, ci-devant noble, chef de Chouans'; for 'Augustin' and he had but one body between them. Like most of the Chouan leaders, La Vireville had a nom de guerre, and many even of his followers knew him by no other. Little, however, did the reward for his person trouble him, since he knew his Bretons incapable of betraying him for money, and was very sensibly persuaded that, his head being forfeit in any case, it did not concern him whether, when he had parted with it, any other person were to reap pecuniary benefit by the separation. Only, as a sacrifice to prudence—about the only one he ever made, and that more for the sake of the cause he served than for his own—he strove to keep apart as much as he could these two selves, and, so far, he had reason to believe the Republican Government ignorant of their identity.

When he had finished his shaving operations, La Vireville, still humming, looked round the scantily appointed dressing-table for something upon which to wipe his razor. On the threadbare dimity lay, in tempting proximity, a folded paper with worn and soiled edges, but this he refrained from using. It was, in fact, the proclamation in question for the person of 'Monsieur Augustin,' and, as it possessed the merit of being very inaccurate in its description of that person, he had the habit of carrying it upon him—partly, he declared, as an amulet. The Republic one and indivisible had not, he averred, the wits to conceive that a man would voluntarily carry about with him his own death-warrant.

"Head of a ci-devant!" he observed now, wiping the razor upon a piece of newspaper, and making a grimace at his image in the glass. "No, Augustin, my friend, you will get a bullet through your heart before ever that ornament rolls into the basket and is shown to an admiring crowd." And indeed this was highly probable.

He was about to put down the razor when the tarnished mirror suddenly revealed to him a tiny trickle of blood on his left cheek, just below the short furrowed scar that ran across it. He had cut himself in shaving—the most infinitesimal injury, yet, after standing a moment staring at the glass, he gave a violent exclamation, dabbed at the place with a hasty handkerchief, and threw the scarcely flecked linen from him as though it were a thing accursed. For a Chouan, of all men, the action, with its suggestion of repugnance, was strange.

However, in another minute his brow cleared and he proceeded with his toilet. Then once more humming the 'Marseillaise,' he sat down upon the bed and looked over the contents of a letter-case which he drew from his pocket. A missive in a fine large flourishing hand signed "Bouillon" informed him that the writer was eagerly expecting his arrival to confer with him as to the landing of a cargo of arms and ammunition near Cap Fréhel on the Breton coast. And, in fact, it was M. de la Vireville's intention to set out this morning for Southampton, thence to Jersey, on this matter. Another letter was there, from Jersey also, in a feminine hand. The smile which was not cynical came about the émigré's lips as he re-read it, and, being a Frenchman, he lifted and kissed his mother's letter. A third was the several days' old note from the Marquis de Flavigny, telling him of the time of the conference which he had already attended in Mr. Elphinstone's house.

"Tudieu!" exclaimed M. de la Vireville as he came upon this. "And I promised to say good-bye to the baby. I wonder have I the time?"

He sprang up to put together his few effects, and in a very short space was making his way westwards.