The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 2

“Ah! mon Dieu! who knows? There is enough mischief here to kill half a squadron; but some fellows get through anything. If we had him in a quiet chamber of the Faubourg, with a good nurse, and all still and tranquil about him, there ‘s no saying; but here, with some seven hundred others, – many as bad, some worse than himself, – the chances are greatly against him. Come, however, we’ll do our best for him.” So saying, he proceeded to pass ligatures on some bleeding arteries; and although speaking rapidly all the while, his motions were even still more quick and hurried. “How old is he?” asked the surgeon, suddenly, as he gazed attentively at the youth.

“I can’t tell you,” said Darcy. “He belonged to my own corps, and by the lace on his jacket, I see, must have been a Volunteer; but I shame to say I don’t remember even his name.” “He knows you, then,” replied the doctor, who, with the shrewd perception of his craft, watched the working of the sick man’s features. “Is’t not so?” said he, stooping down and speaking with marked distinctness. “You know your colonel?”

A gesture, too faint to be called a nod of the head, and a slight motion of the eyebrows, seemed to assent to this question; and Darcy, whose laboring faculties struggled to bring up some clew to the memory of a face he was convinced he had known before, was about to speak again, when a mounted orderly, with a led horse beside him, rode up to the spot, and looking round for a few seconds, as if in search of some one, said, —

“The English colonel, I believe?” The Knight nodded. “You are to mount this horse, sir,” continued the orderly, “and proceed to the head-quarters at once.”

The doctor whispered a few hasty sentences, and while promising to bestow his greatest care upon the sick man, assured Darcy that at the head-quarters he would soon obtain admission of the wounded Volunteer into the officers’ hospital. Partly comforted by this, and partly yielding to what he knew was the inevitable course of fortune, the Knight took a farewell look of his follower, and mounted the horse provided for him.

Darcy was too much engrossed by the interest of the wounded soldier’s case to think much on what might await himself; nor did he notice for some time that they had left the high-road by which the troops were marching for a narrower causeway, leading, as it seemed, not into, but at one side of Alexandria. It mattered so little to him, however, which way they followed, that he paid no further attention, nor was he aware of their progress, till they entered a little mud-built village, which swarmed with dogs, and miserable-looking half-clothed Arabs.

“How do they call this village?” said the Knight, speaking now for the first time to his guide.

“El Etscher,” replied the soldier; “and here we halt” At the same moment he dismounted at the door of a low, mean-looking house; and having ushered Darcy into a small room dimly lighted by a lamp, departed.

The Knight listened to the sharp tramp of the horses’ feet as they moved away; and when they had gone beyond hearing, the silence that followed fell heavily and drearily on his spirits. After sitting for some time in expectation of seeing some one sent after him, he arose and went to the door, but there now stood a sentry posted. He returned at once within the room, and partly overcome by fatigue, and partly from the confusion of his own harassed thoughts, he leaned his head on the table and slept soundly.

“Pardon, Monsieur le colonel,” said a voice at his ear, as, some hours later in the night, he was awakened from his slumbers. “You will be pleased to follow me.” Darcy looked up and beheld a young officer, who stood respectfully before him; and though for a second or so he could not remember where he was, the memory soon came back, and without a word he followed his conductor.

The officer led the way across a dirty, ill-paved courtyard, and entered a building beyond it of greater size, but apparently not less dilapidated than that they had quitted. From the hall, which was lighted with a large lamp, they could perceive through an open door a range of stables filled with horses; at the opposite side a door corresponding with this one, at which a dragoon stood with his carbine on his arm. At a word from the officer the soldier moved aside and permitted them to enter.

The room into which they proceeded was large, but almost destitute of furniture. A common deal table stood in the middle, littered with military cloaks, swords, and shakos. In one corner was a screen, from behind which the only light proceeded; and, with a gesture towards this, the officer motioned Darcy to advance, while with noiseless footsteps he himself withdrew.

Darcy moved forward, and soon came within the space enclosed by the screen, and in front of an officer in a plain uniform, who was busily engaged in writing. Maps, returns, printed orders, and letters lay strewed about him, and in the small brazier of burning wood beside him might be seen the charred remains of a great heap of papers. Darcy had full a minute to contemplate the figure before him ere he was noticed. The Frenchman was short and muscular, with a thick, bushy head of hair, bald in the centre of the head. His features were full of intelligence and quickness, but more unmistakably denoted violence of temper, and the coarse nature of one not born to his present rank, which seemed, at least, that of a field officer. His hands were covered with rings, but their shape and color scarcely denoted that such ornaments were native to them.

“Ha, – the English colonel, – sit down, sir,” said he to Darcy, pointing to a chair without rising from his own. Darcy seated himself with the easy composure of one who felt that in any situation his birth and breeding made him unexceptionable company.

“I wished to see you, sir. I have received orders, that is,” said he, speaking with the greatest rapidity, and a certain thickness of utterance very difficult to follow, “to send for you here, and make certain inquiries, your answers to which will entirely decide the conduct of the Commander-in-Chief in your behalf. You are not aware, perhaps, how completely you have put this in our power?”

“I suppose,” said Darcy, smiling, “my condition as a prisoner of war makes me subject to the usual hardships of such a lot; but I am not aware of anything, peculiar to my case, that would warrant you in proposing even one question which a gentleman and a British officer could refuse to answer.”

“There is exactly such an exception,” replied the Frenchman, hastily. “The proofs are very easy, and nearer at hand than you think of.”

“You have certainly excited my curiosity, sir,” said the Knight, with composure; “you will excuse my saying that the feeling is unalloyed by any fear.”

“We shall see that presently,” said the French officer rising and moving towards the door of an apartment which Darcy had not noticed. “Auguste,” cried he, “is that report ready?” The answer was not audible to the Knight. But the officer resumed, “No matter; it is sufficient for our purpose.” And hastily taking a paper from the hands of a subaltern, he returned to his place within the screen. “A gentleman so conversant with our language, it would be absurd to suppose ignorant of our institutions. Now, sir, to make a very brief affair of this, you have, in contravention to a law passed in the second year of the Republic, ventured to apply opprobrious epithets to the forces of France, ridiculing the manner, bearing, and conduct of our troops, and instituting comparison between the free citizens of a free state and the miserable minions of a degraded monarchy. If a Frenchman, your accusation, trial, and sentence would have probably been nigh accomplished before this time. As a foreigner and a prisoner of war – ”

“I conclude such remarks as I pleased to make were perfectly open to me,” added Darcy, finishing the sentence.

“Then you admit the charge,” said the Frenchman eagerly, as if he had succeeded in entrapping a confession.

“So far, sir, as the expressions of my poor judgment on the effectiveness of your army, and its chances against such a force as we have yonder, I am not only prepared to avow, but if you think the remarks worth the trouble of hearing, to repeat them.”

“As a prisoner of war, sir, according to the eighty-fourth article of the Code Militaire, the offence must be tried by a court-martial, one-half of whose members shall have the same rank as the accused.”

“I ask nothing better, sir, nor will I ever believe that any man who has carried a sword could deem the careless comments of a prisoner on what he sees around him a question of crime and punishment.”

“I would advise you to reflect a little, sir, ere you suffer matters to proceed so far. The witnesses against you – ”

“The witnesses!” exclaimed the Knight, in amazement.

“Yes, sir, four dragoons of a German regiment, thoroughly conversant with your language and ours, have deposed to the words – ”

“I avow everything I have spoken, and am ready to abide by it.”

“Take care, sir, – take care.”

“Pardon me, sir,” said Darcy, with a look of quiet irony, “but it strikes me that the exigencies of your army must be far greater than I deemed them, or you had never had recourse to a system of attempted intimidation.”

“You are in error there,” said the Frenchman. “It was the desire to serve, not to injure you, suggested my present course. It remains with yourself to show that my interest was not misplaced.”

“Let me understand you more clearly. What is expected of me?”

“The answers to questions which doubtless every countryman of yours and mine could reply to from the public papers, but which, to us here, remote from intercourse and knowledge, are matters of slow acquirement.” While the French officer spoke, he continued to search among the papers before him for some document, and at length, taking up a small slip of paper, resumed: “For instance, the ‘Moniteur’ asserts that you meditate sending a force from India to cross the Red Sea and the Desert, and menace us by an attack in the rear as well as in the front. This reads so like a fragment of an Oriental tale, that I can forgive the smile with which you hear it.”

“Nay, sir; you have misinterpreted my meaning,” said the Knight, calmly. “I am free to confess I thought this intelligence was no secret. The form of our Government, the public discussions of our Houses, the freedom of our press, are little favorable to mystery. If you have nothing to ask of me more difficult to answer than this – ”

“And the expedition of Acre, – is this also correct?”

“Perfectly so. A combined movement, which shall compel you to evacuate the country, is in preparation.”

“Parbleu, sir,” said the Frenchman, stamping his foot with impatience, “these are somewhat bold words for a man in your situation to one in mine.”

“I fancy, sir, that circumstance affects the issue I allude to very slightly indeed; even though the officer to whom I address myself should be General Menou, the Commander-in-Chief.”

“And if I be, sir, and if you know it,” said Menou, – for it was he, – his face suffused with anger, “is it consistent with the respect due to my position and to your own safety, to speak thus?”

“For the first, sir, although a mere surmise on my part, I humbly hope I have made no transgression; for the last, I have very little reason to feel any solicitude, knowing that if you hurt a hair of my head, a heavy reprisal will await such of your own officers as may be taken, and the events of yesterday may have told you that a contingency of this sort is neither improbable nor remote.”

Menou made no answer to this threatening speech, but with folded arms paced the apartment for several minutes. At length he turned hastily round, and fixing his eyes on the Knight, said, with a rude oath, “You are a fortunate man, sir, that you did not hold this language to my predecessor in the command. General Kleber would have had you in front of a peloton of grenadiers within five minutes after you uttered it.”

“I have heard as much,” said the Knight, with a slight smile.

Menou rang a bell which stood beside him, and an aide-de-camp entered.

“Captain le Messurier,” said he, in the ordinary tone of discipline, “this officer is under arrest. You will take the necessary steps for his safe keeping, and his due appearance when summoned before a military tribunal.”

He bowed to Darcy as he spoke, and, reseating himself at the table, took up his pen to write.

“At the hazard of being thought very hardy, sir,” said the Knight, as he moved towards the door, “I would humbly solicit a favor.”

“A favor!” exclaimed Menou, staring in surprise.

“Yes, sir; it is that the services of a surgeon should be promptly rendered – ”

“I have given orders on that score already. My own medical man shall attend to you.”

“I speak not of myself, sir. It is of a Volunteer of my corps, a young man who now lies badly wounded; his case is not without hope, if speedily looked to.”

“He must take his chance with others,” said the general, gruffly, while he made a gesture of leave-taking; and Darcy, unable to prolong the interview, retired.

“I am sorry, sir,” said the aide-de-camp, as he went along, “that my orders are peremptory, and you must, if the state of your health permit, at once leave this.”

“Is it thus your prisoners of war are treated, sir?” said Darcy, scornfully, “or am I to hope – for hope I do – that the exception is created especially for me?”

The officer was silent; and although the flush of shame was on his cheek, the severe demands of duty overcame all personal feelings, and he did not dare to answer.

The Knight was not one of those on whom misfortune can press, without eliciting in return the force of resistance, and, if not forgetting, at least combating, the indignities to which he had been subjected; he resigned himself patiently to his destiny, and after a brief delay set forth for his journey to Akrish, which he now learned was to be the place of his confinement.