‘I have been thinking,’ I said, ‘you have been so good to me, both of you, stranger and prisoner as I am, that I have been thinking how I could testify to my gratitude. It may seem a strange subject for a confidence, but there is actually no one here, even of my comrades, that knows me by my name and title. By these I am called plain Champdivers, a name to which I have a right, but not the name which I should bear, and which (but a little while ago) I must hide like a crime. Miss Flora, suffer me to present to you the Vicomte Anne de Kéroual de Saint-Yves, a private soldier.’
‘I knew it!’ cried the boy; ‘I knew he was a noble!’
And I thought the eyes of Miss Flora said the same, but more persuasively. All through this interview she kept them on the ground, or only gave them to me for a moment at a time, and with a serious sweetness.
‘You may conceive, my friends, that this is rather a painful confession,’ I continued. ‘To stand here before you, vanquished, a prisoner in a fortress, and take my own name upon my lips, is painful to the proud. And yet I wished that you should know me. Long after this, we may yet hear of one another – perhaps Mr. Gilchrist and myself in the field and from opposing camps – and it would be a pity if we heard and did not recognise.’
They were both moved; and began at once to press upon me offers of service, such as to lend me books, get me tobacco if I used it, and the like. This would have been all mighty welcome, before the tunnel was ready. Now it signified no more to me than to offer the transition I required.
‘My dear friends,’ I said – ‘for you must allow me to call you that, who have no others within so many hundred leagues – perhaps you will think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but there is one service that I would beg of you before all others. You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst of your city. Even with what liberty I have, I have the opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and land. All this hostile! Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever I see the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one sits before the chimney and reads with joy of our reverses. Pardon me, dear friends, I know that you must do the same, and I do not grudge at it! With you, it is all different. Show me your house then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be not visible, the quarter of the town in which it lies! So, when I look all about me, I shall be able to say: “There is one house in which I am not quite unkindly thought of.”’
Flora stood a moment.
‘It is a pretty thought,’ said she, ‘and, as far as regards Ronald and myself, a true one. Come, I believe I can show you the very smoke out of our chimney.’
So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars. And to this she directed my attention.
‘You see these marks?’ she said. ‘We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are living with my aunt. If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am glad. We, too, can see the castle from a corner in the garden, and we go there in the morning often – do we not, Ronald? – and we think of you, M. de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not altogether make us glad.’
‘Mademoiselle!’ said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under command, ‘if you knew how your generous words – how even the sight of you – relieved the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I know, you would be glad. I will come here daily and look at that dear chimney and these green hills, and bless you from the heart, and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner. Ah! I do not say they can avail!’
‘Who can say that, M. de Saint-Yves?’ she said softly. ‘But I think it is time we should be going.’
‘High time,’ said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little forgotten.
On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground with the youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my last and somewhat too fervent speech, who should come past us but the major? I had to stand aside and salute as he went by, but his eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora.
‘Who is that man?’ she asked.
‘He is a friend of mine,’ said I. ‘I give him lessons in French, and he has been very kind to me.’
‘He stared,’ she said, – ‘I do not say, rudely; but why should he stare?’
‘If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to recommend a veil,’ said I.
She looked at me with what seemed anger. ‘I tell you the man stared,’ she said.
And Ronald added. ‘Oh, I don’t think he meant any harm. I suppose he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr- with M. Saint-Yves.’
But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix’s rooms, and after I had dutifully corrected his exercise – ‘I compliment you on your taste,’ said he to me.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said I.
‘Oh no, I beg yours,’ said he. ‘You understand me perfectly, just as I do you.’
I murmured something about enigmas.
‘Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?’ said he, leaning back. ‘That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you avenged. I do not blame you. She is a heavenly creature.’
‘With all my heart, to the last of it!’ said I. ‘And to the first also, if it amuses you! You are become so very acute of late that I suppose you must have your own way.’
‘What is her name?’ he asked.
‘Now, really!’ said I. ‘Do you think it likely she has told me?’
‘I think it certain,’ said he.
I could not restrain my laughter. ‘Well, then, do you think it likely I would tell you?’ I cried.
‘Not a bit.’ said he. ‘But come, to our lesson!’
CHAPTER VI – THE ESCAPE
The time for our escape drew near, and the nearer it came the less we seemed to enjoy the prospect. There is but one side on which this castle can be left either with dignity or safety; but as there is the main gate and guard, and the chief street of the upper city, it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners. In all other directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty. By our concurrent labours in many a dark night, working with the most anxious precautions against noise, we had made out to pierce below the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the Devil’s Elbow. I have never met that celebrity; nor (if the rest of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry, the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for any length of time – the thought that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack, the mere sight of the Devil’s Elbow wrought like an emetic.
I don’t know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us