Arthur O'Leary Part 23

'It's not your intention, surely, to tie me here for the whole night?'

said I, in horror.

'And why not?' interposed the chief. 'Do you think there are bears or wolves in the Ardennes forest in September?'

'But I shall die of cold or hunger! I never endured such usage before!'

'You'll have plenty worse when you've joined us, I promise you,' was the short reply, as without further loss of time they pa.s.sed the cord round my waist, and began, with a dexterity that bespoke long practice, to fasten me to the tree. I protested vigorously against the proceeding; I declaimed loudly about the liberty of the subject; vowed that England would take a frightful measure of retribution on the whole country, if a hair of my head were injured, and even went so far in the fervour of my indignation as to threaten the party with future consequences from the police.

The word was enough. The leader drew his pistol from his belt, and slapping down the pan, shook the priming with his hand.

'So,' cried he, in a harsh and savage voice, unlike his former tone, 'you 'd play the informer would you? Well, it's honest at least to say as much. Now then, my man, a quick shrift and a short prayer, for I'll send you where you'll meet neither gendarmes nor revenue-officers, or if you do, they'll have enough of business on their hands not to care for yours.'

'Spare my life, most amiable monsieur,' said I, with uplifted hands.

'Never shall I utter one word about you, come what will. I'll keep all I've seen a secret. Don't kill the father of eight children. Let me live this time, and I'll never wander off a turnpike road three yards as long as I breathe.'

They actually screamed with laughter at the terror of my looks; and the chief, seemingly satisfied with my protestation, replaced his pistol in his belt, and kneeling down on the ground began leisurely to examine my knapsack, which he coolly unstrapped and emptied on the gra.s.s.

'What are these papers?' said he, as he drew forth a most voluminous roll of ma.n.u.script from a pocket.

'They are notes of my travels,' said I obsequiously--little pen sketches of men and manners in the countries I've travelled in. I call them "Adventures of Arthur O'Leary." That's my name, gentlemen, at your service.'

'Ah, indeed. Well, then, we've given you a very pretty little incident for your journal this evening,' said he, laughing, 'in return for which I'll ask leave to borrow these memoranda for wadding for my gun. Believe me, Monsieur O'Leary, they'll make a greater noise in the world under my auspices than under yours'; and with that he opened a rude clasp-knife and proceeded to cut my valued ma.n.u.script into pieces about an inch square. This done, he presented two of my s.h.i.+rts to each of his followers, reserving three for himself; and having made a most impartial division of my other effects, he pocketed the purse I carried, with its few gold pieces, and then, rising to his feet said--

'Antoine, let us be stirring now; the moon will be up soon. Gros Jean, throw that sack on your shoulder and move forward. And now, monsieur, I must wish you a good-night; and as in this changeful life we can never answer for the future, let me commend myself to your recollection hereafter, if, as may be, we should not meet again. Adieu, adieu,' said he, waving his hand.

'Adieu,' said I, with a great effort to seem at ease; 'a pleasant journey, and every success to your honest endeavours.'

'You are a fine fellow,' said he, stopping and turning about suddenly--'a superb fellow; and I can't part from you without a _gage d'amitie_ between us'; and with the word he took my handsome travelling-cap from my head and placed it on his own, while he crowned me with a villainous straw thing that nothing save my bondage prevented me from hurling at his feet.

He now hurried forward after the others, and in a few minutes I was in perfect solitude.

'Well,' thought I (it was my first thought), 'it might all have been worse; the wretches might have murdered me, for such reckless devils as practise their trade care little for human life. Murder, too, would only meet the same punishment as smuggling, or nearly so--a year more or a year less at the galleys; and, after all, the night is fine, and if I mistake not he said something about the moon.' I wondered where was the pretty countess--travelling away, probably, as hard as extra post could bring her. Ah, she little thought of my miserable plight now! Then came a little interval of softness; and then a little turn of indignation at my treatment--that I, an Englishman, should be so barbarously molested; a native of the land where freedom was the great birthright of every one! I called to mind all the fine things Burke used to say about liberty, and if I had not begun to feel so cold I'd have tried to sing 'Rule, Britannia,' just to keep up my spirits; and then I fell asleep, if sleep it could be called--that frightful nightmare of famished wolves howling about me, tearing and mangling revenue-officers; and grisly bears running backward and forward with smuggled tobacco on their backs.

The forest seemed peopled by every species of horrible shapes--half men, half beast--but all with straw hats on their heads and leather gaiters on their legs.

However, the night pa.s.sed over, and the day began to break; the purple tint, pale and streaky, that announces the rising sun, was replacing the cold grey of the darker hours. What a different thing it is, to be sure, to get out of your bed deliberately, and rubbing your eyes for two or three minutes with your fingers, as you stand at the half-closed curtain, and then through the mist of your sleep look out upon the east, and think you see the sun rising, and totter back to the comfortable nest again, the whole incident not breaking your sleep, but merely being interwoven with your dreams, a thing to dwell on among other pleasant fancies, and to be boasted of the whole day afterwards--what a different thing it is, I say, from the sensations of him who has been up all night in the mail; shaken, bruised, and cramped; sat on by the fat man, and kicked by the lean one--still worse of him who spends his night _dos a dos_ to an oak in a forest, cold, chill, and comfortless; no property in his limbs beneath the knees, where all sensation terminates, and his hands as benumbed as the heart of a poor-law guardian!

If I have never, in all my after-life, seen the sun rise from the Rigi, from Snowdon, or the Pic du Midi, or any other place which seems especially made for this sole purpose, I owe it to the experience of this night, and am grateful therefore. Not that I have the most remote notion of throwing disrespect on the glorious luminary, far from it--I cut one of my oldest friends for speaking lightly of the equator; but I hold it that the sun looks best, as every one else does, when he's up and dressed for the day. It's a piece of prying, impertinent curiosity to peep at him when he 's rising and at his toilette; he has not rubbed the clouds out of his eyes, or you dared not look at him--and you feel it too. The very way you steal out to catch a glimpse shows the sneaking, contemptible sense you have of your own act. Peeping Tom was a gentleman compared to your early riser.

The whole of which digression simply seems to say that I by no means enjoyed the rosy-fingered morning's blushes the more for having spent the preceding night in the open air. I need not worry myself, still less my reader, by recapitulating the various frames of mind which succeeded each other every hour of my captivity. At one time my escape with life served to console me for all I endured; at another, my bondage excited my whole wrath. I vowed vengeance on my persecutors too, and meditated various schemes for their punishment--my anger rising as their absence was prolonged, till I thought I could calculate my indignation by an algebraical formula, and make it exactly equal to the 'squares of the distance' of my persecutors. Then I thought of the delight I should experience in regaining my freedom, and actually made a bold effort to see something ludicrous in the entire adventure: but no--it would not do; I could not summon up a laugh.

At last--it might have been towards noon--I heard a merry voice chanting a song, and a quick step coming up the _allee_ of the wood. Never did my heart beat with such delight! The very mode of progression had something joyous in it; it seemed a hop and a step and a spring, suiting each motion to the tune of the air--when suddenly the singer, with a long bound, stood before me. It would, indeed, have been a puzzling question which of us more surprised the other; however, as I can render no accurate account of _his_ sensations on seeing me, I must content myself with recording mine on beholding him, and the best way to do so is to describe him. He was a man, or a boy--Heaven knows which--of something under the middle size, dressed in rags of every colour and shape; his old white hat was crushed and bent into some faint resemblance of a chapeau, and decorated with a c.o.c.kade of dirty ribbons and a c.o.c.k's feather; a little white jacket, such as men-cooks wear in the kitchen, and a pair of flaming crimson-plush shorts, cut above the knee, and displaying his naked legs, with sabots, formed his costume. A wooden sword was attached to an old belt round his waist--an ornament of which he seemed vastly proud, and which from time to time he regarded with no small satisfaction.

'Holloa!' cried he, starting back, as he stood some six paces off, and gazed at me with most unequivocal astonishment; then recovering his self-possession long before I could summon mine, he said, 'Bonjour, bonjour, camarade! a fine day for the vintage.'

'No better,' said I; 'but come a little nearer, and do me the favour to untie these cords.'

'Ah, are you long fastened up there?'

'The whole night,' said I, in a lamentable accent, hoping to move his compa.s.sion the more speedily.

'What fun!' said he, chuckling. 'Were there many squirrels about?'

'Thousands of them. But, come, be quick and undo this, and I 'll tell you all about it.'

'Gently, gently,' said he, approaching with great caution about six inches nearer me. 'When did the rabbits come out? Was it before day?'

'Yes, yes, an hour before. But I'll tell you everything when I 'm loose.

Be alive now, do!'

'Why did you tie yourself so fast?' said he eagerly, but not venturing to come closer.

'Confound the fellow!' said I pa.s.sionately. 'I didn't tie myself; it was the--the----

'Ah, I know; it was the mayor, old Pierre Bogout. Well, well, he knows best when you ought to be set free. Bonjour,' and with that he began once more his infernal tune, and set out on his way as if nothing had happened; and though I called, prayed, swore, promised, and threatened with all my might, he never turned his head, but went on capering as before, and soon disappeared in the dark wood.

For a full hour, pa.s.sion so completely mastered me that I could do nothing but revile fools and idiots of every shade and degree--inveighing against mental imbecility as the height of human wickedness, and wondering why no one had ever suggested the propriety of having 'naturals' publicly whipped. I am shocked at myself now, as I call to mind the extravagance of my anger; and I grieve to say that had I been for that short interval the proprietor of a private madhouse, I fear I should have been betrayed into the most unwarrantable cruelties towards the patients; indeed, what is technically called 'moral government' would have formed no part of my system.

Meanwhile time was moving on, if not pleasantly, at least steadily; and already the sun began to decline somewhat--his rays, that before came vertically, being now slanting as they fell upon the wood. For a while my attention was drawn off from my miseries by watching the weasels as they played and sported about me, in the confident belief that I was at best only a kind of fungus--an excrescence on an oak-tree. One of them came actually to my feet, and even ran across my instep in his play.

Suddenly the thought ran through me--and with terror--how soon may it come to pa.s.s that I shall only be a miserable skeleton, pecked at by crows, and nibbled by squirrels! The idea was too dreadful; and as if the hour had actually come, I screamed out to frighten off the little creatures, and sent them back scampering into their dens.

'Holloa there! what's the matter?' shouted a deep mellow voice from the middle of the wood; and before I could reply, a fat, rosy-cheeked man of about fifty, with a pleasant countenance terminating in a row of double chins, approached me, but still with evident caution, and halting when about five paces distant, stood still.

'Who are you?' said I hastily, resolving this time at least to adopt a different method of effecting my liberation.

'What's all this?' quoth the fat man, shading his eyes with his palm, and addressing some one behind him, whom I now recognised as my friend the fool who visited me in the morning.

'I say, sir,' repeated I, in a tone of command somewhat absurd from a man in my situation, 'who are you, may I ask?'

'The Maire de Givet,' said he pompously, as he drew himself up, and took a large pinch of snuff with an imposing gravity, while his companion took off his hat in the most reverent fas.h.i.+on, and bowed down to the ground.

'Well, Monsieur le Maire, the better fortune mine to fall into such hands. I have been robbed, and fastened here, as you see, by a gang of scoundrels'--I took good care to say nothing of smugglers--'who have carried away everything I possessed. Have the goodness to loosen these confounded cords, and set me at liberty.'

'Were there many of them?' quoth the mayor, without budging a step forward.

'Yes, a dozen at least. But untie me at once. I'm heartily sick of being chained up here.'

'A dozen at least!' repeated he, in an accent of wonderment. '_Ma foi_, a very formidable gang. Do you remember any of their names?'

'Devil take their names! how should I know them? Come, cut these cords, will you? We can talk just as well when I 'm free.'

'Not so fast, not so fast,' said he, admonis.h.i.+ng me with a bland motion of his hand. 'Everything must be done in order. Now, since you don't know their names, we must put them down as "parties unknown."'

'Put them down whatever you like; but let me loose!'

'All in good time. Let us proceed regularly. Who are your witnesses?'

'Witnesses!' screamed I, overcome with pa.s.sion; 'you'll drive me distracted! I tell you I was waylaid in the wood by a party of scoundrels, and you ask me for their names, and then for my witnesses!

Cut these cords, and don't be so infernally stupid! Come, old fellow, look alive, will you?'