PAGE 13
The Seven Poor Travellers
by
He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick could not withhold his hand. “It is the hand of a brave Englishman,” said the French officer, retaining it while he spoke. “I could respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, how much more as my friend! I also am a soldier.”
“He has not remembered me, as I have remembered him; he did not take such note of my face, that day, as I took of his,” thought Captain Richard Doubledick. “How shall I tell him?”
The French officer conducted his guest into a garden and presented him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful woman, sitting with Mrs. Taunton in a whimsical old-fashioned pavilion. His daughter, her fair young face beaming with joy, came running to embrace him; and there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange trees on the broad steps, in making for his father’s legs. A multitude of children visitors were dancing to sprightly music; and all the servants and peasants about the chateau were dancing too. It was a scene of innocent happiness that might have been invented for the climax of the scenes of peace which had soothed the Captain’s journey.
He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a resounding bell rang, and the French officer begged to show him his rooms. They went upstairs into the gallery from which the officer had looked down; and Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick was cordially welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one within, all clocks and draperies, and hearths, and brazen dogs, and tiles, and cool devices, and elegance, and vastness.
“You were at Waterloo,” said the French officer.
“I was,” said Captain Richard Doubledick. “And at Badajos.”
Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat down to consider, What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At that time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between English and French officers, arising out of the recent war; and these duels, and how to avoid this officer’s hospitality, were the uppermost thought in Captain Richard Doubledick’s mind.
He was thinking, and letting the time run out in which he should have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton spoke to him outside the door, asking if he could give her the letter he had brought from Mary. “His mother, above all,” the Captain thought. “How shall I tell her?”
“You will form a friendship with your host, I hope,” said Mrs. Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, “that will last for life. He is so true-hearted and so generous, Richard, that you can hardly fail to esteem one another. If He had been spared,” she kissed (not without tears) the locket in which she wore his hair, “he would have appreciated him with his own magnanimity, and would have been truly happy that the evil days were past which made such a man his enemy.”
She left the room; and the Captain walked, first to one window, whence he could see the dancing in the garden, then to another window, whence he could see the smiling prospect and the peaceful vineyards.
“Spirit of my departed friend,” said he, “is it through thee these better thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it thou who hast shown me, all the way I have been drawn to meet this man, the blessings of the altered time? Is it thou who hast sent thy stricken mother to me, to stay my angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that this man did his duty as thou didst,–and as I did, through thy guidance, which has wholly saved me here on earth,–and that he did no more?”
He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, when he rose up, made the second strong resolution of his life,–that neither to the French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to any soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathe what only he knew. And when he touched that French officer’s glass with his own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of the Divine Forgiver of injuries.