PAGE 24
The Two Scouts
by
“‘Not the man?’
“‘Most decidedly not. The man of whom I spoke was dark and not above middle height. He spoke Portuguese like a native, and belonged to a class altogether different. It would be impossible for this gentleman to disguise himself so.’
“For a moment Marmont seemed no less puzzled than we. Then he broke out laughing again.
“‘Ah! of course; that will have been Captain McNeill’s servant–the poor fellow who was killed,’ he added more gravely. ‘I am told, sir, that this servant shared and furthered most of your adventures?’
“‘He did indeed, M. le Marechal,’ said I; ‘but excuse me if I am at a loss–‘
“The Duke interrupted me by laughing again and laying a hand on my shoulder as an orderly announced dinner. ‘Rest easy, my friend, we know of all your little tricks.’ And at table he amused himself and more and more befogged me by a precise account of my haunts and movements. How I had kept a barber’s shop in Sabugal under his very nose; what disguises I used (and you know that I never used a disguise in my life); how my servant had assisted M. de Brissac in a duel and afterwards escaped in his uniform–with much more, and all of it news to me. My astonished face merely excited his laughter; he set it down to my eccentricity. But after dinner, when M. de Brissac had taken his departure, Marmont crossed his handsome legs and came to business.
“‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I am going to pay you a compliment. We have suffered heavily through your cleverness; and although Lord Wellington may choose to call you a scouting officer, you must be aware (and will forgive me for reminding you) that I might well be excused for calling you by an uglier name.’
“You may be sure I did not like this. You may also remember how at Huerta on the occasion of our first meeting the question of disguise came up between us, and how I assured you that to me, with my Scottish face and accent, a disguise would be worse than useless. Well, that was true enough so far as it went; but I fear that in my anxiety not to offend your feelings I spoke less than the whole truth, for I have always held that in our business as soon as a man resorts to disguise his work ceases to be legitimate scouting. It may be no less justifiable and even more useful, but it is no longer scouting. I admit the distinction to be a nice one;[A] and I have sometimes asked myself, when covering my uniform with my dark riding cloak, ‘What, after all, is a disguise?’ Nevertheless, I had always observed it, and standing before Marmont now in His Majesty’s scarlet, which (as I might have told him) I had never discarded either to further a plan or to avoid a danger, I put some constraint on myself to listen in silence on the merest off-chance that my silence might help an affair with which the marshal assumed my perfect acquaintance, while I could only surmise that somehow you were mixed up in it, and therefore presumably it aimed at some advantage to our arms. I did keep silence, however, though without so much as a bow to signify that I assented.
[Footnote A: NOTE BY MANUEL MCNEILL.–I should think so indeed! To me the moral difference, say, between hiding in a truss of hay and hiding under a wig is not worth discussing outside a seminary.]
“‘But you are a gentleman,’ Marmont continued, ‘and I propose to treat you as one. You will be sent in safe custody to France, and beyond this I propose to take no revenge on you–but upon one condition.’
“I waited.
“‘The condition is you give me your parole that on your journey through Spain to France you not only make no effort to escape, but will not consent to be rescued should the attempt be made by any of the partidas in hope of reward.’