CHAPTER III.
EVIL FOREBODINGS.
Mid-ocean, a steamer was laboring on her way, beneath a sky like
glittering pearl, arching over a waste of phosphorescent billows, and
with a crispy breeze behind her.
The ladies were in their berths, the gentlemen paced the deck, and
beguiled the time by discussions many-themed.
But St. Udo Brand, with his hands behind him and his back to all, gazed
over the sea to the distant horizon line.
A grim satisfaction illuminated his eye, though the ever-present sneer
still marred his lips, as, deep in unaccustomed reverie, he examined his
position on all sides.
"Inscrutable are thy ways, oh, Fortune!" mused the captain. "Thou hast
given Seven-Oaks to the humble, and cast the haughty from Castle Brand
into outer darkness, where there is grinding and gnashing of teeth. Yet,
wherefore, oh, sand-blind Fortune! hast thou rolled the hypocritical
saint in my bank-notes, and hung golden offerings upon her Medusa head,
while I, the honest scoundrel, am stripped naked to supply the ovation?
Well, doubtless, she has worked harder for it than ever I could, poor
devil! Now for a name and fame, and may be fortune, in yon republic
behind the shoulder of this world of waters! And, who knows, I may be
happy yet, with my little white cat, instead of the sorceress of yonder
castle."
Back and forth the groups of promenaders passed the solitary man, who
thus faced his fortunes with satiric stoicism; but no one thought of
interfering with his reverie, for Captain Brand had a name for
exclusiveness on board the Bellerophon. He may have had a name for some
more interesting quality, too, if one might draw conclusions from the
earnest scrutiny which two of his fellow-passengers were just now
bestowing on him.
A little gentleman, wrapped in a cloak, lounged upon the deck, regarding
the captain through his eye-glass with an air at once inquisitive and
complacent; and a little behind him stood a tall, elderly man, in
servant's livery, fixedly regarding the captain also.
At last the little gentleman rolled off the bench upon his little legs,
which were--low be it whispered--somewhat crooked, which is, to say the
least, best adapted to equestrianism, and nimbly tripping up to Captain
Brand, accosted him with the sunniest air imaginable:
"_Bon jour, monsieur_, a ver' good day to you, my friend. Why vill you
turn the back upon our merry company? Throw care to the dogs; so"--with
a flourish of the hands--"now he is gone! Be happy, my good friend!"
Captain Brand gloomed down upon the little intruder.
"If you want anything of me," said he, ironically, "do me the infinite
honor to be plain and brief."
The stranger stepped back, threw up his hands, and became dignified.
"Monsieur, you English are a vulgar people. You English do not know how
to treat gentlemen of the world. _Par la meese!_ You know nothing,
except to drink and keep silence. No, monsieur, I want nothing of you
but courtesy, and since you have it not to give, _pardieu! bon jour_."
With inimitable grace, he bowed his adieu, and was retreating, when the
captain's genial laugh arrested him.
"I beg pardon, sir," cried St. Udo, "for the national want. Pray remain,
that I may study you up. With such a model before them, who could remain
a boor?"
"Monsieur," cried the little man, delightedly, "you are von wag. I like
you, monsieur. I present myself. I am called the Chevalier de
Calembours; to you I am Ludovic--at your service _mon ami_."
"Chevalier," returned the captain, "I return the confidence. I am called
Captain Brand, of the Coldstream Guards--have just sold out, and to all
I am merely St. Udo Brand--at your service."
They shook hands and lit cigars.
The captain felt irresistibly drawn to the little chevalier; he liked
him amazingly from the first.
He was handsome; he had a square brow, brown eyes, ruddy cheeks, firm
mouth, enormous nut-brown mustache, and a full, glossy beard. He was
attractive; there was intelligence in the bold forehead, penetration in
the beaming eye, a purpose in the closely-fitting lips, and withal a
playful, airy, insolent, cheery frankness which illumined nearly the
whole face.
He stood revealed, brisk, and ready for business, the nimble Chevalier
de Calembours.
"You are en route for America? So am I--we will be comrades," quoth the
chevalier.
"With all my heart! Yes, I go to join the army. I shall either find fame
or death in the American war."
"Bah! I go to court the jade Fortune. She has jilted me of late. I would
feed my wrinkled purse with American dollars, _ma foi!_ that purse is
famishing just now."
"You are not pure French?" demanded the captain.
"_Mon Dieu!_ no," rasped monsieur, with a shrug. "I am cosmopolite,
yes."
"Where is your birthplace?"
"The Hungary, _mon ami_. Have been in Vienna, in Geneva, in Turin, and
for the rest--everywheres."
"You omit England?"
"Ah, I did not live in England. I saw it, no more."
"Yet you speak English well."
"I am flattered. I have the habitude of the languages; they count me an
expert. Insisted on giving me the post of Professor of the modern
languages in the University of Berlin."
"But it was not as a knight of the ferule that you won this mark of
distinction?" laughed the captain, touching a fluttering badge which
depended from the chevalier's button-hole.
"_Ma foi! non!_ I am Magyar, and that is to say patriot and warrior in
one. I combat under the gaze of our glorious Kossuth; but there are
times when even valor himself must fly, and the sword of the brave must
change, in the stranger's land, to the plowshare, the pen--anything to
keep the wolf from the door. But the ferule, the pen, the pestle, I
abhor. I hear the blast of the trumpet, I return to my first loves. I
cross to Algiers. I fight my way up till I win my _grade_, and this
bagatelle. Nothing more there to pick. I looked around; the rays of
glory are beginning to gild the long slumbering west. I leave the
ancient world, and sinking my illustrious personality, I forget that I
am Count of the Order of Santo Spirito, Turin; that I wear the ribbon of
Legion of Honor, and am to throw myself among these Republican hordes,
and to fight knee by knee with the mob. Enough!" he concluded; "to you I
shall be but Ludovic, _mon ami_. Come--do you play?"
"I play, chevalier. I am at your service," answered the captain.
The chevalier preceded his new friend to his state-room, and ushered him
in with "effusion."
A man rose stiffly from the table, where he had been reading, and made
way for the chevalier and his guest.
A tall, elderly man, in servant's livery, who stooped and slunk softly
about, whose sallow, brown face grew white when the captain scanned it
curiously, whose thin, gray hair and immense overhanging gray mustache
showed traces of cares rather than of years, and whose shifting,
shrinking eyeballs ever sought the ground, as if their depths held
emotions which the man must hide on peril of his life.
A sudden shudder seized Captain Brand; a thrill ran sickening through
his heart, which had never so thrilled before. He turned his back--he
knew not why--in hatred upon the chevalier's valet.
Was it a perception of evil, slow creeping toward him from the gloomy
future--slow, but sure to come as death himself?
Pshaw! what necromancer's dream was this? The captain, scoffing, threw
it from him, and forgot the haggard old servant.
"Thoms, we play _ecarte_," aspirated the chevalier, in his rough English
(he invariably spoke French to the captain). "Bring wine and cards, and
wait upon us."
They plunged with zest into the game, and passed many hours in its
intricacies. The chevalier protested that he had found an adversary
worthy of him, and Captain Brand swore that for want of more piquant
sauce a game of euchre every night with Calembours might answer to
flavor the insipidity of the voyage out to New York.
But the careless captain might have noted, too, had he considered such a
worm worthy of notice, that whatever he did--talk, sing, drink wine, or
muse--the secret, shifting eyes of Thoms, the valet, never lost a
movement, but hour after hour watched him with the unearthly intentness
of a blood-hound.
While the captain slept that night in unconscious security, the
Chevalier de Calembours, with a complacent chuckle and a flowing pen,
wrote down in his diary, these famous words:
"'_I came. I saw, I conquered!_' Monsieur Brand promises to be excellent
sport though little hope of pigeoning him, _en passant_. Yes, he has
keener scent than monsieur, my patron, gave him credit for--he won't be
led altogether by the nose. But pouf! who is it that will not be gulled
by Ludovic de Calembours?"
Thoms, too, in secret, and with wary ear pricked for possible
interruption, bent, in the seclusion of his own state-room, over a tiny
green note-book, jotted down some things he wished to remember, then
thrusting away his little book in a secret pocket, he rubbed his long,
lean hands together in stealthy triumph, and laughed long and wickedly.
Five days passed; the airy chevalier held his own in the sour captain's
esteem, and they mutually approved of each other.
They leaned over the taffrail together, Thoms a step behind, and watched
the glittering city of New York, glowing in their eyes, as the steamer
plowed its way between green and pleasant shores to gain it.
Crowds waited on the pier--sailors, civilians, and soldiers mixed in
frantic confusion.
The chevalier examined them through his glass with smiling nonchalance;
but Captain Brand looked over the scene with thoughtful brow.
"What is monsieur's programme?" chirped the chevalier. "Does he dally
with Fortune's train, or does he brush by her robes and seize the
treasure which she guards? Shall _mon ami_ live the short and merry life
of conviviality with me in New York, or shall he choose the short and
beastly bad career of a soldier?"
St. Udo Brand laughed bitterly.
"What is my life worth to me without fame to gild it?" growled he. "I
have no gold to make it shine."
"_Bravissima!_" shouted the chevalier, clapping his hands; then, with a
smile which just showed his long teeth in a hungry arch, "I, too, will
go southward, because, that to me my life is very much worth, and I will
do bravely to gild it with--gold. We will be brother colonels, _mon
ami_, and Thoms--what shall you do?"
Thoms' evil face beamed with intelligence.
"I'll follow you masters as long as you _live_," uttered the smooth
voice, humbly.
"We shall fight, by gar, for glory!" cried the chevalier. "At least, we
shall say so. But each has his motive pardieu, and a sensible motive is
mine. Ah, life is nothing without illusions, as Mendelssohn says."
"Nothing indeed," smiled the silent lips of Thoms, "nothing indeed."
Thus these three chose to walk together the road which had been
apportioned them by that secret Power behind the scene, bound close
together by Circumstance's chain, yet sundered in soul by walls as deep
as dungeon walls, and the dusty banners, and golden rewards, and
whistling balls of the battle-field beckoned to each with a separate
welcome.
"Here you will win glory," they cried to St. Udo Brand.
"Here you will win gold," they whispered to Calembours.
"We promise you _death_!" they sighed to Thoms.
So the three men followed the beckoning hand, and entered the contest.
Some weeks passed. It was their last evening in New York. On the morrow
they would be en route for the army.
Captain Brand and the Chevalier de Calembours had staid at the same
hotel, and were, of course, tolerably confidential with each other.
Thoms divided his attentions, with marked impartiality, between his
master and his master's friend, and lost no opportunity of ingratiating
himself with the cynical captain.
This evening Captain Brand was writing letters; the chevalier was
serenely smoking on the balcony. Thoms silently plodded through the
packing of their traveling-bags in a corner.
"One, two--there are three letters," said the captain, throwing down his
pen. "Thoms, you dog, post these."
A scornful smile was on his lip. He picked up a photograph from his desk
and pored over it eagerly. The cold, superior smile melted from his
scornful mouth; the keen raillery vanished from his eyes; he regarded
the pictured face almost in despair.
Thoms, creeping behind his chair to reach for the letters, took a keen
survey of the card he held.
It was the face of a young and lovely girl which returned St. Udo's
yearning, questioning gaze with a sweet, free smile.
Thoms took the letters, and standing for a moment in the hall, greedily
scrutinized the envelopes.
"Andrew Davenport, Esq.," "Rufus Gay, M.D.," and "Lady Juliana Ducie,"
whispered the spy.
He passed into his own room, locked the door, and did not emerge for at
least ten minutes; and when he did, he stole out with the letters in his
hand, casting startled looks around, as if he fancied he had some cause
to fear.
The next morning the two new colonels left New York at the head of their
men, and halted not until some three days subsequently they found
themselves within one day's march of the grand army.
The way lay through forests of hickory, planer, and tulip trees, between
tobacco and cotton plantations, and over deep, yielding morasses, where
the giant gourd sprang up to catch the bending cypress branch, and the
wild vine barred the way.
St. Udo, chatting carelessly to his inferior officer, turned suddenly in
his saddle to look for Thoms, and met his quailing eyes scarce two yards
behind.
His head was bent to catch every word uttered by St. Udo; his eyes
gleamed like glow worms in the dusk; he was the picture of a man with
some dread watch to keep.
"Back, fellow!" cried St. Udo, sternly. "What do you want here?"
Thoms fell back with humility.
"Beg pardon, colonel--I was listening to some sounds ahead," muttered
he.
His coolness was manifestly forced--his excuse was manifestly a lie--yet
the haughty Englishman only swore at him and turned from him as one
avoids the worm in the path.
He resumed his idle conversation with his officer, and passed the time
away in light jests and piquant anecdotes of a life neither tame nor
simple, and quite ignored the inquisitive Thoms behind him.
But Thoms did not forget to strain every faculty of hearing and seeing
while he had the chance. Never did lover drink in love vows of his
beautiful betrothed, as did the gray-faced valet his colonel's stories;
never did the worshipers of that star of song, Jenny Lind, analyse each
tone, each delicate inflection of her voice in the day of her most
glorious effulgence, as did Thoms the tones of St. Udo Brand; and when
the soldier, weary of speech, sank into mute reverie, the old man's
glowing eyes stole over his stately figure, measuring its height, its
contour, its carriage, with anxious care, as if but one man lived upon
the earth for him, and that night he might be slain.
At midnight the little detachment paused to rest.
The place they chose as favorable to their purpose was the wide-spread
grounds of a ruined mansion-house.
Merrily the camp-fires blazed up, paling the shimmer of a myriad of
soaring fire-flies, and sparkling through the murk like a broken lava
stream.
The chevalier left his company to visit his friend's tent, and the
brothers-in-arms exchanged cordial jests and friendly converse, while
Thoms, hovering over the camp-fires and boiling the coffee, peered
inquisitively at the pocket album which St. Udo was showing his friend.
"How that old wretch listens to our conversation," exclaimed St. Udo,
laughing, as the valet retreated for a moment beyond earshot, for
another armful of fagots. "He is like Diggory behind his master's
chair--every story moves him to laugh or cry."
"Pardieu! he will play eavesdropper, will he?" hissed the chevalier. "We
shall see."
"Here he comes, hurrying back to the charmed circle," said St. Udo,
"with straining ears and a face which looks 'just like a stratagem,' as
Madam Noblet says. Where did you get the sorry rascal, Calembours?"
"A friend sent him to me on the morning we parted for New York,"
muttered the chevalier. "Peace--he is here."
His nervous tremor did not escape the vigilant eye of Thoms, who grimly
took his post near the pair, and handed them their viands with
obsequious celerity.
St. Udo amused the chevalier by more anecdotes, and presently in their
hilarious enjoyment they forgot the haunting demon in the shadow of the
tent, till St. Udo, happening to glance that way over his shoulder,
stopped short and stared in speechless amazement.
There sat Thoms, leaning against the tent, as St. Udo leaned against the
mossy rock by the fire, throwing back his shaggy head as St. Udo threw
back his, gesticulating with his long, brown hand as St. Udo waved his,
his lurid eyes fixed in a hound-like gaze upon St. Udo Brand, aping
every motion like a haggard shadow of himself.
The Chevalier de Calembours, following St. Udo's stare of astonishment,
caught the man's antics mid-air, and burst into a volley of oaths in
every known language.
"The man's possessed! My life on it, he is a lunatic!" cried St. Udo,
laughing till the tears stood in his eyes. "To see him roll his head,
and wave his hand, and mouth after me my very words. Ha! ha! ha!"
shouted St. Udo. "Thoms, you dog! are you rehearsing a part? What part?"
Thoms was scrambling to his feet, and standing like a scared hare in act
to fly. His cheeks were white, his lips withered, his very hand trembled
so that he slipped it into his bosom to hide its shaking.
"_Diable!_ what mean you? Out with your excuses!" screamed the
chevalier, passionately.
"I--I am--I have been an actor," stammered the old valet, with
chattering teeth and a glare of hatred. "I was doing a Dromio of Ephesus
with Colonel Brand for model."
"With me for your Dromio of Syracuse, you varlet?" mocked St. Udo. "Pity
we are in truth not twin brothers; you might be less of a paradox to me
then."
Thoms suddenly turned his convulsed face away. It was well for him he
did not permit the angry chevalier a view of his half-closed, furious
eyes, blazing like two corpse lights.
"Away with you to rest," ordered Calembours. "We have had enough of you
for to-night, by gar! A little more might be bad for you."
Away sneaked the shivering wretch, and lay down among the soldiers at a
neighboring camp-fire, and, apparently, fell fast asleep. The brother
colonels abused him with mutual heartiness for a while, and then parted
to seek their own slumbers.
Toward the morning a yellow mist drifted from the neighboring cypress
swamp and brooded over the camp. St. Udo stirred in his sleep at the
touch of its clammy breath, and opened his eyes.
And over him hung a face, its wolfish eyes fastened upon his, a thievish
hand creeping into his bosom, almost touching him with his gray hair,
almost stifling him with a damp hand held an inch above his nostrils.
Thoms knelt beside him!
In a moment St. Udo had sprung to his feet and caught him by the throat.
A book fell from the long brown hand--his little pocket-album.
"What the duce do you want, confound you?" thundered St. Udo.
Thoms lifted his weary old face supplicatingly, and held up his shaking
hands for mercy.
"Are you a thief, or an assassin?" demanded St. Udo, releasing him as
unworthy of his wrath, in his age and weakness.
"I--I thought you were dead, colonel," stammered the wretched old
creature. "You lay so still that I--I felt your heart to find if it
beat."
"Another lie, you old fool," mocked St. Udo. "What did you want with my
private album? Answer me, sir."
The old man's speechless look of mock wonder at the album lying upon the
ground, his thin, gray locks damp with perspiration, his abject terror
and abject helplessness, all appealed to the haughty St. Udo's
forbearance. He pushed him contemptuously away with his foot.
"Get up; you are merely a skulking villain. You are not worth my ire!"
exclaimed St. Udo. "And mind that you never approach me again, on peril
of your life."
"Don't--don't order me away. Let me stay near to watch--to save you!"
whined the miserable Thoms.
"Confound safety! if I am to get it at the hands of a worm like you!"
shouted St. Udo. "Why do you haunt me day and night? Why do you run upon
my trail like a sleuth-hound? The next time I detect anything like this,
by all the gods, I'll shoot you down!"
Away stole the trembling Thoms, and was met and stared at by the little
chevalier, coming to have an early breakfast with his friend.
"Another raid into Thoms, _mon ami_?" questioned he, anxiously.
"Who is that devil?" cried St. Udo, passionately.
"Heaven knows! _ma foi_. I wish we did," quoth the chevalier.