Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/391

. 26, 1863.] the major exclaimed; “that jabbering Frenchwoman didn’t seem to know what she was talking about.”

But Eleanor knocked a fourth time, and very much louder than she had knocked before. There was no answer even this time; but a voice was heard within, blaspheming aloud with horrible French execrations that seemed to freeze Eleanor’s blood as she listened to them.

She did listen to them, involuntarily, as people often listen in a crowded thoroughfare to the obnoxious clamour of a drunken man, paralysed for the moment by the horror of his hideous oaths.

Eleanor turned very pale, and looked despairingly at the major.

“Hark,” she whispered, “he is quarrelling with some one.”

The big soldier deliberately turned himself into a convenient position for listening, and flattened his ear against the keyhole.

“No, he ain’t quarrellin’ with any one,” the major said, presently. “I can’t make much out of his lingo, but there’s only one voice. He’s all alone, and goin’ on like a madman.”

The major opened the door softly as he spoke. Monsieur Bourdon’s apartment was divided into two low-roofed chambers, a little larger than comfortable pigeon-holes; and in the inner and smaller chamber Eleanor and her companion saw the commercial traveller wandering backwards and forwards in his obscure den, only dressed in his trowsers and shirt, and gesticulating like a madman.

Mrs. Monckton clung to the soldier’s arm. She had some cause for fear, for in the next moment the Frenchman descried his visitors, and with a howl of rage, rushed at the major’s throat.

The most intellectual and diplomatic individual in Christendom would have been of very little service to Eleanor at that moment, if he had been also a coward. Major Lennard lifted the commercial traveller in his arms, as easily as if that gentleman had been a six-months-old baby, carried him into the next room where there was a narrow little bedstead, flung him on to the mattrass, and held him there.

“You’ll find a silk handkerchief in my pocket, my dear,” he said to Eleanor, “if you’ll be so kind as to pull it out. Voulez-vous gardez-vous trongkeel, dong, vous—Scoundrel!” he exclaimed, addressing himself to the struggling Frenchman.

Mrs. Monckton obeyed. She fell into her place quite naturally, giving way before the major. He was the hero of the moment. Frederic Soulié has said that the meanest actor who ever trod the boards of a theatre, has some inspired moment in which he is great. I fancy it must be pretty much the same in the drama of life. This was the major’s moment; and he arose out of his normal inanity, resplendent with unconscious grandeur.

The silk handkerchief was a large one, and Major Lennard used it very dexterously about Monsieur Bourdon’s wrists; then he found another handkerchief in another pocket, and used it as a bandage for the Frenchman’s ankles; and having done this he sat down by the bedside and contemplated his handiwork complacently, puffing and blowing a little while he did so.

Victor Bourdon lay very still, glaring at the ponderous soldier with eyes that were like those of a wild beast.

“I know thee,” he exclaimed; “thou hast been with me all the night, thou hast sat upon my chest; ah, Grêdin! thou art the biggest of all the demons that torment me. Thou breathest the fire and the sulphur, and thy breath burns me, and now thou hast attached my hands with bands of iron, white hot, and thou hast tied my ankles with living scorpions!”

Eleanor stood at a few paces from the bed, listening with horror to the man’s delirious ravings.

“What is it?” she asked, in a subdued voice. “Is it a fever that makes him like this? Or has he gone mad?”

The major shook his head.

“I think I can guess pretty well what’s the matter with the poor devil;” he said: “he’s been going it a little too fast. He’s got a touch of del. trem.”

“Del trem!”

“Delirium tremens, my dear,” answered the major. “Yes, you can hear his teeth chattering now this minute. I had it once when I was up the country, and our fellers took to living upon brandy-pawnee. I had rather a sharp time of it, while it lasted; used to fancy the tent was on fire; wanted to go out tiger-hunting in the middle of the night; tried to set the bed-clothes alight to cure myself of the hiccough; and ran after Meg with a razor early one morning. This man has got a touch of it, Mrs. Monckton, and I don’t think we shall get much reason out of him to-night.”

The conduct of Monsieur Victor Bourdon, who was at that moment holding a very animated discourse with a dozen or so of juvenile demons supposed to be located in the bed-curtains, went very far towards confirming the major’s assertion.

Eleanor sat down at the little table, upon which the dirty litter of the Frenchman’s last meal was huddled into a heap and intermixed with writing materials; an ink-bottle and a mustard-pot, a quill-pen and a tea-spoon, lying side by side. The girl’s fortitude had given way before this new and most cruel disappointment. She covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.

Major Lennard was very much distressed at this unexpected collapse upon the part of his chief. He was very big, and rather stupid; but he had one of those tender childish natures which never learn to be hard and unmerciful. He was for ever patting the shock-heads of dirty pauper children, for ever fumbling in his pockets for copper coin, always open to the influence of any story of womanly distress, and quite unable to withstand the dingiest female, if she could only produce the merest phantom of a tear to be wiped away furtively from one eye, while the other looked round the corner to see if the shot went home.

He looked piteously at Eleanor, as she sat sobbing passionately, half unconscious of his