Captain Tournier did not return to the
barracks until his health was completely re-established, and Major Kelly was very liberal in his allowance of time. He quitted the hospitable roof of his friend with much regret, but with a heart full of gratitude, and went back to his discomforts as a man returning to his duty, not what he liked, but his duty, and what he meant to make the best of.
Alice Cosin was much struck with the alteration in him, so much so indeed that she did not quite like it. “He seems so cheerful,” she remarked to her brother, “going back to that horrid place after all the comforts he has enjoyed with us.”
“Ah, dear Alice,” he replied, “Tournier always was a man, but he is more a man than ever now, and is going to play the man with his troubles, which is far harder work than fighting with sword and pistol.”
Villemet, however, had been ordered back some time before, and returned to prison, it must be owned, with very bad grace.
That nice little bedroom, so sweet and clean, with creepers peeping in at him through the window, and reminding him of home; and those blue eyes, that always looked so true, made it hard work to leave. He went off with a heavy heart and the gloominess of a mute; and as he shook hands with his friends, he made the most profound bow to Alice, and said, “Miss Cosin, I am going from paradise to I’ll not say what. You cannot imagine how awful the change will be.”
A shower of good wishes refreshed him for the moment, but they did not prevent his entering the hated prison like a bear with a scalded head.
This amiable mood, not altogether to be wondered at, was not improved by the atmosphere of the prison, which he found more than ever charged with the depressing opinion among the prisoners that there was less likelihood than ever of the war coming to an end. Villemet, as we have seen, was a light-hearted fellow, even to a
fault; but his light-heartedness was simply nature’s good gift to him, it was not the fruit of principle, like the newly-found cheerfulness of his friend Tournier, and could not, or at least did not, stand the strain of long continued uncertainty.
“I will stand this vile bondage no longer,” he said to himself one day. “Better be shot in trying to escape than stay longer in this foul den, and lose all my best days of manhood, buried before my time. Honour! What’s honour among thieves? The English have robbed me of my liberty, and I will rob them of my presence. So we shall be quits. If they catch me, I will pay the penalty with my life. Is that not a fair bargain?”