The lively adventures of Gavin Hamilton

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The two men disappeared, and the maid, apparently profiting by the suggestion of money, said very respectfully:

“Supper is not yet ready, madame; and I will add something for these gentlemen,” and disappeared.

Madame Ziska then led the way to a small sitting-room, where a stove glowed, candles gleamed, and a table was set with linen and plate. She seated herself before the stove, and not until then did St. Arnaud and Gavin proceed to warm their chilled bodies. St. Arnaud watched Gavin closely, but with amusement, as if he were assisting at the first production of a new comedy, when he saw this young private soldier of nineteen masquerading as a gentleman. Gavin himself saw the joke, and St. Arnaud could not refrain from bursting out laughing when Gavin, surveying himself coolly in a mirror on the wall, remarked:

“Madame, I am indebted to my brother officer for these clothes—it is quite a story—and, sacre! I hardly know myself in this rig.”

“But,” thought St. Arnaud, “wait until supper is served. The table is a place to tell a man’s up-bringing.”

The door opened, and the servants entered, bringing with them a very good supper. Gavin rose instantly, and forestalled St. Arnaud in placing a chair for Madame Ziska, at which the captain’s heretofore smiling face assumed a scowl. There is such a thing as learning a lesson too well and too promptly. They seated themselves, and a very jolly supper party they made. Madame Ziska’s conversation proved as charming as her appearance. She talked with the utmost ease and apparent frankness, but of her own condition in life she said not a word. Yet, there was something convincingly honest about her; and St. Arnaud, who knew the world thoroughly, felt as much confidence in her as did the unsophisticated Gavin. He shrewdly suspected her to be a professional artist of some description, who possessed, by some chance, a higher degree of education and breeding than was usual in those times. He treated her, however, as if she had been a princess in her own right, and Madame Ziska accepted it with perfect dignity, as her just due.

Gavin had never before sat at table with an officer, and he watched St. Arnaud quite as closely as St. Arnaud watched him. He carried off his part wonderfully well, but it was not quite perfection. He laughed and talked too much, airing his sentiments in the four languages he claimed to know, which, except English and French, he spoke very ungrammatically. St. Arnaud, pleasant but critical, noticed all, while Madame Ziska’s sweet, inscrutable smile revealed nothing. There was a harpsichord in the room, and as soon as they had finished supper St. Arnaud jumped up and, opening it, burst into a sentimental song, accompanying himself brilliantly. This was too much for Gavin, who was so charmed that he altogether forgot the part he was playing, and also the training his mother had given him, and acted as he would at a bivouac when a comrade sang a good song. In the excess of his enjoyment he sat down on the floor, close to the glowing stove, and after a while established himself comfortably at full length, his head resting on his elbows, which he dug into the carpet. St. Arnaud saw it all out of the tail of his eye, until Gavin, suddenly catching St. Arnaud’s amused glance fixed on him, jumped up, red and embarrassed.

“That is for not remembering what my mother told me,” he thought, with the deepest vexation. “However,” he reflected again, “I shall soon overcome the demoralization of camp manners in company like this,” and he demurely seated himself on a sofa. The song closed in a beautiful cadenza, but it was drowned in a tremendous tramping of hoofs, and the maid-servants rushed in, bawling:

“The Prussians! The Prussians!”

St. Arnaud’s and Gavin’s first sensation was one of stupid surprise. They had not thought a Prussian to be within fifty miles. Madame Ziska, however, showed not an instant’s discomposure. She at once opened the door of a closet in the room, saying, “It is strategy, not rashness, which is wanted now;” and almost pushing them in, she took the key out of the lock, and passed it to them in the inside. Then, seating herself nonchalantly, she trimmed the candles and took up a book to read.