Between two thieves

by Richard Dehan

Perhaps the brain behind those cerulean orbs of my Uncle Con’s was of rather soft consistency. Or it may be that the sight of my grandmother sitting in her best parlor, arrayed in her stiffest black silk gown—endued with her most imposing widow’s cap and weepers—waiting, with folded mittens, to hear that yet another of the pound-cakes cast upon the waters had not been sacrificed in vain—was calculated to make havoc of stronger wits and daunt a stouter courage. Suffice it to say that, having started out from barracks with the firm intention of returning as a man definitely engaged—preferably to my Aunt Emmelina rather than to my Aunt Claribella (young ladies between whose respective persons Con had hesitated, uncertain as the proverbial donkey between the bundles of hay)—the Ensign tottered back to quarters, a blighted being, engaged to my Aunt Marietta, whose Roman profile and haughty manners had from the first stricken terror to the young man’s soul.

He must have made wild work with his wooing, unlucky Con! for my grandmother subsequently confided to her bosom friend, Georgiana, that at one moment her firm conviction had been that the young man, with a maturity of taste and judgment rare in one so young, was proposing marriage to herself. In vain Con’s fraternal counselors advised him to go back, explain that he had got the wrong girl, and change her! Con could not muster the pluck! And so my Aunt Emmelina, who had loved the handsome young booby, never married; and Con was a henpecked husband to the ending of his days.

There was a triple wedding, so that one breakfast and one cake might do duty for three brides, a flying visit to London to do the lions; and now you saw my Aunt Julietta, a wife of two days, starting on her honeymoon-trip to Boulogne with the idol of her soul. Be sure that she recognized the deposed idol in their handsome fellow-traveler; that my aunt’s fresh English face had completely faded from Dunoisse’s memory may be guessed.

But the natural chagrin of my Aunt at this discovery was to give place to pangs of a less romantic kind. She had studied French fashions in the illuminating pages of the Ladies’ Mentor, had mastered the French language sufficiently to spell out a “Moral Tale” of Marmontel, or a page of Lamartine, or even a verse of Victor Hugo; and had compounded French dishes from English recipes. But she had never previously crossed the restless strip of Channel that divides her native isle of Britain from the shores of Gallia. And in those days nobody had ever heard of a real gentlewoman who was not very seriously incommoded, if not absolutely indisposed, at sea.

Conceive, then, my Aunt Julietta upon this smoothest of crossings, being dreadfully prostrated by the malady of the wave. Imagine her flattening her bridal bonnet—a sweet thing in drawn peach-blossom satin, with a wreath of orange-blooms inside the brim—into a cocked hat against the stalwart shoulder of her martial lord, as she reiterated agitated entreaties to be taken immediately on shore—picture her subsiding, in all the elegance of her flounced plaid poplin—a charming thing in large checks of pink, brown, and bottle-green—and her mantle of beaver-trimmed casimir, into a mere wisp of seasick humanity, distinguishable afterwards as a moaning bundle of shawls—prone upon a red plush sofa in a saloon cabin—ministered to by a stewardess with brandy-and-water and smelling-salts.

While the Britannia’s other first-class passengers gathered for the one o’clock dinner about the long table in the adjoining saloon, whence the clashing of knives and forks and the robust savors of the leg of boiled mutton with caper sauce, turnips, and potatoes—the porter and ale that washed these down; the apple-pudding that followed, and the Dutch cheese that came in with the materials for gin-hot and whisky-toddy—penetrated to the sufferer, moaning on the other side of the dividing partition of painted planks.

You may imagine that the bridegroom—placed upon the right hand of the Britannia’s commander at the head of the board, made tremendous havoc among the eatables; disposed of pewter after pewter of foaming ale; hobnobbed with the more jovial of the male passengers in bumpers of whisky-toddy; cracked broad jokes, and roared at them loudest of all; and capped the skipper’s thrilling recital of how, in 1830, when First Officer, and on his way to join his steamer at Southampton, he had nearly been pressed for service in the Royal Navy, and had, armed solely with a carpet-bag, containing a log-book and some heavy nautical instruments, done battle with and escaped from the clutches of a gang of crimps and man-catchers;—by relating, with much circumstantial detail, and to the breathless interest of his auditors, the story of how he, Captain Goliath M’Creedy, had backed himself to kill “tree rass” with his “teet” in emulation of the Adjutant’s “ould turrabred bull-bitch Fury,” and had “shuk the squale” out of the last remaining victim thirty seconds under the five minutes. “To the chune of ten guineas and six dozen of the foinust clarrut that ever a gentleman put down his troat!”

LIV

There were not lacking signs by the wayside, as Dunoisse was whirled along the iron road to Paris, of the bloody drama that had begun upon the previous morning, and was being played to the bitter end.

Troops and bodies of police lined the platforms of the railway-stations. Pale faces, downcast looks, and mourning attire distinguished those members of the public whom business or necessity compelled to travel at this perilous time. Glimpses of towns or villages, seen as the train rushed over bridges or in and out of stations, showed closed shops and jealously shut-up houses, many of them with bullet-pocked walls and shattered windows; more police and soldiers patroling the otherwise deserted thoroughfare; and agents in blouses, with rolls of paper, ladders, brushes, and paste-pots, posting the proclamations of Monseigneur upon walls, or trees, or hoardings, or wherever these had not already broken out like pale leprous sores. And upon many country roads significant-looking black vans, surrounded by Dragoons or Municipal Guards, and drawn by muddy, sweat-drenched post-horses, traveled at high speed, followed by open laudaus containing lounging, cigar-smoking Commissaries of Police. And in the roaring, cinder-flavored blackness of tunnels, or in the cold glare of chalky, open cuttings, huge locomotives would flash and thunder past, whirling yet other prison-vans, placed upon trucks, guarded by soldiers or mobilized gendarmerie, and packed with Representatives, Judges, Editors, Chiefs of secret societies, public leaders, and popular orators, to destinations unknown. And as the dusk day-brow sank over the red wintry sunset, the roll of musketry and the thunder of cannon, answered by the dropping, irregular fire from seventy-and-seven barricades, betokened that the train was nearing Paris; and then—the flaring gaslights of the Northern Station were reflected in the polished surfaces of steel or brazen helmets and gleaming blades of sabers; and winked and twinkled from shako-badges and musket-barrels, and the thirsty points of bayonets that had drunk the life-blood of harmless women, and innocent children, and decent, law-abiding men.