And all this time it may well be wondered where was my remorse for a shot fired on the moor of Mearns, for two wretched homes created by my passion and my folly. And where, in that shifting mind of mine, was the place of Isobel Fortune, whose brief days of favour for myself (if that, indeed, was not imagination on my part) had been the cause of these my wanderings? There is one beside me as I write, ready to make allowance for youth and ignorance, the untutored affection, the distraught mind, if not for the dubiety as to her feelings for myself when I was outlawed for a deed of blood and had taken, as the Highland phrase goes, the world for my pillow.
I did not forget the girl of Kirkillstane; many a time in the inward visions of the night, and of the day too, I saw her go about that far-off solitary house in the hollow of the hills. Oddly enough, 'twas ever in sunshine I saw her, with her sun-bonnet swinging from its ribbons and her hand above her eyes, shading them that she might look across the fields that lay about her home, or on a tryst of fancy by the side of Earn, hearing the cushats mourn in a magic harmony with her melancholy thoughts. As for the killing of young Borland, that I kept, waking at least, from my thoughts, or if the same intruded, I found it easier, as time passed, to excuse myself for a fatality that had been in the experience of nearly every man I now knew—of Clancarty and Thurot, of the very baker in whose house I lodged and who kneaded the dough for his little bread not a whit the less cheerily because his hands had been imbrued.
The late Earl of Clare, in France called the Maréchal Comte de Thomond, had come to Dunkerque in the quality of Inspector-General of the Armies of France, to review the troops in garrison and along that menacing coast. The day after my engagement with Father Hamilton I finished my French lesson early and went to see his lordship and his army on the dunes to the east of the town. Cannon thundered, practising at marks far out in the sea; there was infinite manoeuvring of horse and foot; the noon was noisy with drums and the turf shook below the hoofs of galloping chargers. I fancy it was a holiday; at least, as I recall the thing, Dunkerque was allen fête, and a happy and gay populace gathered in the rear of the maréchales flag. Who should be there among the rest, or rather a little apart from the crowd, but Miss Walkinshaw! She had come in a chair; her dainty hand beckoned me to her side almost as soon as I arrived.
“Now, that's what I must allow is very considerate,” said she, eyeing my red shoes, which were put on that day from some notion of proper splendour.
“Well considered?” I repeated.
“Just well considered,” said she. “You know how much it would please me to see you in your red shoes, and so you must put them on.”
I was young in these days, and, like the ass I was, I quickly set about disabusing her mind of a misapprehension that injured her nor me.
“Indeed, Miss Walkinshaw,” said I, “how could I do that when I did not know you were to be here? You are the last I should have expected to see here.”
“What!” she exclaimed, growing very red. “Does Mr. Greig trouble himself so much about theconvenances?And why should I not be here if I have the whim? Tell me that, my fastidious compatriot.”
Here was an accountable flurry over a thoughtless phrase!
“No reason in the world that I know of,” said I gawkily, as red as herself, wondering what it was my foot was in.
“That you know of,” she repeated, as confused as ever. “It seems to me, Mr. Greig, that the old gentleman who is tutoring you in the French language would be doing a good turn to throw in a little of the manners of the same. Let me tell you that I am as much surprised as you can be to find myself here, and now that you are so good as to put me in mind of the—of the—of theconvenances, I will go straight away home. It was not the priest, nor was it Captain Thurot that got your ear, for they are by the way of being gentlemen; it could only have been this Irishman Clancarty—the quality of that country have none of the scrupulosity that distinguishes our own. You can tell his lordship, next time you see him, that Miss Walkinshaw will see day about with him for this.”
She ordered her chairmen to take her home, and then—burst into tears!
I followed at her side, in a stew at my indiscoverable blundering, mychapeau-de-brasin my hand, and myself like to greet too for sympathy and vexation.
“You must tell me what I have done, Miss Walkinshaw,” I said. “Heaven knows I have few enough friends in this world without losing your good opinion through an offence of whose nature I am entirely ignorant.”
“Go away!” she said, pushing my fingers from the side of her chair, that was now being borne towards the town.
“Indeed, and I shall not, Miss Walkinshaw, asking your pardon for the freedom,” I said, “for here's some monstrous misconception, and I must clear myself, even at the cost of losing your favour for ever.”
She hid her face in her handkerchief and paid no more heed to me. Feeling like a mixture of knave and fool, I continued to walk deliberately by her side all the way into the Rue de la Boucherie. She dismissed the chair and was for going into the house without letting an eye light on young persistency.
“One word, Miss Walkinshaw,” I pleaded. “We are a Scottish man and a Scottish woman, our leelones of all our race at this moment in this street, and it will be hard-hearted of the Scottish woman if she will not give her fellow countryman, that has for her a respect and an affection, a chance to know wherein he may have blundered.”
“Respect and affection,” she said, her profile turned to me, her foot on the steps, visibly hesitating.
“Respect and affection,” I repeated, flushing at my own boldness.
“In spite of Clancarty's tales of me?” she said, biting her nether lip and still manifestly close on tears.
“How?” said I, bewildered. “His lordship gave me no tales that I know of.”
“And why,” said she, “be at such pains to tell me you wondered I should be there?”
I got very red at that.
“You see, you cannot be frank with me, Mr. Greig,” she said bitterly.
“Well, then,” I ventured boldly, “what I should have said was that I feared you would not be there, for it's there I was glad to see you. And I have only discovered that in my mind since you have been angry with me and would not let me explain myself.”
“What!” she cried, quite radiant, “and, after all, the red shoon were not without a purpose? Oh, Mr. Greig, you're unco' blate! And, to tell you the truth, I was just play-acting yonder myself. I was only making believe to be angry wi' you, and now that we understand each ither you can see me to my parlour.”
“Well, Bernard,” she said to the Swiss as we entered, “any news?”
He informed her there was none.
“What! no one called?” said she with manifest disappointment.
“Personne, Madame.”
“No letters?”
Nor were there any letters, he replied.
She sighed, paused irresolute a moment with her foot on the stair, one hand at her heart, the other at the fastening of her coat, and looked at me with a face almost tragic in its trouble. I cannot but think she was on the brink of a confidence, but ere it came she changed her mind and dashed up the stair with a tra-la-la of a song meant to indicate her indifference, leaving me a while in her parlour while she changed her dress. She came back to me in a little, attired in a pale primrose-coloured paduasoy, the cuffs and throat embroidered in a pattern of roses and leaves, her hair unpowdered and glossy, wantoning in and out of a neck beyond description. The first thing she did on entrance was odd enough, for it was to stand over me where I lounged on her settee, staring down into my eyes until I felt a monstrous embarrassment.
“I am wonderin',” said she, “if ye are the man I tak' ye for.”
Her eyes were moist; I saw she had been crying in her toilet room.
“I'm just the man you see,” I said, “but for some unco' troubles that are inside me and are not for airing to my friends on a fine day in Dunkerque.”
“Perhaps, like the lave of folks, ye dinna ken yoursel',” she went on, speaking with no sprightly humour though in the Scots she was given to fall to in her moments of fun. “All men, Mr. Greig, mean well, but most of them fall short of their own ideals; they're like the women in that, no doubt, but in the men the consequence is more disastrous.”
“When I was a girl in a place you know,” she went on even more soberly, “I fancied all men were on the model of honest John Walkinshaw—better within than without. He was stern to austerity, demanding the last particle of duty from his children, and to some he might seem hard, but I have never met the man yet with a kinder heart, a pleasanter mind, a more pious disposition than John Walkin-shaw's. It has taken ten years, and acquaintance with some gentry not of Scotland, to make it plain that all men are not on his model.”
“I could fancy not, to judge from his daughter,” I said, blushing at my first compliment that was none the less bold because it was sincere.
At that she put on a little mouth and shrugged her shoulders with a shiver that made the snaps in her ears tremble.
“My good young man,” said she, “there you go! If there's to be any friendship between you and Clementina Walkinshaw, understand there must be a different key from that. You are not only learning your French, but you are learning, it would seem, the manners of the nation. It was that made me wonder if you could be the man I took you for the first day you were in this room and I found I could make you greet with a Scots sang, and tell me honestly about a lass you had a notion of and her no' me. That last's the great stroke of honesty in any man, and let me tell you there are some women who would not relish it. But you are in a company here so ready with the tongue of flattery that I doubt each word they utter, and that's droll enough in me that loves my fellow creatures, and used to think the very best of every one of them. If I doubt them now I doubt them with a sore enough heart, I'll warrant you. Oh! am I not sorry that my man of Mearns should be put in the reverence of such creatures as Clancarty and Thurot, and all that gang of worldlings? I do not suppose I could make you understand it, Mr. Paul Greig, but I feel motherly to you, and to see my son—this great giant fellow who kens the town of Glasgow and dwelt in Mearns where I had May milk, and speaks wi' the fine Scots tongue like mysel' when his heart is true—to see him the boon comrade with folks perhaps good enough for Clementina Walkinshaw but lacking a particle of principle, is a sight to sorrow me.”
“And is it for that you seek to get me away with the priest?” I asked, surprised at all this, and a little resenting the suggestion of youth implied in her feeling like a mother to me. Her face was lit, her movement free and beautiful; something in her fascinated me.
She dropped in a chair and pushed the hair from her ears with a hand like milk, and laughed.
“Now how could you guess?” said she. “Am I no' the careful mother of you to put you in the hands o' the clergy? I doubt this play-acting rhetorician of a man from Dixmunde is no great improvement on the rest of your company when all's said and done, but you'll be none the worse for seeing the world at his costs, and being in other company than Clancarty's and Thurot's and Roscommon's. He told me to-day you were going with him, and I was glad that I had been of that little service to you.”
“Then it seems you think so little of my company as to be willing enough to be rid of me at the earliest opportunity,” I said, honestly somewhat piqued at her readiness to clear me out of Dunkerque.
She looked at me oddly. “Havers, Mr. Greig!” said she, “just havers!”
I was thanking her for her offices, but she checked me. “You are well off,” she said, “to be away from here while these foolish manouvrings are on foot. Poor me! I must bide and see them plan the breaking down of my native country. It's a mercy I know in what a fiasco it will end, this planning. Hearken! Do you hear the bugles? That's Soubise going back to the caserne. He and his little men are going back to eat another dinner destined to assist in the destruction of an island where you and I should be this day if we were wiser than we are. Fancy them destroying Britain, Mr. Greig!—Britain, where honest John Walkinshaw is, that never said an ill word in his life, nor owed any man a penny: where the folks are guid and true, and fear God and want nothing but to be left to their crofts and herds. If it was England—if it was the palace of Saint James—no, but it's Scotland, too, and the men you saw marching up and down to-day are to be marching over the moor o' Mearns when the heather's red. Can you think of it?” She stamped her foot. “Where the wee thack hooses are at the foot o' the braes, and the bairns playing under the rowan trees; where the peat is smelling, and the burns are singing in the glens, and the kirk-bells are ringing. Poor Mr. Greig! Are ye no' wae for Scotland? Do ye think Providence will let a man like Thomond ye saw to-day cursing on horseback—do ye think Providence will let him lead a French army among the roads you and I ken so well, affronting the people we ken too, who may be a thought dull in the matter of repartee, but are for ever decent, who may be hard-visaged, but are so brave?”
She laughed, herself, half bitterly, half contemptuously, at the picture she drew. Outside, in the sunny air of the afternoon, the bugles of Soubise filled the street with brazen cries, and nearer came the roar of pounding drums. I thought I heard them menacing the sleep of evening valleys far away, shattering the calm of the hearth of Hazel Den.
“The cause for which—for which so many are exile here,” I said, looking on this Jacobite so strangely inconsistent, “has no reason to regret that France should plan an attack on Georgius Rex.”
She shook her head impatiently. “The cause has nothing to do with it, Mr. Greig,” said she. “The cause will suffer from this madness more than ever it did, but in any case 'tis the most miserable of lost causes.”
“Prince Charlie-”
“Once it was the cause with me, now I would sooner have it Scotland,” she went on, heedless of my interruption. “Scotland! Scotland! Oh, how the name of her is like a dirge to me, and my heart is sore for her! Where is your heart, Mr. Greig, that it does not feel alarm at the prospect of thesecrapaudsmaking a single night's sleep uneasy for the folks you know? Where is your heart, I'm asking?”
“I wish I knew,” said I impulsively, staring at her, completely bewitched by her manner so variable and intense, and the straying tendrils of her hair.
“Do you not?” said she. “Then I will tell you. It is where it ought to be—with a girl of the name of Isobel Fortune. Oh, the dear name! oh, the sweet name! And when you are on your travels with this priest do not be forgetting her. Oh, yes! I know you will tell me again that all is over between the pair of you, and that she loved another—but I am not believing a word of that, Mr. Greig, when I look at you—(and will ye say 'thank ye' for the compliment that's there?)—you will just go on thinking her the same, and you will be the better man for it. There's something tells me she is thinking of you though I never saw her, the dear! Let me see, this is what sort of girl she will be.”
She drew her chair closer to the settee and leaned forward in front of me, and, fixing her eyes on mine, drew a picture of the girl of Kirkillstane as she imagined her.
“She will be about my own height, and with the same colour of hair-”
“How do you know that? I never said a word of that to you,” I cried, astonished at the nearness of her first guess.
“Oh, I'm a witch,” she cried triumphantly, “a fair witch. Hoots! do I no' ken ye wadna hae looked the side o' the street I was on if I hadna put ye in mind o' her? Well, she's my height and colour—but, alack-a-day, no' my years. She 'll have a voice like the mavis for sweetness, and 'll sing to perfection. She'll be shy and forward in turns, accordin' as you are forward and shy; she 'll can break your heart in ten minutes wi' a pout o' her lips or mak' ye fair dizzy with delight at a smile. And then”—here Miss Walkinshaw seemed carried away herself by her fancy portrait, for she bent her brows studiously as she thought, and seemed to speak in an abstraction—“and then she'll be a managing woman. She'll be the sort of woman that the Bible tells of whose value is over rubies; knowing your needs as you battle with the world, and cheerful when you come in to the hearthstone from the turmoil outside. A witty woman and a judge of things, calm but full of fire in your interests. A household where the wife's a doll is a cart with one wheel, and your Isobel will be the perfect woman. I think she must have travelled some, too, and seen how poor is the wide world compared with what is to be found at your own fire-end; I think she must have had trials and learned to be brave.”
She stopped suddenly, looked at me and got very red in the face.
“A fine picture, Miss Walkinshaw!” said I, with something drumming at my heart. “It is not just altogether like Isobel Fortune, who has long syne forgot but to detest me, but I fancy I know who it is like.”
“And who might that be?” she asked in a low voice and with a somewhat guilty look.
“Will I tell you?” I asked, myself alarmed at my boldness.
“No! no! never mind,” she cried. “I was just making a picture of a girl I once knew—poor lass! and of what she might have been. But she's dead—dead and buried. I hope, after all, your Isobel is a nobler woman than the one I was thinking on and a happier destiny awaiting her.”
“That cannot matter much to me now,” I said, “for, as I told you, there is nothing any more between us—except—except a corp upon the heather.”
She shuddered as she did the first time I told her of my tragedy, and sucked in the air again through her clenched teeth.
“Poor lad! poor lad!” said she. “And you have quite lost her. If so, and the thing must be, then this glass coach of Father Hamilton's must take you to the country of forgetfulness. I wish I could drive there myself this minute, but wae's me, there's no chariot at theremisethat'll do that business for John Walkinshaw's girl.”
Something inexpressively moving was in her mien, all her heart was in her face as it seemed; a flash of fancy came to me that she was alone in the world with nothing of affection to hap her round from its abrasions, and that her soul was crying out for love. Sweet beyond expression was this woman and I was young; up to my feet I rose, and turned on her a face that must have plainly revealed my boyish passion.
“Miss Walkinshaw,” I said, “you may put me out of this door for ever, but I'm bound to say I'm going travelling in no glass coach; Dunkerque will be doing very well for me.”
Her lips trembled; her cheek turned pale; she placed a hand upon her breast, and there was I contrite before her anger!
“Is this—is this your respect and your esteem, Mr. Greig?” she asked brokenly.
“They were never greater than at this moment,” I replied.
“And how are they to be manifested by your waiting on in Dunkerque?” she asked, recovering her colour and some of her ordinary manner.
How indeed? She had no need to ask me the question, for it was already ringing through my being. That the Spoiled Horn from Mearns, an outlaw with blood on his hands and borrowed money in his pocket, should have the presumption to feel any ardour for this creature seemed preposterous to myself, and I flushed in an excess of shame and confusion.
This seemed completely to reassure her. “Oh, Mr. Greig—Mr. Greig, was I not right to ask if ye were the man ye seemed? Here's a nice display o' gallantry from my giant son! I believe you are just makin' fun o' this auld wife; and if no' I hae just one word for you, Paul Greig, and it's this that I said afore—jist havers!”
She went to her spinet and ran her fingers over the keys and broke into a song—
Oh, what ails the laddie, new twined frae his mither?The laddie gallantin' roun' Tibbie and me?—
with glances coquettish yet repelling round her shoulder at me as I stood turning mychapeau-de-brasin my hand as a boy turns his bonnet in presence of laird or dominie. The street was shaking now with the sound of marching soldiers, whose platoons were passing in a momentary silence of trumpet or drum. All at once the trumpets blared forth just in front of the house, broke upon her song, and gave a heavensent diversion to our comedy or tragedy or whatever it was in the parlour.
We both stood looking out at the window for a while in silence, watching the passing troops, and when the last file had gone, she turned with a change of topic “If these men had been in England ten years ago,” she said, “when brisk affairs were doing there with Highland claymores, your Uncle Andrew would have been there, too, and it would not perhaps be your father who was Laird of Hazel Den. But that's all by with now. And when do you set out with Father Hamilton?”
She had a face as serene as fate; my heart ached to tell her that I loved her, but her manner made me hold my tongue on that.
“In three days,” I said, still turning my hat and wishing myself elsewhere, though her presence intoxicated.
“In three days!” she said, as one astonished. “I had thought it had been a week at the earliest. Will I tell you what you might do? You are my great blate bold son, you know, from the moors of Mearns, and I will be wae, wae, to think of you travelling all round Europe without a friend of your own country to exchange a word with. Write to me; will you?”
“Indeed and I will, and that gaily,” I cried, delighted at the prospect.
“And you will tell me all your exploits and where you have been and what you have seen, and where you are going and what you are going to do, and be sure there will be one Scots heart thinking of you (besides Isobel, I daresay), and I declare to you this one will follow every league upon the map, saying 'the blate lad's there to-day,' 'the blate lad's to be here at noon to-morrow.' Is it a bargain? Because you know I will write to you—but oh! I forgot; what of the priest? Not for worlds would I have him know that I kept up a correspondence with his secretary. That is bad.”
She gazed rather expectantly at me as if looking for a suggestion, but the problem was beyond me, and she sighed.
“Of course his reverence need not know anything about it,” she said then.
“Certainly,” I acquiesced, jumping at so obvious a solution. “I will never mention to him anything about it.”
“But how will I get your letters and how will you get mine without his suspecting something?”
“Oh, but he cannot suspect.”
“What, and he a priest, too! It's his trade, Mr. Greig, and this Father Hamilton would spoil all if he knew we were indulging ourselves so innocently. What you must do is to send your letters to me in a way that I shall think of before you leave and I shall answer in the same way. But never a word, remember, to his reverence; I depend on your honour for that.”
As I was going down the stair a little later, she leaned over the bannister and cried after me:
“Mr. Greig,” said she, “ye needna' be sae hainin' wi' your red shoes when ye're traivellin' in the coach. I would be greatly pleased to be thinkin' of you as traivellin' in them a' the time.”
I looked up and saw her smiling saucily at me over the rail.
“Would you indeed?” said I. “Then I'll never put them aff till I see ye again, when I come back to Dunkerque.”
“That is kind,” she answered, laughing outright, “but fair reediculous. To wear them to bed would be against your character for sobriety.”
It was the last, for many months, I was to see of my countrywoman. Before the crow of the cock next morning I was on the unending roads, trundling in a noisy vehicle through pitch darkness, my companion snoring stertorous at my side, his huge head falling every now and then upon my shoulder, myself peering to catch some revelation of what manner of country-side we went through as the light from the swinging lanthorn lit up briefly passing banks of frosted hedge or sleeping hamlets on whose pave the hoofs of our horses hammered as they had been the very war-steeds of Bellona.
But how came I there? How but by my master's whim, that made him anticipate his departure by three days and drag me from my bed incontinent to set out upon his trip over Europe.
I had been sleeping soundly, dreaming I heard the hopper of the mill of Driepps at home banging to make Jock Alexander's fortune, when I awakened, or rather half-wakened, to discover that 'twas no hopper but a nieve at my door, rapping with a vigour to waken the dead.
“Come out! Sir Secretary, come out! or I shall pull thy domicile about thine ears,” cried the voice of Father Hamilton.
He stood at the door when I opened, wrapped over the chin in a muffler of multitudinous folds, and covered by a roquelaure.
“Pax!” he cried, thrusting a purple face into the room, “and on with thy boots like a good lad. We must be off and over the dunes before the bell of St. Eloi knocks another nail in the coffin of time.”
“What!” I said, dumbfoundered, “are we to start on our journey to-day?”
“Even so, my sluggardly Scot; faith! before the day even, for the day will be in a deuce of a hurry an' it catch up on us before we reach Pont-Opoise. Sop a crust in a jug of wine—I've had no betterpetit déjeunermyself—put a clean cravat and a pair of hose in thy sack, and in all emulate the judicious flea that wastes no time in idle rumination, but transacts its affairs in a succession of leaps.”
“And no time to say good-bye to anyone?” I asked, struggling into my toilet.
“La! la! la! the flea never takes acongéthat I've heard on, Master Punctilio. Not so much as a kiss o' the hand for you; I have had news, and 'tis now or never.”
Twenty minutes later, Thurot's landlord (for Thurot himself was from home) lit me to the courtyard, and the priest bundled me and my sack into the bowels of an enormous chariot waiting there.
The clocks began to strike the hour of five; before the last stroke had ceased to shiver the darkness we were thundering along the sea front and my master was already composed to sleep in his corner, without vouchsafing me a sentence of explanation for so hurried a departure. Be sure my heart was sore! I felt the blackest of ingrates to be thus speeding without a sign of farewell from a place where I had met with so much of friendship.
Out at the window of the coach I gazed, to see nothing but the cavernous night on one side, on the other, lit by the lanthorn, the flashing past of houses all shuttered and asleep.
It was dry and pleasant weather, with a sting of frost in the air, and the propinquity of the sea manifest not in its plangent voice alone but in the odour of it that at that hour dominated the natural smells of the faubourgs. Only one glimpse I had of fellow creatures; as we passed the fort, the flare of flambeaux showed an enormous body of soldiers working upon the walls of Risebank; it but added to the poignance of my melancholy to reflect that here were my country's enemies unsleeping, and I made a sharp mental contrast of this most dauntening spectacle with a picture of the house of Hazel Den dreaming among its trees, and only crying lambs perhaps upon the moor to indicate that any life was there. Melancholy! oh, it was eerie beyond expression for me that morning! Outside, the driver talked to his horses and to some one with him on the boot; it must have been cheerier for him than for me as I sat in that sombre and close interior, jolted by my neighbour, and unable to refrain from rehabilitating all the past. Especially did I think of my dark home-coming with a silent father on the day I left the college to go back to the Mearns. And by a natural correlation, that was bound to lead to all that followed—even to the event for which I was now so miserably remote from my people.
Once or twice his reverence woke, to thrust his head out at the window and ask where we were. Wherever we were when he did so, *twas certain never to be far enough for his fancy, and he condemned the driver for a snail until the whip cracked wickedly and the horses laboured more strenuously than ever, so that our vehicle swung upon its springs till it might well seem we were upon a ship at sea.
For me he had but the one comment—“I wonder what's fordéjeuner.” He said it each time solemnly as it were his matins, and then slid into his swinish sleep again.
The night seemed interminable, but by-and-by the day broke. I watched it with eagerness as it gradually paled the east, and broke up the black bulk of the surrounding land into fields, orchards, gardens, woods. And the birds awoke—God bless the little birds!—they woke, and started twittering and singing in the haze, surely the sweetest, the least sinless of created things, the tiny angels of the woods, from whom, walking in summer fields in the mornings of my age as of my youth, I have borrowed hope and cheer.
Father Hamilton wakened too, and heard the birds; indeed, they filled the ear of the dawn with melodies. A smile singularly pleasant came upon his countenance as he listened.
“Pardieu!” said he, “how they go on! Has't the woodland soul,Sieur Croque-mort? Likely enough not; I never knew another but myself and thine uncle that had it, and 'tis the mischief that words will not explain the same. 'Tis a gift of the fairies”—here he crossed himself devoutly and mumbled a Romish incantation—“that, having the said woodland spirit—in its nature a Pagan thing perchance, butn'importe!—thou hast in the song of the tiny beings choiring there something to make the inward tremor that others find in a fiddle and a glass of wine. No! no! not that, 'tis a million times more precious; 'tis—'tis the pang of the devotee, 'tis the ultimate thrill of things. Myself, I could expire upon the ecstasy of the thrush, or climb to heaven upon the lark's May rapture. And there they go! the loves! and they have the same ditty I heard from them first in Louvain. There are but three clean things in this world, my lad of Scotland—a bird, a flower, and a child's laughter. I have been confessor long enough to know all else is filth. But what's the luck in waiting for us at Azincourt? and what's thepot-au-feuto-day?”
He listened a little longer to the birds, and fell asleep smiling, his fat face for once not amiss, and I was left again alone as it were to receive the day.
We had long left the dunes and the side of the sea, though sometimes on puffs of wind I heard its distant rumour. Now the land was wooded with the apple tree; we rose high on the side of a glen, full of a rolling fog that streamed off as the day grew. A tolerable land enough; perhaps more lush than my own, with scarce a rood uncultivated, and dotted far and wide by the strangest farm steadings and pendicles, but such steadings and pendicles as these eyes never before beheld, with enormous eaves of thatch reaching almost to the ground, and ridiculous windows of no shape; with the yokings of the cattle, the boynes, stoups, carts, and ploughs about the places altogether different from our own. We passed troops marching, peasants slouching with baskets of poultry to market towns, now and then a horseman, now and then a caleche. And there were numerous hamlets, and at least two middling-sized towns, and finally we came, at the hour of eleven, upon the place appointed for ourdéjeuner. It was a small inn on the banks of the only rivulet I had seen in all the journey. I forget its name, but I remember there was a patch of heather on the side of it, and that I wished ardently the season had been autumn that I might have looked upon the purple bells.
“Tis a long lane that has no tavern,” said his reverence, and oozed out of his side of the coach with groanings. The innkeeper ran forth, louted, and kissed his hand.
“Jour, m'sieu jour!” said Father Hamilton hurriedly. “And now, what have you here that is worth while?”
The innkeeper respectfully intimated that the church of Saint-Jean-en-Grève was generally considered worth notice. Its vestments, relics, and windows were of merit, and the view from the tower—
“Mort de ma vie!” cried the priest angrily, “do I look like a traveller who trots up belfrys in strange villages at the hour ofdéjeuner?A plague on Saint-Jean-en-Grève! I said nothing at all of churches; I spoke ofdéjeuner, my good fellow. What's fordéjeuner?”
The innkeeper recounted a series of dishes. Father Hamilton hummed and hawed, reflected, condemned, approved, all with an eagerness beyond description. And when the meal was being dished up, he went frantically to the kitchen and lifted pot-lids, and swung a salad for himself, and confounding the ordinary wine for the vilest piquette ordered a special variety from the cellar. It was a spectacle of gourmandise not without its humour; I was so vastly engaged in watching him that I scarce glanced at the men who had travelled on the outside of the coach since morning.
What was my amazement when I did so to see that the servant or valet (as he turned out to be) was no other than the Swiss, Bernard, who had been in the service of Miss Walkinshaw no later than yesterday morning!
I commented on the fact to Father Hamilton when we sat down to eat.
“Why, yes!” he said, gobbling at his vivers with a voracity I learned not to wonder at later when I knew him more. “The same man. A good man, too, or I'm a Turk. I've envied Miss Walkinshaw this lusty, trusty, secret rogue for a good twelvemonth, and just on the eve of my leaving Dunkerque, by a very providence, the fellow gets drunk and finds himself dismissed. He came to me with a flush and a hiccough last night to ask a recommendation, and overlooking the peccadillo that is not of a nature confined to servants, Master Greig, let me tell thee, I gave him a place in myentourage. Madame will not like it, but no matter! she'll have time to forget it ere I see her again.”
I felt a mild satisfaction to have the Swiss with us just because I had heard him called “Bernard” so often by his late employer.
We rested for some hours afterdéjeuner, seated under a tree by the brink of the rivulet, and in the good humour of a man satisfied in nature the priest condescended to let me into some of his plans.
We were bound for Paris in the first place. “Zounds!” he cried, “I am all impatience to clap eyes again on Lutetia, the sweet rogue, and eat decent bread and behold a noble gown and hear a right cadenza. And though thou hast lost thy Lyrnessides—la! la! la! I have thee there!—thou canst console thyself with the Haemonian lyre. Paris! oh, lad, I'd give all to have thy years and a winter or two in it. Still, we shall make shift—oh, yes! I warrant thee we shall make shift. We shall be there, at my closest reckoning, on the second day of Holy Week, and my health being so poorly we shall not wait to commencede faire les Pâquesan hour after. What's in asoutane, anyhow, that it should be permitted to mortify an honest priest's oesophagus?”
I sighed in spite of myself, for he had made me think of our throwing of Easter eggs on the green at Hazel Den.
“What!” he cried. “Does my frugal Scot fancy we have not enough trinkgeld for enjoyment. Why, look here!—and here!—and here!”
He thrust his hand into his bosom and drew forth numerous rouleaux—so many that I thought his corpulence might well be a plethora of coin.
“There!” said he, squeezing a rouleau till it burst and spreading out the gold upon the table before him. “Am I a poor parish priest or a very Croesus?”
Then he scooped in the coins with his fat hands and returned all to his bosom. “Allons!” he said shortly; we were on the road again!
That night we put up at the Bon Accueil in a town whose name escapes my recollection.
He had gone to bed; through the wall from his chamber came the noise of his sleep, while I was at the writing of my first letter to Miss Walkinshaw, making the same as free and almost affectionate as I had been her lover, for as I know it now, I was but seeking in her for the face of the love of the first woman and the last my heart was given to.
I had scarcely concluded when the Swiss came knocking softly to my door, and handed me a letter from the very woman whose name was still in wet ink upon my folded page. I tore it open eagerly, to find a score of pleasant remembrances. She had learned the night before that the priest was to set out in the morning: “I have kept my word,” she went on. “Your best friend is Bernard, so I let you have him, and let us exchange our billets through him. It will be the most Discreet method. And I am, with every consideration, Ye Ken Wha.”
The occasion for this precaution in our correspondence was beyond my comprehension; nevertheless I was too proud to have the patronage of so fine a woman to cavil at what system she should devise for its discreet conduct, and the Swiss that night got my first letter to frank and despatch. He got one next evening also, and the evening after that; in short, I made a diurnal of each stage in our journey and Bernard was my postman—so to name it—on every occasion that I forwarded the same to Miss Walkinshaw. He assured me that he was in circumstances to secure the more prompt forwardation of my epistles than if I trusted in the common runner, and it was a proof of this that when we got, after some days, into Versailles, he should bring to me a letter from the lady herself informing me how much of pleasure she had got from the receipt of the first communication I had sent her.
Perhaps it is a sign of the injudicious mind that I should not be very mightily pleased with this same Versailles. We had come into it of a sunny afternoon and quartered at the Cerf d'Or Inn, and went out in the evening for the air. Somehow the place gave me an antagonism; its dipt trees all in rows upon the wayside like a guard of soldiers; its trim gardens and bits of plots; its fountains crying, as it seemed, for attention—these things hurt me as a liberty taken with nature. Here, thought I, is the fitting place for the raff in ruffles and the scented wanton; it should be the artificial man and the insincere woman should be condemned to walk for ever in these alleys and drink in thesebosquets;I would not give a fir planting black against the evening sky at home for all this pompous play-acting at landscape, nor a yard of the brown heather of the hills for all these well-drilled flower parterres.
“Eh! M. Croque-mort,” said the priest, delighted visibly with all he saw about him; “what think'st thou of Le Notre's gardening?”
“A good deal, sir,” I said, “that need never be mentioned. I feel a pity for the poor trees as I did for yon dipt poodle dog at Griepon.”
“La! la! la!sots raissonable, Monsieur,” cried the priest. “We cannot have the tastes of our Dubarrys and Pompadours and Maintenons so called in question by an untravelled Scot that knows but the rude mountain and stunted oaks dying in a murrain of climate. 'Art too ingenuous, youth. And yet—and yet”—here he paused and tapped his temple and smiled whimsically—“between ourselves, I prefer the woods of Somme where the birds sang together so jocund t'other day. But there now—ah,quelle gloire!”
We had come upon the front of the palace, and its huge far-reaching masonry, that I learned later to regard as cold, formal, and wanting in a soul, vastly discomposed me. I do not know why it should be so, but as I gazed at this—the greatest palace I had ever beheld—I felt tears rush irrestrainably to my eyes. Maybe it was the poor little poet in MacGibbon's law chamber in Lanark town that used to tenant every ancient dwelling with spirits of the past, cropped up for the moment in Father Hamilton's secretary, and made me, in a flash, people the place with kings—and realise something of the wrench it must have been and still would be to each and all of them to say adieu at the long last to this place of noisy grandeur where they had had their time of gaiety and splendour. Anyhow, I well-nigh wept, and the priest was quick to see it.
“Fore God!” he cried, “here's Andrew Greig again! 'Twas the wickedest rogue ever threw dice, and yet the man must rain at the eyes like a very woman.”
And yet he was pleased, I thought, to see me touched. A band was playing somewhere in a garden unseen; he tapped time to its music with his finger tips against each other and smiled beatifically and hummed. He seemed at peace with the world and himself at that moment, yet a second later he was the picture of distress and apprehension.
We were going towards the Place d'Armes; he had, as was customary, his arm through mine, leaning on me more than was comfortable, for he was the poorest judge imaginable of his own corpulence. Of a sudden I felt him jolt as if he had been startled, and then he gripped my arm with a nervous grasp. All that was to account for his perturbation was that among the few pedestrians passing us on the road was one in a uniform who cast a rapid glance at us. It was not wonderful that he should do so, for indeed we were a singularly ill-assorted pair, but there was a recognition of the priest in the glance the man in the uniform threw at him in passing. Nothing was said; the man went on his way and we on ours, but looking at Father Hamilton I saw his face had lost its colour and grown blotched in patches. His hand trembled; for the rest of the walk he was silent, and he could not too soon hurry us back to the Cerf d'Or.
Next day was Sunday, and Father Hamilton went to Mass leaving me to my own affairs, that were not of that complexion perhaps most becoming on that day to a lad from Scotland. He came back anon and dressed most scrupulously in a suit of lay clothing.
“Come out, Master Greig,” said he, “and use thine eyes for a poor priest that has ruined his own in studying the Fathers and seeking for honesty.”
“It is not in the nature of a compliment to myself, that,” I said, a little tired of his sour sentiments regarding humanity, and not afraid in the least to tell him so.
“Eh!” said he. “I spoke not of thee, thou savage. A plague on thy curt temper; 'twas ever the weakness of the Greigs. Come, and I shall show thee a house where thy uncle and I had many a game of dominoes.”
We went to a coffee-house and watched the fashionable world go by. It was a sight monstrously fine. Because it was the Easter Sunday the women had on their gayest apparel, the men their most belacedjabots.
“Now look you well, Friend Scotland,” said Father Hamilton, as we sat at a little table and watched the stream of quality pass, “look you well and watch particularly every gentleman that passes to the right, and when you see one you know tell me quickly.”
He had dropped his Roman manner as if in too sober a mood to act.
“Is it a game?” I asked. “Who can I ken in the town of Versailles that never saw me here before?”
“Never mind,” said he, “do as I tell you. A sharp eye, and-”
“Why,” I cried, “there's a man I have seen before!”
“Where? where?” said Father Hamilton, with the utmost interest lighting his countenance.
“Yonder, to the left of the man with the velvet breeches. He will pass us in a minute or two.”
The person I meant would have been kenspeckle in any company by the splendour of his clothing, but beyond his clothing there was a haughtiness in his carriage that singled him out even among the fashionables of Versailles, who were themselves obviously interested in his personality, to judge by the looks that they gave him as closely as breeding permitted. He came sauntering along the pavement swinging a cane by its tassel, his chin in the air, his eyes anywhere but on the crowds that parted to give him room. As he came closer I saw it was a handsome face enough that thus was cocked in haughtiness to the heavens, not unlike Clancarty's in that it showed the same signs of dissipation, yet with more of native nobility in it than was in the good enough countenance of the French-Irish nobleman. Where had I seen that face before?
It must have been in Scotland; it must have been when I was a boy; it was never in the Mearns. This was a hat with a Dettingen cock; when I saw that forehead last it was under a Highland bonnet.
A Highland bonnet—why! yes, and five thousand Highland bonnets were in its company—whom had I here but Prince Charles Edward!
The recognition set my heart dirling in my breast, for there was enough of the rebel in me to feel a romantic glow at seeing him who set Scotland in a blaze, and was now the stuff of songs our women sang in milking folds among the hills; that heads had fallen for, and the Hebrides had been searched for in vain for weary seasons. The man was never a hero of mine so long as I had the cooling influence of my father to tell me how lamentable for Scotland had been his success had God permitted the same, yet I was proud to-day to see him.
“Is it he?” asked the priest, dividing his attention between me and the approaching nobleman.
“It's no other,” said I. “I would know Prince Charles in ten thousand, though I saw him but the once in a rabble of caterans coming up the Gallow-gate of Glasgow.”
“Ah,” said the priest, with a curious sighing sound. “They said he passed here at the hour. And that's our gentleman, is it? I expected he would have been—would have been different.” When the Prince was opposite the café where we sat he let his glance come to earth, and it fell upon myself. His aspect changed; there was something of recognition in it; though he never slackened his pace and was gazing the next moment down the vista of the street, I knew that his glance had taken me in from head to heel, and that I was still the object of his thoughts.
“You see! you see!” cried the priest, “I was right, and he knew the Greig. Why, lad, shalt have an Easter egg for this—the best horologe in Versailles upon Monday morning.”
“Why, how could he know me?” I asked. “It is an impossibility, for when he and I were in the same street last he rode a horse high above an army and I was only a raw laddie standing at a close-mouth in Duff's Land in the Gallowgate.”
But all the same I felt the priest was right, and that there was some sort of recognition in the Prince's glance at me in passing.
Father Hamilton poured himself a generous glass and drank thirstily.
“La! la! la!” said he, resuming his customary manner of address. “I daresay his Royal Highness has never clapt eyes on thycroque-moricountenance before, but he has seen its like—ay, and had a regard for it, too! Thine Uncle Andrew has done the thing for thee again; the mole, the hair, the face, the shoes—sure they advertise the Greig as by a drum tuck! and Charles Edward knew thy uncle pretty well so I supposed he would know thee. And this is my gentleman, is it? Well, well! No, not at all well; mighty ill indeed. Not the sort of fellow I had looked for at all. Seems a harmless man enough, and has tossed many a goblet in the way of company. If he had been a sour whey-face now—”
Father Hamilton applied himself most industriously to the bottle that afternoon, and it was not long till the last of my respect for him was gone. Something troubled him. He was moody and hilarious by turns, but neither very long, and completed my distrust of him when he intimated that there was some possibility of our trip across Europe never coming into effect. But all the same, I was to be assured of his patronage, I was to continue in his service as secretary, if, as was possible, he should take up his residence for a time in Paris. And money—why, look again! he had a ship's load of it, and 'twould never be said of Father Hamilton that he could not share with a friend. And there he thrust some rouleaux upon me and clapped my shoulder and was so affected at his own love for Andrew Greig's nephew that he must even weep.
Weeping indeed was the priest's odd foible for the week we remained at Versailles. He that had been so jocular before was now filled with morose moods, and would ruminate over his bottle by the hour at a time.
He was none the better for the company he met during our stay at the Cerf d'Or—all priests, and to the number of half a dozen, one of them an abbé with a most noble and reverent countenance. They used to come to him late at night, confer with him secretly in his room, and when they were gone I found him each time drenched in a perspiration and feverishly gulping spirits.
Every day we went to the café where we had seen the Prince first, and every day at the same hour we saw his Royal Highness, who, it appeared, was not known to the world as such, though known to me. The sight of him seemed to trouble Father Hamilton amazingly, and yet 'twas the grand object of the day—its only diversion; when we had seen the Prince we went back straight to the inn every afternoon.
The Cerf d'Or had a courtyard, cobbled with rough stones, in which there was a great and noisy traffic. In the midst of the court there was a little clump of evergreen trees and bushes in tubs, round which were gathered a few tables and chairs whereat—now that the weather was mild—the world sat in the afternoon. The walls about were covered with dusty ivy where sparrows had begun to busy themselves with love and housekeeping; lilacs sprouted into green, and the porter of the house was for ever scratching at the hard earth about the plants, and tying up twigs and watering the pots. It was here I used to write my letters to Miss Walkinshaw at a little table separate from the rest, and I think it was on Friday I was at this pleasant occupation when I looked up to see the man with the uniform gazing at me from the other side of the bushes as if he were waiting to have the letter when I was done with it.
I went in and asked Father Hamilton who this man was.
“What!” he cried in a great disturbance, “the same as we met near the Trianon! O Lord! Paul, there is something wrong, for that was Buhot.”
“And this Buhot?” I asked.
“A police inspector. There is no time to lose. Monsieur Greig, I want you to do an office for me. Here is a letter that must find its way into the hands of the Prince. You will give it to him. You have seen that he passes the café at the same hour every day. Well, it is the easiest thing in the world for you to go up to him and hand him this. No more's to be done by you.”
“But why should I particularly give him the letter? Why not send it by the Swiss?”
“That is my affair,” cried the priest testily. “The Prince knows you—that is important. He knows the Swiss too, and that is why I have the Swiss with me as a second string to my bow, but I prefer that he should have this letter from the hand of M. Andrew Greig's nephew. 'Tis a letter from his Royal Highness's most intimate friend.”
I took the letter into my hand, and was amazed to see that the address was in a writing exactly corresponding to that of a billet now in the bosom of my coat!
What could Miss Walkinshaw and the Prince have of correspondence to be conducted on such roundabout lines? Still, if the letter was hers I must carry it!
“Very well,” I agreed, and went out to meet the Prince.
The sun was blazing; the street was full of the quality in their summer clothing. His Royal Highness came stepping along at the customary hour more gay than ever. I made bold to call myself to his attention with my hat in my hand. “I beg your Royal Highness's pardon,” I said in English, “but I have been instructed to convey this letter to you.”
He swept his glance over me; pausing longest of all on my red shoes, and took the letter from my hand. He gave a glance at the direction, reddened, and bit his lip.
“Let me see now, what is the name of the gentleman who does me the honour?”
“Greig,” I answered. “Paul Greig.”
“Ah!” he cried, “of course: I have had friends in Monsieur's family.Charmé, Monsieur, de faire votre connaissance. M. Andrew Greig-”
“Was my uncle, your Royal Highness?”
“So! a dear fellow, but, if I remember rightly, with a fatal gift of irony. 'Tis a quality to be used with tact. I hope you have tact, M. Greig. Your good uncle once did me the honour to call me a—what was it now?—a gomeral.”
“It was very like my uncle, that, your Royal Highness,” I said. “But I know that he loved you and your cause.”
“I daresay he did, Monsieur; I daresay he did,” said the Prince, flushing, and with a show of pleasure at my speech. “I have learned of late that the fair tongue is not always the friendliest. In spite of it all I liked M. Andrew Greig. I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing Monsieur Greig's nephew soon again.Au plaisir de vous revoir!” And off he went, putting the letter, unread, into his pocket.
When I went back to the Cerf d'Or and told Hamilton all that had passed, he was straightway plunged into the most unaccountable melancholy.