It was the first of May. But for Father Hamilton's birds, and some scanty signs of it in the small garden, the lengthened day and the kindlier air of the evenings, I might never have known what season it was out of the almanac, for all seasons were much the same, no doubt, in the Isle of the City where the priest and I sequestered. 'Twas ever the shade of the tenements there; the towers of the churches never greened nor budded; I would have waited long, in truth, for the scent of the lilac and the chatter of the rook among these melancholy temples.
Till that night I had never ventured farther from the gloomy vicinity of the hospital than I thought I could safely retrace without the necessity of asking any one the way; but this night, more courageous, or perhaps more careless than usual, I crossed the bridge of Notre Dame and found myself in something like the Paris of the priest's rhapsodies and the same all thrilling with the passion of the summer. It was not flower nor tree, though these were not wanting, but the spirit in the air—young girls laughing in the by-going with merriest eyes, windows wide open letting out the sounds of songs, the pavements like a river with zesty life of Highland hills when the frosts above are broken and the overhanging boughs have been flattering it all the way in the valleys.
I was fair infected. My step, that had been unco' dull and heavy, I fear, and going to the time of dirges on the Isle, went to a different tune; my being rhymed and sang. I had got the length of the Rue de Richelieu and humming to myself in the friendliest key, with the good-natured people pressing about me, when of a sudden it began to rain. There was no close in the neighbourhood where I could shelter from the elements, but in front of me was the door of a tavern called the Tête du Duc de Burgoyne shining with invitation, and in I went.
A fat wife sat at a counter; a pot-boy, with a cry of “V'ià!” that was like a sheep's complaining, served two ancient citizens in skull-caps that played the game of dominoes, and he came to me with my humble order of a litre of ordinary and a piece of bread for the good of the house.
Outside the rain pelted, and the folks upon the pavement ran, and by-and-by the tavern-room filled up with shelterers like myself and kept the pot-boy busy. Among the last to enter was a group of five that took a seat at another corner of the room than that where I sat my lone at a little table. At first I scarcely noticed them until I heard a word of Scots. I think the man that used it spoke of “gully-knives,” but at least the phrase was the broadest lallands, and went about my heart.
I put down my piece of bread and looked across the room in wonder to see that three of the men were gazing intently at myself. The fourth was hid by those in front of him; the fifth that had spoken had a tartan waistcoat and eyes that were like a gled's, though they were not on me. In spite of that, 'twas plain that of me he spoke, and that I was the object of some speculation among them.
No one that has not been lonely in a foreign town, and hungered for communion with those that know his native tongue, can guess how much I longed for speech with this compatriot that in dress and eye and accent brought back the place of my nativity in one wild surge of memory. Every bawbee in my pocket would not have been too much to pay for such a privilege, but it might not be unless the overtures came from the persons in the corner.
Very deliberately, though all in a commotion within, I ate my piece and drank my wine before the stare of the three men, and at last, on the whisper of one of them, another produced a box of dice.
“No, no!” said the man with the tartan waistcoat hurriedly, with a glance from the tail of his eye at me, but they persisted in their purpose and began to throw. My countryman in tartan got the last chance, of which he seemed reluctant to avail himself till the one unseen said: “Vous avez le de'', Kilbride.”
Kilbride! the name was the call of whaups at home upon the moors!
He laughed, shook, and tossed carelessly, and then the laugh was all with them, for whatever they had played for he had seemingly lost and the dice were now put by.
He rose somewhat confused, looked dubiously across at me with a reddening face, and then came over with his hat in his hand.
“Pardon, Monsieur,” he began; then checked the French, and said: “Have I a countryman here?”
“It is like enough,” said I, with a bow and looking at his tartan. “I am from Scotland myself.”
He smiled at that with a look of some relief and took a vacant chair on the other side of my small table.
“I have come better speed with my impudence,” said he in the Hielan' accent, “than I expected or deserved. My name's Kilbride—MacKellar of Kilbride—and I am here with another Highland gentleman of the name of Grant and two or three French friends we picked up at the door of the play-house. Are you come off the Highlands, if I make take the liberty?”
“My name is lowland,” said I, “and I hail from the shire of Renfrew.”
“Ah,” said he, with a vanity that was laughable. “What a pity! I wish you had been Gaelic, but of course you cannot help it being otherwise, and indeed there are many estimable persons in the lowlands.”
“And a great wheen of Highland gentlemen very glad to join them there too,” said I, resenting the implication.
“Of course, of course,” said he heartily. “There is no occasion for offence.”
“Confound the offence, Mr. MacKellar!” said I. “Do you not think I am just too glad at this minute to hear a Scottish tongue and see a tartan waistcoat? Heilan' or Lowlan', we are all the same” when our feet are off the heather.
“Not exactly,” he corrected, “but still and on we understand each other. You must be thinking it gey droll, sir, that a band of strangers in a common tavern would have the boldness to stare at you like my friends there, and toss a dice about you in front of your face, but that is the difference between us. If I had been in your place I would have thrown the jug across at them, but here I am not better nor the rest, because the dice fell to me, and I was one that must decide the wadger.”
“Oh, and was I the object of a wadger?” said I, wondering what we were coming to.
“Indeed, and that you were,” said he shamefacedly, “and I'm affronted to tell it. But when Grant saw you first he swore you were a countryman, and there was some difference of opinion.”
“And what, may I ask, did Kilbride side with?”
“Oh,” said he promptly, “I had never a doubt about that. I knew you were Scots, but what beat me was to say whether you were Hielan' or Lowlan'.” “And how, if it's a fair question, did you come to the conclusion that I was a countryman of any sort?” said I.
He laughed softly, and “Man,” said he, “I could never make any mistake about that, whatever of it. There's many a bird that's like the woodcock, but the woodcock will aye be kennin' which is which, as the other man said. Thae bones were never built on bread and wine. It's a French coat you have there, and a cockit hat (by your leave), but to my view you were as plainly from Scotland as if you had a blue bonnet on your head and a sprig of heather in your lapels. And here am I giving you the strange cow's welcome (as the other man said), and that is all inquiry and no information. You must just be excusing our bit foolish wadger, and if the proposal would come favourably from myself, that is of a notable family, though at present under a sort of cloud, as the other fellow said, I would be proud to have you share in the bottle of wine that was dependent upon Grant's impudent wadger. I can pass my word for my friends there that they are all gentry like ourselves—of the very best, in troth, though not over-nice in putting this task on myself.”
I would have liked brawly to spend an hour out any company than my own, but the indulgence was manifestly one involving the danger of discovery; it was, as I told myself, the greatest folly to be sitting in a tavern at all, so MacKellar's manner immediately grew cold when he saw a swithering in my countenance.
“Of course,” said he, reddening and rising, “of course, every gentleman has his own affairs, and I would be the last to make a song of it if you have any dubiety about my friends and me. I'll allow the thing looks very like a gambler's contrivance.”
“No, no, Mr. MacKellar,” said I hurriedly, unwilling to let us part like that, “I'm swithering here just because I'm like yoursel' of it and under a cloud of my own.”
“Dod! Is that so?” said he quite cheerfully again, and clapping down, “then I'm all the better pleased that the thing that made the roebuck swim the loch—and that's necessity—as the other man said, should have driven me over here to precognosce you. But when you say you are under a cloud, that is to make another way of it altogether, and I will not be asking you over, for there is a gentleman there among the five of us who might be making trouble of it.”
“Have you a brother in Glasgow College?” says I suddenly, putting a question that had been in my mind ever since he had mentioned his name.
“Indeed, and I have that,” said he quickly, “but now he is following the law in Edinburgh, where I am in the hopes it will be paying him better than ever it paid me that has lost two fine old castles and the best part of a parish by the same. You'll not be sitting there and telling me surely that you know my young brother Alasdair?”
“Man! him and me lodged together in Lucky Grant's, in Crombie's Land in the High Street, for two Sessions,” said I.
“What!” said MacKellar. “And you'll be the lad that snow-balled the bylie, and your name will be Greig?”
As he said it he bent to look under the table, then drew up suddenly with a startled face and a whisper of a whistle on his lips.
“My goodness!” said he, in a cautious tone, “and that beats all. You'll be the lad that broke jyle with the priest that shot at Buhot, and there you are, youamadain, like a gull with your red brogues on you, crying 'come and catch me' in two languages. I'm telling you to keep thae feet of yours under this table till we're out of here, if it should be the morn's morning. No—that's too long, for by the morn's morning Buhot's men will be at the Hôtel Dieu, and the end of the story will be little talk and the sound of blows, as the other man said.”
Every now and then as he spoke he would look over his shoulder with a quick glance at his friends—a very anxious man, but no more anxious than Paul Greig.
“Mercy on us!” said I, “do you tell me you ken all that?”
“I ken a lot more than that,” said he, “but that's the latest of my budget, and I'm giving it to you for the sake of the shoes and my brother Alasdair, that is a writer in Edinburgh. There's not two Scotchmen drinking a bowl in Paris town this night that does not ken your description, and it's kent by them at the other table there—where better?—but because you have that coat on you that was surely made for you when you were in better health, as the other man said, and because your long trams of legs and red shoes are under the table there's none of them suspects you. And now that I'm thinking of it, I would not go near the hospital place again.”
“Oh! but the priest's there,” said I, “and it would never do for me to be leaving him there without a warning.”
“A warning!” said MacKellar with contempt. “I'm astonished to hear you, Mr. Greig. The filthy brock that he is!”
“If you're one of the Prince's party,” said I, “and it has every look of it, or, indeed, whether you are or not, I'll allow you have some cause to blame Father Hamilton, but as for me, I'm bound to him because we have been in some troubles together.”
“What's all this about 'bound to him'?” said MacKellar with a kind of sneer. “The dog that's tethered with a black pudding needs no pity, as the other man said, and I would leave this fellow to shift for himself.”
“Thank you,” said I, “but I'll not be doing that.”
“Well, well,” said he, “it's your business, and let me tell you that you're nothing but a fool to be tangled up with the creature. That's Kilbride's advice to you. Let me tell you this more of it, that they're not troubling themselves much about you at all now that you have given them the information.”
“Information!” I said with a start. “What do you mean by that?”
He prepared to join his friends, with a smile of some slyness, and gave me no satisfaction on the point.
“You'll maybe ken best yourself,” said he, “and I'm thinking your name will have to be Robertson and yourself a decent Englishman for my friends on the other side of the room there. Between here and yonder I'll have to be making up a bonny lie or two that will put them off the scent of you.”
A bonny lie or two seemed to serve the purpose, for their interest in me appeared to go no further, and by-and-by, when it was obvious that there would be no remission of the rain, they rose to go.
The last that went out of the door turned on the threshold and looked at me with a smile of recognition and amusement.
It was Buhot!
What this marvel betokened was altogether beyond my comprehension, but the five men were no sooner gone than I clapped on my hat and drew up the collar of my coat and ran like fury through the plashing streets for the place that was our temporary home. It must have been an intuition of the raised that guided me; my way was made without reflection on it, at pure hazard, and yet I landed through a multitude of winding and bewildering streets upon the Isle of the City and in front of the Hôtel Dieu in a much shorter time than it had taken me to get from there to the Duke of Burgundy's Head.
I banged past the doorkeeper, jumped upstairs to the clergyman's quarters, threw open the door and—found Father Hamilton was gone!
About the matter there could be no manner of dubiety, for he had left a letter directed to myself upon the drawers-head.
“My Good Paul (said the epistle, that I have kept till now as a memorial of my adventure): When you return you will discover from this that I have taken leavea l'anglaise, and I fancy I can see my secretary looking like the arms of Bourges (though that is an unkind imputation). 'Tis fated, seemingly, that there shall be no rest for the sole of the foot of poor Father Hamilton. I had no sooner got to like a loose collar, and an unbuttoned vest, and the seclusion of a cell, than I must be plucked out; and now when my birds—the darlings!—are on the very point of hatching I must make adieux.Oh! la belle équipée!M. Buhot knows where I am—that's certain, so I must remove myself, and this time I do not propose to burden M. Paul Greig with my company, for it will be a miracle if they fail to find me. As for my dear Croque-mort, he can have the glass coach and Jacques and Bernard, and doubtless the best he can do with them is to take all to Dunkerque and leave them there. I myself, I gosans trompette, and no inquiries will discover to him where I go.”
As a postscript he added, “And 'twas only a sailor's log, dear lad! My poor young Paul!” When I read the letter I was puzzled tremendously, and at first I felt inclined to blame the priest for a scurvy flitting to rid himself of my society, but a little deliberation convinced me that no such ignoble consideration was at the bottom of his flight. If I read his epistle aright the step he took was in my own interest, though how it could be so there was no surmising. In any case he was gone; his friend in the hospital told me he had set out behind myself, and taken a candle with him and given a farewell visit to his birds, and almost cried about them and about myself, and then departed for good to conceal himself, in some other part of the city, probably, but exactly where his friend had no way of guessing. And it was a further evidence of the priest's good feeling to myself (if such were needed) that he had left a sum of a hundred livres for me towards the costs of my future movements.
I left the Hôtel Dieu at midnight to wander very melancholy about the streets for a time, and finally came out upon the river's bank, where some small vessels hung at a wooden quay. I saw them in moonlight (for now the rain was gone), and there rose in me such a feeling as I had often experienced as a lad in another parish than the Mearns, to see the road that led from strangeness past my mother's door. The river seemed a pathway out of mystery and discontent to the open sea, and the open sea was the same that beat about the shores of Britain, and my thought took flight there and then to Britain, but stopped for a space, like a wearied bird, upon the town Dunkerque. There is one who reads this who will judge kindly, and pardon when I say that I felt a sort of tenderness for the lady there, who was not only my one friend in France, so far as I could guess, but, next to my mother, the only woman who knew my shame and still retained regard for me. And thinking about Scotland and about Dunkerque, and seeing that watery highway to them both, I was seized with a great repugnance for the city I stood in, and felt that I must take my feet from there at once. Father Hamilton was lost to me: that was certain. I could no more have found him in this tanglement of streets and strange faces than I could have found a needle in a haystack, and I felt disinclined to make the trial. Nor was I prepared to avail myself of his offer of the coach and horses, for to go travelling again in them would be to court Bicêtre anew.
There was a group of busses or barges at the quay, as I have said, all huddled together as it were animals seeking warmth, with their bows nuzzling each other, and on one of them there were preparations being made for her departure. A cargo of empty casks was piled up in her, lights were being hung up at her bow and stern, and one of her crew was ashore in the very act of casting off her ropes. At a flash it occurred to me that I had here the safest and the speediest means of flight.
I ran at once to the edge of the quay and clumsily propounded a question as to where the barge was bound for.
“Rouen or thereabouts,” said the master.
I asked if I could have a passage, and chinked my money in my pocket.
My French might have been but middling, but Lewis d'Or talks in a language all can understand.
Ten minutes later we were in the fairway of the river running down through the city which, in that last look I was ever fated to have of it, seemed to brood on either hand of us like bordering hills, and at morning we were at a place by name Triel.
Of all the rivers I have seen I must think the Seine the finest. It runs in loops like my native Forth, sometimes in great, wide stretches that have the semblance of moorland lochs. In that fine weather, with a sun that was most genial, the country round about us basked and smiled. We moved upon the fairest waters, by magic gardens, and the borders of enchanted little towns. Now it would be a meadow sloping backward from the bank, where reeds were nodding, to the horizon; now an orchard standing upon grass that was the rarest green, then a village with rusty roofs and spires and the continual chime of bells, with women washing upon stones or men silent upon wherries fishing. Every link of the river opened up a fresher wonder; if not some poplared isle that had the invitation to a childish escapade, 'twould be another town, or the garden of a château, maybe, with ladies walking stately on the lawns, perhaps alone, perhaps with cavaliers about them as if they moved in some odd woodland minuet. I can mind of songs that came from open windows, sung in women's voices; of girls that stood drawing water and smiled on us as we passed, at home in our craft of fortune, and still the lucky roamers seeing the world so pleasantly without the trouble of moving a step from our galley fire.
Sometimes in the middle of the days we would stop at a red-faced, ancient inn, with bowers whose tables almost had their feet dipped in the river, and there would eat a meal and linger on a pot of wine while our barge fell asleep at her tether and dreamt of the open sea. About us in these inns came the kind country-people and talked of trivial things for the mere sake of talking, because the weather was sweet and God so gracious; homely sounds would waft from the byres and from the barns—the laugh of bairns, the whistle of boys, the low of cattle.
At night we moored wherever we might be, and once I mind of a place called Andelys, selvedged with chalky cliffs and lorded over by a castle called Gaillard, that had in every aspect of it something of the clash of weapons and of trumpet-cry. The sky shone blue through its gaping gables and its crumbling windows like so many eyes; the birds that wheeled all round it seemed to taunt it for its inability. The old wars over, the deep fosse silent, the strong men gone—and there at its foot the thriving town so loud with sounds of peaceful trade! Whoever has been young, and has the eye for what is beautiful and great and stately, must have felt in such a scene that craving for companionship that tickles like a laugh within the heart—that longing for some one to feel with him, and understand, and look upon with silence. In my case 'twas two women I would have there with me just to look upon this Gaillard and the town below it.
Then the bending, gliding river again, the willow and the aspen edges, the hazy orchards and the emerald swards; hamlets, towns, farm-steadings, châteaux, kirks, and mills; the flying mallard, the leaping perch, the silver dawns, the starry nights, the ripple of the water in my dreams, and at last the city of Rouen. My ship of fortune went no further on.
I slept a night in an inn upon the quay, and early the next morning, having bought a pair of boots to save my red shoes, I took the road over a hill that left Rouen and all its steeples, reeking at the bottom of a bowl. I walked all day, through woods and meadows and trim small towns and orchards, and late in the gloaming came upon the port of Havre de Grace.
The sea was sounding there, and the smell of it was like a salutation. I went out at night from my inn, and fairly joyed in its propinquity, and was so keen on it that I was at the quay before it was well daylight. The harbour was full of vessels. It was not long ere I got word of one that was in trim for Dunkerque, to which I took a passage, and by favour of congenial weather came upon the afternoon of the second day.
Dunkerque was more busy with soldiers than ever, all the arms of France seemed to be collected there, and ships of war and flat-bottomed boats innumerable were in the harbour.
At the first go-off I made for the lodgings I had parted from so unceremoniously on the morning of that noisy glass coach.
The house, as I have said before, was over a baker's shop, and was reached by a common outer stair that rose from a court-yard behind. Though internally the domicile was well enough, indeed had a sort of old-fashioned gentility, and was kept by a woman whose man had been a colonel of dragoons, but now was a tippling pensioner upon the king, and his own wife's labours, it was, externally, somewhat mean, the place a solid merchant of our own country might inhabit, but scarce the place wherein to look for royal blood. What was my astonishment, then, when, as I climbed the stair, I came face to face with the Prince!
I felt the stair swing off below me and half distrusted my senses, but I had the presence of mind to take my hat off.
“Bon jour, Monsieur, said he, with a slight hiccough, and I saw that he was flushed and meant to pass with an evasion. There and then a daft notion to explain myself and my relations with the priest who had planned his assassination came to me, and I stopped and spoke.
“Your Royal Highness—-” I began, and at that he grew purple.
“Cest un drôle de corps!” said he, and, always speaking in French, said he again:
“You make an error, Monsieur; I have not the honour of Monsieur's acquaintance,” and looked at me with a bold eye and a disconcerting.
“Greig,” I blurted, a perfect lout, and surely as blind as a mole that never saw his desire, “I had the honour to meet your Royal Highness at Versailles.”
“My Royal Highness!” said he, this time in English. “I think Monsieur mistakes himself.” And then, when he saw how crestfallen I was, he smiled and hiccoughed again. “You are going to call on our good Clancarty,” said he. “In that case please tell him to translate to you the proverb,Oui phis sait plus se tait.”
“There is no necessity, Monsieur,” I answered promptly. “Now that I look closer I see I was mistaken. The person I did you the honour to take you for was one in whose opinion (if he took the trouble to think of me at all) I should have liked to re-establish myself, that was all.”
In spite of his dissipation there was something noble in his manner—a style of the shoulders and the hands, a poise of the head that I might practise for years and come no closer on than any nowt upon my father's fields. It was that which I remember best of our engagement on the stair, and that at the last of it he put out his hand to bid me good-day.
“My name,” says he, “is Monsieur Albany so long as I am in Dunkerque.À bon entendeur salut!I hope we may meet again, Monsieur Greig.” He looked down at the black boots I had bought me in Rouen. “If I might take the liberty to suggest it,” said he, smiling, “I should abide by the others. I have never seen their wearer wanting wit,esprit, and prudence—which are qualities that at this moment I desire above all in those that count themselves my friends.”
And with that he was gone. I watched him descend the remainder of the stair with much deliberation, and did not move a step myself until the tip of his scabbard had gone round the corner of the close.
Clancarty and Thurot were playing cards, so intent upon that recreation that I was in the middle of the floor before they realised who it was the servant had ushered in.
“Mon Dieu! Monsieur Blanc-bec! Il n'y a pas de petit chez soi!” cried Thurot, dropping his hand, and they jumped to their feet to greet me.
“I'll be hanged if you want assurance, child,” said Clancarty, surveying me from head to foot as if I were some curiosity. “Here's your exploits ringing about the world, and not wholly to your credit, and you must walk into the very place where they will find the smallest admiration.”
“Not meaning the lodging of Captain Thurot,” said I. “Whatever my reputation may be with the world, I make bold to think he and you will believe me better than I may seem at the first glance.”
“The first glance!” cried his lordship. “Gad, the first glance suggests that Bicêtre agreed with our Scotsman. Sure, they must have fed you on oatmeal. I'd give a hatful of louis d'or to see Father Hamilton, for if he throve so marvellously in the flesh as his secretary he must look like the side of St. Eloi. One obviously grows fat on regicide—fatter than a few poor devils I know do upon devotion to princes.”
Thurot's face assured me that I was as welcome there as ever I had been. He chid Clancarty for his badinage, and told me he was certain all along that the first place I should make for after my flight from Bicêtre (of which all the world knew) would be Dunkerque. “And a good thing too, M. Greig,” said he.
“Not so good,” says I, “but what I must meet on your stair the very man-”
“Stop!” he cried, and put his finger on his lip. “In these parts we know only a certain M. Albany, who is, my faith! a good friend of your own if you only knew it.”
“I scarcely see how that can be,” said I. “If any man has a cause to dislike me it is his Roy—”
“M. Albany,” corrected Thurot.
“It is M. Albany, for whom, it seems, I was the decoy in a business that makes me sick to think on. I would expect no more than that he had gone out there to send the officers upon my heels, and for me to be sitting here may be simple suicide.”
Clancarty laughed. “Tis the way of youth,” said he, “to attach far too much importance to itself. Take our word for it, M. Greig, all France is not scurrying round looking for the nephew of Andrew Greig. Faith, and I wonder at you, my dear Thurot, that has an Occasion here—a veritable Occasion—and never so much as says bottle. Stap me if I have a friend come to me from a dungeon without wishing him joy in a glass of burgundy!”
The burgundy was forthcoming, and his lordship made the most of it, while Captain Thurot was at pains to assure me that my position was by no means so bad as I considered it. In truth, he said, the police had their own reasons for congratulating themselves on my going out of their way. They knew very well, as M. Albany did, that I had been the catspaw of the priest, who was himself no better than that same, and for that reason as likely to escape further molestation as I was myself.
Thurot spoke with authority, and hinted that he had the word of M. Albany himself for what he said. I scarcely knew which pleased me best—that I should be free myself or that the priest should have a certain security in his concealment.
I told them of Buhot, and how oddly he had shown his complacence to his escaped prisoner in the tavern of the Duke of Burgundy's Head. At that they laughed.
“Buhot!” cried his lordship. “My faith! Ned must have been tickled to see his escaped prisoner in such a cosycachetteas the Duke's Head, where he and I, and Andy Greig—ay! and this same priest—tossed many a glass,Ciel!the affair runs like a play. All it wants to make this the most delightful of farces is that you should have Father Hamilton outside the door to come in at a whistle. Art sure the fat old man is not in your waistcoat pocket? Anyhow, here's his good health....”
Whoever it was that moved at the instigation of Madame on my behalf, he put speed into the business, for the very next day I was told my sous-lieutenancy was waiting at the headquarters of the regiment. A severance that seemed almost impossible to me before I learned from the lady's own lips that her heart was elsewhere engaged was now a thing to long for eagerly, and I felt that the sooner I was out of Dunkerque and employed about something more important than the tying of my hair and the teasing of my heart with thinking, the better for myself. Teasing my heart, I say, because Miss Walkinshaw had her own reasons for refusing to see me any more, and do what I might I could never manage to come face to face with her. Perhaps on the whole it was as well, for what in the world I was to say to the lady, supposing I were privileged, it beats me now to fancy. Anyhow, the opportunity never came my way, though, for the few days that elapsed before I departed from Dunkerque, I spent hours in the Rue de la Boucherie sipping sirops on the terrace of the Café Coignet opposite her lodging, or at night on the old game of humming ancient love-songs to her high and distant window. All I got for my pains were brief and tantalising glimpses of her shadow on the curtains; an attenuate kind of bliss it must be owned, and yet counted by Master Red-Shoes (who suffered from nostalgia, not from love, if he had had the sense to know it) a very delirium of delight.
One night there was an odd thing came to pass. But, first of all, I must tell that more than once of an evening, as I would be in the street and staring across at Miss Walkinshaw's windows, I saw his Royal Highness in the neighbourhood. His cloak might be voluminous, his hat dragged down upon the very nose of him, but still the step was unmistakable. If there had been the smallest doubt of it, there came one evening when he passed me so close in the light of an oil lamp that I saw the very blotches on his countenance. What was more, he saw and recognised me, though he passed without any other sign than the flash of an eye and a halfstep of hesitation.
304
“H'm,” thinks I, “here's Monsieur Albany looking as if he might, like myself, be trying to content himself with the mere shadows of things.”
He saw me more than once, and at last there came a night when a fellow in drink came staving down the street on the side I was on and jostled me in the by-going without a word of apology.
“Pardonnez, Monsieur!” said I in irony, with my hat off to give him a hint at his manners.
He lurched a second time against me and put up his hand to catch my chin, as if I were a wench, “Mon Dieu! Monsieur Blanc-bec, 'tis time you were home,” said he in French, and stuttered some ribaldry that made me smack his face with an open hand.
“I saw his Royal Highness in the neighbourhood—”
At once he sobered with suspicious suddenness if I had had the sense to reflect upon it, and gave me his name and direction as one George Bonnat, of the Marine. “Monsieur will do me the honour of a meeting behind the Auberge Cassard afterpetit dejeunerto-morrow,” said he, and named a friend. It was the first time I was ever challenged. It should have rung in the skull of me like an alarm, but I cannot recall at this date that my heart beat a stroke the faster, or that the invitation vexed me more than if it had been one to the share of a bottle of wine. “It seems a pretty ceremony about a cursed impertinence on the part of a man in liquor,” I said, “but I'm ready to meet you either before or after petit déjeuner, as it best suits you, and my name's Greig, by your leave.”
“Very well, Monsieur Greig,” said he; “except that you stupidly impede the pavement and talk French like a Spanish cow (comme une vache espagnole), you seem a gentleman of much accommodation. Eight o'clock then, behind theauberge,” and off went Sir Ruffler, singularly straight and business-like, with a profoundcongéfor the unfortunate wretch he planned to thrust a spit through in the morning.
I went home at once, to find Thurot and Clancarty at lansquenet. They were as elate at my story as if I had been asked to dine with Louis.
“Gad, 'tis an Occasion!” cried my lord, and helped himself, as usual, with a charming sentiment: “A demain les affaires sérieuses; to-night we'll pledge our friend!”
Thurot evinced a flattering certainty of my ability to break down M. Bonnat's guard in little or no time. “A crab, this Bonnat,” said he. “Why he should pick a quarrel with you I cannot conceive, for 'tis well known the man is M. Albany's creature. But, no matter, we shall tickle his ribs, M. Paul.Ma foi!here's better gaming than your pestilent cards. I'd have every man in the kingdom find an affair for himself once a month to keep his spleen in order.”
“This one's like to put mine very much out of order with his iron,” I said, a little ruefully recalling my last affair.
“What!” cried Thurot, “after all my lessons! And this Bonnat a crab too! Fie! M. Paul. And what an he pricks a little? a man's the better for some iron in his system now and then. Come, come, pass down these foils, my lord, and I shall supple the arms of our Paul.”
We had a little exercise, and then I went to bed. The two sat in my room, and smoked and talked till late in the night, while I pretended to be fast asleep. But so far from sleep was I, that I could hear their watches ticking in their fobs. Some savagery, some fearful want of soul in them, as evidenced by their conversation, horrified me. It was no great matter that I was to risk my life upon a drunkard's folly, but for the first time since I had come into the port of Dunkerque, and knew these men beside my bed, there intruded a fiery sense of alienation. It seemed a dream—a dreadful dream, that I should be lying in a foreign land, upon the eve, perhaps, of my own death or of another manslaughter, and in a correspondence with two such worldly men as those that sat there recalling combats innumerable with never a thought of the ultimate fearful retribution. Compared with this close room, where fumed the wine and weed, and men with never a tie domestic were paying away their lives in the small change of trivial pleasures, how noble and august seemed our old life upon the moors!
When they were gone I fell asleep and slept without a break till Thurot's fingers drummed reveille on my door. I jumped into the sunshine of a lovely day that streamed into the room, soused my head in water and in a little stood upon the street with my companion.
“Bon matin, Paul!” he cried cheerfully. “Faith, you sleep surles deux oreilles, and we must be marching briskly to be at M. Bonnat's rendezvous at eight o'clock.”
We went through the town and out upon its edge at the Calais road. The sky was blue like another sea; the sea itself was all unvexed by wave; a sweeter day for slaughtering would pass the wit of man to fancy. Thurot hummed an air as he walked along the street, but I was busy thinking of another morning in Scotland, when I got a bitter lesson I now seemed scandalously soon to have forgotten. By-and-by we came to the inn. It stood by itself upon the roadside, with a couple of workmen sitting on a bench in front dipping their morning crusts in a common jug of wine. Thurot entered and made some inquiry; came out radiant. “Monsieur is not going to disappoint us, as I feared,” said he; and led me quickly behind theauberge. We passed through the yard, where a servant-girl scoured pots and pans and sang the while as if the world were wholly pleasant in that sunshine; we crossed a tiny rivulet upon a rotten plank and found ourselves in an orchard. Great old trees stood silent in the finest foggy grass, their boughs all bursting out into blossom, and the air scent-thick-ened; everywhere the birds were busy; it seemed a world of piping song. I thought to myself there could be no more incongruous place nor season for our duelling, and it was with half a gladness I looked around the orchard, finding no one there.
“Bah! our good Bonnat's gone!” cried Thurot, vastly chagrined and tugging at his watch. “That comes of being five minutes too late, and I cannot, by my faith, compliment the gentleman upon his eagerness to meet you.”
I was mistaken but for a second; then I spied my fiery friend of the previous evening lying on his back beneath the oldest of the trees, his hat tilted over his eyes, as if he had meant to snatch a little sleep in spite of the dazzling sunshine. He rose to his feet on our approach, swept off his hat courteously, and hailed Thurot by name.
“What, you, Antoine! I am ravished! For, look you, the devil's in all my friends that I can get none of them to move a step at this hour of the morning, and I have had to come to M. Greig without a second. Had I known his friend was Captain Thurot I should not have vexed myself. Doubtless M. Greig has no objection to my entrusting my interests as well as his own in the hands of M. le Capitaine?”
I bowed my assent. Captain Thurot cast a somewhat cold and unsatisfied eye upon the ruffler, protesting the thing was unusual.
Bonnat smiled and shrugged his shoulders, put off his coat with much deliberation, and took up his place upon the sward, where I soon followed him.
“Remember, it is no fool, this crab,” whispered Captain Thurot as he took my coat from me. “And 'tis two to one on him who prefers the parry to the attack.”
I had been reading Molière's “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” the previous morning, and as I faced my assailant I had the fencing-master's words as well as Captain Thurot's running in my ears: “To give and not receive is the secret of the sword.” It may appear incredible, but it seemed physically a trivial affair I was engaged upon until I saw the man Bonnat's eye. He wore a smile, but his eye had the steely glint of murder! It was as unmistakable as if his tongue confessed it, and for a second I trembled at the possibilities of the situation. He looked an unhealthy dog; sallow exceedingly on the neck, which had the sinews so tight they might have twanged like wire, and on his cheeks, that he seemed to suck in with a gluttonous exultation such as a gross man shows in front of a fine meal.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” said Thurot; and we nodded. “Then in guard!” said he.
We saluted, fell into position and thrust simultaneously in tierce, parrying alike, then opened more seriously.
In Thurot's teaching of me there was one lesson he most unweariedly insisted on, whose object was to keep my point in a straight line and parry in the smallest possible circles. I had every mind of it now, but the cursed thing was that this Bonnat knew it too. He fenced, like an Italian, wholly from the wrist, and, crouched upon his knees, husbanded every ounce of energy by the infrequency and the brevity of his thrusts. His lips drew back from his teeth, giving him a most villainous aspect, and he began to press in the lower lines.
In a side-glance hazarded I saw the anxiety of Thurot's eye and realised his apprehension. I broke ground, and still, I think, was the bravo's match but for the alarm of Thurot's eye. It confused me so much that I parried widely and gave an opening for a thrust that caught me slightly on the arm, and dyed my shirt-sleeve crimson in a moment.
“Halt!” cried Thurot, and put up his arm.
I lowered my weapon, thinking the bout over, and again saw murder in Bonnat's eye. He lunged furiously at my chest, missing by a miracle.
“Scélérat!” cried Thurot, and, in an uncontrollable fury at the action, threw himself upon Bonnat and disarmed him.
They glared at each other for a minute, and Thurot finally cast the other's weapon over a hedge. “So much for M. Bonnat!” said he. “This is our valiant gentleman, is it? To stab like an assassin!”
“Oh, malédiction!” said the other, little abashed, and shrugging his shoulders as he lifted his coat to put it on. “Talking of assassination, I but did the duty of the executioner in his absence, and proposed to kill the man who meditated the same upon the Prince.”
“The Prince!” cried Thurot. “Why 'tis the Prince's friend, and saved his life!”
“I know nothing about that,” said Bonnat; “but do you think I'd be out here at such a cursed early hour fencing if any other than M. Albany had sent me?Pardieu!the whole of you are in the farce, but I always counted you the Prince's friend, and here you must meddle when I do as I am told to do!”
“And you tell me, Jean Bonnat, that you take out my friend to murder him by M. Albany's command?” cried Thurot incredulous.
“What the devil else?” replied the bravo. “'Tis true M. Albany only mentioned that M. des Souliers Rouges was an obstruction in the Rue de la Boucherie and asked me to clear him out of Dunkerque, but 'twere a tidier job to clear him altogether. And here is a great pother about an English hog!”
I was too busily stanching my wound, that was scarce so serious as it appeared, to join in this dispute, but the allusion to the Prince and the Rue de la Boucherie extremely puzzled me. I turned to Bonnat with a cry for an explanation.
“What!” I says, “does his Royal Highness claim any prerogative to the Rue de la Boucherie? I'm unconscious that I ever did either you or him the smallest harm, and if my service—innocent enough as it was—with the priest Hamilton was something to resent, his Highness has already condoned the offence.”
“For the sake of my old friend M. le Capitaine here I shall give you one word of advice,” said Bonnat, “and that is, to evacuate Dunkerque as sharply as you may. M. Albany may owe you some obligement, as I've heard him hint himself, but nevertheless your steps will be safer elsewhere than in the Rue de la Boucherie.”
“There is far too much of the Rue de la Boucherie about this,” I said, “and I hope no insult is intended to certain friends I have or had there.”
At this they looked at one another. The bravo (for so I think I may at this time call him) whistled curiously and winked at the other, and, in spite of himself, Captain Thurot was bound to laugh.
“And has M. Paul been haunting the Rue de la Boucherie, too?” said he. “That, indeed, is to put another face on the business. 'Tis,ma foi!to expect too much of M. Albany's complaisance. After that there is nothing for us but to go home. And, harkee! M. Bonnat, no more Venetian work, or, by St. Denys, I shall throw you into the harbour.”
“You must ever have your joke, my noble M. le Capitaine,” said Bonnat brazenly, and tucked his hat on the side of the head. “M. Blanc-bec there handlesarme blancherather prettily, thanks, no doubt, to the gallant commander of theRoi Rouge, but if he has a mother let me suggest the wisdom of his going back to her.” And with that and acongéhe left us to enter theauberge.
Thurot and I went into the town. He was silent most of the way, ruminating upon this affair, which it was plain he could unravel better than I could, yet he refused to give me a hint at the cause of it. I pled with him vainly for an explanation of the Prince's objection to my person. “I thought he had quite forgiven my innocent part in the Hamilton affair,” I said.
“And so he had,” said Thurot. “I have his own assurances.”
“'Tis scarcely like it when he sets a hired assassin on my track to lure me into a duel.”
“My dear boy,” said Thurot, “you owe him all—your escape from Bicêtre, which could easily have been frustrated; and the very prospect of the lieutenancy in the Regiment d'Auvergne.”
“What! he has a hand in this?” I cried.
“Who else?” said he. “'Tis not the fashion in France to throw unschooled Scots into such positions out of hand, and only princes may manage it. It seems, then, that we have our Prince in two moods, which is not uncommon with the same gentleman. He would favour you for the one reason, and for the other he would cut your throat. M. Tête-de-fer is my eternal puzzle. And the deuce is that he has, unless I am much mistaken, the same reason for favouring and hating you.”
“And what might that be?” said I.
“Who, rather?” said Thurot, and we were walking down the Rue de la Boucherie. “Why, then, if you must have pointed out to you what is under your very nose, 'tis the lady who lives here. She is the god from the machine in half a hundred affairs no less mysterious, and I wish she were anywhere else than in Dunkerque. But, anyway, she sent you with Hamilton, and she has secured the favour of the Prince for you, and now—though she may not have attempted it—she has gained you the same person's enmity.”
I stopped in the street and turned to him. “All this is confused enough to madden me,” I said, “and rather than be longer in the mist I shall brave her displeasure, compel an audience, and ask her for an explanation.”
“Please yourself,” said Thurot, and seeing I meant what I said he left me.