The Shoes of Fortune

But luckily it could never then, or at any other time, be said of Father Hamilton that he was thin-skinned. He only laughed the more at me. “Touche!” he cried. “I knew I could prick the old Andy somewhere. Still, Master Paul, thine uncle was not so young as thou, my cockerel. Had seen his world and knew that Scotland and its – what do you call them? – its manses, did not provide the universal ensample of true piety.”

“I do not think, Father Hamilton,” said I, “that piety troubled him very much, or his shoes had not been so well known in Dunkerque.”

Miss Walkinshaw laughed.

“There you are, Father Hamilton!” said she. “You’ll come little speed with a man from the Mearns moors unless you take him a little more seriously.”

Father Hamilton pursed his lips and rubbed down his thighs, an image of the gross man that would have turned my father’s stomach, who always liked his men lean, clean, and active. He was bantering me, this fat priest of Dixmunde, but all the time it was with a friendly eye. Thinks I, here’s another legacy of goodwill from my extraordinary uncle!

“Hast got thy pass yet, Master Dull?” said he.

“Not so dull, Master Minister, but what I resent the wrong word even in a joke,” I replied, rising to go.

Thurot’s voice was on the stair now, and Clan-carty’s. If they were not to find their protégé in an undignified war of words with the priest of Dixmunde, it was time I was taking my feet from there, as the saying went.

But Miss Walkinshaw would not hear of it. “No, no,” she protested, “we have some business before you go to your ridiculous French – weary be on the language that ever I heard Je t’aime in it! – and how does the same march with you, Mr. Greig?”

“I know enough of it to thank my good friends in,” said I, “but that must be for another occasion.”

“Father Hamilton,” said she, “here’s your secretary.”

A curious flash came to those eyes pitted in rolls of flabby flesh, I thought of an eagle old and moulting, languid upon a mountain cliff in misty weather, catching the first glimpse of sun and turned thereby to ancient memories. He said nothing; there was at the moment no opportunity, for the visitors had entered, noisily polite and posturing as was their manner, somewhat touched by wine, I fancied, and for that reason scarcely welcomed by the mistress of the house.

There could be no more eloquent evidence of my innocence in these days than was in the fact that I never wondered at the footing upon which these noisy men of the world were with a countrywoman of mine. The cause they often spoke of covered many mysteries; between the Rue de Paris and the Rue de la Boucherie I could have picked out a score of Scots in exile for their political faiths, and why should not Miss Walkinshaw be one of the company? But sometimes there was just the faintest hint of over-much freedom in their manner to her, and that I liked as little as she seemed to do, for when her face flushed and her mouth firmed, and she became studiously deaf, I felt ashamed of my sex, and could have retorted had not prudence dictated silence as the wisest policy.

As for her, she was never but the minted metal, ringing true and decent, compelling order by a glance, gentle yet secure in her own strength, tolerant, but in bounds.

They were that day full of the project for invading England. It had gone so far that soldiers at Calais and Boulogne were being practised in embarkation. I supposed she must have a certain favour for a step that was designed to benefit the cause wherefor I judged her an exile, but she laughed at the idea of Britain falling, as she said, to a parcel of crapauds. “Treason!” treason!” cried Thurot laughingly.

“Under the circumstances, Madame – ”

“ – Under the circumstances, Captain Thurot,” she interrupted quickly, “I need not pretend at a lie. This is not in the Prince’s interest, this invasion, and it is a blow at a land I love. Mr. Greig here has just put it into my mind how good are the hearts there, how pleasant the tongue, and how much I love the very name of Scotland. I would be sorry to think of its end come to pleasure the women in Versailles.”

“Bravo! bravo! vive la bagatelle!” cried my Lord Clancarty. “Gad! I sometimes feel the right old pathriot myself. Sure I have a good mind – ”

“Then ‘tis not your own, my lord,” she cried quickly, displeasure in her expression, and Clancarty only bowed, not a whit abashed at the sarcasm.

Father Hamilton drew me aside from these cheerful contentions, and plunged into the matter that was manifestly occupying all his thoughts since Miss Walkinshaw had mooted me as his secretary.

“Monsieur Greig,” he said, placing his great carcase between me and the others in the room, “I declare that women are the seven plagues, and yet here we come chasing them from petit lever till – till – well, till as late as the darlings will let us. By the Mass and Father Hamilton knows their value, and when a man talks to me about a woman and the love he bears her, I think ‘tis a maniac shouting the praise of the snake that has crept to his breast to sting him. Women – chut! – now tell me what the mischief is a woman an’ thou canst.”

“I fancy, Father Hamilton,” said I, “you could be convinced of the merits of woman if your heart was ever attacked by one – your heart, that does not believe anything in that matter that emanates from your head.”

Again the eagle’s gleam from the pitted eyes; and, upon my word, a sigh! It was a queer man this priest of Dixmunde.

“Ah, young cockerel,” said he, “thou knowest nothing at all about it, and as for me – well, I dare not; but once – once – once there were dews in the woods, and now it is very dry weather, Master Greig. How about thine honour’s secretaryship? Gripp’st at the opportunity, young fellow? Eh? Has the lady said sooth? Come now, I like the look of my old Andrew’s – my old Merry Andrew’s nephew, and could willingly tolerate his croque-mort countenance, his odour of the sanctuary, if he could weather it with a plethoric good liver that takes the world as he finds it.”

He was positively eager to have me. It was obvious from his voice. He took me by the button of my lapel as if I were about to run away from his offer, but I was in no humour to run away. Here was the very office I should have chosen if a thousand offered. The man was a fatted sow to look on, and by no means engaging in his manner to myself, but what was I and what my state that I should be too particular? Here was a chance to see the world – and to forget. Seeing the world might have been of most importance some months ago in the mind of a clean-handed young lad in the parish of Mearns in Scotland, but now it was of vastly more importance that I should forget.

“We start in a week,” said the priest, pressing me closely lest I should change my mind, and making the prospects as picturesque as he could. “Why should a man of flesh and blood vex his good stomach with all this babblement of king’s wars? and a pox on their flat-bottomed boats! I have seen my last Mass in Dixmunde; say not a word on that to our friends nor to Madame; and I suffer from a very jaundice of gold. Is’t a pact, friend Scotland?”

A pact it was; I went out from Miss Walkinshaw’s lodging that afternoon travelling secretary to the fat priest.

CHAPTER XVI

RELATES HOW I INDULGED MY CURIOSITY AND HOW LITTLE CAME OF IT

Dunkerque in these days (it may be so no longer) was a place for a man to go through with his nose in his fingers. Garbage stewed and festered in the gutters of the street so that the women were bound to walk high-kilted, and the sea-breeze at its briskest scarcely sufficed to stir the stagnant, stenching atmosphere of the town, now villainously over-populated by the soldiery with whom it was France’s pleasant delusion she should whelm our isle.

“Pardieu!” cried Father Hamilton, as we emerged in this malodorous open, “‘twere a fairy godfather’s deed to clear thee out of this feculent cloaca. Think on’t, boy; of you and me a week hence riding through the sweet woods of Somme or Oise, and after that Paris! Paris! my lad of tragedy; Paris, where the world moves and folk live. And then, perhaps, Tours, and Bordeaux, and Flanders, and Sweden, Seville, St. Petersburg itself, but at least the woods of Somme, where the roads are among gossamer and dew and enchantment in the early morning – if we cared to rise early enough to see them, which I promise thee we shall not.”

His lips were thick and trembling: he gloated as he pictured me this mad itinerary, leaning heavily on my arm – Silenus on an ash sapling – half-trotting beside me, looking up every now and then to satisfy himself I appreciated the prospect. It was pleasant enough, though in a measure incredible, but at the moment I was thinking of Miss Walkinshaw, and wondering much to myself that this exposition of foreign travel should seem barely attractive because it meant a severance from her. Her sad smile, her brave demeanour, her kind heart, her beauty had touched me sensibly.

“Well, Master Scrivener!” cried the priest, panting at my side, “art dumb?”

“I fancy, sir, it is scarcely the weather for woods,” said I. “I hope we are not to put off our journey till the first of April a twelvemonth.” A suspicion unworthy of me had flashed into my mind that I might, after all, be no more than the butt of a practical joke. But that was merely for a moment; the priest was plainly too eager on his scheme to be play-acting it.

“I am very grateful to the lady,” I hastened to add, “who gave me the chance of listing in your service. Had it not been for her you might have found a better secretary, and I might have remained long enough in the evil smells of Dunkerque that I’ll like all the same in spite of that, because I have so good a friend as Miss Walkinshaw in it.”

“La! la! la!” cried out Father Hamilton, squeezing my arm. “Here’s our young cockerel trailing wing already! May I never eat fish again if ‘tisn’t a fever in this woman that she must infect every man under three score. For me I am within a month of the period immune, and only feel a malaise in her company. Boy, perpend! Have I not told thee every woman, except the ugliest, is an agent of the devil? I am the first to discover that his majesty is married and his wife keeps shop when he is travelling – among Jesuits and Jacobites and such busy fuel for the future fires. His wife keeps shop, lad, and does a little business among her own sex, using the handsomest for her purposes. Satan comes back to the boutique. ‘What!’ he cries, and counts the till, ‘these have been busy days, good wife.’ And she, Madame Dusky, chuckles with a ‘Ha! Jack, old man, hast a good wife or not? Shalt never know how to herd in souls like sheep till thou hast a quicker eye for what’s below a Capuchin hood.’ This – this is a sweet woman, this Walkinshaw, Paul, but a dangerous. ‘Ware hawk, lad, ‘ware hawk!”

I suppose my face reddened at that; at least he looked at me again and pinched, and “Smitten to the marrow; may I drink water and grow thin else. Sacré nom de nom! ‘tis time thou wert on the highways of Europe.”

“How does it happen that a countrywoman of mine is here alone?” I asked.

“I’ll be shot if thou art not the rascalliest young innocent in France. Aye! or out of Scotland,” cried Father Hamilton, holding his sides for laughter.

“Is thy infernal climate of fogs and rains so pleasant that a woman of spirit should abide there for ever an’ she have the notion to travel otherwheres? La! la! la! Master Scrivener, and thou must come to an honest pious priest for news of the world. But, boy, I’m deaf and dumb; mine eyes on occasion are without vision. Let us say the lady has been an over-ardent Jacobite; ‘twill suffice in the meantime. And now has’t ever set eyes on Charles Edward?”

I told him I had never had any hand in the Jacobite affairs, if that was what he meant.

His countenance fell at that.

“What!” he cried, losing his Roman manner, “do you tell me you have never seen him?”

But once, I explained, when he marched into Glasgow city with his wild Highlanders and bullied the burgesses into providing shoes for his ragged army.

“Ah,” said he with a clearing visage, “that will suffice. Must point him out to me. Dixmunde parish was a poor place for seeing the great; ‘tis why I go wandering now.”

Father Hamilton’s hint at politics confirmed my guess about Miss Walkinshaw, but I suppose I must have been in a craze to speak of her on any pretence, for later in the day I was at Thurot’s lodging, and there must precognosce again.

“Oh, mon Dieu, quelle espièglerie!” cried out the captain. “And this a Greig too! Well, I do not wonder that your poor uncle stayed so long away from home; faith, he’d have died of an ennui else. Miss Walkinshaw is – Miss Walkinshaw; a countryman of her own should know better than I all that is to be known about her. But ‘tis not our affair, Mr. Greig. For sure ‘tis enough that we find her smiling, gentle, tolerant, what you call the ‘perfect lady’ —n’est ce pas?And of all the virtues, upon my word, kindness is the best and rarest, and that she has to a miracle.”

“I’m thinking that is not a corsair’s creed, Captain Thurot,” said I, smiling at the gentleman’s eagerness. He was standing over me like a lighthouse, with his eyes on fire, gesturing with his arms as they had been windmill sails.

“No, faith! but ‘tis a man’s, Master Greig, and I have been happy with it. Touching our fair friend, I may say that, much as I admire her, I agree with some others that ours were a luckier cause without her. Gad! the best thing you could do, Mr. Greig, would be to marry her yourself and take her back with you to Scotland.”

“What! byway of Paris in Father Hamilton’s glass coach,” I said, bantering to conceal my confusion at such a notion.