The Shoes of Fortune

“H’m,” said he. “Father Hamilton and the lady are a pair.” He walked a little up and down the room as if he were in a quandary. “A pair,” he resumed. “I fancied I could see to the very centre of the Sphinx itself, for all men are in ourselves if we only knew it, till I came upon this Scotswoman and this infernal Flemish-English priest of Dix-munde. Somehow, for them Antoine Thurot has not the key in himself yet. Still, ‘twill arrive, ‘twill arrive! I like the lady – and yet I wish she were a thousand miles away; I like the man too, but a Jesuit is too many men at once to be sure of; and, Gad! I can scarcely sleep at nights for wondering what he may be plotting. This grand tour of his-”

“Stop, stop!” I cried, in a fear that he might compromise himself in an ignorance of my share in the tour in question; “I must tell you that I am going with Father Hamilton as his secretary, although it bothers me to know what scrivening is to be accomplished in a glass coach. Like enough I am to be no more, in truth, than the gentleman’s companion or courier, and it is no matter so long as I am moving.”

“Indeed, and is it so?” cried Captain Thurot, stopping as if he had been shot. “And how happens it that this priest is willing to take you, that are wholly a foreigner and a stranger to the country?”

“Miss Walkinshaw recommended me,” said I.

“Oh!” he cried, “you have not been long of getting into your excellent countrywoman’s kind favour. Is it that Tony Thurot has been doing the handsome by an ingrate? No, no, Monsieur, that were a monstrous innuendo, for the honour has been all mine. But that Miss Walkinshaw should be on such good terms with the priest as to trouble with the provision of his secretary is opposed to all I had expected of her. Why, she dislikes the man, or I’m a stuffed fish.”

“Anyhow, she has done a handsome thing by me,” said I. “It is no wonder that so good a heart as hers should smother its repugnances (and the priest is a fat sow, there is no denying) for the sake of a poor lad from its own country. You are but making it the plainer that I owe her more than at first I gave her credit for.”

“Bless me, here’s gratitude!” cried the captain, laughing at my warmth. “Mademoiselle Walkinshaw has her own plans; till now, I fancied them somewhat different from Hamilton’s, but more fool I to fancy they were what they seemed! All that, my dear lad, need not prevent your enjoying your grand tour with the priest, who has plenty of money and the disposition to spend it like a gentleman.”

Finally I went to my Lord Clancarty, for it will be observed that I had still no hint as to the origin of the lady who was so good a friend of mine. Though the last thing in the world I should have done was to pry into her affairs for the indulgence of an idle curiosity, I would know the best of her before the time came to say farewell, and leave of her with me no more than a memory.

The earl was at the Café du Soleil d’Or, eating mussels on the terrace and tossing the empty shells into the gutter what time he ogled passing women and exchanged levitous repartee with some other frequenters of the place.

“Egad, Paul,” he cried, meeting me with effusion, “‘tis said there is one pearl to be found for every million mussels; but here’s a pearl come to me in the midst of a single score. An Occasion, lad; I sat at the dice last night till a preposterous hour this morning, and now I have a headache like the deuce and a thirst to take the Baltic. I must have the tiniest drop, and on an Occasion too. Voilà! Gaspard, une autre bouteille.”

He had his bottle, that I merely made pretence to help him empty, and I had my precognition.

But it came to little in the long run. Oh yes, he understood my interest in the lady (with rakish winking); ‘twas a delicious creature for all its hauteur when one ventured a gallantry, but somehow no particular friend to the Earl of Clancarty, who, if she only knew it, was come of as noble a stock as any rotten Scot ever went unbreeched; not but what (this with a return of the naturally polite man) there were admirable and high-bred people of that race, as instance my Uncle Andrew and myself. But was there any reason why such a man as Charlie Stuart should be King of Ireland? “I say, Greig, blister the old Chevalier and his two sons! There is not a greater fumbler on earth than this sotted person, who has drunk the Cause to degradation and would not stir a hand to serve me and my likes, that are, begad! the fellow’s betters.”

“But all this,” said I, “has little to do with Miss Walkinshaw. I have nothing to say of the Prince, who may be all you say, though that is not the repute he has in Scotland.”

“Bravo, Mr. Greig!” cried his lordship. “That is the tone if you would keep in the lady’s favour. Heaven knows she has little reason to listen to praise of such a creature, but, then, women are blind. She loves not Clancarty, as I have said; but, no matter, I forgive her that; ‘tis well known ‘tis because I cannot stomach her prince.”

“And yet,” said I, “you must interest yourself in these Jacobite affairs and mix with all that are here of that party.”

“Faith and I do,” he confessed heartily. “What! am I to be a mole and stay underground? A man must have his diversion, and though I detest the Prince I love his foolish followers. Do you know what, Mr. Greig? ‘Tis the infernal irony of things in this absurd world that the good fellows, the bloods, the men of sensibilities must for ever be wrapped up in poor mad escapades and emprises. And a Clancarty is ever of such a heart that the more madcap the scheme the more will he dote on it.”

A woman passing in a chair at this moment looked in his direction; fortunately, otherwise I was condemned to a treatise on life and pleasure.

“Egad!” he cried, “there’s a face that’s like a line of song,” and he smiled at her with unpardonable boldness as it seemed to me, a pleasant pucker about his eyes, a hint of the good comrade in his mouth.

She flushed like wine and tried to keep from smiling, but could not resist, and smiling she was borne away.

“Do you know her, my lord?” I could not forbear asking.

“Is it know her?” said he. “Devil a know, but ‘tis a woman anyhow, and a heart at that. Now who the deuce can she be?” And he proceeded, like a true buck, to fumble with the Mechlin of his fall and dust his stockings in an airy foppish manner so graceful that I swear no other could have done the same so well.

“Now this Miss Walkinshaw – ” I went on, determined to have some satisfaction from my interview.

“Confound your Miss Walkinshaw, by your leave, Mr. Greig,” he interrupted. “Can you speak of Miss Walkinshaw when the glory of the comet is still trailing in the heavens? And – hum! – I mind me of a certain engagement, Mr. Greig,” he went on hurriedly, drawing a horologe from his fob and consulting it with a frowning brow. “In the charm of your conversation I had nigh forgot, so adieu, adieu, mon ami!”

He gave me the tips of his fingers, and a second later he was gone, stepping down the street with a touch of the minuet, tapping his legs with his cane, his sword skewering his coat-skirts, all the world giving him the cleanest portion of the thoroughfare and looking back after him with envy and admiration.

CHAPTER XVII

WITNESSES THE LAST OF A BLATE YOUNG MAN

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 all en 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 the convenances? 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 the convenances, 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, my chapeau-de-bras in 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?”