The Shoes of Fortune

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!

CHAPTER XXIX

WHEREIN THE PRIEST LEAVES ME, AND I MAKE AN INLAND VOYAGE

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 leave a 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 go sans 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.

CHAPTER XXX

A GUID CONCEIT OF MYSELF LEADS ME FAR ASTRAY

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.”