The Shoes of Fortune

I stammered some sentences that were meant to reassure him. He interrupted me, and – not with any roughness, but with a pressure there was no mistaking and I was not fool enough to resist – led me from the side of the quay.

“Ma foi!” said he, “‘Tis the most ridiculous thing! I had nearly missed you and could never have forgiven myself. My Swiss has just informed me that you were in the house an hour ago while I was there myself. I fear we must have bored you, M. Albany and I, with our dull affairs. At least there was no other excuse for your unceremonious departure through my back window.”

I was never well-equipped to conceal my feelings, and it was plain in my face that I knew all.

He sighed.

“Well, lad,” said he, rather sorrowfully, “I’d give a good many louis d’or that you had come visiting at another hour of the day, and now there’s but one thing left me. My Swiss did not know you, but he has – praise le bon Dieu!– a pair of eyes in his head, and he remembered that my visitor wore red shoes. Red shoes and a Scotsman! – the conjunction was unmistakable, and here we are, M. Greig. There are a score of men looking all over Dunkerque at this moment for these same shoes.”

“Confound the red shoes!” I cried, unable to conceal my vexation that they should once more have brought me into trouble.

“By no means, M. Greig,” said Thurot. “But for them we should never have identified our visitor, and a somewhat startling tale was over the Channel a little earlier than we intended. And now all that I may do for old friendship to yourself and the original wearer of the shoes is to give you a free trip to England in my own vessel. ‘Tis not the Roi Rouge this time – worse luck! – but a frigate, and we can be happy enough if you are not a fool.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THUROT’S PRISONER. MY FRIEND THE WATCH

It was plain from the first that my overhearing of the plot must compel Thurot to the step he took. He was not unkind, but so much depended on the absolute secrecy of the things he had talked to the Prince, that, even at the unpleasant cost of trepanning me, he must keep me from carrying my new-got information elsewhere. For that reason he refused to accede to my request for a few minutes’ conversation with the priest or my fellow-countrymen. The most ordinary prudence, he insisted, demanded that he should keep me in a sort of isolation until it was too late to convey a warning across the Channel.

It was for these reasons I was taken that Sabbath afternoon to the frigate that was destined to be in a humble sense his flagship, and was lying in the harbour with none of her crew as yet on board. I was given a cabin; books were furnished to cheer my incarceration, for it was no less. I was to all intents and purposes a prisoner, though enjoying again some of the privileges of the salle d’épreuves for the sake of old acquaintance.

All that day I planned escape. Thurot came to the cabin and smoked and conversed pleasantly, but found me so abstracted that he could scarcely fail to think I meant a counter-sap.

“Be tranquil, my Paul,” he advised; “Clancarty and I will make your life on ship-board as little irksome as possible, but it is your own cursed luck that you must make up your mind to a fortnight of it.”

But that was considerably longer than I was ready to think of with equanimity. What I wished for was an immediate freedom and a ship to England, and while he talked I reviewed a dozen methods of escape. Here was I with a secret worth a vast deal to the British Government; if I could do my country that service of putting her into possession of it in time to prevent catastrophe, might I not, without presumption, expect some clemency from her laws for the crime I had committed in the hot blood of ignorant and untutored youth? I saw the most cheerful possibilities rise out of that accident that had made me an eavesdropper in Thurot’s lodging – freedom, my family perhaps restored to me, my name partly re-established; but the red shoes that set me on wrong roads to start with still kept me on them. Thurot was an amiable enough gaoler, but not his best wine nor his wittiest stories might make me forget by how trivial a chance I had lost my opportunity.

We were joined in the afternoon by Lord Clancarty.

“What, lad!” cried his lordship, pomaded and scented beyond words; fresh, as he told us, from the pursuit of a lady whose wealth was shortly to patch up his broken fortunes. “What, lad! Here’s a pretty matter! Pressed, egad! A renegade against his will! ‘Tis the most cursed luck, Captain Thurot, and wilt compel the poor young gentleman to cut the throats of his own countrymen?”

“I? Faith, not I!” said Thurot. “I press none but filthy Swedes. M. Greig has my word for it that twelve hours before we weigh anchor he may take his leave of us. Je le veux bien.”

“Bah! ‘Tis an impolite corsair this. As for me I should be inconsolable to lose M. Greig to such a dull country as this England. Here’s an Occasion, M. le Capitaine, for pledging his health in a bottle, and wishing him well out of his troubles.”

“You do not stand sufficiently on your dignity, Clancarty,” laughed Thurot. “Here’s the enemy – ”

“Dignity! pooh!” said his lordship. “To stand on that I should need a year’s practice first on the tight-rope. There’s that about an Irish gentleman that makes the posturings and proprieties and pretences of the fashionable world unnecessary. Sure, race will show in his face and action if he stood alone in his shirt-sleeves on a village common juggling balls. I am of the oldest blood that springs in Irish kings. ‘Tis that knowledge keeps my heart up when circumstances make the world look rotten like a cheese. But the curst thing is one cannot for ever be drinking and dining off a pedigree, and here I am deserted by M. Tête-de-mouche – ”

Thurot put up his hand to check one of these disloyalties to the Pretender that I had long since learned were common with Lord Clancarty.

“Bah!” cried his lordship. “I love you, Tony, and all the other boys, but your Prince is a madman – a sotted madman tied to the petticoat tails of a trollope. This Walkinshaw – saving your presence, Paul Greig, for she’s your countrywoman and by way of being your friend, I hear – has ruined Charles and the Cause. We have done what we could to make him send madame back to the place she came from, but he’ll do nothing of the kind. ‘She has stuck by me through thick and thin, and lost all for me, and now I shall stick by her,’ says foolish Master Sentiment.”

“Bravo!” cried Thurot. “‘Tis these things make us love the Prince and have faith in his ultimate success.”

“You were ever the hopeful ass, Tony,” said his lordship coolly. “Il riest pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre, and you must shut your ears against a tale that all the world is shouting at the pitch of its voice. Who knows better than Tony Thurot how his Royal Highness has declined? Why! ‘tis manifest in the fellow’s nose; I declare he drinks like a fish – another vice he brought back from your mountain land, M. Greig, along with Miss Walkinshaw – ”

“There is far too much of Miss Walkinshaw about your lordship’s remarks,” I cried in an uncontrollable heat that the lady should be the subject of implications so unkind.

He stared, and then kissed his hand to me with laughter and a bow, “Ha!” he cried, “here’s another young gentleman of sentiment. Stap me if I say a word against the lady for your sake, Andy Greig’s nephew.” And back he went to his bottle.

In this light fashion we spent a day that by rights should have been more profitably and soberly occupied. The frigate lay well out from the quays from which Thurot had conveyed me with none of the indignities that might be expected by a prisoner. There was, as I have said, none of her crew on board save a watch of two men. Beside her quarter there hung a small smuggling cutter that had been captured some days previously. As I sat in the cabin, yawning at the hinder-end over Clancarty’s sallies, I could hear now and then the soft thudding of the smuggler’s craft against the fenders as the sea rocked us lightly, and it put a mad fancy into my head.

How good it would be, I thought, to be free on board such a vessel and speeding before a light wind to Britain! Was it wholly impossible? The notion so possessed me that I took an occasion to go on deck and see how things lay.

The smuggler’s boat had her mast stepped, but no sails in her. Over the bulwark of the frigate leaned one of the watch idly looking at sea-gulls that cried like bairns upon the smuggler’s thwarts and gunnels. He was a tarry Dutchman (by his build and colour); I fancy that at the time he never suspected I was a prisoner, for he saluted me with deference.

The harbour was emptier than usual of shipping. Dusk was falling on the town; some lights were twinkling wanly and bells rang in the cordage of the quays. I asked the seaman if he knew where the hoy Vrijster of Helvoetsluys lay.

At that his face brightened and he promptly pointed to her yellow hull on the opposite side of the harbour.

“Did my honour know Captain Breuer?” he asked, in crabbed French.

My honour was very pleased to confess that he did, though in truth my acquaintance with the skipper who had taken us round from Helvoetsluys went scarcely further than sufficed me to recall his name.

The best sailor ever canted ship! my Dutchman assured me with enthusiasm. How often have I heard the self-same sentiment from mariners? for there is something jovial and kind in the seaman’s manner that makes him ever fond of the free, the brave and competent of his own calling, and ready to cry their merits round the rolling world.

A good seaman certainly! – I agreed heartily, though the man might have been merely middling for all I knew of him.

He would like nothing better than to have an hour with Captain Breuer, said Mynheer.

“And I, too,” said I quickly. “But for Captain Thurot’s pressing desire that I should spend the evening here I should be in Breuer’s cabin now. Next to being with him there I would reckon the privilege of having him here.”

There might be very little difficulty about that if my honour was willing, said Mynheer. They were old shipmates; had sailed the Zuyder Sea together, and drunken in a score of ports. Dearly indeed would he love to have some discourse with Breuer. But to take leave from the frigate and cross to the hoy – no! Captain Thurot would not care for him to do that.

“Why not have Breuer come to the frigate?” I asked, with my heart beating fast.

“Why, indeed?” repeated Mynheer with a laugh. “A hail across the harbour would not fetch him.”

“Then go for him,” said I, my heart beating faster than ever lest he should have some suspicion of my condition and desires.

He reminded me that he had no excuse to leave the frigate, though to take the small boat at the stern and row over to the hoy would mean but a minute or two.

“Well, as for excuses,” said I, “that’s easily arranged, for I can give you one to carry a note to the care of the captain, and you may take it at your leisure.”

At his leisure! He would take it at once and thankfully while we gentlemen were drinking below, for there was no pleasure under heaven he could compare with half an hour of good Jan Breuer’s company.

Without betraying my eagerness to avail myself of such an unlooked-for opportunity, I deliberately wrote a note in English intimating that I was a prisoner on the frigate and in pressing humour to get out of her at the earliest moment. I addressed it to Kilbride, judging the Highlander more likely than Father Hamilton to take rational steps for my release if that were within the bounds of possibility.

I assured the seaman that if he lost no time in taking it over I would engage his absence would never be noticed, and he agreed to indicate to me by a whistle when he returned.

With a cheerful assurance that he would have Jan Breuer on this deck in less than twenty minutes the seaman loosed the painter of the small boat and set forth upon his errand, while I returned to the cabin where Thurot and Clancarty still talked the most contrary and absurd politics over their wine. The vast and tangled scheme of French intrigue was set before me; at another time it might have been of the most fascinating interest, but on this particular occasion I could not subdue my mind to matters so comparatively trivial, while I kept my hearing strained for the evidence that the Dutchman had accomplished his mission and got back.

The moments passed; the interest flagged; Clancarty began to yawn and Thurot grew silent. It was manifest that the sooner my Dutchman was back to his ship the better for my plan. Then it was I showed the brightest interest in affairs that an hour earlier failed to engage a second of my attention, and I discovered for the entertainment of my gaoler and his friend a hitherto unsuspected store of reminiscence about my Uncle Andrew and a fund of joke and anecdote whereof neither of them probably had thought me capable.

But all was useless. The signal that the Dutchman had returned was not made when Lord Clancarty rose to his feet and intimated his intention there and then of going ashore, though his manner suggested that it would have been easy to induce him to wait longer. We went on deck with him. The night was banked with clouds though a full moon was due; only a few stars shone in the spaces of the zenith; our vessel was in darkness except where a lamp swung at the bow.

“Mon Dieu! Tony, what a pitchy night! I’d liefer be safe ashore than risking my life getting there in your cockle-shell,” said Clancarty.