The Shoes of Fortune

“If my sail-making’s to be relied on she’s in the best of trim,” I answered.

“And – what do ye call it? – all found?”

“A water breaker, a bottle of brandy, a bag of bread – ”

“Enough for a foray of fifty men!” he said heartily. “Give me meal and water in the heel of my shoe and I would count it very good vivers for a fortnight.”

He went into the cutter; I released the ropes that bound her to the frigate and followed him.

“Mon Dieu dear lad, ‘tis a world of most fantastic happenings,” was all the poor old priest said, shivering in the cold night air.

We had to use the oars of the frigate’s small-boat for a stroke or two so as to get the cutter round before the wind; she drifted quickly from the large ship’s side almost like a living thing with a crave for freedom at last realised; up speedily ran her sail, unhandsome yet sufficient, the friendly air filled out the rustling folds and drove her through the night into the open sea.

There is something in a moonlit night at sea that must touch in the most cloddish heart a spring of fancy. It is friendlier than the dawn that at its most glorious carries a hint of sorrow, or than the bravest sunset that reminds us life is a brief day at the best of it, and the one thing sempiternal yet will be the darkness. We sat in the well of the cutter – three odd adventurers, myself the most silent because I had the double share of dubiety about the enterprise, for who could tell how soon the doomster’s hand would be on me once my feet were again on British soil? Yet now when I think of it – of the moonlit sea, the swelling sail above us, the wake behind that shone with fire – I must count it one of the happiest experiences of my life.

The priest looked back at the low land of France receding behind us, with its scattered lights on the harbour and the shore, mere subjects to the queenly moon. “There goes poor Father Hamilton,” said he whimsically, “happy schoolboy, foolish lover in Louvain that had never but moonlit eves, parish priest of Dixmunde working two gardens, human and divine, understanding best the human where his bees roved, but loving all men good and ill. There goes the spoiled page, the botched effort, and here’s a fat old man at the start of a new life, and never to see his darling France again. Ah! the good mother; Dieu te bénisse!”

CHAPTER XL

MY INTERVIEW WITH PITT

Of our voyage across the Channel there need be no more said than that it was dull to the very verge of monotony, for the wind, though favourable, was often in a faint where our poor sail shook idly at the mast. Two days later we were in London, and stopped at the Queen’s Head above Craig’s Court in Charing Cross.

And now I had to make the speediest possible arrangement for a meeting with those who could make the most immediate and profitable use of the tidings I was in a position to lay before them, by no means an easy matter to decide upon for a person who had as little knowledge of London as he had of the Cities of the Plain.

MacKellar – ever the impetuous Gael – was for nothing less than a personal approach to his Majesty.

“The man that is on the top of the hill will always be seeing furthest,” he said. “I have come in contact with the best in Europe on that under standing, but it calls for a kind of Hielan’ tact that – that – ”

“That you cannot credit to a poor Lowlander like myself,” said I, amused at his vanity.

“Oh, I’m meaning no offence, just no offence at all,” he responded quickly, and flushing at his faux pas. “You have as much talent of the kind as the best of us I’m not denying, and I have just the one advantage, that I was brought up in a language that has delicacies of address beyond the expression of the English, or the French that is, in some measure, like it.”

“Well,” said I, “the spirit of it is obviously not to be translated into English, judging from the way you go on crying up your countrymen at the expense of my own.”

“That is true enough,” he conceded, “and a very just observe; but no matter, what I would be at is that your news is worth too much to be wasted on any poor lackey hanging about his Majesty’s back door, who might either sell it or you on his own behoof, or otherwise make a mull of the matter with the very best intentions. If you would take my way of it, there would be but Geordie himself for you.”

“What have you to say to that?” I asked the priest, whose knowledge of the world struck me as in most respects more trustworthy than that of this impetuous Highland chirurgeon.

“A plague of your kings! say I; sure I know nothing about them, for my luck has rubbed me against the gabardine and none of your ermined cloaks. There must be others who know his Majesty’s affairs better than his Majesty himself, otherwise what advantage were there in being a king?”

In fine his decision was for one of the Ministers, and at last the Secretary of State was decided on.

How I came to meet with Mr. Pitt need not here be recorded; ‘twas indeed more a matter of good luck than of good guidance, and had there been no Scots House of Argyll perhaps I had never got rid of my weighty secret after all. I had expected to meet a person magnificent in robes of state; instead of which ‘twas a man in a blue coat with yellow metal buttons, full round bob wig, a large hat, and no sword-bag nor ruffles that met me – more like a country coachman or a waggoner than a personage of importance.

He scanned over again the letter that had introduced me and received me cordially enough. In a few words I indicated that I was newly come from France, whence I had escaped in a smuggler’s boat, and that I had news of the first importance which I counted it my duty to my country to convey to him with all possible expedition.

At that his face changed and he showed singularly little eagerness to hear any more.

“There will be – there will be the – the usual bargain, I presume, Mr. Greig?” he said, half-smiling. “What are the conditions on which I am to have this vastly important intelligence?”

“I never dreamt of making any, sir,” I answered, promptly, with some natural chagrin, and yet mixed with a little confusion that I should in truth be expecting something in the long run for my story.

“Pardon my stupid pleasantry, Mr. Greig,” he said, reddening slightly. “I have been so long one of his Majesty’s Ministers, and of late have seen so many urgent couriers from France with prime news to be bargained for, that I have grown something of a cynic. You are the first that has come with a secret not for sale. Believe me, your story will have all the more attention because it is offered disinterestedly.”

In twenty minutes I had put him into possession of all I knew of the plans for invasion. He walked up and down the room, with his hands behind his back, intently listening, now and then uttering an exclamation incredulous or astonished.

“You are sure of all this?” he asked at last sharply, looking in my face with embarrassing scrutiny.

“As sure as any mortal man may be with the gift of all his senses,” I replied firmly. “At this moment Thurot’s vessel is, I doubt not, taking in her stores; the embarkation of troops is being practised daily, troops are assembled all along the coast from Brest to Vannes, and – ”

“Oh! on these points we are, naturally, not wholly dark,” said the Minister. “We have known for a year of this somewhat theatrical display on the part of the French, but the lines of the threatened invasion are not such as your remarkable narrative suggests. You have been good enough to honour me with your confidence, Mr. Greig; let me reciprocate by telling you that we have our – our good friends in France, and that for six months back I have been in possession of the Chevalier D’Arcy’s instructions to Dumont to reconnoitre the English coast, and of Dumont’s report, with the chart of the harbours and towns where he proposed that the descent should be made.” He smiled somewhat grimly. “The gentleman who gave us the information,” he went on, “stipulated for twenty thousand pounds and a pension of two thousand a year as the just reward for his loving service to his country in her hour of peril. He was not to get his twenty thousand, I need scarcely say, but he was to get something in the event of his intelligence proving to be accurate, and if it were for no more than to get the better of such a dubious patriot I should wish his tale wholly disproved, though we have hitherto acted on the assumption that it might be trustworthy. There cannot be alternative plans of invasion; our informant – another Scotsman, I may say – is either lying or has merely the plan of a feint.”

“You are most kind, sir,” said I.

“Oh,” he said, “I take your story first, and as probably the most correct, simply because it comes from one that loves his country and makes no bagman’s bargains for the sale of secrets vital to her existence.”

“I am much honoured, sir,” said I, with a bow.

And then he stopped his walk abruptly and faced me again.

“You have told me, Mr. Greig,” he went on, “that Conflans is to descend in a week or two on the coast of Scotland, and that Thurot is to create a diversion elsewhere with the aid of the Swedes, I have, from the most delicate considerations, refrained from asking you how you know all this?”

“I heard it from the lips of Thurot himself.”

“Thurot! impossible!” he murmured.

“Of Thurot himself, sir.”

“You must be much in that pirate’s confidence,” said Mr. Pitt, for the first time with suspicion.

“Not to that extent that he would tell me of his plans for invading my country,” I answered, “and I learned these things by the merest accident. I overheard him speak last Sunday in Dunkerque with the Young Pretender – ”

“The Pretender!” cried the Minister, shrugging his shoulders, and looking at me with more suspicion than ever. “You apparently move in the most select and interesting society, Mr. Greig?”

“In this case, sir, it was none of my choosing,” I replied, and went on briefly to explain how I had got into Thurot’s chamber unknown to him, and unwittingly overhead the Prince and him discuss the plan.

“Very good, very good, and still – you will pardon me – I cannot see how so devout a patriot as Mr. Greig should be in the intimacy of men like Thurot?”

“A most natural remark under the circumstances,” I replied. “Thurot saved my life from a sinking British vessel, and it is no more than his due to say he proved a very good friend to me many a time since. But I was to know nothing of his plans of invasion, for he knew very well I had no sympathy with them nor with Charles Edward, and, as I have told you, he made me his prisoner on his ship so that I might not betray what I had overheard.”

The Minister made hurried notes of what I had told him, and concluded the interview by asking where I could be communicated with during the next few days.

I gave him my direction at the Queen’s Head, but added that I had it in my mind to go shortly to Edinburgh, where my address would be best known to the Lord Advocate.

“The Lord Advocate!” said Mr. Pitt, raising his eyebrows.

“I may as well make a clean breast of it, sir,” I proceeded hurriedly, “and say that I left Scotland under circumstances peculiarly distressing. Thurot saved me from a ship called the Seven Sisters, that had been scuttled and abandoned with only myself and a seaman on board of her in mid-channel, by a man named Daniel Risk.”