The Shoes of Fortune

“Bless me!” cried Mr. Pitt, “the scoundrel Risk was tried in Edinburgh a month or two ago on several charges, including the one you mention, and he has either been hanged, or is waiting to be hanged at this moment, in the jail at Edinburgh.”

“I was nominally purser on the Seven Sisters, but in actual fact I was fleeing from justice.”

The Minister hemmed, and fumbled with his papers.

“It was owing to a duelling affair, in which I had the misfortune to – to – kill my opponent. I desire, sir, above all, to be thoroughly honest, and I am bound to tell you it was my first intention to make the conveyance of this plan of Thurot’s a lever to secure my pardon for the crime of manslaughter which lies at my charge. I would wish now that my loyalty to my country was really disinterested, and I have, in the last half-hour, made up my mind to surrender myself to the law of Scotland.”

“That is for yourself to decide on,” said the Minister more gravely, “but I should advise the postponement of your departure to Edinburgh until you hear further from me. I shall expect to find you at the inn at Charing Cross during the next week; thereafter – ”

He paused for a moment. “Well – thereafter we shall see,” he added.

After a few more words of the kindest nature the Minister shook hands with the confessed manslayer (it flashed on me as a curious circumstance), and I went back to join the priest and my fellow countryman.

They were waiting full of impatience.

“Hast the King’s pardon in thy pocket, friend Scotland?” cried Father Hamilton; then his face sank in sympathy with the sobriety of my own that was due to my determination on a surrender to justice once my business with the Government was over.

“I have no more in my pocket than I went out with in the morning,” said I. “But my object, so far, has been served. Mr. Pitt knows my story and is like to take such steps as maybe needful. As for my own affair I have mentioned it, but it has gone no further than that.”

“You’re not telling me you did not make a bargain of it before saying a word about the bit plan?” cried MacKellar in surprise, and could scarcely find words strong enough to condemn me for what he described as my stupidity.

“Many a man will sow the seed that will never eat the syboe,” was his comment; “and was I not right yonder when I said yon about the tact? If it had been me now I would have gone very canny to the King himself and said: ‘Your Majesty, I’m a man that has made a slip in a little affair as between gentlemen, and had to put off abroad until the thing blew by. I can save the lives of many thousand Englishmen, and perhaps the country itself, by intelligence that came to my knowledge when I was abroad; if I prove it, will your Majesty pardon the thing that lies at my charge?’”

“And would have his Majesty’s signature to the promise as ‘twere a deed of sale!” laughed the priest convulsively. “La! la! la! Paul, here’s our Celtic Solon with tact – the tact of the foot-pad. Stand and deliver! My pardon, sire, or your life! Mon Dieu! there runs much of the old original cateran in thy methods of diplomacy, good Master MacKellar. Too much for royal courts, I reckon.” MacKellar pshawed impatiently. “I’m asking you what is the Secretary’s name, Mr. Greig?” said he. “Fox or Pitt it is all the same – the one is sly and the other is deep, and it is the natures of their names. I’ll warrant Mr. Pitt has forgotten already the name of the man who gave him the secret, and the wisest thing Paul Greig could do now would be to go into hiding as fast as he can.”

But I expressed my determination to wait in the Queen’s Head a week longer, as I had promised, and thereafter (if nothing happened to prevent it) to submit myself at Edinburgh. Though I tried to make as little of that as possible to myself, and indeed would make myself believe I was going to act with a rare bravery, I must confess now that my determination was strengthened greatly by the reflection that my service to the country would perhaps annul or greatly modify my sentence.

CHAPTER XLI

TREATS OF FATHER HAMILTON’S DEATH

It was a gay place, London, in the days I write of, however it may be now, though Father Hamilton was prone occasionally to compare it unfavourably with the Paris of his fancy, the which he held a sample-piece of paradise. The fogs and rains depressed him; he had an eye altogether unfriendly for the signs of striving commerce in the streets and the greedy haste of clerks and merchants into whose days of unremitting industry so few joys (as he fancied) seemed to enter.

MacKellar soon found company in it among silken bucks that held noisy sederunts in the evenings at a place called White’s and another called (if my memory does not fail me) the Cocoa Nut Tree. ‘Twas marvellous the number of old friends and fellow countrymen that, by his own account, he found there. And what open hands they had! But for him that was privileged, for old acquaintance sake, to borrow from them, we had found our week or two in London singularly hungry because (to tell the truth of it) our money was come very nearly to an end. But MacKellar, who had foraged so well in Silesia, was equally good at it in the city of London. From these night escapades he seldom failed to return richer than he went, and it was he who paid the piper with so much of an air of thinking it a privilege, that we had not the heart, even if we had the inclination, to protest.

If I had known then, as I know now, or at least suspect, that the money that fed and boarded us was won through his skill at dice and cards, I daresay I had shifted sooner from London than I did at the last.

Day after day passed, and no word from Mr. Pitt. I dared scarcely leave my inn for an hour’s airing lest I should be asked for in my absence. There was, for a while, a hope that though I had refused to make any bargain about the pardon, something – I could not so much as guess what – might happen to avert the scandal of a trial at Edinburgh, and the disgrace that same might bring upon my family. But day after day passed, as I have said, and there came no hint of how matters stood.

And then there came a day when I was to consider it mattered very little whether I heard from Pitt or not; when even my country was forgotten and I was to suffer a loss whose bitterness abides with me yet. It was the death of Father Hamilton, whom I had grown to like exceedingly. Birds have built and sung for many generations since then; children play in the garden still; there is essence at the table, there is sparkle in the wine, and he will never enjoy them any more. Fortune has come to me since then, so that I might have the wherewithal, if I had the wish, to take the road again with him in honesty, and see it even better than when Sin paid the bill for us, but it cannot be with him.

It was a December day of the whitest, the city smothered in snow, its tumult hushed. I had been tempted to wander in the forenoon a good way from our lodging. Coming home in the afternoon I met Kilbride, distracted, setting out to seek for me. He had a face like the clay, and his hands, that grasped my lapels as if I meant to fly from him, were trembling.

“Oh, Paul,” said he. “Here’s the worst of all,” and I declare his cheeks were wet with tears.

“What is it?” I cried in great alarm.

“The priest, the priest,” said he. “He’s lying yonder at the ebb, and I’m no more use to him than if I were a bairn. I’ve seen the death-thraws a thousand times, but never to vex me just like this before. He could make two or three of us in bulk, and yet his heart was like a wean’s, and there he’s crying on you even-on till I was near demented and must run about the streets to seek for you.”

“But still you give me no clue!” I cried, hurrying home with him.

He gave me the story by the way. It seemed his reverence had had a notion to see Eastcheap, round which the writer Shakespeare had thrown a glamour for him. He had gone there shortly after I had gone out in the forenoon, and after a space of walking about it had found himself in a mean street where a blackguard was beating a child. ‘Twas the man’s own child, doubtless, and so he had, I make no doubt, the law of it on his own side, but the drunken wretch outdid all reasonable chastisement, and thrashed her till the blood flowed.

Up ran the priest and took her in his arms, shielding her from the blows of the father’s cudgel with his arm. The child nuzzled to his breast, shrieking, and the father tried to pull her away. Between them she fell; the priest stood over her, keeping back the beast that threatened. The man struck at him with his stick; Father Hamilton wrenched it from him, threw it down that he might have no unfair advantage, and flung himself upon the wretch. He could have crushed him into jelly, but the man was armed, and suddenly drew a knife. He thrust suddenly between the priest’s shoulders, released himself from the tottering body, and disappeared with his child apparently beyond all chance of identification or discovery.

Father Hamilton was carried home upon a litter.

“O God! Kilbride, and must he die?” I cried in horror.

“He will travel in less than an hour,” said the Highlander, vastly moved. “And since he came here his whole cry has been for you and Father Joyce.”

We went into the room that seemed unnaturally white and sunny. He lay upon the bed-clothes. The bed was drawn towards the window, through which the domes and towers and roofs of London could be seen, with their accustomed greyness gone below the curtain of the snow. A blotch of blood was on his shirt-front as he lay upon his side. I thought at first it was his own life oozing, but learned a little later that the stricken child had had her face there.

“Paul! Paul!” he said, “I thought thou wouldst blame me for deserting thee again, and this time without so much as a letter of farewell.”

What could I do but take his hand, and fall upon my knees beside his bed? He had blue eyes that never aged nor grossened – the eyes of a boy, clear, clean, and brave, and round about them wrinkles played in a sad, sweet smile.

“What, Paul!” he said, “all this for behemoth! for the old man of the sea that has stuck on thy shoulders for a twelvemonth, and spurred thee to infinite follies and perils! I am no more worth a tear of thine than is the ivied ash that falls untimely and decayed, eaten out of essence by the sins he sheltered. And the poor child, Paul! – the poor child with her arms round my neck, her tears brine – sure I have them on my lips – the true viaticum! The brute! the brute! Ah no! ah no! poor sinner, we do not know.”

“Oh, father!” I cried, “and must we never go into the woods and towns any more?”

He smiled again and stroked my hair.

“Not in these fields, boy,” said he, “but perhaps in more spacious, less perplexed. Be good, be simple, be kind! Tis all I know.”

We heard the steps of Father Joyce upon the stairs.

“All I know!” repeated the priest. “Fifty years to learn it, and I might have found it in my mother’s lap. Chère ange– the little mother – ‘twas a good world! And Fanchon that is dead below the snow in Louvain – oh, the sweet world! And the sunny gardens of bees and children – ”

His eyes were dull. A pallor was on his countenance. He breathed with difficulty. Kilbride, who stood by, silent, put a finger on his pulse. At that he opened his eyes again, once more smiling, and Father Joyce was at the door.

“Kiss me, Paul,” said the dying man, “I hear them singing prime.”

When Father Joyce was gone I came into the room again where the priest lay smiling still, great in figure, in the simplicity and sweetness of his countenance like a child.

Kilbride and I stood silent for a little by the bed, and the Highlander was the first to speak. “I have seen worse,” said he, “than Father Hamilton.”

It may seem a grudging testimony, but not to me that heard it.

On the day after the priest’s funeral Kilbride came to me with that news which sent me north. He had the week’s gazette in his hand, “Have you heard the latest?” he cried. “It is just what I expected,” he went on. “They have made use of your information and set you aside. Here’s the tidings of Conflans’ defeat. Hawke came down on him off Brest, drove him back from the point of Quiberon to the coast near the mouth of the Vilaine, sank four ships, captured two, and routed the enemy. The invasion is at an end.”

“It is gallant news!” I cried, warm with satisfaction.

“Maybe,” said he indifferently, “but the main thing is that Paul Greig, who put the Government in the way of taking proper steps, is here in cheap lodgings with a charge on his head and no better than ever he was. Indeed, perhaps he’s worse off than ever he was.”

“How is that?”

“Well, they ken where you are, for one thing, and you put yourself in their power. I am one that has small faith in Governments. What will hinder them to clap you in jail and save another reward like the first one Pitt told you about? I would never put it past a Sassenach of the name.”