The Shoes of Fortune

I had seen yon remnant of a man in the Tolbooth cell, and an immediate death upon the gallows seemed less dreadful than the degradation and the doubt he must suffer waiting weary months behind bars. But gallows or cell was become impossible for the new poltroon of Dan Risk’s making to contemplate with any equanimity, and I made up my mind that America was a country which would benefit greatly by my presence, if I could get a passage there by working for it.

Perhaps I would not have made so prompt a decision upon America had not America implied a Clyde ship, and the Clyde as naturally implied a flying visit to my home in Mearns. Since ever I had set foot on Scotland, and saw Scots reek rise from Scots lums, and blue bonnets on Scots heads, and heard the twang of the true North and kindly from the people about me, I had been wondering about my folk. It was plain they had never got the letter I had sent by Horn, or got it only recently, for he himself had only late got home.

To see the house among the trees, then, to get a reassuring sight of its smoke and learn about my parents, was actually of more importance in my mind than my projected trip to America, though I did not care to confess so much to myself.

I went to Glasgow on the following day; the snow was on the roofs; the students were noisily battling; the bells were cheerfully ringing as on the day with whose description I open this history. I put up at the “Saracen Head,” and next morning engaged a horse to ride to Mearns. In the night there had come a change in the weather; I splashed through slush of melted snow, and soaked in a constant rain, but objected none at all because it gave me an excuse to keep up the collar of my cloak, and pull the brim of my hat well forward on my face and so minimise the risk of identification.

There is the lichened root of an ancient fallen saugh tree by the side of Earn Water between Kirkillstane and Driepps that I cannot till this day look on without a deep emotion. Walter’s bairns have seen me sitting there more than once, and unco solemn so that they have wondered, the cause beyond their comprehension. It was there I drew up my horse to see the house of Kirkillstane from the very spot where I had rambled with my shabby stanzas, and felt the first throb of passion for a woman.

The country was about me familiar in every dyke and tree and eminence; where the water sobbed in the pool it had the accent it had in my dreams; there was a broken branch of ash that trailed above the fall, where I myself had dragged it once in climbing. The smell of moss and rotten leafage in the dripping rain, the eerie aspect of the moorland in the mist, the call of lapwings – all was as I had left it. There was not the most infinite difference to suggest that I had seen another world, and lived another life, and become another than the boy that wandered here.

I rode along the river to find the smoke rising from my father’s house – thank God! but what the better was the outlaw son for that? Dare he darken again the door he had disgraced, and disturb anew the hearts he had made sore?

I pray my worst enemy may never feel torn by warring dictates of the spirit as I was that dreary afternoon by the side of Earn; I pray he may never know the pang with which I decided that old events were best let lie, and that I must be content with that brief glimpse of home before setting forth again upon the roads of dubious fortune. Fortune! Did I not wear just now the very Shoes of Fortune? They had come I knew not whence, from what magic part and artisan of heathendom I could not even guess, to my father’s brother; they had covered the unresting foot of him; to me they had brought their curse of discontent, and so in wearing them I seemed doomed to be the unhappy rover, too.

The afternoon grew loud with wind as I sat my horse beside the increasing water; I felt desolate beyond expression.

“Well, there must be an end of it some way!” I said bitterly, and I turned to go.

The storm opposed me as I cantered over Whig-gitlaw, and won by Brooms, and Bishops Offerance, and Kilree. Shepherds sheltered in the lee of dykes, and women hurried out and shuttered windows. I saw sheep hastening into the angles of the fields, and the wild white sea-gull beating across the sky. The tempest thrashed on me as though it could not have me go too soon from the country of my shame; I broke the horse to gallop, and fields and dykes flew by like things demented.

Then of a sudden the beast grew lame; I searched for a stone or a cast shoe, but neither ailed him, and plainly the ride to town that night was impossible. Where the beast failed was within half a mile of Newton, and at all hazards I decided I must make for the inn there. I felt there were risks of recognition, but I must run them. I led the horse by a side path, and reached the inn no sooner than the darkness that fell that night with unusual suddenness. Lights were in the house, and the sound of rural merriment in the kitchen, where farm lads drank twopenny ale, and sang.

A man – he proved to be the innkeeper – came to my summons with a lantern in his hand, and held it up to see what wayfarer was this in such a night. He saw as little of me as my hat and cloak could reveal, and I saw, what greatly relieved me, that he was not John Warnock, who had tenanted the inn when I left the country, but a new tenant and one unknown to me. He helped me to unsaddle the horse, discovered with me that the lameness would probably succumb to a night in the stall, and unburdened himself to the questions every unknown traveller in the shire of Renfrew may expect.

“You’ll be frae Ayr, maybe, or Irvine?”

No, I was from neither; I was from Glasgow.

“Say ye sae, noo! Dod! it’s nae nicht for travelling and nae wonder your horse is lamed. Ye’ll be for ower Fenwick way, noo, i’ the mornin’?” Nor was I for over Fenwick way in the morning. I was for Glasgow again.

He looked from the corners of his eyes at this oddity who travelled like a shuttle in such weather. I was drenched with rain, and my spatter-dashes, with which I had thought to make up in some degree for the inadequate foot-wear of red shoes on horseback, were foul with clay. He presumed I was for supper?

“No,” I answered; “I’m more in the humour for bed, and I will be obliged if you send to my room for my clothes in a little so that they may be dry by the time I start in the morning, and I shall set out at seven if by that time my horse is recovered.”

I drank a tankard of ale for the good of the house, as we say, during a few minutes in the parlour, making my dripping clothes and a headache the excuse for refusing the proffered hospitality of the kitchen where the ploughboys sang, and then went to the little cam-ceiled room where a hasty bed had been made for me.

The world outside was full of warring winds and plashing rains, into which the yokels went at last reluctantly, and when they were gone I fell asleep, wakening once only for a moment when my wet clothes were being taken from the room.

CHAPTER XLIV

WHEREIN THE SHOES OF FORTUNE BRING ME HOME

I came down from my cam-ceiled room to a breakfast by candle-light in a morning that was yet stormy. The landlord himself waited on me (‘twas no other than Ralph Craig that’s now retired at the Whinnell), and he had a score of apologies for his servant lass that had slept in too long, as he clumsily set a table with his own hand, bringing in its equipment in single pieces.

There was a nervousness in his manner that escaped me for a little in the candle-light, but I saw it finally with some wonder, rueing I had agreed to have breakfast here at all, and had not taken my horse, now recovered of his lameness, and pushed on out of a neighbourhood where I had no right in common sense to be.

If the meal was slow of coming it was hearty enough, though the host embarrassed me too much with his attentions. He was clearly interested in my personality.

“It’s not the first time ye’ve been in the ‘Red Lion,’” said he with an assurance that made me stare.

“And what way should you be thinking that?” I asked, beginning to feel more anxious about my position.

“Oh, jist a surmise o’ my ain,” he answered. “Ye kent your way to the stable in the dark, and then – and then there’s whiles a twang o’ the Mearns in your speech.”

This was certainly coming too close! I hastened through my breakfast, paid my lawing, and ordered out my horse. That took so long that I surmised the man was wilfully detaining me. “This fellow has certainly some project to my detriment,” I told myself, and as speedily as I might got into the saddle. Then he said what left no doubt:

“They’ll be gey glad to see ye at the Hazel Den, Mr. Greig.”

I felt a stound of anguish at the words that might in other circumstances have been true but now were so remote from it.

“You seem to have a very gleg eye in your head,” I said, “and to have a great interest in my own affairs.”

“No offence, Mr. Paul, no offence!” said he civilly, and indeed abashed. “There’s a lassie in the kitchen that was ance your mither’s servant and she kent your shoes.”

“I hope then you’ll say nothing about my being here to any one – for the sake of the servant’s old mistress – that was my mother.”

“That was your mither!” he repeated. “And what for no’ yet? She’ll be prood to see ye hame.”

“Is it well with them up there?” I eagerly asked.

I rode like fury home. The day was come before I reached the dykes of Hazel Den. Smoke was rising from its chimneys; there was a homely sound of lowing cattle, and a horse was saddling for my father who was preparing to ride over to the inn at Newton to capture his errant son. He stood before the door, a little more grey, a little more bent, a little more shrunken than when I had seen him last. When I drew up before him with my hat in my hand and leaped out of the saddle, he scarcely grasped at first the fact that here was his son.

“Father! Father!” I cried to him, and he put his arms about my shoulders.

“You’re there, Paul!” said he at last. “Come your ways in; your dear mother is making your breakfast.”

I could not have had it otherwise – ‘twas the welcome I would have chosen!

His eyes were brimming over; his voice was full of sobs and laughter as he cried “Katrine! Katrine!” and my mother came to throw herself into my arms.

My Shoes of Fortune had done me their one good office; they had brought me home.

And now, my dear David, and Quentin, and Jean, my tale is ended, leaving some folks who figured therein a space with their ultimate fortunes unexplained. There is a tomb in Rome that marks the end of Prince Charles Edward’s wanderings and exploits, ambitions, follies, and passions. Of him and of my countrywoman, Clementina Walkinshaw, you will by-and-by read with understanding in your history-books. She died unhappy and disgraced, yet I can never think of her but as young, beautiful, kind, the fool of her affections, the plaything of Circumstance. Clancarty’s after career I never learned, but Thurot, not long after I escaped from him in Dunkerque, plundered the town of Carrickfergus, in Ireland, and was overtaken by three frigates when he was on his way back to France. His ships were captured and he himself was killed. You have seen Dr. MacKellar here on a visit from his native Badenoch; his pardon from the Government was all I got, or all I wished for, from Mr. Pitt. “And where is Isobel Fortune?” you will ask. You know her best as your grandmother, my wife. My Shoes of Fortune, she will sometimes say, laughing, brought me first and last Miss Fortune; indeed they did! I love them for it, but I love you, too, and hope to keep you from the Greig’s temptation, so they are to the fore no longer.

THE END