The Shoes of Fortune

Next day was Sunday, and Father Hamilton went to Mass leaving me to my own affairs, that were not of that complexion perhaps most becoming on that day to a lad from Scotland. He came back anon and dressed most scrupulously in a suit of lay clothing.

“Come out, Master Greig,” said he, “and use thine eyes for a poor priest that has ruined his own in studying the Fathers and seeking for honesty.”

“It is not in the nature of a compliment to myself, that,” I said, a little tired of his sour sentiments regarding humanity, and not afraid in the least to tell him so.

“Eh!” said he. “I spoke not of thee, thou savage. A plague on thy curt temper; ‘twas ever the weakness of the Greigs. Come, and I shall show thee a house where thy uncle and I had many a game of dominoes.”

We went to a coffee-house and watched the fashionable world go by. It was a sight monstrously fine. Because it was the Easter Sunday the women had on their gayest apparel, the men their most belaced jabots.

“Now look you well, Friend Scotland,” said Father Hamilton, as we sat at a little table and watched the stream of quality pass, “look you well and watch particularly every gentleman that passes to the right, and when you see one you know tell me quickly.”

He had dropped his Roman manner as if in too sober a mood to act.

“Is it a game?” I asked. “Who can I ken in the town of Versailles that never saw me here before?”

“Never mind,” said he, “do as I tell you. A sharp eye, and-”

“Why,” I cried, “there’s a man I have seen before!”

“Where? where?” said Father Hamilton, with the utmost interest lighting his countenance.

“Yonder, to the left of the man with the velvet breeches. He will pass us in a minute or two.”

The person I meant would have been kenspeckle in any company by the splendour of his clothing, but beyond his clothing there was a haughtiness in his carriage that singled him out even among the fashionables of Versailles, who were themselves obviously interested in his personality, to judge by the looks that they gave him as closely as breeding permitted. He came sauntering along the pavement swinging a cane by its tassel, his chin in the air, his eyes anywhere but on the crowds that parted to give him room. As he came closer I saw it was a handsome face enough that thus was cocked in haughtiness to the heavens, not unlike Clancarty’s in that it showed the same signs of dissipation, yet with more of native nobility in it than was in the good enough countenance of the French-Irish nobleman. Where had I seen that face before?

It must have been in Scotland; it must have been when I was a boy; it was never in the Mearns. This was a hat with a Dettingen cock; when I saw that forehead last it was under a Highland bonnet.

A Highland bonnet – why! yes, and five thousand Highland bonnets were in its company – whom had I here but Prince Charles Edward!

The recognition set my heart dirling in my breast, for there was enough of the rebel in me to feel a romantic glow at seeing him who set Scotland in a blaze, and was now the stuff of songs our women sang in milking folds among the hills; that heads had fallen for, and the Hebrides had been searched for in vain for weary seasons. The man was never a hero of mine so long as I had the cooling influence of my father to tell me how lamentable for Scotland had been his success had God permitted the same, yet I was proud to-day to see him.

“Is it he?” asked the priest, dividing his attention between me and the approaching nobleman.

“It’s no other,” said I. “I would know Prince Charles in ten thousand, though I saw him but the once in a rabble of caterans coming up the Gallow-gate of Glasgow.”

“Ah,” said the priest, with a curious sighing sound. “They said he passed here at the hour. And that’s our gentleman, is it? I expected he would have been – would have been different.” When the Prince was opposite the café where we sat he let his glance come to earth, and it fell upon myself. His aspect changed; there was something of recognition in it; though he never slackened his pace and was gazing the next moment down the vista of the street, I knew that his glance had taken me in from head to heel, and that I was still the object of his thoughts.

“You see! you see!” cried the priest, “I was right, and he knew the Greig. Why, lad, shalt have an Easter egg for this – the best horologe in Versailles upon Monday morning.”

“Why, how could he know me?” I asked. “It is an impossibility, for when he and I were in the same street last he rode a horse high above an army and I was only a raw laddie standing at a close-mouth in Duff’s Land in the Gallowgate.”

But all the same I felt the priest was right, and that there was some sort of recognition in the Prince’s glance at me in passing.

Father Hamilton poured himself a generous glass and drank thirstily.

“La! la! la!” said he, resuming his customary manner of address. “I daresay his Royal Highness has never clapt eyes on thy croque-mori countenance before, but he has seen its like – ay, and had a regard for it, too! Thine Uncle Andrew has done the thing for thee again; the mole, the hair, the face, the shoes – sure they advertise the Greig as by a drum tuck! and Charles Edward knew thy uncle pretty well so I supposed he would know thee. And this is my gentleman, is it? Well, well! No, not at all well; mighty ill indeed. Not the sort of fellow I had looked for at all. Seems a harmless man enough, and has tossed many a goblet in the way of company. If he had been a sour whey-face now – ”

Father Hamilton applied himself most industriously to the bottle that afternoon, and it was not long till the last of my respect for him was gone. Something troubled him. He was moody and hilarious by turns, but neither very long, and completed my distrust of him when he intimated that there was some possibility of our trip across Europe never coming into effect. But all the same, I was to be assured of his patronage, I was to continue in his service as secretary, if, as was possible, he should take up his residence for a time in Paris. And money – why, look again! he had a ship’s load of it, and ‘twould never be said of Father Hamilton that he could not share with a friend. And there he thrust some rouleaux upon me and clapped my shoulder and was so affected at his own love for Andrew Greig’s nephew that he must even weep.

Weeping indeed was the priest’s odd foible for the week we remained at Versailles. He that had been so jocular before was now filled with morose moods, and would ruminate over his bottle by the hour at a time.

He was none the better for the company he met during our stay at the Cerf d’Or – all priests, and to the number of half a dozen, one of them an abbé with a most noble and reverent countenance. They used to come to him late at night, confer with him secretly in his room, and when they were gone I found him each time drenched in a perspiration and feverishly gulping spirits.

Every day we went to the café where we had seen the Prince first, and every day at the same hour we saw his Royal Highness, who, it appeared, was not known to the world as such, though known to me. The sight of him seemed to trouble Father Hamilton amazingly, and yet ‘twas the grand object of the day – its only diversion; when we had seen the Prince we went back straight to the inn every afternoon.

The Cerf d’Or had a courtyard, cobbled with rough stones, in which there was a great and noisy traffic. In the midst of the court there was a little clump of evergreen trees and bushes in tubs, round which were gathered a few tables and chairs whereat – now that the weather was mild – the world sat in the afternoon. The walls about were covered with dusty ivy where sparrows had begun to busy themselves with love and housekeeping; lilacs sprouted into green, and the porter of the house was for ever scratching at the hard earth about the plants, and tying up twigs and watering the pots. It was here I used to write my letters to Miss Walkinshaw at a little table separate from the rest, and I think it was on Friday I was at this pleasant occupation when I looked up to see the man with the uniform gazing at me from the other side of the bushes as if he were waiting to have the letter when I was done with it.

I went in and asked Father Hamilton who this man was.

“What!” he cried in a great disturbance, “the same as we met near the Trianon! O Lord! Paul, there is something wrong, for that was Buhot.”

“And this Buhot?” I asked.

“A police inspector. There is no time to lose. Monsieur Greig, I want you to do an office for me. Here is a letter that must find its way into the hands of the Prince. You will give it to him. You have seen that he passes the café at the same hour every day. Well, it is the easiest thing in the world for you to go up to him and hand him this. No more’s to be done by you.”

“But why should I particularly give him the letter? Why not send it by the Swiss?”

“That is my affair,” cried the priest testily. “The Prince knows you – that is important. He knows the Swiss too, and that is why I have the Swiss with me as a second string to my bow, but I prefer that he should have this letter from the hand of M. Andrew Greig’s nephew. ‘Tis a letter from his Royal Highness’s most intimate friend.”

I took the letter into my hand, and was amazed to see that the address was in a writing exactly corresponding to that of a billet now in the bosom of my coat!

What could Miss Walkinshaw and the Prince have of correspondence to be conducted on such roundabout lines? Still, if the letter was hers I must carry it!

“Very well,” I agreed, and went out to meet the Prince.

The sun was blazing; the street was full of the quality in their summer clothing. His Royal Highness came stepping along at the customary hour more gay than ever. I made bold to call myself to his attention with my hat in my hand. “I beg your Royal Highness’s pardon,” I said in English, “but I have been instructed to convey this letter to you.”

He swept his glance over me; pausing longest of all on my red shoes, and took the letter from my hand. He gave a glance at the direction, reddened, and bit his lip.

“Let me see now, what is the name of the gentleman who does me the honour?”

“Greig,” I answered. “Paul Greig.”

“Ah!” he cried, “of course: I have had friends in Monsieur’s family. Charmé, Monsieur, de faire votre connaissance. M. Andrew Greig-”

“Was my uncle, your Royal Highness?”

“So! a dear fellow, but, if I remember rightly, with a fatal gift of irony. ‘Tis a quality to be used with tact. I hope you have tact, M. Greig. Your good uncle once did me the honour to call me a – what was it now? – a gomeral.”

“It was very like my uncle, that, your Royal Highness,” I said. “But I know that he loved you and your cause.”

“I daresay he did, Monsieur; I daresay he did,” said the Prince, flushing, and with a show of pleasure at my speech. “I have learned of late that the fair tongue is not always the friendliest. In spite of it all I liked M. Andrew Greig. I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing Monsieur Greig’s nephew soon again. Au plaisir de vous revoir!” And off he went, putting the letter, unread, into his pocket.

When I went back to the Cerf d’Or and told Hamilton all that had passed, he was straightway plunged into the most unaccountable melancholy.

CHAPTER XXI

THE ATTEMPT ON THE PRINCE

And now I come to an affair of which there have been many accounts written, some of them within a mile or two of the truth, the most but sheer romantics. I have in my mind notably the account of the officer Buhot printed two years after the events in question, in which he makes the most fabulous statement as to the valiancy of Father Hamilton’s stand in the private house in the Rue des Reservoirs, and maintains that myself —le fier Eccossais, as he is flattering enough to designate me – drew my sword upon himself and threatened to run him through for his proposition that I should confess to a complicity in the attempt upon his Royal Highness. I have seen his statement reproduced with some extra ornament in the Edinburgh Courant, and the result of all this is that till this day my neighbours give me credit, of which I am loth to advantage myself, for having felled two or three of the French officers before I was overcome at the hinder-end.

The matter is, in truth, more prosaic as it happened, and if these memorials of mine leave the shadow of a doubt in the minds of any interested in an old story that created some stir in its time, I pray them see the archives of M. Bertin, the late Lieut. – General of the police. Bertin was no particular friend of mine, that had been the unconscious cause of great trouble and annoyance to him, but he has the truth in the deposition I made and signed prior to my appointment to a company of the d’Auvergne regiment.

Well, to take matters in their right order, it was the evening of the day I had given the letter to the Prince that Father Hamilton expressed his intention of passing that night in the house of a friend.

I looked at him with manifest surprise, for he had been at the bottle most of the afternoon, and was by now more in a state for his bed than for going among friends.

“Well,” he cried peevishly, observing my dubiety. “Do you think me too drunk for the society of a parcel of priests? Ma foi! it is a pretty thing that I cannot budge from my ordinary habitude of things without a stuck owl setting up a silent protest.”

To a speech so wanting in dignity I felt it better there should be no reply, and instead I helped him into his great-coat. As I did so, he made an awkward lurching movement due to his corpulence, and what jumped out of an inner pocket but a pistol? Which of us was the more confused at that it would be hard to say. For my part, the weapon – that I had never seen in his possession before – was a fillip to my sleeping conscience; I picked it up with a distaste, and he took it from me with trembling fingers and an averted look.

“A dangerous place, Versailles, after dark,” he explained feebly. “One never knows, one never knows,” and into his pocket hurriedly with it.

“I shall be back for breakfast,” he went on. “Unless – unless – oh, I certainly shall be back.” And off he set.

The incident of the pistol disturbed me for a while. I made a score of speculations as to why a fat priest should burden himself with such an article, and finally concluded that it was as he suggested, to defend himself from night birds if danger offered; though that at the time had been the last thing I myself would have looked for in the well-ordered town of Versailles. I sat in the common-room or salle of the inn for a while after he had gone, and thereafter retired to my own bedchamber, meaning to read or write for an hour or two before going to bed. In the priest’s room – which was on the same landing and next to my own – I heard the whistle of Bernard the Swiss, but I had no letters for him that evening, and we did not meet each other. I was at first uncommon dull, feeling more than usually the hame-wae that must have been greatly wanting in the experience of my Uncle Andrew to make him for so long a wanderer on the face of the earth. But there is no condition of life so miserable but what one finds in it remissions, diversions, nay, and delights also, and soon I was – of all things in the world to be doing when what followed came to pass! – inditing a song to a lady, my quill scratching across the paper in spurts and dashes, and baffled pauses where the matter would not attend close enough on the mood, stopping altogether at a stanza’s end to hum the stuff over to myself with great satisfaction. I was, as I say, in the midst of this; the Swiss had gone downstairs; all in my part of the house was still, though vehicles moved about in the courtyard, when unusually noisy footsteps sounded on the stair, with what seemed like the tap of scabbards on the treads.

It was a sound so strange that my hand flew by instinct to the small sword I was now in the habit of wearing and had learned some of the use of from Thurot.

There was no knock for entrance; the door was boldly opened and four officers with Buhot at their head were immediately in the room.

Buhot intimated in French that I was to consider myself under arrest, and repeated the same in indifferent English that there might be no mistake about a fact as patent as that the sword was in his hand.

For a moment I thought the consequence of my crime had followed me abroad, and that this squat, dark officer, watching me with the scrutiny of a forest animal, partly in a dread that my superior bulk should endanger himself, was in league with the law of my own country. That I should after all be dragged back in chains to a Scots gallows was a prospect unendurable; I put up the ridiculous small sword and dared him to lay a hand on me. But I had no sooner done so than its folly was apparent, and I laid the weapon down.

“Tant mieux!” said he, much relieved, and then an assurance that he knew I was a gentleman of discretion and would not make unnecessary trouble. “Indeed,” he went on, “Voyez! I take these men away; I have the infinite trust in Monsieur; Monsieur and I shall settle this little affair between us.”

And he sent his friends to the foot of the stair.

“Monsieur may compose himself,” he assured me with a profound inclination.

“I am very much obliged to you,” I said, seating myself on the corner of the table and crushing my poor verses into my pocket as I did so, “I am very much obliged to you, but I’m at a loss to understand to what I owe the honour.”

“Indeed!” he said, also seating himself on the table to show, I supposed, that he was on terms of confidence with his prisoner. “Monsieur is Father Hamilton’s secretary?”

“So I believe,” I said; “at least I engaged for the office that’s something of a sinecure, to tell the truth.”

And then Buhot told me a strange story.

He told me that Father Hamilton was now a prisoner, and on his way to the prison of Bicêtre. He was – this Buhot – something of the artist and loved to make his effects most telling (which accounts, no doubt, for the romantical nature of the accounts aforesaid), and sitting upon the table-edge he embarked upon a narrative of the most crowded two hours that had perhaps been in Father Hamilton’s lifetime.

It seemed that when the priest had left the Cerf d’Or, he had gone to a place till recently called the Bureau des Carrosses pour la Rochelle, and now unoccupied save by a concierge, and the property of some person or persons unknown. There he had ensconced himself in the only habitable room and waited for a visitor regarding whom the concierge had his instructions.

“You must imagine him,” said the officer, always with the fastidiousness of an artist for his effects, “you must imagine him, Monsieur, sitting in this room, all alone, breathing hard, with a pistol before him on the table, and – ”

“What! a pistol!” I cried, astounded and alarmed. “Certainement” said Buhot, charmed with the effect his dramatic narrative was creating. “Your friend, mon ami, would be little good, I fancy, with a rapier. Anyway, ‘twas a pistol. A carriage drives up to the door; the priest rises to his feet with the pistol in his hand; there is the rap at the door. ‘Entrez!’ cries the priest, cocking the pistol, and no sooner was his visitor within than he pulled the trigger; the explosion rang through the dwelling; the chamber was full of smoke.”

“Good heavens!” I cried in horror, “and who was the unhappy wretch?”

Buhot shrugged his shoulders, made a French gesture with his hands, and pursed his mouth.

“Whom did you invite to the room at the hour of ten, M. Greig?” he asked.

“Invite!” I cried. “It’s your humour to deal in parables. I declare to you I invited no one.”

“And yet, my good sir, you are Hamilton’s secretary and you are Hamilton’s envoy. ‘Twas you handed to the Prince the poulet that was designed to bring him to his fate.”

My instinct grasped the situation in a second; I had been the ignorant tool of a madman; the whole events of the past week made the fact plain, and I was for the moment stunned.

Buhot watched me closely, and not unkindly, I can well believe, from what I can recall of our interview and all that followed after it.

“And you tell me he killed the Prince?” I cried at last.

“No, Monsieur,” said Buhot; “I am happy to say he did not. The Prince was better advised than to accept the invitation you sent to him.”

“Still,” I cried with remorse, “there’s a man dead, and ‘tis as much as happens when princes themselves are clay.”

“Parfaitement, Monsieur, though it is indiscreet to shout it here. Luckily there is no one at all dead in this case, otherwise it had been myself, for I was the man who entered to the priest and received his pistol fire. It was not the merriest of duties either,” he went on, always determined I should lose no iota of the drama, “for the priest might have discovered before I got there that the balls of his pistol had been abstracted.”

“Then Father Hamilton has been under watch?”

“Since ever you set foot in Versailles last Friday,” said Buhot complacently. “The Damiens affair has sharpened our wits, I warrant you.”

“Well, sir,” I said, “let me protest that I have been till this moment in utter darkness about Hamilton’s character or plans. I took him for what he seemed – a genial buffoon of a kind with more gear than guidance.”

“We cannot, with infinite regret, assume that, Monsieur, but personally I would venture a suggestion,” said Buhot, coming closer on the table and assuming an affable air. “In this business, Hamilton is a tool – no more; and a poor one at that, badly wanting the grindstone. To break him – phew! – ‘twere as easy as to break a glass, but he is one of a great movement and the man we seek is his master – one Father Fleuriau of the Jesuits. Hamilton’s travels were but part of a great scheme that has sent half a dozen of his kind chasing the Prince in the past year or two from Paris to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Orleans, from Orleans to Hamburg, Seville, Lisbon, Rome, Brussels, Potsdam, Nuremburg, Berlin. The same hand that extracted his bullets tapped the priest’s portfolio and found the wretch was in promise of a bishopric and a great sum of money. You see, M. Greig, I am curiously frank with my prisoner.”

“And no doubt you have your reasons,” said I, but beat, myself, to imagine what they could be save that he might have proofs of my innocence.

“Very well,” said M. Buhot. “To come to the point, it is this, that we desire to have the scheme of the Jesuits for the Prince’s assassination, and other atrocities shocking to all that revere the divinity of princes, crumbled up. Father Hamilton is at the very roots of the secret; if, say, a gentleman so much in his confidence as yourself – now, if such a one were, say, to share a cell with this regicide for a night or two, and pursue judicious inquiries – ”

“Stop! stop!” I cried, my blood hammering in my head, and the words like to choke me. “Am I to understand that you would make me your spy and informer upon this miserable old madman that has led me such a gowk’s errand?”

Buhot slid back off the table edge and on to his feet. “Oh,” said he, “the terms are not happily chosen: ‘spy’ – ‘informer’ – come, Monsieur Greig; this man is in all but the actual accomplishment of his purpose an assassin. ‘Tis the duty of every honest man to help in discovering the band of murderers whose tool he has been.”

“Then I’m no honest man, M. Buhot,” said I bitterly, “for I’ve no stomach for a duty so dirty.”

“Think of it for a moment,” he pressed, with evident surprise at my decision. “Bicêtre is an unwholesome hostelry, I give you my word. Consider that your choice is between a night or two there and – who knows? – a lifetime of Galbanon that is infinitely worse.”

“Then let it be Galbanon!” I said, and lifted my sword and slapped it furiously, sheathed as it was, like a switch upon the table.

Buhot leaped back in a fear that I was to attack him, and cried his men from the stair foot.

“This force is not needed at all,” I said. “I am innocent enough to be prepared to go quietly.”

CHAPTER XXII

OF A NIGHT JOURNEY AND BLACK BICETRE AT THE END OF IT