The Shoes of Fortune

“La! la! la!” would Father Hamilton cry at me when I got home with a face like a fiddle. “Art the most ridiculous rustic ever ate a cabbage or set foot in Arcady. Why, man! the woman must be wooed – this Mademoiselle Lutetia. Must take her front and rear, walk round her, ogling bravely. Call her dull! call her dreadful! Ciel! Has the child never an eye in his mutton head? I avow she is the queen of the earth this Paris. If I were young and wealthy I’d buy the glittering stars in constellations and turn them into necklets for her. With thy plaguey gift of the sonnet I’d deave her with ecstasies and spill oceans of ink upon leagues of paper to tell her about her eyes. Go to! Scotland, go to! Ghosts! ghosts! devil the thing else but ghosts in thy rustic skull, for to take a fear of Lutetia when her black hair is down of an evening and thou canst not get a glimpse of that beautiful neck that is rounded like the same in the Psyche of Praxiteles. Could I pare off a portion of this rotundity and go out in a masque as Apollo I’d show thee things.”

And all he saw of Paris himself was from the windows of the hospital, where he and I would stand by the hour looking out into the square. For the air itself he had to take it in a little garden at the back, surrounded by a high wall, and affording a seclusion that even the priest could avail himself of without the hazard of discovery. He used to sit in an arbour there in the warmth of the day, and it was there I saw another trait of his character that helped me much to forget his shortcomings.

Over his head, within the doorway of the bower, he hung a box and placed therein the beginnings of a bird’s nest. The thing was not many hours done when a pair of birds came boldly into his presence as he sat silent and motionless in the bower, and began to avail themselves of so excellent a start in householding. In a few days there were eggs in the nest, and ‘twas the most marvellous of spectacles to witness the hen sit content upon them over the head of the fat man underneath, and the cock, without concern, fly in and out attentive on his mate.

But, indeed, the man was the friend of all helpless things, and few of the same came his way without an instinct that told them it was so. Not the birds in the nest alone were at ease in his society; he had but to walk along the garden paths whistling and chirping, and there came flights of birds about his head and shoulders, and some would even perch upon his hand. I have never seen him more like his office than when he talked with the creatures of the air, unless it was on another occasion when two bairns, the offspring of an inmate in the hospital, ventured into the garden, finding there another child, though monstrous, who had not lost the key to the fields where blossom the flowers of infancy, and frolic is a prayer.

But he dare not set a foot outside the walls of our retreat, for it was as useless to hide Ballageich under a Kilmarnock bonnet as to seek a disguise for his reverence in any suit of clothes. Bernard would come to us rarely under cover of night, but alas! there were no letters for me now, and mine that were sent through him were fewer than before. And there was once an odd thing happened that put an end to these intromissions; a thing that baffled me to understand at the time, and indeed for many a day thereafter, but was made plain to me later on in a manner that proved how contrary in his character was this mad priest, that was at once assassin and the noblest friend.

Father Hamilton was not without money, though all had been taken from him at Bicêtre. It was an evidence of the width and power of the Jesuit movement that even in the Hôtel Dieu he could command what sums he needed, and Bernard was habituated to come to him for moneys that might pay for himself and the coachman and the horses at the remise. On the last of these occasions I took the chance to slip a letter for Miss Walkinshaw into his hand. Instead of putting it in his pocket he laid it down a moment on a table, and he and I were busy packing linen for the wash when a curious cry from Father Hamilton made us turn to see him with the letter in his hand.

He was gazing with astonishment on the direction.

“Ah!” said he, “and so my Achilles is not consoling himself exclusively with the Haemonian lyre, but has taken to that far more dangerous instrument the pen. The pen, my child, is the curse of youth. When we are young we use it for our undoing, and for the facture of regrets for after years – even if it be no more than the reading of our wives’ letters that I’m told are a bitter revelation to the married man. And so – and so, Monsieur Croque-mort keeps up a correspondence with the lady. H’m!” He looked so curiously and inquiringly at me that I felt compelled to make an explanation.

“It is quite true, Father Hamilton,” said I. “After all, you gave me so little clerkly work that I was bound to employ my pen somehow, and how better than with my countrywoman?”

“‘Tis none of my affair – perhaps,” he said, laying down the letter. “And yet I have a curiosity. Have we here the essential Mercury?” and he indicated Bernard who seemed to me to have a greater confusion than the discovery gave a cause for.

“Bernard has been good enough,” said I. “You discover two Scots, Father Hamilton, in a somewhat sentimental situation. The lady did me the honour to be interested in my little travels, and I did my best to keep her informed.”

He turned away as he had been shot, hiding his face, but I saw from his neck that he had grown as white as parchment.

“What in the world have I done?” thinks I, and concluded that he was angry for my taking the liberty to use the dismissed servant as a go-between. In a moment or two he turned about again, eying me closely, and at last he put his hand upon my shoulder as a schoolmaster might do upon a boy’s.

“My good Paul,” said he, “how old are you?”

“Twenty-one come Martinmas,” I said.

“Expiscate! elucidate! ‘Come Martinmas,’” says he, “and what does that mean? But no matter – twenty-one says my barbarian; sure ‘tis a right young age, a very baby of an age, an age in frocks if one that has it has lived the best of his life with sheep and bullocks.”

“Sir,” I said, indignant, “I was in very honest company among the same sheep and bullocks.”

“Hush!” said he, and put up his hand, eying me with compassion and kindness. “If thou only knew it, lad, thou art due me a civil attention at the very least. Sure there is no harm in my mentioning that thou art mighty ingenuous for thy years. ‘Tis the quality I would be the last to find fault with, but sometimes it has its inconveniences. And Bernard” – he turned to the Swiss who was still greatly disturbed – “Bernard is a somewhat older gentleman. Perhaps he will say – our good Bernard – if he was the person I have to thank for taking the sting out of the wasp, for extracting the bullet from my pistol? Ah! I see he is the veritable person. Adorable Bernard, let that stand to his credit!”

Then Bernard fell trembling like a saugh tree, and protested he did but what he was told.

“And a good thing, too,” said the priest, still very pale but with no displeasure. “And a good thing too, else poor Buhot, that I have seen an infinity of headachy dawns with, had been beyond any interest in cards or prisoners. For that I shall forgive you the rest that I can guess at. Take Monsieur Grog’s letter where you have taken the rest, and be gone.”

The Swiss went out much crestfallen from an interview that was beyond my comprehension.

When he was gone Father Hamilton fell into a profound meditation, walking up and down his room muttering to himself.

“Faith, I never had such a problem presented to me before,” said he, stopping his walk; “I know not whether to laugh or swear. I feel that I have been made a fool of, and yet nothing better could have happened. And so my Croque-mort, my good Monsieur Propriety, has been writing the lady? I should not wonder if he thought she loved him.”

“Nothing so bold,” I cried. “You might without impropriety have seen every one of my letters, and seen in them no more than a seaman’s log.”

“A seaman’s log!” said he, smiling faintly and rubbing his massive chin; “nothing would give the lady more delight, I am sure. A seaman’s log! And I might have seen them without impropriety, might I? That I’ll swear was what her ladyship took very good care to obviate. Come now, did she not caution thee against telling me of this correspondence?”

I confessed it was so; that the lady naturally feared she might be made the subject of light talk, and I had promised that in that respect she should suffer nothing for her kindly interest in a countryman.

The priest laughed consumedly at this.

“Interest in her countryman!” said he. “Oh, lad, wilt be the death of me for thy unexpected spots of innocence.”

“And as to that,” I said, “you must have had a sort of correspondence with her yourself.”

“I!” said he. “Comment!”

“To be quite frank with you,” said I, “it has been the cause of some vexatious thoughts to me that the letter I carried to the Prince was directed in Miss Walkinshaw’s hand of write, and as Buhot informed me, it was the same letter that was to wile his Royal Highness to his fate in the Rue des Reservoirs.” Father Hamilton groaned, as he did at any time the terrible affair was mentioned.

“It is true, Paul, quite true,” said he, “but the letter was a forgery. I’ll give the lady the credit to say she never had a hand in it.”

“I am glad to hear that, for it removes some perplexities that have troubled me for a while back.”

“Ah,” said he, “and your perplexities and mine are not over even now, poor Paul. This Bernard is like to be the ruin of me yet. For you, however, I have no fear, but it is another matter with the poor old fool from Dixmunde.”

His voice broke, he displayed thus and otherwise so troubled a mind and so great a reluctance to let me know the cause of it that I thought it well to leave him for a while and let him recover his old manner.

To that end I put on my coat and hat and went out rather earlier than usual for my evening walk.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE MAN WITH THE TARTAN WAISTCOAT

It was the first of May. But for Father Hamilton’s birds, and some scanty signs of it in the small garden, the lengthened day and the kindlier air of the evenings, I might never have known what season it was out of the almanac, for all seasons were much the same, no doubt, in the Isle of the City where the priest and I sequestered. ‘Twas ever the shade of the tenements there; the towers of the churches never greened nor budded; I would have waited long, in truth, for the scent of the lilac and the chatter of the rook among these melancholy temples.

Till that night I had never ventured farther from the gloomy vicinity of the hospital than I thought I could safely retrace without the necessity of asking any one the way; but this night, more courageous, or perhaps more careless than usual, I crossed the bridge of Notre Dame and found myself in something like the Paris of the priest’s rhapsodies and the same all thrilling with the passion of the summer. It was not flower nor tree, though these were not wanting, but the spirit in the air – young girls laughing in the by-going with merriest eyes, windows wide open letting out the sounds of songs, the pavements like a river with zesty life of Highland hills when the frosts above are broken and the overhanging boughs have been flattering it all the way in the valleys.

I was fair infected. My step, that had been unco’ dull and heavy, I fear, and going to the time of dirges on the Isle, went to a different tune; my being rhymed and sang. I had got the length of the Rue de Richelieu and humming to myself in the friendliest key, with the good-natured people pressing about me, when of a sudden it began to rain. There was no close in the neighbourhood where I could shelter from the elements, but in front of me was the door of a tavern called the Tête du Duc de Burgoyne shining with invitation, and in I went.

A fat wife sat at a counter; a pot-boy, with a cry of “V’ià!” that was like a sheep’s complaining, served two ancient citizens in skull-caps that played the game of dominoes, and he came to me with my humble order of a litre of ordinary and a piece of bread for the good of the house.

Outside the rain pelted, and the folks upon the pavement ran, and by-and-by the tavern-room filled up with shelterers like myself and kept the pot-boy busy. Among the last to enter was a group of five that took a seat at another corner of the room than that where I sat my lone at a little table. At first I scarcely noticed them until I heard a word of Scots. I think the man that used it spoke of “gully-knives,” but at least the phrase was the broadest lallands, and went about my heart.

I put down my piece of bread and looked across the room in wonder to see that three of the men were gazing intently at myself. The fourth was hid by those in front of him; the fifth that had spoken had a tartan waistcoat and eyes that were like a gled’s, though they were not on me. In spite of that, ‘twas plain that of me he spoke, and that I was the object of some speculation among them.

No one that has not been lonely in a foreign town, and hungered for communion with those that know his native tongue, can guess how much I longed for speech with this compatriot that in dress and eye and accent brought back the place of my nativity in one wild surge of memory. Every bawbee in my pocket would not have been too much to pay for such a privilege, but it might not be unless the overtures came from the persons in the corner.

Very deliberately, though all in a commotion within, I ate my piece and drank my wine before the stare of the three men, and at last, on the whisper of one of them, another produced a box of dice.

“No, no!” said the man with the tartan waistcoat hurriedly, with a glance from the tail of his eye at me, but they persisted in their purpose and began to throw. My countryman in tartan got the last chance, of which he seemed reluctant to avail himself till the one unseen said: “Vous avez le de’’, Kilbride.”

Kilbride! the name was the call of whaups at home upon the moors!

He laughed, shook, and tossed carelessly, and then the laugh was all with them, for whatever they had played for he had seemingly lost and the dice were now put by.

He rose somewhat confused, looked dubiously across at me with a reddening face, and then came over with his hat in his hand.

“Pardon, Monsieur,” he began; then checked the French, and said: “Have I a countryman here?”

“It is like enough,” said I, with a bow and looking at his tartan. “I am from Scotland myself.”

He smiled at that with a look of some relief and took a vacant chair on the other side of my small table.

“I have come better speed with my impudence,” said he in the Hielan’ accent, “than I expected or deserved. My name’s Kilbride – MacKellar of Kilbride – and I am here with another Highland gentleman of the name of Grant and two or three French friends we picked up at the door of the play-house. Are you come off the Highlands, if I make take the liberty?”

“My name is lowland,” said I, “and I hail from the shire of Renfrew.”

“Ah,” said he, with a vanity that was laughable. “What a pity! I wish you had been Gaelic, but of course you cannot help it being otherwise, and indeed there are many estimable persons in the lowlands.”

“And a great wheen of Highland gentlemen very glad to join them there too,” said I, resenting the implication.

“Of course, of course,” said he heartily. “There is no occasion for offence.”

“Confound the offence, Mr. MacKellar!” said I. “Do you not think I am just too glad at this minute to hear a Scottish tongue and see a tartan waistcoat? Heilan’ or Lowlan’, we are all the same” when our feet are off the heather.

“Not exactly,” he corrected, “but still and on we understand each other. You must be thinking it gey droll, sir, that a band of strangers in a common tavern would have the boldness to stare at you like my friends there, and toss a dice about you in front of your face, but that is the difference between us. If I had been in your place I would have thrown the jug across at them, but here I am not better nor the rest, because the dice fell to me, and I was one that must decide the wadger.”

“Oh, and was I the object of a wadger?” said I, wondering what we were coming to.

“Indeed, and that you were,” said he shamefacedly, “and I’m affronted to tell it. But when Grant saw you first he swore you were a countryman, and there was some difference of opinion.”

“And what, may I ask, did Kilbride side with?”

“Oh,” said he promptly, “I had never a doubt about that. I knew you were Scots, but what beat me was to say whether you were Hielan’ or Lowlan’.” “And how, if it’s a fair question, did you come to the conclusion that I was a countryman of any sort?” said I.

He laughed softly, and “Man,” said he, “I could never make any mistake about that, whatever of it. There’s many a bird that’s like the woodcock, but the woodcock will aye be kennin’ which is which, as the other man said. Thae bones were never built on bread and wine. It’s a French coat you have there, and a cockit hat (by your leave), but to my view you were as plainly from Scotland as if you had a blue bonnet on your head and a sprig of heather in your lapels. And here am I giving you the strange cow’s welcome (as the other man said), and that is all inquiry and no information. You must just be excusing our bit foolish wadger, and if the proposal would come favourably from myself, that is of a notable family, though at present under a sort of cloud, as the other fellow said, I would be proud to have you share in the bottle of wine that was dependent upon Grant’s impudent wadger. I can pass my word for my friends there that they are all gentry like ourselves – of the very best, in troth, though not over-nice in putting this task on myself.”

I would have liked brawly to spend an hour out any company than my own, but the indulgence was manifestly one involving the danger of discovery; it was, as I told myself, the greatest folly to be sitting in a tavern at all, so MacKellar’s manner immediately grew cold when he saw a swithering in my countenance.

“Of course,” said he, reddening and rising, “of course, every gentleman has his own affairs, and I would be the last to make a song of it if you have any dubiety about my friends and me. I’ll allow the thing looks very like a gambler’s contrivance.”

“No, no, Mr. MacKellar,” said I hurriedly, unwilling to let us part like that, “I’m swithering here just because I’m like yoursel’ of it and under a cloud of my own.”

“Dod! Is that so?” said he quite cheerfully again, and clapping down, “then I’m all the better pleased that the thing that made the roebuck swim the loch – and that’s necessity – as the other man said, should have driven me over here to precognosce you. But when you say you are under a cloud, that is to make another way of it altogether, and I will not be asking you over, for there is a gentleman there among the five of us who might be making trouble of it.”

“Have you a brother in Glasgow College?” says I suddenly, putting a question that had been in my mind ever since he had mentioned his name.

“Indeed, and I have that,” said he quickly, “but now he is following the law in Edinburgh, where I am in the hopes it will be paying him better than ever it paid me that has lost two fine old castles and the best part of a parish by the same. You’ll not be sitting there and telling me surely that you know my young brother Alasdair?”

“Man! him and me lodged together in Lucky Grant’s, in Crombie’s Land in the High Street, for two Sessions,” said I.

“What!” said MacKellar. “And you’ll be the lad that snow-balled the bylie, and your name will be Greig?”

As he said it he bent to look under the table, then drew up suddenly with a startled face and a whisper of a whistle on his lips.

“My goodness!” said he, in a cautious tone, “and that beats all. You’ll be the lad that broke jyle with the priest that shot at Buhot, and there you are, you amadain, like a gull with your red brogues on you, crying ‘come and catch me’ in two languages. I’m telling you to keep thae feet of yours under this table till we’re out of here, if it should be the morn’s morning. No – that’s too long, for by the morn’s morning Buhot’s men will be at the Hôtel Dieu, and the end of the story will be little talk and the sound of blows, as the other man said.”

Every now and then as he spoke he would look over his shoulder with a quick glance at his friends – a very anxious man, but no more anxious than Paul Greig.

“Mercy on us!” said I, “do you tell me you ken all that?”

“I ken a lot more than that,” said he, “but that’s the latest of my budget, and I’m giving it to you for the sake of the shoes and my brother Alasdair, that is a writer in Edinburgh. There’s not two Scotchmen drinking a bowl in Paris town this night that does not ken your description, and it’s kent by them at the other table there – where better? – but because you have that coat on you that was surely made for you when you were in better health, as the other man said, and because your long trams of legs and red shoes are under the table there’s none of them suspects you. And now that I’m thinking of it, I would not go near the hospital place again.”

“Oh! but the priest’s there,” said I, “and it would never do for me to be leaving him there without a warning.”

“A warning!” said MacKellar with contempt. “I’m astonished to hear you, Mr. Greig. The filthy brock that he is!”

“If you’re one of the Prince’s party,” said I, “and it has every look of it, or, indeed, whether you are or not, I’ll allow you have some cause to blame Father Hamilton, but as for me, I’m bound to him because we have been in some troubles together.”

“What’s all this about ‘bound to him’?” said MacKellar with a kind of sneer. “The dog that’s tethered with a black pudding needs no pity, as the other man said, and I would leave this fellow to shift for himself.”

“Thank you,” said I, “but I’ll not be doing that.”

“Well, well,” said he, “it’s your business, and let me tell you that you’re nothing but a fool to be tangled up with the creature. That’s Kilbride’s advice to you. Let me tell you this more of it, that they’re not troubling themselves much about you at all now that you have given them the information.”

“Information!” I said with a start. “What do you mean by that?”

He prepared to join his friends, with a smile of some slyness, and gave me no satisfaction on the point.

“You’ll maybe ken best yourself,” said he, “and I’m thinking your name will have to be Robertson and yourself a decent Englishman for my friends on the other side of the room there. Between here and yonder I’ll have to be making up a bonny lie or two that will put them off the scent of you.”

A bonny lie or two seemed to serve the purpose, for their interest in me appeared to go no further, and by-and-by, when it was obvious that there would be no remission of the rain, they rose to go.

The last that went out of the door turned on the threshold and looked at me with a smile of recognition and amusement.

It was Buhot!

CHAPTER XXIX

WHEREIN THE PRIEST LEAVES ME, AND I MAKE AN INLAND VOYAGE

What this marvel betokened was altogether beyond my comprehension, but the five men were no sooner gone than I clapped on my hat and drew up the collar of my coat and ran like fury through the plashing streets for the place that was our temporary home. It must have been an intuition of the raised that guided me; my way was made without reflection on it, at pure hazard, and yet I landed through a multitude of winding and bewildering streets upon the Isle of the City and in front of the Hôtel Dieu in a much shorter time than it had taken me to get from there to the Duke of Burgundy’s Head.

I banged past the doorkeeper, jumped upstairs to the clergyman’s quarters, threw open the door and – found Father Hamilton was gone!

About the matter there could be no manner of dubiety, for he had left a letter directed to myself upon the drawers-head.

“My Good Paul (said the epistle, that I have kept till now as a memorial of my adventure): When you return you will discover from this that I have taken leave a l’anglaise, and I fancy I can see my secretary looking like the arms of Bourges (though that is an unkind imputation). ‘Tis fated, seemingly, that there shall be no rest for the sole of the foot of poor Father Hamilton. I had no sooner got to like a loose collar, and an unbuttoned vest, and the seclusion of a cell, than I must be plucked out; and now when my birds – the darlings! – are on the very point of hatching I must make adieux. Oh! la belle équipée! M. Buhot knows where I am – that’s certain, so I must remove myself, and this time I do not propose to burden M. Paul Greig with my company, for it will be a miracle if they fail to find me. As for my dear Croque-mort, he can have the glass coach and Jacques and Bernard, and doubtless the best he can do with them is to take all to Dunkerque and leave them there. I myself, I go sans trompette, and no inquiries will discover to him where I go.”