RELATES HOW I INDULGED MY CURIOSITY AND HOW LITTLE CAME OF IT
Dunkerque in these days (it may be so no longer) was a place for a man to go through with his nose in his fingers. Garbage stewed and festered in the gutters of the street so that the women were bound to walk high-kilted, and the sea-breeze at its briskest scarcely sufficed to stir the stagnant, stenching atmosphere of the town, now villainously over-populated by the soldiery with whom it was France's pleasant delusion she should whelm our isle.
“Pardieu!” cried Father Hamilton, as we emerged in this malodorous open, “'twere a fairy godfather's deed to clear thee out of this feculent cloaca. Think on't, boy; of you and me a week hence riding through the sweet woods of Somme or Oise, and after that Paris! Paris! my lad of tragedy; Paris, where the world moves and folk live. And then, perhaps, Tours, and Bordeaux, and Flanders, and Sweden, Seville, St. Petersburg itself, but at least the woods of Somme, where the roads are among gossamer and dew and enchantment in the early morning—if we cared to rise early enough to see them, which I promise thee we shall not.”
His lips were thick and trembling: he gloated as he pictured me this mad itinerary, leaning heavily on my arm—Silenus on an ash sapling—half-trotting beside me, looking up every now and then to satisfy himself I appreciated the prospect. It was pleasant enough, though in a measure incredible, but at the moment I was thinking of Miss Walkinshaw, and wondering much to myself that this exposition of foreign travel should seem barely attractive because it meant a severance from her. Her sad smile, her brave demeanour, her kind heart, her beauty had touched me sensibly.
“Well, Master Scrivener!” cried the priest, panting at my side, “art dumb?”
“I fancy, sir, it is scarcely the weather for woods,” said I. “I hope we are not to put off our journey till the first of April a twelvemonth.” A suspicion unworthy of me had flashed into my mind that I might, after all, be no more than the butt of a practical joke. But that was merely for a moment; the priest was plainly too eager on his scheme to be play-acting it.
“I am very grateful to the lady,” I hastened to add, “who gave me the chance of listing in your service. Had it not been for her you might have found a better secretary, and I might have remained long enough in the evil smells of Dunkerque that I'll like all the same in spite of that, because I have so good a friend as Miss Walkinshaw in it.”
“La! la! la!” cried out Father Hamilton, squeezing my arm. “Here's our young cockerel trailing wing already! May I never eat fish again if 'tisn't a fever in this woman that she must infect every man under three score. For me I am within a month of the period immune, and only feel a malaise in her company. Boy, perpend! Have I not told thee every woman, except the ugliest, is an agent of the devil? I am the first to discover that his majesty is married and his wife keeps shop when he is travelling—among Jesuits and Jacobites and such busy fuel for the future fires. His wife keeps shop, lad, and does a little business among her own sex, using the handsomest for her purposes. Satan comes back to the boutique. 'What!' he cries, and counts the till, 'these have been busy days, good wife.' And she, Madame Dusky, chuckles with a 'Ha! Jack, old man, hast a good wife or not? Shalt never know how to herd in souls like sheep till thou hast a quicker eye for what's below a Capuchin hood.' This—this is a sweet woman, this Walkinshaw, Paul, but a dangerous. 'Ware hawk, lad, 'ware hawk!”
I suppose my face reddened at that; at least he looked at me again and pinched, and “Smitten to the marrow; may I drink water and grow thin else. Sacré nom de nom! 'tis time thou wert on the highways of Europe.”
“How does it happen that a countrywoman of mine is here alone?” I asked.
“I'll be shot if thou art not the rascalliest young innocent in France. Aye! or out of Scotland,” cried Father Hamilton, holding his sides for laughter.
“Is thy infernal climate of fogs and rains so pleasant that a woman of spirit should abide there for ever an' she have the notion to travel otherwheres? La! la! la! Master Scrivener, and thou must come to an honest pious priest for news of the world. But, boy, I'm deaf and dumb; mine eyes on occasion are without vision. Let us say the lady has been an over-ardent Jacobite; 'twill suffice in the meantime. And now has't ever set eyes on Charles Edward?”
I told him I had never had any hand in the Jacobite affairs, if that was what he meant.
His countenance fell at that.
“What!” he cried, losing his Roman manner, “do you tell me you have never seen him?”
But once, I explained, when he marched into Glasgow city with his wild Highlanders and bullied the burgesses into providing shoes for his ragged army.
“Ah,” said he with a clearing visage, “that will suffice. Must point him out to me. Dixmunde parish was a poor place for seeing the great; 'tis why I go wandering now.”
Father Hamilton's hint at politics confirmed my guess about Miss Walkinshaw, but I suppose I must have been in a craze to speak of her on any pretence, for later in the day I was at Thurot's lodging, and there must precognosce again.
“Oh, mon Dieu, quelle espièglerie!” cried out the captain. “And this a Greig too! Well, I do not wonder that your poor uncle stayed so long away from home; faith, he'd have died of an ennui else. Miss Walkinshaw is—Miss Walkinshaw; a countryman of her own should know better than I all that is to be known about her. But 'tis not our affair, Mr. Greig. For sure 'tis enough that we find her smiling, gentle, tolerant, what you call the 'perfect lady'—n'est ce pas?And of all the virtues, upon my word, kindness is the best and rarest, and that she has to a miracle.”
“I'm thinking that is not a corsair's creed, Captain Thurot,” said I, smiling at the gentleman's eagerness. He was standing over me like a lighthouse, with his eyes on fire, gesturing with his arms as they had been windmill sails.
“No, faith! but 'tis a man's, Master Greig, and I have been happy with it. Touching our fair friend, I may say that, much as I admire her, I agree with some others that ours were a luckier cause without her. Gad! the best thing you could do, Mr. Greig, would be to marry her yourself and take her back with you to Scotland.”
“What! byway of Paris in Father Hamilton's glass coach,” I said, bantering to conceal my confusion at such a notion.
“H'm,” said he. “Father Hamilton and the lady are a pair.” He walked a little up and down the room as if he were in a quandary. “A pair,” he resumed. “I fancied I could see to the very centre of the Sphinx itself, for all men are in ourselves if we only knew it, till I came upon this Scotswoman and this infernal Flemish-English priest of Dix-munde. Somehow, for them Antoine Thurot has not the key in himself yet. Still, 'twill arrive, 'twill arrive! I like the lady—and yet I wish she were a thousand miles away; I like the man too, but a Jesuit is too many men at once to be sure of; and, Gad! I can scarcely sleep at nights for wondering what he may be plotting. This grand tour of his-”
“Stop, stop!” I cried, in a fear that he might compromise himself in an ignorance of my share in the tour in question; “I must tell you that I am going with Father Hamilton as his secretary, although it bothers me to know what scrivening is to be accomplished in a glass coach. Like enough I am to be no more, in truth, than the gentleman's companion or courier, and it is no matter so long as I am moving.”
“Indeed, and is it so?” cried Captain Thurot, stopping as if he had been shot. “And how happens it that this priest is willing to take you, that are wholly a foreigner and a stranger to the country?”
“Miss Walkinshaw recommended me,” said I.
“Oh!” he cried, “you have not been long of getting into your excellent countrywoman's kind favour. Is it that Tony Thurot has been doing the handsome by an ingrate? No, no, Monsieur, that were a monstrous innuendo, for the honour has been all mine. But that Miss Walkinshaw should be on such good terms with the priest as to trouble with the provision of his secretary is opposed to all I had expected of her. Why, she dislikes the man, or I'm a stuffed fish.”
“Anyhow, she has done a handsome thing by me,” said I. “It is no wonder that so good a heart as hers should smother its repugnances (and the priest is a fat sow, there is no denying) for the sake of a poor lad from its own country. You are but making it the plainer that I owe her more than at first I gave her credit for.”
“Bless me, here's gratitude!” cried the captain, laughing at my warmth. “Mademoiselle Walkinshaw has her own plans; till now, I fancied them somewhat different from Hamilton's, but more fool I to fancy they were what they seemed! All that, my dear lad, need not prevent your enjoying your grand tour with the priest, who has plenty of money and the disposition to spend it like a gentleman.”
Finally I went to my Lord Clancarty, for it will be observed that I had still no hint as to the origin of the lady who was so good a friend of mine. Though the last thing in the world I should have done was to pry into her affairs for the indulgence of an idle curiosity, I would know the best of her before the time came to say farewell, and leave of her with me no more than a memory.
The earl was at the Café du Soleil d'Or, eating mussels on the terrace and tossing the empty shells into the gutter what time he ogled passing women and exchanged levitous repartee with some other frequenters of the place.
“Egad, Paul,” he cried, meeting me with effusion, “'tis said there is one pearl to be found for every million mussels; but here's a pearl come to me in the midst of a single score. An Occasion, lad; I sat at the dice last night till a preposterous hour this morning, and now I have a headache like the deuce and a thirst to take the Baltic. I must have the tiniest drop, and on an Occasion too. Voilà! Gaspard, une autre bouteille.”
He had his bottle, that I merely made pretence to help him empty, and I had my precognition.
But it came to little in the long run. Oh yes, he understood my interest in the lady (with rakish winking); 'twas a delicious creature for all its hauteur when one ventured a gallantry, but somehow no particular friend to the Earl of Clancarty, who, if she only knew it, was come of as noble a stock as any rotten Scot ever went unbreeched; not but what (this with a return of the naturally polite man) there were admirable and high-bred people of that race, as instance my Uncle Andrew and myself. But was there any reason why such a man as Charlie Stuart should be King of Ireland? “I say, Greig, blister the old Chevalier and his two sons! There is not a greater fumbler on earth than this sotted person, who has drunk the Cause to degradation and would not stir a hand to serve me and my likes, that are, begad! the fellow's betters.”
“But all this,” said I, “has little to do with Miss Walkinshaw. I have nothing to say of the Prince, who may be all you say, though that is not the repute he has in Scotland.”
“Bravo, Mr. Greig!” cried his lordship. “That is the tone if you would keep in the lady's favour. Heaven knows she has little reason to listen to praise of such a creature, but, then, women are blind. She loves not Clancarty, as I have said; but, no matter, I forgive her that; 'tis well known 'tis because I cannot stomach her prince.”
“And yet,” said I, “you must interest yourself in these Jacobite affairs and mix with all that are here of that party.”
“Faith and I do,” he confessed heartily. “What! am I to be a mole and stay underground? A man must have his diversion, and though I detest the Prince I love his foolish followers. Do you know what, Mr. Greig? 'Tis the infernal irony of things in this absurd world that the good fellows, the bloods, the men of sensibilities must for ever be wrapped up in poor mad escapades and emprises. And a Clancarty is ever of such a heart that the more madcap the scheme the more will he dote on it.”
A woman passing in a chair at this moment looked in his direction; fortunately, otherwise I was condemned to a treatise on life and pleasure.
“Egad!” he cried, “there's a face that's like a line of song,” and he smiled at her with unpardonable boldness as it seemed to me, a pleasant pucker about his eyes, a hint of the good comrade in his mouth.
She flushed like wine and tried to keep from smiling, but could not resist, and smiling she was borne away.
“Do you know her, my lord?” I could not forbear asking.
“Is it know her?” said he. “Devil a know, but 'tis a woman anyhow, and a heart at that. Now who the deuce can she be?” And he proceeded, like a true buck, to fumble with the Mechlin of his fall and dust his stockings in an airy foppish manner so graceful that I swear no other could have done the same so well.
“Now this Miss Walkinshaw—” I went on, determined to have some satisfaction from my interview.
“Confound your Miss Walkinshaw, by your leave, Mr. Greig,” he interrupted. “Can you speak of Miss Walkinshaw when the glory of the comet is still trailing in the heavens? And—hum!—I mind me of a certain engagement, Mr. Greig,” he went on hurriedly, drawing a horologe from his fob and consulting it with a frowning brow. “In the charm of your conversation I had nigh forgot, so adieu, adieu, mon ami!”
He gave me the tips of his fingers, and a second later he was gone, stepping down the street with a touch of the minuet, tapping his legs with his cane, his sword skewering his coat-skirts, all the world giving him the cleanest portion of the thoroughfare and looking back after him with envy and admiration.