It was then that I stepped in with the servant bawling my name, and the priest surged to his feet with his face all quivering.
“What! M. Andrew!” he cried; “fattened and five-and-twenty. Holy Mother! It is, then, that miracles are possible? I shall have a hogshead, master, of thine infernal essence and drink away this paunch, and skip anon like to the goats of—of-”
And then his friends burst into peals of laughter as much at my bewilderment as at his credulity, and he saw that it was all a pleasantry.
“Mon Dieu!” he said, sighing like a November forest. “There was never more pestilent gleek played upon a wretched man. Oh! oh! oh! I had an angelic dream for that moment of your entrance, for I saw me again a stripling—a stripling—and the girl's name was—never mind. God rest her! she is under grass in Louvain.”
All the rest of the day—at Clancarty's, at the Café de la Poste, in our walk along the dunes where cannon were being fired at marks well out at sea, this obese cleric scarcely let his eyes off me. He seemed to envy and admire, and then again he would appear to muse upon my countenance, debating with himself as one who stands at a shop window pondering a purchase that may be on the verge of his means.
Captain Thurot observed his interest, and took an occasion to whisper to me.
“Have a care, M. Greig,” said he playfully; “this priest schemes something; that's ever the worst of your Jesuits, and you may swear 'tis not your eternal salvation.”
'Twas that afternoon we went all together to the curious lodging in the Rue de la Boucherie. I remember as it had been yesterday how sunny was the weather, and how odd it seemed to me that there should be a country-woman of my own there.
She was not, as it seems to me now, lovely, though where her features failed of perfection it would beat me to disclose, but there was something inexpressibly fascinating in her—in the mild, kind, melting eyes, and the faint sad innuendo of her smile. She sat at a spinet playing, and for the sake of this poor exile, sang some of the songs we are acquainted with at home. Upon my word, the performance touched me to the core! I felt sick for home: my mother's state, the girl at Kirkillstane, the dead lad on the moor, sounds of Earn Water, clouds and heather on the hill of Ballageich—those mingled matters swept through my thoughts as I sat with these blithe gentlemen, hearkening to a simple Doric tune, and my eyes filled irrestrainably with tears.
Miss Walkinshaw—for so her name was—saw what effect her music had produced; reddened, ceased her playing, took me to the window while the others discussed French poetry, and bade me tell her, as we looked out upon the street, all about myself and of my home. She was, perhaps, ten years my senior, and I ran on like a child.