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.