WHEREIN A SITUATION OFFERS AND I ENGAGE TO GO TRAVELLING WITH THE PRIEST
A week passed with no further incident particularly affecting this
history. With my reduced and antique mentor I studied _la belle langue_,
sedulous by day, at night pacing the front of the sea, giving words to
its passion as it broke angry on the bar or thundered on the beach--the
sea that still haunts me and invites, whose absence makes often lonely
the moorland country where is my home, where are my people's graves. It
called me then, in the dripping weather of those nights in France--it
called me temptingly to try again my Shoes of Fortune (as now I named
them to myself), and learn whereto they might lead.
But in truth I was now a prisoner to that inviting sea. The last English
vessel had gone; the Channel was a moat about my native isle, and I
was a tee'd ball with a passport that was no more and no less than a
warder's warrant in my pouch. It had come to me under cover of Thurot
two days after Miss Walkinshaw's promise; it commanded _tous les
gouverneurs et tous les lieutenants-généraux de nos provinces et de nos
armées, gouverneurs particuliers et commandants de nos villes, places
et troupes_ to permit and pass the Sieur Greig anywhere in the country,
_sans lui donner aucun empêchement_, and was signed for the king by the
Duc de Choiseuil.
I went round to make my devoirs to the lady to whom I owed the favour,
and this time I was alone.
“Where's your shoon, laddie?” said she at the first go-off. “Losh! do
ye no' ken that they're the very makin' o' ye? If it hadna been for them
Clementina Walkinshaw wad maybe never hae lookit the gait ye were on.
Ye'll be to put them on again!” She thrust forth a _bottine_ like a
doll's for size and trod upon my toes, laughing the while with
her curious suggestion of unpractised merriment at my first solemn
acceptance of her humour as earnest.
“Am I never to get quit o' thae shoes?” I cried; “the very deil maun be
in them.”
“It was the very deil,” said she, “was in them when it was your Uncle
Andrew.” And she stopped and sighed. “O Andy Greig, Andy Greig! had I
been a wise woman and ta'en a guid-hearted though throughither Mearns
man's advice--toots! laddie, I micht be a rudas auld wife by my
preachin'. Oh, gie's a sang, or I'll dee.”
And then she flew to the spinet (a handsome instrument singularly out of
keeping with the rest of the plenishing in that odd lodging in the Rue
de la Boucherie of Dunkerque), and touched a prelude and broke into an
air.
To-day they call that woman lost and wicked; I have seen it said in
books: God's pity on her! she was not bad; she was the very football of
fate, and a heart of the yellow gold. If I was warlock or otherwise had
charms, I would put back the dial two score years and wrench her from
her chains.
O waly, waly up the bank,
O waly, waly doon the brae.
And waly, waly yon burn-side,
Where I and my love wont to gae.
I leaned my back unto an aik,
I thocht it was a trusty tree,
But first it bowed and syne it brak,
Sae my true love did lichtly me.
They have their own sorrow even in script those ballad words of an
exile like herself, but to hear Miss Walkinshaw sing them was one of the
saddest things I can recall in a lifetime that has known many sorrows.
And still, though sad, not wanting in a sort of brave defiance of
calumny, a hope, and an unchanging affection. She had a voice as sweet
as a bird in the thicket at home; she had an eye full and melting; her
lips, at the sentiment, sometimes faintly broke.
I turned my head away that I might not spy upon her feeling, for here,
it was plain, was a tragedy laid bare. She stopped her song mid-way with
a laugh, dashed a hand across her eyes, and threw herself into a chair.
“Oh, fie! Mr. Greig, to be backing up a daft woman, old enough to know
better, in her vapours. You must be fancying I am a begrutten bairn to
be snackin' my daidlie in this lamentable fashion, but it's just you and
your Mearns, and your Ballageich, and your douce Scots face and tongue
that have fair bewitched me. O Scotland! Scotland! Let us look oot at
this France o' theirs, Mr. Greig.” She came to the window (her movements
were ever impetuous, like the flight of a butterfly), and “Do I no' wish
that was the Gallowgate,” said she, “and Glasgow merchants were in
the shops and Christian signs abin the doors, like 'MacWhannal' and
'Mackay,' and 'Robin Oliphant'? If that was Bailie John Walkinshaw, wi'
his rattan, and yon was the piazza o' Tontine, would no' his dochter
be the happy woman? Look! look! ye Mearns man, look! look! at the bairn
playing pal-al in the close. 'Tis my little sister Jeanie that's married
on the great Doctor Doig--him wi' the mant i' the Tron kirk--and bairns
o' her ain, I'm tell't, and they'll never hear their Aunt Clemie named
but in a whisper. And yon auld body wi' the mob cap, that's the baxter's
widow, and there's carvie in her scones that you'll can buy for a bawbee
apiece.”
The maddest thing!--but here was the woman smiling through her tears,
and something tremulous in her as though her heart was leaping at her
breast. Suddenly her manner changed, as if she saw a sobering sight,
and I looked out again, and there was Father Hamilton heaving round the
corner of a lane, his face as red as the moon in a fog of frost.
“Ah!” cried Miss Walkinshaw, “here's France, sure enough, Mr. Greig. We
must put by our sentiments, and be just witty or as witty as we can be.
If you're no' witty here, my poor Mr. Greig, you might as well be dumb.
A heart doesna maitter much; but, oh! be witty.”
The priest was making for the house. She dried her tears before me, a
frankness that flattered my vanity; “and let us noo to our English, Mr.
Greig,” said she as the knock came to the door. “It need be nae honest
Scots when France is chappin'. Would you like to travel for a season?”
The question took me by surprise; it had so little relevance to what had
gone before.
“Travel?” I repeated.
“Travel,” said she again quickly. “In a glass coach with a companion
who has plenty of money--wherever it comes from--and see all Europe, and
maybe--for you are Scots like myself--make money. The fat priest wants a
secretary; that's the long and the short of it, for there's his foot on
the stairs, and if you'll say yes, I fancy I can get you the situation.”
I did not hesitate a second.
“Why, then yes, to be sure,” said I, “and thank you kindly.”
“Thank _you_, Paul Greig,” said she softly, for now the Swiss had opened
the door, and she squeezed my wrist.
“_Benedicite!_” cried his reverence and came in, puffing hugely after
his climb, his face now purple almost to strangulation. “May the devil
fly away with turnpike stairs, Madame!--puff-puff--I curse them whether
they be wood or marble;--puff-puff--I curse them Dunkerque; in Ostend,
Paris, all Europe itself, ay even unto the two Americas. I curse their
designers, artisans, owners, and defenders in their waking and sleeping!
Madame, kindly consider your stairs anathema!”
“You need all your wind to cool your porridge, as we say in Scotland,
Father Hamilton,” cried Miss Walkinshaw, “and a bonny-like thing it is
to have you coming here blackguarding my honest stairs.”
He laughed enormously and fell into a chair, shaking the house as if the
world itself had quaked. “Pardon, my dear Miss Walkinshaw,” said he when
his breath was restored, “but, by the Mass, you must confess 'tis the
deuce and all for a man--a real man that loves his viands, and sleeps
well o' nights, and has a contented mind and grows flesh accordingly,
to trip up to Paradise--” here he bowed, his neck swelling in massive
folds--“to trip up to Paradise, where the angels are, as easily as a
ballet-dancer--bless her!--skips to the other place where, by my faith!
I should like to pay a brief visit myself, if 'twere only to see old
friends of the Opéra Comique. Madame, I give you good-day. Sir, Monsieur
Greig--'shalt never be a man like thine Uncle Andrew for all thy
confounded elixir. I favour not your virtuous early rising in the young.
There! thine uncle would a-been abed at this hour an' he were alive and
in Dunkerque; thou must be a confoundedly industrious and sober Greig to
be dangling at a petticoat-tail--Pardon, Madame, 'tis the dearest tail,
anyway!--before the hour meridian.”
“And this is France,” thought I. “Here's your papistical gospeller at
home!” I minded of the Rev. Scipio Walker in the kirk of Mearns, an
image ever of austerity, waling his words as they had come from Solomon,
groaning even-on for man's eternal doom.
The priest quickly comprehended my surprise at his humour, and laughed
the more at that till a fit of coughing choked him. “_Mon Dieu_” said
he; “our Andy reincarnate is an Andy most pestilent dull, or I'm a
cockle, a convoluted cockle, and uncooked at that. Why, man! cheer up,
thou _croque mort_, thou lanthorn-jaw, thou veal-eye, thou melancholious
eater of oaten-meal!”
“It's a humblin' sicht!” said I. The impertinence was no sooner uttered
than I felt degraded that I should have given it voice, for here was a
priest of God, however odd to my thinking, and, what was more, a man who
might in years have been my father.
But luckily it could never then, or at any other time, be said of Father
Hamilton that he was thin-skinned. He only laughed the more at me.
“Touche!” he cried. “I knew I could prick the old Andy somewhere. Still,
Master Paul, thine uncle was not so young as thou, my cockerel. Had seen
his world and knew that Scotland and its--what do you call them?--its
manses, did not provide the universal ensample of true piety.”
“I do not think, Father Hamilton,” said I, “that piety troubled him very
much, or his shoes had not been so well known in Dunkerque.”
Miss Walkinshaw laughed.
“There you are, Father Hamilton!” said she. “You'll come little speed
with a man from the Mearns moors unless you take him a little more
seriously.”
Father Hamilton pursed his lips and rubbed down his thighs, an image
of the gross man that would have turned my father's stomach, who always
liked his men lean, clean, and active. He was bantering me, this fat
priest of Dixmunde, but all the time it was with a friendly eye. Thinks
I, here's another legacy of goodwill from my extraordinary uncle!
“Hast got thy pass yet, Master Dull?” said he.
“Not so dull, Master Minister, but what I resent the wrong word even in
a joke,” I replied, rising to go.
Thurot's voice was on the stair now, and Clan-carty's. If they were not
to find their _protégé_ in an undignified war of words with the priest
of Dixmunde, it was time I was taking my feet from there, as the saying
went.
But Miss Walkinshaw would not hear of it. “No, no,” she protested, “we
have some business before you go to your ridiculous French--weary be on
the language that ever I heard _Je t'aime_ in it!--and how does the same
march with you, Mr. Greig?”
“I know enough of it to thank my good friends in,” said I, “but that
must be for another occasion.”
“Father Hamilton,” said she, “here's your secretary.”
A curious flash came to those eyes pitted in rolls of flabby flesh, I
thought of an eagle old and moulting, languid upon a mountain cliff in
misty weather, catching the first glimpse of sun and turned thereby
to ancient memories. He said nothing; there was at the moment no
opportunity, for the visitors had entered, noisily polite and posturing
as was their manner, somewhat touched by wine, I fancied, and for that
reason scarcely welcomed by the mistress of the house.
There could be no more eloquent evidence of my innocence in these days
than was in the fact that I never wondered at the footing upon which
these noisy men of the world were with a countrywoman of mine. The cause
they often spoke of covered many mysteries; between the Rue de Paris
and the Rue de la Boucherie I could have picked out a score of Scots in
exile for their political faiths, and why should not Miss Walkinshaw be
one of the company? But sometimes there was just the faintest hint of
over-much freedom in their manner to her, and that I liked as little as
she seemed to do, for when her face flushed and her mouth firmed, and
she became studiously deaf, I felt ashamed of my sex, and could have
retorted had not prudence dictated silence as the wisest policy.
As for her, she was never but the minted metal, ringing true and decent,
compelling order by a glance, gentle yet secure in her own strength,
tolerant, but in bounds.
They were that day full of the project for invading England. It had
gone so far that soldiers at Calais and Boulogne were being practised in
embarkation. I supposed she must have a certain favour for a step that
was designed to benefit the cause wherefor I judged her an exile, but
she laughed at the idea of Britain falling, as she said, to a parcel of
_crapauds_. “Treason!” treason!” cried Thurot laughingly.
“Under the circumstances, Madame----”
“--Under the circumstances, Captain Thurot,” she interrupted quickly,
“I need not pretend at a lie. This is not in the Prince's interest, this
invasion, and it is a blow at a land I love. Mr. Greig here has just put
it into my mind how good are the hearts there, how pleasant the tongue,
and how much I love the very name of Scotland. I would be sorry to think
of its end come to pleasure the women in Versailles.”
“Bravo! bravo! _vive la bagatelle!_” cried my Lord Clancarty. “Gad! I
sometimes feel the right old pathriot myself. Sure I have a good mind--”
“Then 'tis not your own, my lord,” she cried quickly, displeasure in her
expression, and Clancarty only bowed, not a whit abashed at the sarcasm.
Father Hamilton drew me aside from these cheerful contentions, and
plunged into the matter that was manifestly occupying all his thoughts
since Miss Walkinshaw had mooted me as his secretary.
“Monsieur Greig,” he said, placing his great carcase between me and the
others in the room, “I declare that women are the seven plagues, and yet
here we come chasing them from _petit lever_ till--till--well, till as
late as the darlings will let us. By the Mass and Father Hamilton knows
their value, and when a man talks to me about a woman and the love he
bears her, I think 'tis a maniac shouting the praise of the snake that
has crept to his breast to sting him. Women--chut!--now tell me what the
mischief is a woman an' thou canst.”
“I fancy, Father Hamilton,” said I, “you could be convinced of the
merits of woman if your heart was ever attacked by one--your heart, that
does not believe anything in that matter that emanates from your head.”
Again the eagle's gleam from the pitted eyes; and, upon my word, a sigh!
It was a queer man this priest of Dixmunde.
“Ah, young cockerel,” said he, “thou knowest nothing at all about it,
and as for me--well, I dare not; but once--once--once there were dews in
the woods, and now it is very dry weather, Master Greig. How about thine
honour's secretaryship? Gripp'st at the opportunity, young fellow?
Eh? Has the lady said sooth? Come now, I like the look of my old
Andrew's--my old Merry Andrew's nephew, and could willingly tolerate
his _croque-mort_ countenance, his odour of the sanctuary, if he could
weather it with a plethoric good liver that takes the world as he finds
it.”
He was positively eager to have me. It was obvious from his voice. He
took me by the button of my lapel as if I were about to run away from
his offer, but I was in no humour to run away. Here was the very office
I should have chosen if a thousand offered. The man was a fatted sow to
look on, and by no means engaging in his manner to myself, but what was
I and what my state that I should be too particular? Here was a chance
to see the world--and to forget. Seeing the world might have been of
most importance some months ago in the mind of a clean-handed young
lad in the parish of Mearns in Scotland, but now it was of vastly more
importance that I should forget.
“We start in a week,” said the priest, pressing me closely lest I should
change my mind, and making the prospects as picturesque as he could.
“Why should a man of flesh and blood vex his good stomach with all this
babblement of king's wars? and a pox on their flat-bottomed boats!
I have seen my last Mass in Dixmunde; say not a word on that to our
friends nor to Madame; and I suffer from a very jaundice of gold. Is't a
pact, friend Scotland?”
A pact it was; I went out from Miss Walkinshaw's lodging that afternoon
travelling secretary to the fat priest.