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.