A RAP IN THE EARLY MORNING AWAKENS ME AND I START IN A GLASS COACH UPON
THE ODDEST OF JOURNEYS
It was the last, for many months, I was to see of my countrywoman.
Before the crow of the cock next morning I was on the unending roads,
trundling in a noisy vehicle through pitch darkness, my companion
snoring stertorous at my side, his huge head falling every now and then
upon my shoulder, myself peering to catch some revelation of what manner
of country-side we went through as the light from the swinging lanthorn
lit up briefly passing banks of frosted hedge or sleeping hamlets on
whose pave the hoofs of our horses hammered as they had been the very
war-steeds of Bellona.
But how came I there? How but by my master's whim, that made him
anticipate his departure by three days and drag me from my bed
incontinent to set out upon his trip over Europe.
I had been sleeping soundly, dreaming I heard the hopper of the mill
of Driepps at home banging to make Jock Alexander's fortune, when I
awakened, or rather half-wakened, to discover that 'twas no hopper but a
nieve at my door, rapping with a vigour to waken the dead.
“Come out! Sir Secretary, come out! or I shall pull thy domicile about
thine ears,” cried the voice of Father Hamilton.
He stood at the door when I opened, wrapped over the chin in a muffler
of multitudinous folds, and covered by a roquelaure.
“_Pax!_” he cried, thrusting a purple face into the room, “and on with
thy boots like a good lad. We must be off and over the dunes before the
bell of St. Eloi knocks another nail in the coffin of time.”
“What!” I said, dumbfoundered, “are we to start on our journey to-day?”
“Even so, my sluggardly Scot; faith! before the day even, for the day
will be in a deuce of a hurry an' it catch up on us before we reach
Pont-Opoise. Sop a crust in a jug of wine--I've had no better _petit
déjeuner_ myself--put a clean cravat and a pair of hose in thy sack,
and in all emulate the judicious flea that wastes no time in idle
rumination, but transacts its affairs in a succession of leaps.”
“And no time to say good-bye to anyone?” I asked, struggling into my
toilet.
“La! la! la! the flea never takes a _congé_ that I've heard on, Master
Punctilio. Not so much as a kiss o' the hand for you; I have had news,
and 'tis now or never.”
Twenty minutes later, Thurot's landlord (for Thurot himself was from
home) lit me to the courtyard, and the priest bundled me and my sack
into the bowels of an enormous chariot waiting there.
The clocks began to strike the hour of five; before the last stroke had
ceased to shiver the darkness we were thundering along the sea front
and my master was already composed to sleep in his corner, without
vouchsafing me a sentence of explanation for so hurried a departure.
Be sure my heart was sore! I felt the blackest of ingrates to be thus
speeding without a sign of farewell from a place where I had met with so
much of friendship.
Out at the window of the coach I gazed, to see nothing but the cavernous
night on one side, on the other, lit by the lanthorn, the flashing past
of houses all shuttered and asleep.
It was dry and pleasant weather, with a sting of frost in the air, and
the propinquity of the sea manifest not in its plangent voice alone but
in the odour of it that at that hour dominated the natural smells of the
faubourgs. Only one glimpse I had of fellow creatures; as we passed the
fort, the flare of flambeaux showed an enormous body of soldiers
working upon the walls of Risebank; it but added to the poignance of my
melancholy to reflect that here were my country's enemies unsleeping,
and I made a sharp mental contrast of this most dauntening spectacle
with a picture of the house of Hazel Den dreaming among its trees, and
only crying lambs perhaps upon the moor to indicate that any life
was there. Melancholy! oh, it was eerie beyond expression for me that
morning! Outside, the driver talked to his horses and to some one with
him on the boot; it must have been cheerier for him than for me as I sat
in that sombre and close interior, jolted by my neighbour, and unable to
refrain from rehabilitating all the past. Especially did I think of my
dark home-coming with a silent father on the day I left the college to
go back to the Mearns. And by a natural correlation, that was bound
to lead to all that followed--even to the event for which I was now so
miserably remote from my people.
Once or twice his reverence woke, to thrust his head out at the window
and ask where we were. Wherever we were when he did so, *twas certain
never to be far enough for his fancy, and he condemned the driver for
a snail until the whip cracked wickedly and the horses laboured more
strenuously than ever, so that our vehicle swung upon its springs till
it might well seem we were upon a ship at sea.
For me he had but the one comment--“I wonder what's for _déjeuner._” He
said it each time solemnly as it were his matins, and then slid into his
swinish sleep again.
The night seemed interminable, but by-and-by the day broke. I watched
it with eagerness as it gradually paled the east, and broke up the black
bulk of the surrounding land into fields, orchards, gardens, woods. And
the birds awoke--God bless the little birds!--they woke, and started
twittering and singing in the haze, surely the sweetest, the least
sinless of created things, the tiny angels of the woods, from whom,
walking in summer fields in the mornings of my age as of my youth, I
have borrowed hope and cheer.
Father Hamilton wakened too, and heard the birds; indeed, they filled
the ear of the dawn with melodies. A smile singularly pleasant came upon
his countenance as he listened.
“_Pardieu!_” said he, “how they go on! Has't the woodland soul, _Sieur
Croque-mort_? Likely enough not; I never knew another but myself and
thine uncle that had it, and 'tis the mischief that words will not
explain the same. 'Tis a gift of the fairies”--here he crossed himself
devoutly and mumbled a Romish incantation--“that, having the
said woodland spirit--in its nature a Pagan thing perchance, but
_n'importe!_--thou hast in the song of the tiny beings choiring there
something to make the inward tremor that others find in a fiddle and
a glass of wine. No! no! not that, 'tis a million times more precious;
'tis--'tis the pang of the devotee, 'tis the ultimate thrill of things.
Myself, I could expire upon the ecstasy of the thrush, or climb to
heaven upon the lark's May rapture. And there they go! the loves! and
they have the same ditty I heard from them first in Louvain. There are
but three clean things in this world, my lad of Scotland--a bird, a
flower, and a child's laughter. I have been confessor long enough
to know all else is filth. But what's the luck in waiting for us at
Azincourt? and what's the _pot-au-feu_ to-day?”
He listened a little longer to the birds, and fell asleep smiling, his
fat face for once not amiss, and I was left again alone as it were to
receive the day.
We had long left the dunes and the side of the sea, though sometimes on
puffs of wind I heard its distant rumour. Now the land was wooded with
the apple tree; we rose high on the side of a glen, full of a rolling
fog that streamed off as the day grew. A tolerable land enough; perhaps
more lush than my own, with scarce a rood uncultivated, and dotted
far and wide by the strangest farm steadings and pendicles, but such
steadings and pendicles as these eyes never before beheld, with enormous
eaves of thatch reaching almost to the ground, and ridiculous windows of
no shape; with the yokings of the cattle, the boynes, stoups, carts, and
ploughs about the places altogether different from our own. We passed
troops marching, peasants slouching with baskets of poultry to market
towns, now and then a horseman, now and then a caleche. And there were
numerous hamlets, and at least two middling-sized towns, and finally
we came, at the hour of eleven, upon the place appointed for our
_déjeuner_. It was a small inn on the banks of the only rivulet I had
seen in all the journey. I forget its name, but I remember there was
a patch of heather on the side of it, and that I wished ardently the
season had been autumn that I might have looked upon the purple bells.
“Tis a long lane that has no tavern,” said his reverence, and oozed
out of his side of the coach with groanings. The innkeeper ran forth,
louted, and kissed his hand.
“_Jour, m'sieu jour!_” said Father Hamilton hurriedly. “And now, what
have you here that is worth while?”
The innkeeper respectfully intimated that the church of
Saint-Jean-en-Grève was generally considered worth notice. Its
vestments, relics, and windows were of merit, and the view from the
tower--
“_Mort de ma vie!_” cried the priest angrily, “do I look like a
traveller who trots up belfrys in strange villages at the hour of
_déjeuner?_ A plague on Saint-Jean-en-Grève! I said nothing at all of
churches; I spoke of _déjeuner_, my good fellow. What's for _déjeuner?_”
The innkeeper recounted a series of dishes. Father Hamilton hummed and
hawed, reflected, condemned, approved, all with an eagerness beyond
description. And when the meal was being dished up, he went frantically
to the kitchen and lifted pot-lids, and swung a salad for himself, and
confounding the ordinary wine for the vilest piquette ordered a special
variety from the cellar. It was a spectacle of gourmandise not without
its humour; I was so vastly engaged in watching him that I scarce
glanced at the men who had travelled on the outside of the coach since
morning.
What was my amazement when I did so to see that the servant or valet (as
he turned out to be) was no other than the Swiss, Bernard, who had been
in the service of Miss Walkinshaw no later than yesterday morning!
I commented on the fact to Father Hamilton when we sat down to eat.
“Why, yes!” he said, gobbling at his vivers with a voracity I learned
not to wonder at later when I knew him more. “The same man. A good man,
too, or I'm a Turk. I've envied Miss Walkinshaw this lusty, trusty,
secret rogue for a good twelvemonth, and just on the eve of my leaving
Dunkerque, by a very providence, the fellow gets drunk and finds himself
dismissed. He came to me with a flush and a hiccough last night to ask
a recommendation, and overlooking the peccadillo that is not of a nature
confined to servants, Master Greig, let me tell thee, I gave him a place
in my _entourage_. Madame will not like it, but no matter! she'll have
time to forget it ere I see her again.”
I felt a mild satisfaction to have the Swiss with us just because I had
heard him called “Bernard” so often by his late employer.
We rested for some hours after _déjeuner_, seated under a tree by the
brink of the rivulet, and in the good humour of a man satisfied in
nature the priest condescended to let me into some of his plans.
We were bound for Paris in the first place. “Zounds!” he cried, “I am
all impatience to clap eyes again on Lutetia, the sweet rogue, and
eat decent bread and behold a noble gown and hear a right cadenza.
And though thou hast lost thy Lyrnessides--la! la! la! I have thee
there!--thou canst console thyself with the Haemonian lyre. Paris! oh,
lad, I'd give all to have thy years and a winter or two in it. Still, we
shall make shift--oh, yes! I warrant thee we shall make shift. We shall
be there, at my closest reckoning, on the second day of Holy Week, and
my health being so poorly we shall not wait to commence _de faire les
Pâques_ an hour after. What's in a _soutane_, anyhow, that it should be
permitted to mortify an honest priest's oesophagus?”
I sighed in spite of myself, for he had made me think of our throwing of
Easter eggs on the green at Hazel Den.
“What!” he cried. “Does my frugal Scot fancy we have not enough
trinkgeld for enjoyment. Why, look here!--and here!--and here!”
He thrust his hand into his bosom and drew forth numerous rouleaux--so
many that I thought his corpulence might well be a plethora of coin.
“There!” said he, squeezing a rouleau till it burst and spreading out
the gold upon the table before him. “Am I a poor parish priest or a very
Croesus?”
Then he scooped in the coins with his fat hands and returned all to his
bosom. “_Allons!_” he said shortly; we were on the road again!
That night we put up at the Bon Accueil in a town whose name escapes my
recollection.
He had gone to bed; through the wall from his chamber came the noise
of his sleep, while I was at the writing of my first letter to Miss
Walkinshaw, making the same as free and almost affectionate as I had
been her lover, for as I know it now, I was but seeking in her for the
face of the love of the first woman and the last my heart was given to.
I had scarcely concluded when the Swiss came knocking softly to my door,
and handed me a letter from the very woman whose name was still in wet
ink upon my folded page. I tore it open eagerly, to find a score of
pleasant remembrances. She had learned the night before that the priest
was to set out in the morning: “I have kept my word,” she went on. “Your
best friend is Bernard, so I let you have him, and let us exchange our
billets through him. It will be the most Discreet method. And I am, with
every consideration, Ye Ken Wha.”