FAREWELL TO MISS WALKINSHAW
It was under the lash of a natural exasperation I went up Mademoiselle's
stairs determined on an interview. Bernard (of all men in the world!)
responded to my knock. I could have thrashed him with a cane if the same
had been handy, but was bound to content myself with the somewhat barren
comfort of affecting that I had never set eyes on him before. He smiled
at first, as if not unpleased to see me, but changed his aspect at the
unresponse of mine.
“I desire to see Miss Walkinshaw,” said I.
The rogue blandly intimated that she was not at home. There is more
truth in a menial eye than in most others, and this man's fashionable
falsehood extended no further than his lips. I saw quite plainly he was
acting upon instructions, and, what made it the more uncomfortable for
him, he saw that I saw.
“Very well, I shall have the pleasure of waiting in the neighbourhood
till she returns,” I said, and leaned against the railing. This
frightened him somewhat, and he hastened to inform me that he did not
know when she might return.
“It does not matter,” I said coolly, inwardly pleased to find my courage
much higher in the circumstances than I had expected. “If it's midnight
she shall find me here, for I have matters of the first importance upon
which to consult her.”
He was more disturbed than ever, hummed and hawed and hung upon the
door-handle, making it very plainly manifest that his instructions had
not gone far enough, and that he was unable to make up his mind how he
was further to comport himself to a visitor so persistent. Then, unable
to get a glance of recognition from me, and resenting further
the inconvenience to which I was subjecting him, he rose to an
impertinence--the first (to do him justice) I had ever found in him.
“Will Monsieur,” said he, “tell me who I shall say called?”
The thrust was scarcely novel. I took it smiling, and “My good rogue,”
said I, “if the circumstances were more favourable I should have the
felicity of giving you an honest drubbing.” He got very red. “Come,
Bernard,” I said, adopting another tone, “I think you owe me some
consideration. And will you not, in exchange for my readiness to give
you all the information you required some time ago for your employers,
tell me the truth and admit that Mademoiselle is within?”
He was saved an answer by the lady herself.
“La! Mr. Greig!” she cried, coming to the door and putting forth a
welcoming hand. “My good Bernard has no discrimination, or he should
except my dear countryman from my general orders against all visitors.”
So much in French; and then, as she led the way to her parlour, “My dear
man of Mearns, you are as dour as--as dour as--”
“As a donkey,” I finished, seeing she hesitated for a likeness. “And I
feel very much like that humble beast at this moment.”
“I do not wonder at it,” said she, throwing herself in a chair. “To
thrust yourself upon a poor lonely woman in this fashion!”
“I am the ass--I have been the ass--it would appear, in other respects
as well.”
She reddened, and tried to conceal her confusion by putting back her
hair, that somehow escaped in a strand about her ears. I had caught
her rather early in the morning; she had not even the preparation of
a _petit lever_; and because of a certain chagrin at being discovered
scarcely looking her best her first remarks were somewhat chilly.
“Well, at least you have persistency, I'll say that of it,” she went
on, with a light laugh, and apparently uncomfortable. “And for what am I
indebted to so early a visit from my dear countryman?”
“It was partly that I might say a word of thanks personally to you for
your offices in my poor behalf. The affair of the Regiment d'Auvergne is
settled with a suddenness that should be very gratifying to myself,
for it looks as if King Louis could not get on another day wanting my
distinguished services. I am to join the corps at the end of the month,
and must leave Dunkerque forthwith. That being so, it was only proper I
should come in my own person to thank you for your good offices.”
“Do not mention it,” she said hurriedly. “I am only too glad that I
could be of the smallest service to you.”
“I cannot think,” I went on, “what I can have done to warrant your
displeasure with me.”
“Displeasure!” she replied. “Who said I was displeased?”
“What am I to think, then? I have been refused the honour of seeing you
for this past week.”
“Well, not displeasure, Mr. Greig,” she said, trifling with her rings.
“Let us be calling it prudence. I think that might have suggested itself
as a reason to a gentleman of Mr. Greig's ordinary intuitions.”
“It's a virtue, this prudence, a Greig could never lay claim to,” I
said. “And I must tell you that, where the special need for it arises
now, and how it is to be made manifest, is altogether beyond me.”
“No matter,” said she, and paused. “And so you are going to the
frontier, and are come to say good-bye to me?”
“Now that you remind me that is exactly my object,” I said, rising to
go. She did not have the graciousness even to stay me, but rose too, as
if she felt the interview could not be over a moment too soon. And yet I
noticed a certain softening in her manner that her next words confirmed.
“And so you go, Mr. Greig?” she said. “There's but the one thing I would
like to say to my friend, and that's that I should like him not to think
unkindly of one that values his good opinion--if she were worthy to have
it. The honest and unsuspecting come rarely my way nowadays, and now
that I'm to lose them I feel like to greet.” She was indeed inclined
to tears, and her lips were twitching, but I was not enough rid of my
annoyance to be moved much by such a demonstration.
“I have profited much by your society, Miss Walkinshaw,” I said. “You
found me a boy, and what way it happens I do not know, but it's a man
that's leaving you. You made my stay here much more pleasant than it
would otherwise have been, and this last kindness--that forces me away
from you--is one more I have to thank you for.”
She was scarcely sure whether to take this as a compliment or the
reverse, and, to tell the truth, I meant it half and half.
“I owed all the little I could do to my countryman,” said she.
“And I hope I have been useful,” I blurted out, determined to show her I
was going with open eyes.
Somewhat stricken she put her hand upon my arm. “I hope you will forgive
that, Mr. Greig,” she said, leaving no doubt that she had jumped to my
meaning.
“There is nothing to forgive,” I said shortly. “I am proud that I was of
service, not to you alone but to one in the interests of whose house
some more romantical Greigs than I have suffered. My only complaint is
that the person in question seems scarcely to be grateful for the little
share I had unconsciously in preserving his life.”
“I am sure he is very grateful,” she cried hastily, and perplexed. “I
may tell you that he was the means of getting you the post in the
regiment.”
“So I have been told,” I said, and she looked a little startled. “So I
have been told. It may be that I'll be more grateful by-and-by, when I
see what sort of a post it is. In the meantime, I have my gratitude
greatly hampered by a kind of inconsistency in the--in the person's
actings towards myself!”
“Inconsistency!” she repeated bitterly. “That need not surprise you! But
I do not understand.”
“It is simply that--perhaps to hasten me to my duties--his Royal
Highness this morning sent a ruffian to fight me.”
I have never seen a face so suddenly change as hers did when she heard
this; for ordinary she had a look of considerable amiability, a soft,
kind eye, a ready smile that had the hint (as I have elsewhere said)
of melancholy, a voice that, especially in the Scots, was singularly
attractive. A temper was the last thing I would have charged her with,
yet now she fairly flamed, “What is this you are telling me, Paul
Greig?” she cried, her eyes stormy, her bosom beginning to heave. “Oh,
just that M. Albany (as he calls himself) has some grudge against me,
for he sent a man--Bonnat--to pick a quarrel with me, and by Bonnat's
own confession the duel that was to ensue was to be _à outrance_. But
for the intervention of a friend, half an hour ago, there would have
been a vacancy already in the Regiment d'Auvergne.”
“Good heavens!” she cried. “You must be mistaken. What object in the
wide world could his Royal Highness have in doing you any harm? You were
an instrument in the preservation of his life.”
I bowed extremely low, with a touch of the courts I had not when I
landed first in Dunkerque.
“I have had the distinguished honour, Miss Walkinshaw,” I said. “And
I should have thought that enough to counterbalance my unfortunate and
ignorant engagement with his enemies.”
“But why, in Heaven's name, should he have a shred of resentment against
you?”
“It seems,” I said, “that it has something to do with my boldness in
using the Rue de la Boucherie for an occasional promenade.”
She put her two hands up to her face for a moment, but I could see the
wine-spill in between, and her very neck was in a flame.
“Oh, the shame! the shame!” she cried, and began to walk up and down the
room like one demented. “Am I to suffer these insults for ever in spite
of all that I may do to prove--to prove----”
She pulled herself up short, put down her hands from a face exceedingly
distressed, and looked closely at me. “What must you think of me, Mr.
Greig?” she asked suddenly in quite a new key.
“What do I think of myself to so disturb you?” I replied. “I do not
know in what way I have vexed you, but to do so was not at all in my
intention. I must tell you that I am not a politician, and that since I
came here these affairs of the Prince and all the rest of it are quite
beyond my understanding. If the cause of the white cockade brought you
to France, Miss Walkinshaw, as seems apparent, I cannot think you are
very happy in it nowadays, but that is no affair of mine.”
She stared at me. “I hope,” said she, “you are not mocking me?”
“Heaven forbid!” I said. “It would be the last thing I should presume
to do, even if I had a reason. I owe you, after all, nothing but the
deepest gratitude.”
Beyond the parlour we stood in was a lesser room that was the lady's
boudoir. We stood with our backs to it, and I know not how much of our
conversation had been overheard when I suddenly turned at the sound of a
man's voice, and saw his Royal Highness standing in the door!
I could have rubbed my eyes out of sheer incredulity, for that he should
be in that position was as if I had come upon a ghost. He stood with a
face flushed and frowning, rubbing his eyes, and there was something in
his manner that suggested he was not wholly sober.
“I'll be cursed,” said he, “if I haven't been asleep. Deuce take
Clancarty! He kept me at cards till dawn this morning, and I feel as if
I had been all night on heather. _Pardieu_----!”
He pulled himself up short and stared, seeing me for the first time.
His face grew purple with annoyance. “A thousand pardons!” he cried with
sarcasm, and making a deep bow. “I was not aware that I intruded on
affairs.”
Miss Walkinshaw turned to him sharply.
“There is no intrusion,” said she, “but honesty, in the person of my
dear countryman, who has come to strange quarters with it. Your Royal
Highness has now the opportunity of thanking this gentleman.”
“I' faith,” said he, “I seem to be kept pretty constantly in mind of
the little I owe to this gentleman in spite of himself. Harkee, my good
Monsieur, I got you a post; I thought you had been out of Dunkerque by
now.”
“The post waits, M. Albany,” said I, “and I am going to take it up
forthwith. I came here to thank the person to whose kindness I owe
the post, and now I am in a quandary as to whom my thanks should be
addressed.”
“My dear Monsieur, to whom but to your countrywoman? We all of us owe
her everything, and--egad!--are not grateful enough,” and with that he
looked for the first time at her with his frown gone.
“Yes, yes,” she cried; “we may put off the compliments till another
occasion. What I must say is that it is a grief and a shame to me that
this gentleman, who has done so much for me--I speak for myself, your
Royal Highness will observe--should be so poorly requited.”
“Requited!” cried he. “How now? I trust Monsieur is not dissatisfied.”
His face had grown like paste, his hand, that constantly fumbled at his
unshaven chin, was trembling. I felt a mortal pity for this child of
kings, discredited and debauched, and yet I felt bound to express myself
upon the trap that he had laid for me, if Bonnat's words were true.
“I have said my thanks, M. Albany, very stammeringly for the d'Auvergne
office, because I can only guess at my benefactor. My gratitude----”
“Bah!” cried he. “Tis the scurviest of qualities. A benefactor that does
aught for gratitude had as lief be a selfish scoundrel. We want none of
your gratitude, Monsieur Greig.”
“'Tis just as well, M. Albany,” I cried, “for what there was of it is
mortgaged.”
“_Comment?_” he asked, uneasily.
“I was challenged to a duel this morning with a man Bonnat that calls
himself your servant,” I replied, always very careful to take his own
word for it and assume I spoke to no prince, but simply M. Albany. “He
informed me that you had, Monsieur, some objection to my sharing the
same street with you, and had given him his instructions.”
“Bonnat,” cried the Prince, and rubbed his hand across his temples.
“I'll be cursed if I have seen the man for a month. Stay!--stay--let
me think! Now that I remember, he met me last night after dinner,
but--but----”
“After dinner! Then surely it should have been in a more favourable mood
to myself, that has done M. Albany no harm,” I said. “I do not wonder
that M. Albany has lost so many of his friends if he settles their
destinies after dinner.”
At first he frowned at this and then he laughed outright.
“_Ma foi!_” he cried, “here's another Greig to call me gomeral to my
face,” and he lounged to a chair where he sunk in inextinguishable
laughter.
But if I had brought laughter from him I had precipitated anger
elsewhere.
“Here's a pretty way to speak to his Royal Highness,” cried Miss
Walkinshaw, her face like thunder. “The manners of the Mearns shine very
poorly here. You forget that you speak to one that is your prince, in
faith your king!”
“Neither prince nor king of mine, Miss Walkinshaw,” I cried, and turned
to go. “No, if a hundred thousand swords were at his back. I had once a
notion of a prince that rode along the Gallowgate, but I was then a boy,
and now I am a man--which you yourself have made me.”
With that I bowed low and left them. They neither of them said a word.
It was the last I was to see of Clementina Walkinshaw and the last of
Charles Edward.