TREATS OF FATHER HAMILTON'S DEATH
It was a gay place, London, in the days I write of, however it may
be now, though Father Hamilton was prone occasionally to compare
it unfavourably with the Paris of his fancy, the which he held a
sample-piece of paradise. The fogs and rains depressed him; he had an
eye altogether unfriendly for the signs of striving commerce in the
streets and the greedy haste of clerks and merchants into whose days of
unremitting industry so few joys (as he fancied) seemed to enter.
MacKellar soon found company in it among silken bucks that held noisy
sederunts in the evenings at a place called White's and another called
(if my memory does not fail me) the Cocoa Nut Tree. 'Twas marvellous the
number of old friends and fellow countrymen that, by his own account,
he found there. And what open hands they had! But for him that was
privileged, for old acquaintance sake, to borrow from them, we had found
our week or two in London singularly hungry because (to tell the truth
of it) our money was come very nearly to an end. But MacKellar, who
had foraged so well in Silesia, was equally good at it in the city of
London. From these night escapades he seldom failed to return richer
than he went, and it was he who paid the piper with so much of an air of
thinking it a privilege, that we had not the heart, even if we had the
inclination, to protest.
If I had known then, as I know now, or at least suspect, that the money
that fed and boarded us was won through his skill at dice and cards, I
daresay I had shifted sooner from London than I did at the last.
Day after day passed, and no word from Mr. Pitt. I dared scarcely leave
my inn for an hour's airing lest I should be asked for in my absence.
There was, for a while, a hope that though I had refused to make any
bargain about the pardon, something--I could not so much as guess
what--might happen to avert the scandal of a trial at Edinburgh, and the
disgrace that same might bring upon my family. But day after day passed,
as I have said, and there came no hint of how matters stood.
And then there came a day when I was to consider it mattered very little
whether I heard from Pitt or not; when even my country was forgotten and
I was to suffer a loss whose bitterness abides with me yet. It was the
death of Father Hamilton, whom I had grown to like exceedingly. Birds
have built and sung for many generations since then; children play in
the garden still; there is essence at the table, there is sparkle in
the wine, and he will never enjoy them any more. Fortune has come to me
since then, so that I might have the wherewithal, if I had the wish,
to take the road again with him in honesty, and see it even better than
when Sin paid the bill for us, but it cannot be with him.
It was a December day of the whitest, the city smothered in snow, its
tumult hushed. I had been tempted to wander in the forenoon a good
way from our lodging. Coming home in the afternoon I met Kilbride,
distracted, setting out to seek for me. He had a face like the clay, and
his hands, that grasped my lapels as if I meant to fly from him, were
trembling.
“Oh, Paul,” said he. “Here's the worst of all,” and I declare his cheeks
were wet with tears.
“What is it?” I cried in great alarm.
“The priest, the priest,” said he. “He's lying yonder at the ebb,
and I'm no more use to him than if I were a bairn. I've seen the
death-thraws a thousand times, but never to vex me just like this
before. He could make two or three of us in bulk, and yet his heart
was like a wean's, and there he's crying on you even-on till I was near
demented and must run about the streets to seek for you.”
“But still you give me no clue!” I cried, hurrying home with him.
He gave me the story by the way. It seemed his reverence had had a
notion to see Eastcheap, round which the writer Shakespeare had thrown
a glamour for him. He had gone there shortly after I had gone out in the
forenoon, and after a space of walking about it had found himself in a
mean street where a blackguard was beating a child. 'Twas the man's own
child, doubtless, and so he had, I make no doubt, the law of it on his
own side, but the drunken wretch outdid all reasonable chastisement, and
thrashed her till the blood flowed.
Up ran the priest and took her in his arms, shielding her from the blows
of the father's cudgel with his arm. The child nuzzled to his breast,
shrieking, and the father tried to pull her away. Between them she fell;
the priest stood over her, keeping back the beast that threatened. The
man struck at him with his stick; Father Hamilton wrenched it from him,
threw it down that he might have no unfair advantage, and flung himself
upon the wretch. He could have crushed him into jelly, but the man
was armed, and suddenly drew a knife. He thrust suddenly between the
priest's shoulders, released himself from the tottering body,
and disappeared with his child apparently beyond all chance of
identification or discovery.
Father Hamilton was carried home upon a litter.
“O God! Kilbride, and must he die?” I cried in horror.
“He will travel in less than an hour,” said the Highlander, vastly
moved. “And since he came here his whole cry has been for you and Father
Joyce.”
We went into the room that seemed unnaturally white and sunny. He lay
upon the bed-clothes. The bed was drawn towards the window, through
which the domes and towers and roofs of London could be seen, with their
accustomed greyness gone below the curtain of the snow. A blotch of
blood was on his shirt-front as he lay upon his side. I thought at first
it was his own life oozing, but learned a little later that the stricken
child had had her face there.
“Paul! Paul!” he said, “I thought thou wouldst blame me for deserting
thee again, and this time without so much as a letter of farewell.”
What could I do but take his hand, and fall upon my knees beside his
bed? He had blue eyes that never aged nor grossened--the eyes of a boy,
clear, clean, and brave, and round about them wrinkles played in a sad,
sweet smile.
“What, Paul!” he said, “all this for behemoth! for the old man of the
sea that has stuck on thy shoulders for a twelvemonth, and spurred thee
to infinite follies and perils! I am no more worth a tear of thine than
is the ivied ash that falls untimely and decayed, eaten out of essence
by the sins he sheltered. And the poor child, Paul!--the poor child
with her arms round my neck, her tears brine--sure I have them on my
lips--the true _viaticum!_ The brute! the brute! Ah no! ah no! poor
sinner, we do not know.”
“Oh, father!” I cried, “and must we never go into the woods and towns
any more?”
He smiled again and stroked my hair.
“Not in these fields, boy,” said he, “but perhaps in more spacious, less
perplexed. Be good, be simple, be kind! Tis all I know.”
We heard the steps of Father Joyce upon the stairs.
“All I know!” repeated the priest. “Fifty years to learn it, and I might
have found it in my mother's lap. _Chère ange_--the little mother--'twas
a good world! And Fanchon that is dead below the snow in Louvain--oh,
the sweet world! And the sunny gardens of bees and children--”
His eyes were dull. A pallor was on his countenance. He breathed with
difficulty. Kilbride, who stood by, silent, put a finger on his pulse.
At that he opened his eyes again, once more smiling, and Father Joyce
was at the door.
“Kiss me, Paul,” said the dying man, “I hear them singing prime.”
When Father Joyce was gone I came into the room again where the priest
lay smiling still, great in figure, in the simplicity and sweetness of
his countenance like a child.
Kilbride and I stood silent for a little by the bed, and the Highlander
was the first to speak. “I have seen worse,” said he, “than Father
Hamilton.”
It may seem a grudging testimony, but not to me that heard it.
On the day after the priest's funeral Kilbride came to me with that news
which sent me north. He had the week's gazette in his hand, “Have you
heard the latest?” he cried. “It is just what I expected,” he went on.
“They have made use of your information and set you aside. Here's the
tidings of Conflans' defeat. Hawke came down on him off Brest, drove
him back from the point of Quiberon to the coast near the mouth of
the Vilaine, sank four ships, captured two, and routed the enemy. The
invasion is at an end.”
“It is gallant news!” I cried, warm with satisfaction.
“Maybe,” said he indifferently, “but the main thing is that Paul Greig,
who put the Government in the way of taking proper steps, is here in
cheap lodgings with a charge on his head and no better than ever he was.
Indeed, perhaps he's worse off than ever he was.”
“How is that?”
“Well, they ken where you are, for one thing, and you put yourself in
their power. I am one that has small faith in Governments. What will
hinder them to clap you in jail and save another reward like the first
one Pitt told you about? I would never put it past a Sassenach of the
name.”
Then I told him it had been in my mind ever since I had seen the
Minister to go to Edinburgh and give myself up to the authorities.
“Are ye daft?” he cried, astonished.
I could only shrug my shoulders at that.
“Perhaps you fancy this business of the invasion will help you to get
your neck out of the loop? I would not lippen on a Government for ten
minutes. You have saved the country--that's the long and the short of
it; now you must just be saving your own hide. There's nothing for us
but the Continent again, and whether you're in the key for that or not,
here's a fellow will sleep uneasy till he has Europe under his head.”
Even at the cost of parting with Kilbride I determined to carry out
my intention of going to Edinburgh. With the priest gone, no prospect
of Mr. Pitt taking the first step, and Kilbride in the humour for a
retreat, I decided that the sooner I brought matters to a head the
better.
There was a mail coach that went north weekly. It took a considerable
deal of money and a fortnight of time to make the journey between the
two capitals, but MacKellar, free-handed to the last, lent me the
money (which I sent him six months later to Holland), and I set out one
Saturday from the “Bull and Whistle” in a genteel two-end spring machine
that made a brisk passage--the weather considered--as far as York on our
way into Scotland.
I left on a night of jubilation for the close of the war and the
overthrow of Conflans. Bonfires blazed on the river-side and the
eminences round the city; candles were in every window, the people
were huzzaing in the streets where I left behind me only the one kent
face--that of MacKellar of Kilbride who came to the coach to see the
last of me. And everywhere was the snow--deep, silent, apparently
enduring.