The Shoes of Fortune
I had been reading Molière’s “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” the previous morning, and as I faced my assailant I had the fencing-master’s words as well as Captain Thurot’s running in my ears: “To give and not receive is the secret of the sword.” It may appear incredible, but it seemed physically a trivial affair I was engaged upon until I saw the man Bonnat’s eye. He wore a smile, but his eye had the steely glint of murder! It was as unmistakable as if his tongue confessed it, and for a second I trembled at the possibilities of the situation. He looked an unhealthy dog; sallow exceedingly on the neck, which had the sinews so tight they might have twanged like wire, and on his cheeks, that he seemed to suck in with a gluttonous exultation such as a gross man shows in front of a fine meal.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” said Thurot; and we nodded. “Then in guard!” said he.
We saluted, fell into position and thrust simultaneously in tierce, parrying alike, then opened more seriously.
In Thurot’s teaching of me there was one lesson he most unweariedly insisted on, whose object was to keep my point in a straight line and parry in the smallest possible circles. I had every mind of it now, but the cursed thing was that this Bonnat knew it too. He fenced, like an Italian, wholly from the wrist, and, crouched upon his knees, husbanded every ounce of energy by the infrequency and the brevity of his thrusts. His lips drew back from his teeth, giving him a most villainous aspect, and he began to press in the lower lines.
In a side-glance hazarded I saw the anxiety of Thurot’s eye and realised his apprehension. I broke ground, and still, I think, was the bravo’s match but for the alarm of Thurot’s eye. It confused me so much that I parried widely and gave an opening for a thrust that caught me slightly on the arm, and dyed my shirt-sleeve crimson in a moment.
“Halt!” cried Thurot, and put up his arm.
I lowered my weapon, thinking the bout over, and again saw murder in Bonnat’s eye. He lunged furiously at my chest, missing by a miracle.
“Scélérat!” cried Thurot, and, in an uncontrollable fury at the action, threw himself upon Bonnat and disarmed him.
They glared at each other for a minute, and Thurot finally cast the other’s weapon over a hedge. “So much for M. Bonnat!” said he. “This is our valiant gentleman, is it? To stab like an assassin!”
“Oh, malédiction!” said the other, little abashed, and shrugging his shoulders as he lifted his coat to put it on. “Talking of assassination, I but did the duty of the executioner in his absence, and proposed to kill the man who meditated the same upon the Prince.”
“The Prince!” cried Thurot. “Why ‘tis the Prince’s friend, and saved his life!”
“I know nothing about that,” said Bonnat; “but do you think I’d be out here at such a cursed early hour fencing if any other than M. Albany had sent me? Pardieu! the whole of you are in the farce, but I always counted you the Prince’s friend, and here you must meddle when I do as I am told to do!”
“And you tell me, Jean Bonnat, that you take out my friend to murder him by M. Albany’s command?” cried Thurot incredulous.
“What the devil else?” replied the bravo. “‘Tis true M. Albany only mentioned that M. des Souliers Rouges was an obstruction in the Rue de la Boucherie and asked me to clear him out of Dunkerque, but ‘twere a tidier job to clear him altogether. And here is a great pother about an English hog!”
I was too busily stanching my wound, that was scarce so serious as it appeared, to join in this dispute, but the allusion to the Prince and the Rue de la Boucherie extremely puzzled me. I turned to Bonnat with a cry for an explanation.
“What!” I says, “does his Royal Highness claim any prerogative to the Rue de la Boucherie? I’m unconscious that I ever did either you or him the smallest harm, and if my service – innocent enough as it was – with the priest Hamilton was something to resent, his Highness has already condoned the offence.”
“For the sake of my old friend M. le Capitaine here I shall give you one word of advice,” said Bonnat, “and that is, to evacuate Dunkerque as sharply as you may. M. Albany may owe you some obligement, as I’ve heard him hint himself, but nevertheless your steps will be safer elsewhere than in the Rue de la Boucherie.”
“There is far too much of the Rue de la Boucherie about this,” I said, “and I hope no insult is intended to certain friends I have or had there.”
At this they looked at one another. The bravo (for so I think I may at this time call him) whistled curiously and winked at the other, and, in spite of himself, Captain Thurot was bound to laugh.
“And has M. Paul been haunting the Rue de la Boucherie, too?” said he. “That, indeed, is to put another face on the business. ‘Tis, ma foi! to expect too much of M. Albany’s complaisance. After that there is nothing for us but to go home. And, harkee! M. Bonnat, no more Venetian work, or, by St. Denys, I shall throw you into the harbour.”
“You must ever have your joke, my noble M. le Capitaine,” said Bonnat brazenly, and tucked his hat on the side of the head. “M. Blanc-bec there handles arme blanche rather prettily, thanks, no doubt, to the gallant commander of the Roi Rouge, but if he has a mother let me suggest the wisdom of his going back to her.” And with that and a congé he left us to enter the auberge.
Thurot and I went into the town. He was silent most of the way, ruminating upon this affair, which it was plain he could unravel better than I could, yet he refused to give me a hint at the cause of it. I pled with him vainly for an explanation of the Prince’s objection to my person. “I thought he had quite forgiven my innocent part in the Hamilton affair,” I said.
“And so he had,” said Thurot. “I have his own assurances.”
“‘Tis scarcely like it when he sets a hired assassin on my track to lure me into a duel.”
“My dear boy,” said Thurot, “you owe him all – your escape from Bicêtre, which could easily have been frustrated; and the very prospect of the lieutenancy in the Regiment d’Auvergne.”
“What! he has a hand in this?” I cried.
“Who else?” said he. “‘Tis not the fashion in France to throw unschooled Scots into such positions out of hand, and only princes may manage it. It seems, then, that we have our Prince in two moods, which is not uncommon with the same gentleman. He would favour you for the one reason, and for the other he would cut your throat. M. Tête-de-fer is my eternal puzzle. And the deuce is that he has, unless I am much mistaken, the same reason for favouring and hating you.”
“And what might that be?” said I.
“Who, rather?” said Thurot, and we were walking down the Rue de la Boucherie. “Why, then, if you must have pointed out to you what is under your very nose, ‘tis the lady who lives here. She is the god from the machine in half a hundred affairs no less mysterious, and I wish she were anywhere else than in Dunkerque. But, anyway, she sent you with Hamilton, and she has secured the favour of the Prince for you, and now – though she may not have attempted it – she has gained you the same person’s enmity.”
I stopped in the street and turned to him. “All this is confused enough to madden me,” I said, “and rather than be longer in the mist I shall brave her displeasure, compel an audience, and ask her for an explanation.”
“Please yourself,” said Thurot, and seeing I meant what I said he left me.
CHAPTER XXXIII
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.
CHAPTER XXXIV
OF MY WINTER CAMPAIGN IN PRUSSIA, AND ANOTHER MEETING WITH MACKELLAR OF KILBRIDE
I have no intention here of narrating at large what happened in my short career as a soldier of the French Army, curious though some of the things that befell me chanced to be. They may stand for another occasion, while I hurriedly and briefly chronicle what led to my second meeting with MacKellar of Kilbride, and through that same to the restoration of the company of Father Hamilton, the sometime priest of Dixmunde.
The Regiment d’Auvergne was far from its native hills when first I joined it, being indeed on the frontier of Austria. ‘Twas a corps not long embodied, composed of a preposterous number of mere lads as soft as kail, yet driven to miracles of exertion by drafted veteran officers of other regiments who stiffened their command with the flat of the sword. As for my lieutenancy it was nothing to be proud of in such a battalion, for I herded in a mess of foul-mouthed scoundrels and learned little of the trade of soldiering that I was supposed to be taught in the interval between our departure from the frontier and our engagement on the field as allies with the Austrians. Of the Scots that had been in the regiment at one time there was only one left – a major named MacKay, that came somewhere out of the Reay country in the shire of Sutherland, and was reputed the drunkenest officer among the allies, yet comported himself, on the strength of his Hielan’ extraction, towards myself, his Lowland countryman, with such a ludicrous haughtiness I could not bear the man – no, not from the first moment I set eyes on him!
He was a pompous little person with legs bowed through years of riding horse, and naturally he was the first of my new comrades I introduced myself to when I joined the colours. I mind he sat upon a keg of bullets, looking like a vision of Bacchus, somewhat soiled and pimply, when I entered to him and addressed him, with a certain gladness, in our tongue.
“Humph!” was what he said. “Another of his Royal Highness’s Sassenach friends! Here’s a wheen of the lousiest French privates ever shook in their breeks in front of a cannon, wanting smeddum and courage drummed into them with a scabbard, and they send me Sassenachs to do the business with when the whole hearty North of Scotland is crawling with the stuff I want particularly.”
