The Shoes of Fortune
“The man that is on the top of the hill will always be seeing furthest,” he said. “I have come in contact with the best in Europe on that under standing, but it calls for a kind of Hielan’ tact that – that – ”
“That you cannot credit to a poor Lowlander like myself,” said I, amused at his vanity.
“Oh, I’m meaning no offence, just no offence at all,” he responded quickly, and flushing at his faux pas. “You have as much talent of the kind as the best of us I’m not denying, and I have just the one advantage, that I was brought up in a language that has delicacies of address beyond the expression of the English, or the French that is, in some measure, like it.”
“Well,” said I, “the spirit of it is obviously not to be translated into English, judging from the way you go on crying up your countrymen at the expense of my own.”
“That is true enough,” he conceded, “and a very just observe; but no matter, what I would be at is that your news is worth too much to be wasted on any poor lackey hanging about his Majesty’s back door, who might either sell it or you on his own behoof, or otherwise make a mull of the matter with the very best intentions. If you would take my way of it, there would be but Geordie himself for you.”
“What have you to say to that?” I asked the priest, whose knowledge of the world struck me as in most respects more trustworthy than that of this impetuous Highland chirurgeon.
“A plague of your kings! say I; sure I know nothing about them, for my luck has rubbed me against the gabardine and none of your ermined cloaks. There must be others who know his Majesty’s affairs better than his Majesty himself, otherwise what advantage were there in being a king?”
In fine his decision was for one of the Ministers, and at last the Secretary of State was decided on.
How I came to meet with Mr. Pitt need not here be recorded; ‘twas indeed more a matter of good luck than of good guidance, and had there been no Scots House of Argyll perhaps I had never got rid of my weighty secret after all. I had expected to meet a person magnificent in robes of state; instead of which ‘twas a man in a blue coat with yellow metal buttons, full round bob wig, a large hat, and no sword-bag nor ruffles that met me – more like a country coachman or a waggoner than a personage of importance.
He scanned over again the letter that had introduced me and received me cordially enough. In a few words I indicated that I was newly come from France, whence I had escaped in a smuggler’s boat, and that I had news of the first importance which I counted it my duty to my country to convey to him with all possible expedition.
At that his face changed and he showed singularly little eagerness to hear any more.
“There will be – there will be the – the usual bargain, I presume, Mr. Greig?” he said, half-smiling. “What are the conditions on which I am to have this vastly important intelligence?”
“I never dreamt of making any, sir,” I answered, promptly, with some natural chagrin, and yet mixed with a little confusion that I should in truth be expecting something in the long run for my story.
“Pardon my stupid pleasantry, Mr. Greig,” he said, reddening slightly. “I have been so long one of his Majesty’s Ministers, and of late have seen so many urgent couriers from France with prime news to be bargained for, that I have grown something of a cynic. You are the first that has come with a secret not for sale. Believe me, your story will have all the more attention because it is offered disinterestedly.”
In twenty minutes I had put him into possession of all I knew of the plans for invasion. He walked up and down the room, with his hands behind his back, intently listening, now and then uttering an exclamation incredulous or astonished.
“You are sure of all this?” he asked at last sharply, looking in my face with embarrassing scrutiny.
“As sure as any mortal man may be with the gift of all his senses,” I replied firmly. “At this moment Thurot’s vessel is, I doubt not, taking in her stores; the embarkation of troops is being practised daily, troops are assembled all along the coast from Brest to Vannes, and – ”
“Oh! on these points we are, naturally, not wholly dark,” said the Minister. “We have known for a year of this somewhat theatrical display on the part of the French, but the lines of the threatened invasion are not such as your remarkable narrative suggests. You have been good enough to honour me with your confidence, Mr. Greig; let me reciprocate by telling you that we have our – our good friends in France, and that for six months back I have been in possession of the Chevalier D’Arcy’s instructions to Dumont to reconnoitre the English coast, and of Dumont’s report, with the chart of the harbours and towns where he proposed that the descent should be made.” He smiled somewhat grimly. “The gentleman who gave us the information,” he went on, “stipulated for twenty thousand pounds and a pension of two thousand a year as the just reward for his loving service to his country in her hour of peril. He was not to get his twenty thousand, I need scarcely say, but he was to get something in the event of his intelligence proving to be accurate, and if it were for no more than to get the better of such a dubious patriot I should wish his tale wholly disproved, though we have hitherto acted on the assumption that it might be trustworthy. There cannot be alternative plans of invasion; our informant – another Scotsman, I may say – is either lying or has merely the plan of a feint.”
“You are most kind, sir,” said I.
“Oh,” he said, “I take your story first, and as probably the most correct, simply because it comes from one that loves his country and makes no bagman’s bargains for the sale of secrets vital to her existence.”
“I am much honoured, sir,” said I, with a bow.
And then he stopped his walk abruptly and faced me again.
“You have told me, Mr. Greig,” he went on, “that Conflans is to descend in a week or two on the coast of Scotland, and that Thurot is to create a diversion elsewhere with the aid of the Swedes, I have, from the most delicate considerations, refrained from asking you how you know all this?”
“I heard it from the lips of Thurot himself.”
“Thurot! impossible!” he murmured.
“Of Thurot himself, sir.”
“You must be much in that pirate’s confidence,” said Mr. Pitt, for the first time with suspicion.
“Not to that extent that he would tell me of his plans for invading my country,” I answered, “and I learned these things by the merest accident. I overheard him speak last Sunday in Dunkerque with the Young Pretender – ”
“The Pretender!” cried the Minister, shrugging his shoulders, and looking at me with more suspicion than ever. “You apparently move in the most select and interesting society, Mr. Greig?”
“In this case, sir, it was none of my choosing,” I replied, and went on briefly to explain how I had got into Thurot’s chamber unknown to him, and unwittingly overhead the Prince and him discuss the plan.
“Very good, very good, and still – you will pardon me – I cannot see how so devout a patriot as Mr. Greig should be in the intimacy of men like Thurot?”
“A most natural remark under the circumstances,” I replied. “Thurot saved my life from a sinking British vessel, and it is no more than his due to say he proved a very good friend to me many a time since. But I was to know nothing of his plans of invasion, for he knew very well I had no sympathy with them nor with Charles Edward, and, as I have told you, he made me his prisoner on his ship so that I might not betray what I had overheard.”
The Minister made hurried notes of what I had told him, and concluded the interview by asking where I could be communicated with during the next few days.
I gave him my direction at the Queen’s Head, but added that I had it in my mind to go shortly to Edinburgh, where my address would be best known to the Lord Advocate.
“The Lord Advocate!” said Mr. Pitt, raising his eyebrows.
“I may as well make a clean breast of it, sir,” I proceeded hurriedly, “and say that I left Scotland under circumstances peculiarly distressing. Thurot saved me from a ship called the Seven Sisters, that had been scuttled and abandoned with only myself and a seaman on board of her in mid-channel, by a man named Daniel Risk.”
“Bless me!” cried Mr. Pitt, “the scoundrel Risk was tried in Edinburgh a month or two ago on several charges, including the one you mention, and he has either been hanged, or is waiting to be hanged at this moment, in the jail at Edinburgh.”
“I was nominally purser on the Seven Sisters, but in actual fact I was fleeing from justice.”
The Minister hemmed, and fumbled with his papers.
“It was owing to a duelling affair, in which I had the misfortune to – to – kill my opponent. I desire, sir, above all, to be thoroughly honest, and I am bound to tell you it was my first intention to make the conveyance of this plan of Thurot’s a lever to secure my pardon for the crime of manslaughter which lies at my charge. I would wish now that my loyalty to my country was really disinterested, and I have, in the last half-hour, made up my mind to surrender myself to the law of Scotland.”
“That is for yourself to decide on,” said the Minister more gravely, “but I should advise the postponement of your departure to Edinburgh until you hear further from me. I shall expect to find you at the inn at Charing Cross during the next week; thereafter – ”
He paused for a moment. “Well – thereafter we shall see,” he added.
After a few more words of the kindest nature the Minister shook hands with the confessed manslayer (it flashed on me as a curious circumstance), and I went back to join the priest and my fellow countryman.
They were waiting full of impatience.
“Hast the King’s pardon in thy pocket, friend Scotland?” cried Father Hamilton; then his face sank in sympathy with the sobriety of my own that was due to my determination on a surrender to justice once my business with the Government was over.
“I have no more in my pocket than I went out with in the morning,” said I. “But my object, so far, has been served. Mr. Pitt knows my story and is like to take such steps as maybe needful. As for my own affair I have mentioned it, but it has gone no further than that.”
“You’re not telling me you did not make a bargain of it before saying a word about the bit plan?” cried MacKellar in surprise, and could scarcely find words strong enough to condemn me for what he described as my stupidity.
“Many a man will sow the seed that will never eat the syboe,” was his comment; “and was I not right yonder when I said yon about the tact? If it had been me now I would have gone very canny to the King himself and said: ‘Your Majesty, I’m a man that has made a slip in a little affair as between gentlemen, and had to put off abroad until the thing blew by. I can save the lives of many thousand Englishmen, and perhaps the country itself, by intelligence that came to my knowledge when I was abroad; if I prove it, will your Majesty pardon the thing that lies at my charge?’”
“And would have his Majesty’s signature to the promise as ‘twere a deed of sale!” laughed the priest convulsively. “La! la! la! Paul, here’s our Celtic Solon with tact – the tact of the foot-pad. Stand and deliver! My pardon, sire, or your life! Mon Dieu! there runs much of the old original cateran in thy methods of diplomacy, good Master MacKellar. Too much for royal courts, I reckon.” MacKellar pshawed impatiently. “I’m asking you what is the Secretary’s name, Mr. Greig?” said he. “Fox or Pitt it is all the same – the one is sly and the other is deep, and it is the natures of their names. I’ll warrant Mr. Pitt has forgotten already the name of the man who gave him the secret, and the wisest thing Paul Greig could do now would be to go into hiding as fast as he can.”
But I expressed my determination to wait in the Queen’s Head a week longer, as I had promised, and thereafter (if nothing happened to prevent it) to submit myself at Edinburgh. Though I tried to make as little of that as possible to myself, and indeed would make myself believe I was going to act with a rare bravery, I must confess now that my determination was strengthened greatly by the reflection that my service to the country would perhaps annul or greatly modify my sentence.
CHAPTER XLI
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.
CHAPTER XLII
I DEPART IN THE MIDST OF ILLUMINATION AND COME TO A JAIL, BAD NEWS, AND AN OLD ENEMY
We carried this elation all through England with us. Whatever town we stopped at flags were flying, and the oldest resident must be tipsy on the green for the glory of the British Isles. The seven passengers who occupied the coach with me found in these rejoicings, and in the great event which gave rise to them, subjects of unending discourse as we dragged through the country in the wake of steaming horses. There was with us a maker of perukes that had found trade dull in Town (as they call it), and planned to start business in York; a widow woman who had buried her second husband and was returning to her parents in Northumberland with a sprightliness that told she was ready to try a third if he offered; and a squire (as they call a laird) of Morpeth.
But for the common interest in the rejoicings it might have been a week before the company thawed to each other enough to start a conversation. The first mile of the journey, however, found us in the briskest clebate on Hawke and his doings. I say us, but in truth my own share in the conversation was very small as I had more serious reflections.
The perruquier, as was natural to his trade, knew everything and itched to prove it.
