CHAPTER XXIX
WHEREIN THE PRIEST LEAVES ME, AND I MAKE AN INLAND VOYAGE
What this marvel betokened was altogether beyond my comprehension, butthe five men were no sooner gone than I clapped on my hat and drew upthe collar of my coat and ran like fury through the plashing streets forthe place that was our temporary home. It must have been an intuition ofthe raised that guided me; my way was made without reflection on it,at pure hazard, and yet I landed through a multitude of winding andbewildering streets upon the Isle of the City and in front of the HotelDieu in a much shorter time than it had taken me to get from there tothe Duke of Burgundy's Head.
I banged past the doorkeeper, jumped upstairs to the clergyman'squarters, threw open the door and--found Father Hamilton was gone!
About the matter there could be no manner of dubiety, for he had left aletter directed to myself upon the drawers-head.
"My Good Paul (said the epistle, that I have kept till now as a memorialof my adventure): When you return you will discover from this that Ihave taken leave _a l'anglaise_, and I fancy I can see my secretarylooking like the arms of Bourges (though that is an unkind imputation).'Tis fated, seemingly, that there shall be no rest for the sole ofthe foot of poor Father Hamilton. I had no sooner got to like a loosecollar, and an unbuttoned vest, and the seclusion of a cell, than I mustbe plucked out; and now when my birds--the darlings!--are on the verypoint of hatching I must make adieux. _Oh! la belle equipee!_ M. Buhotknows where I am--that's certain, so I must remove myself, and this timeI do not propose to burden M. Paul Greig with my company, for it willbe a miracle if they fail to find me. As for my dear Croque-mort, he canhave the glass coach and Jacques and Bernard, and doubtless the besthe can do with them is to take all to Dunkerque and leave them there.I myself, I go _sans trompette_, and no inquiries will discover to himwhere I go."
As a postscript he added, "And 'twas only a sailor's log, dear lad! Mypoor young Paul!" When I read the letter I was puzzled tremendously, andat first I felt inclined to blame the priest for a scurvy flitting torid himself of my society, but a little deliberation convinced me thatno such ignoble consideration was at the bottom of his flight. If I readhis epistle aright the step he took was in my own interest, though howit could be so there was no surmising. In any case he was gone; hisfriend in the hospital told me he had set out behind myself, and takena candle with him and given a farewell visit to his birds, and almostcried about them and about myself, and then departed for good to concealhimself, in some other part of the city, probably, but exactly wherehis friend had no way of guessing. And it was a further evidence of thepriest's good feeling to myself (if such were needed) that he had left asum of a hundred livres for me towards the costs of my future movements.
I left the Hotel Dieu at midnight to wander very melancholy about thestreets for a time, and finally came out upon the river's bank, wheresome small vessels hung at a wooden quay. I saw them in moonlight (fornow the rain was gone), and there rose in me such a feeling as I hadoften experienced as a lad in another parish than the Mearns, to see theroad that led from strangeness past my mother's door. The river seemed apathway out of mystery and discontent to the open sea, and the open seawas the same that beat about the shores of Britain, and my thoughttook flight there and then to Britain, but stopped for a space, like awearied bird, upon the town Dunkerque. There is one who reads thiswho will judge kindly, and pardon when I say that I felt a sort oftenderness for the lady there, who was not only my one friend in France,so far as I could guess, but, next to my mother, the only woman who knewmy shame and still retained regard for me. And thinking about Scotlandand about Dunkerque, and seeing that watery highway to them both, I wasseized with a great repugnance for the city I stood in, and felt thatI must take my feet from there at once. Father Hamilton was lost to me:that was certain. I could no more have found him in this tanglementof streets and strange faces than I could have found a needle in ahaystack, and I felt disinclined to make the trial. Nor was I preparedto avail myself of his offer of the coach and horses, for to gotravelling again in them would be to court Bicetre anew.
There was a group of busses or barges at the quay, as I have said, allhuddled together as it were animals seeking warmth, with their bowsnuzzling each other, and on one of them there were preparations beingmade for her departure. A cargo of empty casks was piled up in her,lights were being hung up at her bow and stern, and one of her crew wasashore in the very act of casting off her ropes. At a flash it occurredto me that I had here the safest and the speediest means of flight.
I ran at once to the edge of the quay and clumsily propounded a questionas to where the barge was bound for.
"Rouen or thereabouts," said the master.
I asked if I could have a passage, and chinked my money in my pocket.
My French might have been but middling, but Lewis d'Or talks in alanguage all can understand.
Ten minutes later we were in the fairway of the river running downthrough the city which, in that last look I was ever fated to have ofit, seemed to brood on either hand of us like bordering hills, and atmorning we were at a place by name Triel.
Of all the rivers I have seen I must think the Seine the finest. It runsin loops like my native Forth, sometimes in great, wide stretches thathave the semblance of moorland lochs. In that fine weather, with a sunthat was most genial, the country round about us basked and smiled.We moved upon the fairest waters, by magic gardens, and the borders ofenchanted little towns. Now it would be a meadow sloping backward fromthe bank, where reeds were nodding, to the horizon; now an orchardstanding upon grass that was the rarest green, then a village with rustyroofs and spires and the continual chime of bells, with women washingupon stones or men silent upon wherries fishing. Every link of theriver opened up a fresher wonder; if not some poplared isle that hadthe invitation to a childish escapade, 'twould be another town, or thegarden of a chateau, maybe, with ladies walking stately on the lawns,perhaps alone, perhaps with cavaliers about them as if they movedin some odd woodland minuet. I can mind of songs that came from openwindows, sung in women's voices; of girls that stood drawing water andsmiled on us as we passed, at home in our craft of fortune, and stillthe lucky roamers seeing the world so pleasantly without the trouble ofmoving a step from our galley fire.
Sometimes in the middle of the days we would stop at a red-faced,ancient inn, with bowers whose tables almost had their feet dipped inthe river, and there would eat a meal and linger on a pot of wine whileour barge fell asleep at her tether and dreamt of the open sea. About usin these inns came the kind country-people and talked of trivial thingsfor the mere sake of talking, because the weather was sweet and Godso gracious; homely sounds would waft from the byres and from thebarns--the laugh of bairns, the whistle of boys, the low of cattle.
At night we moored wherever we might be, and once I mind of a placecalled Andelys, selvedged with chalky cliffs and lorded over by a castlecalled Gaillard, that had in every aspect of it something of the clashof weapons and of trumpet-cry. The sky shone blue through its gapinggables and its crumbling windows like so many eyes; the birds thatwheeled all round it seemed to taunt it for its inability. The old warsover, the deep fosse silent, the strong men gone--and there at its footthe thriving town so loud with sounds of peaceful trade! Whoever hasbeen young, and has the eye for what is beautiful and great and stately,must have felt in such a scene that craving for companionship thattickles like a laugh within the heart--that longing for some one to feelwith him, and understand, and look upon with silence. In my case 'twastwo women I would have there with me just to look upon this Gaillard andthe town below it.
Then the bending, gliding river again, the willow and the aspenedges, the hazy orchards and the emerald swards; hamlets, towns,farm-steadings, chateaux, kirks, and mills; the flying mallard, theleaping perch, the silver dawns, the starry nights, the ripple of thewater in my dreams, and at last the city of Rouen. My ship of fortunewent no further on.
I slept a night in an inn upon the
quay, and early the next morning,having bought a pair of boots to save my red shoes, I took the road overa hill that left Rouen and all its steeples, reeking at the bottom of abowl. I walked all day, through woods and meadows and trim small townsand orchards, and late in the gloaming came upon the port of Havre deGrace.
The sea was sounding there, and the smell of it was like a salutation. Iwent out at night from my inn, and fairly joyed in its propinquity, andwas so keen on it that I was at the quay before it was well daylight.The harbour was full of vessels. It was not long ere I got word of onethat was in trim for Dunkerque, to which I took a passage, and by favourof congenial weather came upon the afternoon of the second day.
Dunkerque was more busy with soldiers than ever, all the arms of Franceseemed to be collected there, and ships of war and flat-bottomed boatsinnumerable were in the harbour.
At the first go-off I made for the lodgings I had parted from sounceremoniously on the morning of that noisy glass coach.
The house, as I have said before, was over a baker's shop, and wasreached by a common outer stair that rose from a court-yard behind.Though internally the domicile was well enough, indeed had a sort ofold-fashioned gentility, and was kept by a woman whose man had been acolonel of dragoons, but now was a tippling pensioner upon the king, andhis own wife's labours, it was, externally, somewhat mean, the place asolid merchant of our own country might inhabit, but scarce the placewherein to look for royal blood. What was my astonishment, then, when,as I climbed the stair, I came face to face with the Prince!
I felt the stair swing off below me and half distrusted my senses, but Ihad the presence of mind to take my hat off.
"_Bon jour, Monsieur_, said he, with a slight hiccough, and I saw thathe was flushed and meant to pass with an evasion. There and then adaft notion to explain myself and my relations with the priest who hadplanned his assassination came to me, and I stopped and spoke.
"Your Royal Highness---" I began, and at that he grew purple.
"_Cest un drole de corps!_" said he, and, always speaking in French,said he again:
"You make an error, Monsieur; I have not the honour of Monsieur'sacquaintance," and looked at me with a bold eye and a disconcerting.
"Greig," I blurted, a perfect lout, and surely as blind as a mole thatnever saw his desire, "I had the honour to meet your Royal Highness atVersailles."
"My Royal Highness!" said he, this time in English. "I think Monsieurmistakes himself." And then, when he saw how crestfallen I was,he smiled and hiccoughed again. "You are going to call on our goodClancarty," said he. "In that case please tell him to translate to youthe proverb, _Oui phis sait plus se tait_."
"There is no necessity, Monsieur," I answered promptly. "Now that I lookcloser I see I was mistaken. The person I did you the honour to take youfor was one in whose opinion (if he took the trouble to think of me atall) I should have liked to re-establish myself, that was all."
In spite of his dissipation there was something noble in his manner--astyle of the shoulders and the hands, a poise of the head that I mightpractise for years and come no closer on than any nowt upon my father'sfields. It was that which I remember best of our engagement on thestair, and that at the last of it he put out his hand to bid megood-day.
"My name," says he, "is Monsieur Albany so long as I am in Dunkerque._A bon entendeur salut!_ I hope we may meet again, Monsieur Greig." Helooked down at the black boots I had bought me in Rouen. "If I mighttake the liberty to suggest it," said he, smiling, "I should abide bythe others. I have never seen their wearer wanting wit, _esprit_, andprudence--which are qualities that at this moment I desire above all inthose that count themselves my friends."
And with that he was gone. I watched him descend the remainder of thestair with much deliberation, and did not move a step myself until thetip of his scabbard had gone round the corner of the close.