CHAPTER XLI
TREATS OF FATHER HAMILTON'S DEATH
It was a gay place, London, in the days I write of, however it maybe now, though Father Hamilton was prone occasionally to compareit unfavourably with the Paris of his fancy, the which he held asample-piece of paradise. The fogs and rains depressed him; he had aneye altogether unfriendly for the signs of striving commerce in thestreets and the greedy haste of clerks and merchants into whose days ofunremitting industry so few joys (as he fancied) seemed to enter.
MacKellar soon found company in it among silken bucks that held noisysederunts 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 thenumber of old friends and fellow countrymen that, by his own account,he found there. And what open hands they had! But for him that wasprivileged, for old acquaintance sake, to borrow from them, we had foundour week or two in London singularly hungry because (to tell the truthof it) our money was come very nearly to an end. But MacKellar, whohad foraged so well in Silesia, was equally good at it in the city ofLondon. From these night escapades he seldom failed to return richerthan he went, and it was he who paid the piper with so much of an air ofthinking it a privilege, that we had not the heart, even if we had theinclination, to protest.
If I had known then, as I know now, or at least suspect, that the moneythat fed and boarded us was won through his skill at dice and cards, Idaresay 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 leavemy 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 anybargain about the pardon, something--I could not so much as guesswhat--might happen to avert the scandal of a trial at Edinburgh, and thedisgrace 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 littlewhether I heard from Pitt or not; when even my country was forgotten andI was to suffer a loss whose bitterness abides with me yet. It was thedeath of Father Hamilton, whom I had grown to like exceedingly. Birdshave built and sung for many generations since then; children play inthe garden still; there is essence at the table, there is sparkle inthe wine, and he will never enjoy them any more. Fortune has come to mesince 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 thanwhen 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, itstumult hushed. I had been tempted to wander in the forenoon a goodway 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, andhis hands, that grasped my lapels as if I meant to fly from him, weretrembling.
"Oh, Paul," said he. "Here's the worst of all," and I declare his cheekswere 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 thedeath-thraws a thousand times, but never to vex me just like thisbefore. He could make two or three of us in bulk, and yet his heartwas like a wean's, and there he's crying on you even-on till I was neardemented 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 anotion to see Eastcheap, round which the writer Shakespeare had throwna glamour for him. He had gone there shortly after I had gone out in theforenoon, and after a space of walking about it had found himself in amean street where a blackguard was beating a child. 'Twas the man's ownchild, doubtless, and so he had, I make no doubt, the law of it on hisown side, but the drunken wretch outdid all reasonable chastisement, andthrashed her till the blood flowed.
Up ran the priest and took her in his arms, shielding her from the blowsof 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. Theman struck at him with his stick; Father Hamilton wrenched it from him,threw it down that he might have no unfair advantage, and flung himselfupon the wretch. He could have crushed him into jelly, but the manwas armed, and suddenly drew a knife. He thrust suddenly between thepriest's shoulders, released himself from the tottering body,and disappeared with his child apparently beyond all chance ofidentification 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, vastlymoved. "And since he came here his whole cry has been for you and FatherJoyce."
We went into the room that seemed unnaturally white and sunny. He layupon the bed-clothes. The bed was drawn towards the window, throughwhich the domes and towers and roofs of London could be seen, with theiraccustomed greyness gone below the curtain of the snow. A blotch ofblood was on his shirt-front as he lay upon his side. I thought at firstit was his own life oozing, but learned a little later that the strickenchild had had her face there.
"Paul! Paul!" he said, "I thought thou wouldst blame me for desertingthee 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 hisbed? 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 thesea that has stuck on thy shoulders for a twelvemonth, and spurred theeto infinite follies and perils! I am no more worth a tear of thine thanis the ivied ash that falls untimely and decayed, eaten out of essenceby the sins he sheltered. And the poor child, Paul!--the poor childwith her arms round my neck, her tears brine--sure I have them on mylips--the true _viaticum!_ The brute! the brute! Ah no! ah no! poorsinner, we do not know."
"Oh, father!" I cried, "and must we never go into the woods and townsany more?"
He smiled again and stroked my hair.
"Not in these fields, boy," said he, "but perhaps in more spacious, lessperplexed. 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 mighthave found it in my mother's lap. _Chere ange_--the little mother--'twasa 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 withdifficulty. Kilbride, who stood by, silent, put a finger on his pulse.At that he opened his eyes again, once more smiling, and Father Joycewas 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 priestlay smiling still, great in figure, in the simplicity and sweetness ofhis countenance like a child.
Kilbride and I stood silent for a little by the bed, and the Highlanderwas the first to speak. "I have seen worse," said he, "than FatherHamilton."
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 newswhich sent me north. He had the week's gazette in his hand, "Have youheard 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 thetidings of Conflans' defeat. Hawke came down on him off Brest, drovehim back from the point of Quiberon to the coast near the mouth ofthe Vilaine, sank four ships, captured two, and routed the enemy. Theinvasion is at an end."
"It is gallant news!" I cried, warm with satisfaction.
"Maybe," said he indifferently, "but the main thing is th
at Paul Greig,who put the Government in the way of taking proper steps, is here incheap 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 intheir power. I am one that has small faith in Governments. What willhinder them to clap you in jail and save another reward like the firstone Pitt told you about? I would never put it past a Sassenach of thename."
Then I told him it had been in my mind ever since I had seen theMinister 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 getyour neck out of the loop? I would not lippen on a Government for tenminutes. You have saved the country--that's the long and the short ofit; now you must just be saving your own hide. There's nothing for usbut 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 outmy intention of going to Edinburgh. With the priest gone, no prospectof Mr. Pitt taking the first step, and Kilbride in the humour for aretreat, I decided that the sooner I brought matters to a head thebetter.
There was a mail coach that went north weekly. It took a considerabledeal of money and a fortnight of time to make the journey between thetwo capitals, but MacKellar, free-handed to the last, lent me themoney (which I sent him six months later to Holland), and I set out oneSaturday from the "Bull and Whistle" in a genteel two-end spring machinethat made a brisk passage--the weather considered--as far as York on ourway into Scotland.
I left on a night of jubilation for the close of the war and theoverthrow of Conflans. Bonfires blazed on the river-side and theeminences round the city; candles were in every window, the peoplewere huzzaing in the streets where I left behind me only the one kentface--that of MacKellar of Kilbride who came to the coach to see thelast of me. And everywhere was the snow--deep, silent, apparentlyenduring.