Kitabı oku: «The Shoes of Fortune», sayfa 16
CHAPTER XXXVII
I OVERHEAR THE PLAN OF BRITAIN’S INVASION
I began these chronicles with a homily upon the pregnancy of chance that gives the simplest of our acts ofttimes far-reaching and appalling consequences. It is clear that I had never become the Spoiled Horn and vexed my parents’ lives had not a widow woman burned her batch of scones, and though perhaps the pair of shoes in the chest bequeathed to me by my Uncle Andrew were without the magic influence he and I gave credit for, it is probable that I had made a different flight from Scotland had they not led me in the way of Daniel Risk.
And even now their influence was not ended. During the months I had spent at soldiering the red shoes reposed among my baggage; even when I had changed from the uniform of the Regiment d’Auvergne upon the frontier of Holland, and made myself again a common citizen of Europe, I had some freit (as we say of a superstition) against resuming the shoes that had led me previously into divers perils. But the day we left Helvoet in the Hollands Deep hoy, I was so hurried in my departure that the red shoes were the only ones I could lay hands on. As luck would have it, when I entered Dunkerque for the last time in my history some days after, I was wearing the same leather as on the first day of my arrival there, and the fact led, by a singularity of circumstances, to my final severance from many of those: companions – some of them pleasant and unforgetable – I had made acquaintance with in France.
It was thus that the thing happened.
When we entered Dunkerque, the priest, Kilbride, and I went to an inn upon the sea front. Having breakfasted I was deputed to go forth and call upon Thurot, explain our circumstances, take his counsel, and return to the hoy where my two friends would return to wait for me. He was out when I reached his lodging, but his Swiss – a different one from what he had before when I was there – informed me that his master was expected back at any moment, and invited me to step in and wait for him. I availed myself of the opportunity.
Our voyage along the coast had been delayed by contrary winds, so that now it was the Sabbath; the town was by-ordinary still (though indeed Sabbath nor Saturday made much difference, as a rule, on the gaiety of Dunkerque), and wearied by the sea travel that had just concluded I fell fast asleep in Captain Thurot’s chair.
I was wakened by a loud knocking at the outer door, not the first, as it may be remembered, that called me forth from dreams to new twists of fortune, and I started to my feet to meet my host.
What was my chagrin to hear the Prince’s voice in converse with him on the stair!
“Here is a pretty pickle!” I told myself. “M. Albany is the last man on earth I would choose to meet at this moment,” and without another reflection I darted into the adjoining room and shut the door. It was Thurot’s bed-chamber, with a window that looked out upon the court where fowls were cackling. I was no sooner in than I somewhat rued my precipitation, for the manlier course indubitably had been to bide where I was. But now there was no retreating, so I sat with what patience I could command to wait my discovery by the tenant of the place after his royal visitor was gone.
It was the Sabbath day as I have said, and the chimes of St. Eloi were going briskly upon some papist canticle, but not so loud that I could not hear, in spite of myself, all that went on in the next room.
At first I paid no heed, for the situation was unworthy enough of itself without any attempt on my part to be an eavesdropper. But by-and-bye, through the banging of the bells of St. Eloi, I heard M. Albany (still to give the man his by-name) mention the name Ecosse.
Scotland! The name of her went through me like a pang!
They spoke in French of course; I think I could have understood them had it been Chinese. For they discussed some details of the intended invasion that still hung fire, and from the first of M. Albany’s sentences I learned that the descent was determined upon Scotland. ‘Twas that which angered me and made me listen for the rest with every sense of the spy and deterred by never a scruple. At first I had fancied Thurot would learn from his servant I was in the house, and leave me alone till his royal guest’s departure from an intuition that I desired no meeting, but it was obvious now that no such consideration would have induced him to let me hear the vast secret they discussed.
“Twenty thousand men are between Brest and Vannes,” said M. Albany. “We shall have them in frigates in a fortnight from to-day, and then, mon Capitaine, affairs shall move briskly.”
“And still,” said Thurot, who had some odd tone of dissatisfaction in his voice, “I had preferred it had been the South of England. Dumont has given us every anchorage and sounding on the coast between Beachy Head and Arundel, and from there we could all the sooner have thrust at the heart of England. This Scotland – ”
“Bah! Captain Thurot,” cried his Royal Highness impatiently, “you talk like a fool. At the heart, indeed! With all habitable England like a fat about it, rich with forts and troops and no more friendship for us than for the Mameluke! No, no, Thurot, I cry Scotland; all the chances are among the rocks, and I am glad it has been so decided on.”
“And still, with infinite deference, your Royal Highness, this same West of Scotland never brought but the most abominable luck to you and yours,” continued Thurot. “Now, Arundel Bay – ”
“Oh! to the devil with Arundel Bay!” cried M. Albany; “‘tis settled otherwise, and you must take it as you find it. Conflans and his men shall land upon the West —mon Dieu! I trust they may escape its fangs; and measures will be there taken with more precaution and I hope with more success than in Seventeen Forty-five. Thence they will march to England, sweeping the whole country before them, and not leaving behind them a man or boy who can carry a musket. Thus they must raise the army to fifty or sixty thousand men, strike a terror into England, and carry all with a high hand. I swear ‘tis a fatted hog this England: with fewer than ten thousand Highlanders I have made her thrill at the very vitals.”
Thurot hummed. Plainly there was much in the project that failed to meet his favour.
“And Conflans?” said he.
His Royal Highness laughed.
“Ha! Captain,” said he, “I know, I know. ‘Twould suit you better if a certain Tony Thurot had command.”
“At least,” said Thurot, “I am in my prime, while the Marshal is beyond his grand climacteric.”
“And still, by your leave, with the reputation of being yet the best – well, let us say among the best – of the sea officers of France. Come, come, Captain, there must be no half-hearts in this venture; would to Heaven I were permitted to enjoy a share in it! And on you, my friend, depends a good half of the emprise and the gloire.”
“Gloire!” cried Thurot. “With every deference to your Royal Highness I must consider myself abominably ill-used in this matter. That I should be sent off to Norway and hound-in wretched Swedes with a personage like Flaubert! Oh, I protest, ‘tis beyond all reason! Is it for that I have been superseded by a man like Conflans that totters on the edge of the grave?”
“I hope ‘tis England’s grave,” retorted M. Albany with unfailing good humour, and I heard the gluck of wine as he helped himself to another glass. “I repeat gloire, with every apology to the experience of M. le Corsair. ‘Tis your duty to advance with your French and your Swedes upon the North of England, and make the diversion in these parts that shall inconvenience the English army front or rear.”
“Oh, curse your diversions!” cried Thurot. “If I have a talent at all ‘tis for the main attack. And this Conflans – ”
The remainder of the discussion, so far as I remained to hear it, gave no enlargement upon the plan thus laid bare. But in any case my whole desire now was to escape from the house without discovery, for I had news that made my return to Britain imperative.
I opened the window quietly and slipped out. The drop to the court was less than my own height. Into the street I turned with the sober step of leisure, yet my feet tingled to run hard and my heart was stormy. The bells of St. Eloi went on ringing; the streets were growing busy with holiday-makers and the soldiers who were destined to over-run my country. I took there and then the most dreadful hatred of them, and scowled so black that some of the soldiers cried after me with a jeer.
The priest and Kilbride I found were not at the inn where I had left them, having gone back to the vessel, so I hurried down to the quay after them. The hoy had been moved since morning, and in the throng of other vessels that were in the harbour at the time I lost well-nigh an hour in seeking her. Whether that was well for me or ill would be folly now to guess, but when I had no more than set a foot upon the gunwale of a small boat that was to take me out to her I was clapped upon the shoulder.
I turned, to see Thurot and two officers of marine!
“Pardon, M. Greig, a moment,” said Thurot, with not the kindest of tones. “Surely you would not hurry out of Dunkerque without a congé for old friends?”
I stammered some sentences that were meant to reassure him. He interrupted me, and – not with any roughness, but with a pressure there was no mistaking and I was not fool enough to resist – led me from the side of the quay.
“Ma foi!” said he, “‘Tis the most ridiculous thing! I had nearly missed you and could never have forgiven myself. My Swiss has just informed me that you were in the house an hour ago while I was there myself. I fear we must have bored you, M. Albany and I, with our dull affairs. At least there was no other excuse for your unceremonious departure through my back window.”
I was never well-equipped to conceal my feelings, and it was plain in my face that I knew all.
He sighed.
“Well, lad,” said he, rather sorrowfully, “I’d give a good many louis d’or that you had come visiting at another hour of the day, and now there’s but one thing left me. My Swiss did not know you, but he has – praise le bon Dieu!– a pair of eyes in his head, and he remembered that my visitor wore red shoes. Red shoes and a Scotsman! – the conjunction was unmistakable, and here we are, M. Greig. There are a score of men looking all over Dunkerque at this moment for these same shoes.”
“Confound the red shoes!” I cried, unable to conceal my vexation that they should once more have brought me into trouble.
“By no means, M. Greig,” said Thurot. “But for them we should never have identified our visitor, and a somewhat startling tale was over the Channel a little earlier than we intended. And now all that I may do for old friendship to yourself and the original wearer of the shoes is to give you a free trip to England in my own vessel. ‘Tis not the Roi Rouge this time – worse luck! – but a frigate, and we can be happy enough if you are not a fool.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THUROT’S PRISONER. MY FRIEND THE WATCH
It was plain from the first that my overhearing of the plot must compel Thurot to the step he took. He was not unkind, but so much depended on the absolute secrecy of the things he had talked to the Prince, that, even at the unpleasant cost of trepanning me, he must keep me from carrying my new-got information elsewhere. For that reason he refused to accede to my request for a few minutes’ conversation with the priest or my fellow-countrymen. The most ordinary prudence, he insisted, demanded that he should keep me in a sort of isolation until it was too late to convey a warning across the Channel.
It was for these reasons I was taken that Sabbath afternoon to the frigate that was destined to be in a humble sense his flagship, and was lying in the harbour with none of her crew as yet on board. I was given a cabin; books were furnished to cheer my incarceration, for it was no less. I was to all intents and purposes a prisoner, though enjoying again some of the privileges of the salle d’épreuves for the sake of old acquaintance.
All that day I planned escape. Thurot came to the cabin and smoked and conversed pleasantly, but found me so abstracted that he could scarcely fail to think I meant a counter-sap.
“Be tranquil, my Paul,” he advised; “Clancarty and I will make your life on ship-board as little irksome as possible, but it is your own cursed luck that you must make up your mind to a fortnight of it.”
But that was considerably longer than I was ready to think of with equanimity. What I wished for was an immediate freedom and a ship to England, and while he talked I reviewed a dozen methods of escape. Here was I with a secret worth a vast deal to the British Government; if I could do my country that service of putting her into possession of it in time to prevent catastrophe, might I not, without presumption, expect some clemency from her laws for the crime I had committed in the hot blood of ignorant and untutored youth? I saw the most cheerful possibilities rise out of that accident that had made me an eavesdropper in Thurot’s lodging – freedom, my family perhaps restored to me, my name partly re-established; but the red shoes that set me on wrong roads to start with still kept me on them. Thurot was an amiable enough gaoler, but not his best wine nor his wittiest stories might make me forget by how trivial a chance I had lost my opportunity.
We were joined in the afternoon by Lord Clancarty.
“What, lad!” cried his lordship, pomaded and scented beyond words; fresh, as he told us, from the pursuit of a lady whose wealth was shortly to patch up his broken fortunes. “What, lad! Here’s a pretty matter! Pressed, egad! A renegade against his will! ‘Tis the most cursed luck, Captain Thurot, and wilt compel the poor young gentleman to cut the throats of his own countrymen?”
“I? Faith, not I!” said Thurot. “I press none but filthy Swedes. M. Greig has my word for it that twelve hours before we weigh anchor he may take his leave of us. Je le veux bien.”
“Bah! ‘Tis an impolite corsair this. As for me I should be inconsolable to lose M. Greig to such a dull country as this England. Here’s an Occasion, M. le Capitaine, for pledging his health in a bottle, and wishing him well out of his troubles.”
“You do not stand sufficiently on your dignity, Clancarty,” laughed Thurot. “Here’s the enemy – ”
“Dignity! pooh!” said his lordship. “To stand on that I should need a year’s practice first on the tight-rope. There’s that about an Irish gentleman that makes the posturings and proprieties and pretences of the fashionable world unnecessary. Sure, race will show in his face and action if he stood alone in his shirt-sleeves on a village common juggling balls. I am of the oldest blood that springs in Irish kings. ‘Tis that knowledge keeps my heart up when circumstances make the world look rotten like a cheese. But the curst thing is one cannot for ever be drinking and dining off a pedigree, and here I am deserted by M. Tête-de-mouche – ”
Thurot put up his hand to check one of these disloyalties to the Pretender that I had long since learned were common with Lord Clancarty.
“Bah!” cried his lordship. “I love you, Tony, and all the other boys, but your Prince is a madman – a sotted madman tied to the petticoat tails of a trollope. This Walkinshaw – saving your presence, Paul Greig, for she’s your countrywoman and by way of being your friend, I hear – has ruined Charles and the Cause. We have done what we could to make him send madame back to the place she came from, but he’ll do nothing of the kind. ‘She has stuck by me through thick and thin, and lost all for me, and now I shall stick by her,’ says foolish Master Sentiment.”
“Bravo!” cried Thurot. “‘Tis these things make us love the Prince and have faith in his ultimate success.”
“You were ever the hopeful ass, Tony,” said his lordship coolly. “Il riest pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre, and you must shut your ears against a tale that all the world is shouting at the pitch of its voice. Who knows better than Tony Thurot how his Royal Highness has declined? Why! ‘tis manifest in the fellow’s nose; I declare he drinks like a fish – another vice he brought back from your mountain land, M. Greig, along with Miss Walkinshaw – ”
“There is far too much of Miss Walkinshaw about your lordship’s remarks,” I cried in an uncontrollable heat that the lady should be the subject of implications so unkind.
He stared, and then kissed his hand to me with laughter and a bow, “Ha!” he cried, “here’s another young gentleman of sentiment. Stap me if I say a word against the lady for your sake, Andy Greig’s nephew.” And back he went to his bottle.
In this light fashion we spent a day that by rights should have been more profitably and soberly occupied. The frigate lay well out from the quays from which Thurot had conveyed me with none of the indignities that might be expected by a prisoner. There was, as I have said, none of her crew on board save a watch of two men. Beside her quarter there hung a small smuggling cutter that had been captured some days previously. As I sat in the cabin, yawning at the hinder-end over Clancarty’s sallies, I could hear now and then the soft thudding of the smuggler’s craft against the fenders as the sea rocked us lightly, and it put a mad fancy into my head.
How good it would be, I thought, to be free on board such a vessel and speeding before a light wind to Britain! Was it wholly impossible? The notion so possessed me that I took an occasion to go on deck and see how things lay.
The smuggler’s boat had her mast stepped, but no sails in her. Over the bulwark of the frigate leaned one of the watch idly looking at sea-gulls that cried like bairns upon the smuggler’s thwarts and gunnels. He was a tarry Dutchman (by his build and colour); I fancy that at the time he never suspected I was a prisoner, for he saluted me with deference.
The harbour was emptier than usual of shipping. Dusk was falling on the town; some lights were twinkling wanly and bells rang in the cordage of the quays. I asked the seaman if he knew where the hoy Vrijster of Helvoetsluys lay.
At that his face brightened and he promptly pointed to her yellow hull on the opposite side of the harbour.
“Did my honour know Captain Breuer?” he asked, in crabbed French.
My honour was very pleased to confess that he did, though in truth my acquaintance with the skipper who had taken us round from Helvoetsluys went scarcely further than sufficed me to recall his name.
The best sailor ever canted ship! my Dutchman assured me with enthusiasm. How often have I heard the self-same sentiment from mariners? for there is something jovial and kind in the seaman’s manner that makes him ever fond of the free, the brave and competent of his own calling, and ready to cry their merits round the rolling world.
A good seaman certainly! – I agreed heartily, though the man might have been merely middling for all I knew of him.
He would like nothing better than to have an hour with Captain Breuer, said Mynheer.
“And I, too,” said I quickly. “But for Captain Thurot’s pressing desire that I should spend the evening here I should be in Breuer’s cabin now. Next to being with him there I would reckon the privilege of having him here.”
There might be very little difficulty about that if my honour was willing, said Mynheer. They were old shipmates; had sailed the Zuyder Sea together, and drunken in a score of ports. Dearly indeed would he love to have some discourse with Breuer. But to take leave from the frigate and cross to the hoy – no! Captain Thurot would not care for him to do that.
“Why not have Breuer come to the frigate?” I asked, with my heart beating fast.
“Why, indeed?” repeated Mynheer with a laugh. “A hail across the harbour would not fetch him.”
“Then go for him,” said I, my heart beating faster than ever lest he should have some suspicion of my condition and desires.
He reminded me that he had no excuse to leave the frigate, though to take the small boat at the stern and row over to the hoy would mean but a minute or two.
“Well, as for excuses,” said I, “that’s easily arranged, for I can give you one to carry a note to the care of the captain, and you may take it at your leisure.”
At his leisure! He would take it at once and thankfully while we gentlemen were drinking below, for there was no pleasure under heaven he could compare with half an hour of good Jan Breuer’s company.
Without betraying my eagerness to avail myself of such an unlooked-for opportunity, I deliberately wrote a note in English intimating that I was a prisoner on the frigate and in pressing humour to get out of her at the earliest moment. I addressed it to Kilbride, judging the Highlander more likely than Father Hamilton to take rational steps for my release if that were within the bounds of possibility.
I assured the seaman that if he lost no time in taking it over I would engage his absence would never be noticed, and he agreed to indicate to me by a whistle when he returned.
With a cheerful assurance that he would have Jan Breuer on this deck in less than twenty minutes the seaman loosed the painter of the small boat and set forth upon his errand, while I returned to the cabin where Thurot and Clancarty still talked the most contrary and absurd politics over their wine. The vast and tangled scheme of French intrigue was set before me; at another time it might have been of the most fascinating interest, but on this particular occasion I could not subdue my mind to matters so comparatively trivial, while I kept my hearing strained for the evidence that the Dutchman had accomplished his mission and got back.
The moments passed; the interest flagged; Clancarty began to yawn and Thurot grew silent. It was manifest that the sooner my Dutchman was back to his ship the better for my plan. Then it was I showed the brightest interest in affairs that an hour earlier failed to engage a second of my attention, and I discovered for the entertainment of my gaoler and his friend a hitherto unsuspected store of reminiscence about my Uncle Andrew and a fund of joke and anecdote whereof neither of them probably had thought me capable.
But all was useless. The signal that the Dutchman had returned was not made when Lord Clancarty rose to his feet and intimated his intention there and then of going ashore, though his manner suggested that it would have been easy to induce him to wait longer. We went on deck with him. The night was banked with clouds though a full moon was due; only a few stars shone in the spaces of the zenith; our vessel was in darkness except where a lamp swung at the bow.
“Mon Dieu! Tony, what a pitchy night! I’d liefer be safe ashore than risking my life getting there in your cockle-shell,” said Clancarty.
“‘Art all right, Lord Clancarty,” said Thurot. “Here’s a man will row you to the quay in two breaths, and you’ll be snug in bed before M. Greig and I have finished our prayers.” Then he cried along the deck for the seaman.
I felt that all was lost now the fellow’s absence was to be discovered.
What was my astonishment to hear an answering call, and see the Dutchman’s figure a blotch upon the blackness of the after-deck.
“Bring round the small boat and take Lord Clancarty ashore,” said the captain, and the seaman hastened to do so. He sprang into the small boat, released her rope, and brought her round.
“A demain, dear Paul,” cried his lordship with a hiccough. “It’s curst unkind of Tony Thurot not to let you ashore on parole or permit me to wait with you.”
The boat dropped off into the darkness of the harbour, her oars thudding on the thole-pins.
“There goes a decent fellow though something of a fool,” said Thurot. “‘Tis his kind have made so many enterprises like our own have an ineffectual end. And now you must excuse me, M. Greig, if I lock you into your cabin. There are too few of us on board to let you have the run of the vessel.”
He put a friendly hand upon the shoulder I shrugged with chagrin at this conclusion to an unfortunate day.
“Sorry, M. Greig, sorry,” he said humorously. “Qui commence mal finit mal, and I wish to heaven you had begun the day by finding Antoine Thurot at home, in which case we had been in a happier relationship to-night.”
