Kitabı oku: «The Shoes of Fortune», sayfa 17
CHAPTER XXXIX
DISCLOSES THE MANNER OF MY ESCAPE AND HOW WE SET SAIL FOR ALBION
Thurot turned the key on me with a pleasantry that was in no accordance with my mood, and himself retired to the round house on deck where his berth was situated. I sat on a form for a little, surrendered all to melancholy, then sought to remove it by reading, as sleep in my present humour was out of the question. My reading, though it lasted for an hour or two, was scarcely worth the name, for my mind continually wandered from the page. I wondered if my note to Kilbride had been delivered, and if any step on his part was to be expected therefrom; the hope that rose with that reflection died at once upon the certainty that as the Dutch seaman had not signalled as he had promised he had somehow learned the true nature of my condition in the frigate. Had he told Thurot? If he had told Thurot – which was like enough – that I had communicated with any one outside the vessel there was little doubt that the latter would take adequate steps to prevent interference by Kilbride or any one else.
We are compact of memories, a mere bundle of bygone days, childish recollections, ancient impressions, and so an older experience came to me, too, of the night I sat in the filthy cabin of Dan Risk’s doomed vessel hearing the splash of illegitimate oars, anticipating with a mind scarcely more disturbed than I had just now the step of the officer from the prison at Blackness and the clutch of the chilly fetters.
There was a faint but rising nor’-east wind. It sighed among the shrouds of the frigate. I could hear it even in the cabin, pensive like the call of the curfew at a great distance. The waves washed against the timbers in curious short gluckings and hissings. On the vessel herself not a sound was to be heard, until of a sudden there came a scratching at my cabin door!
It was incredible! I had heard no footstep on the companion, and I had ceased to hope for anything from the Dutchman!
“Who’s there?” I asked softly, and at that the key outside was turned and I was fronted by Kilbride!
He wore the most ridiculous travesty of the Dutchman’s tarry breeks and tarpaulin hat and coarse wide jumper, and in the light of my candle there was a humorous twinkle on his face as he entered, closed the door softly after him, and sat down beside me.
“My goodness!” he whispered, “you have a face on you as if you were in a graveyard watching ghosts. It’s time you were steeping the withies to go away as we say in the Language, and you may be telling me all the story of it elsewhere.”
“Where’s the Dutchman that took my letter?” I asked.
“Where,” said Kilbride, “but in the place that well befits him – at the lug of an anker of Rotterdam gin taking his honest night’s rest. I’m here guizing in his tarry clothes, and if I were Paul Greig of the Hazel Den I would be clapping on my hat gey quick and getting out of here without any more parley.”
“You left him in the hoy!” said I astonished.
“Faith, there was nothing better for it!” said he coolly. “Breuer gave him so much of the juniper for old acquaintance that when I left he was so full of it that he had lost the power of his legs and you might as well try to keep a string of fish standing.”
“And it was you took Clancarty ashore?”
“Who else? And I don’t think it’s a great conceit of myself to believe I play-acted the Dutch tarry-breeks so very well, though I was in something of a tremble in case the skipper here would make me out below my guizard’s clothes. You may thank your stars the moon was as late of rising this night as a man would be that was at a funeral yesterday.” “And where’s the other man who was on this vessel?” I asked, preparing to go.
“Come on deck and I’ll show you,” said Kilbride, checking a chuckle of amusement at something.
We crept softly on deck into the night now slightly lit by a moon veiled by watery clouds. The ship seemed all our own and we were free to leave her when we chose for the small boat hung at her stern.
“You were asking for the other one,” said Kilbride. “There he is,” and he pointed to a huddled figure bound upon the waist. “When I came on board after landing Clancarty this stupid fellow discovered I was a stranger and nearly made an outcry; but I hit him on the lug with the loom of an oar. He’ll not be observing very much for a while yet, but I was bound all the same to put a rope on him to prevent him disturbing Captain Thurot’s sleep too soon.”
We spoke in whispers for the night seemed all ear and I was for ever haunted by the reflection that Thurot was divided from us by little more than an inch or two of teak-wood. Now and then the moon peeped through a rift of cloud and lit a golden roadway over the sea, enticing me irresistibly home.
“O God, I wish I was in Scotland!” I said passionately.
“Less luck than that will have to be doing us,” said Kilbride, fumbling at the painter of the boat. “The hoy sets sail for Calais in an hour or two, and it’s plain from your letter we’ll be best to be taking her round that length.”
“No, not Calais,” said I. “It’s too serious a business with me for that. I’m wanting England, and wanting it unco fast.”
“Oh, Dhe!” said my countryman, “here’s a fellow with the appetite of Prince Charlie and as likely to gratify it. What for must it be England, loachain?”
“I can only hint at that,” I answered hastily, “and that in a minute. Are ye loyal?”
“To a fine fellow called MacKellar first and to my king and country after?”
“The Stuarts?” said I.
He cracked his thumb. “It’s all by with that,” said he quickly and not without a tone of bitterness.
“The breed of them has never been loyal to me, and if I could wipe out of my life six months of the cursedest folly in Forty-five I would go back to Scotland with the first chance and throw my bonnet for Geordie ever after like the greasiest burgess ever sold a wab of cloth or a cargo of Virginia in Glasgow.”
“Then,” I said, “you and me’s bound for England this night, for I have that in my knowledge should buy the safety of the pair of us,” and I briefly conveyed my secret.
He softly whistled with astonishment.
“Man! it’s a gey taking idea,” he confessed. “But the bit is to get over the Channel.”
“I have thought of that,” said I. “Here’s a smuggler wanting no more than a rag of sail in this wind to make the passage in a couple of days.”
“By the Holy Iron it’s the very thing!” he interrupted, slapping his leg.
It takes a time to tell all this in writing, but in actual fact our whole conversation together in the cabin and on the deck occupied less than five minutes. We were both of us too well aware of the value of time to have had it otherwise and waste moments in useless conversation.
“What is to be done is this,” I suggested, casting a rapid glance along the decks and upwards to the spars. “I will rig up a sail of some sort here and you will hasten over again in the small-boat to the hoy and give Father Hamilton the option of coming with us. He may or he may not care to run the risks involved in the exploit, but at least we owe him the offer.”
“But when I’m across at the hoy there, here’s you with this dovering body and Captain Thurot. Another knock might settle the one, but you would scarcely care to have knocks going in the case of an old friend like Tony Thurot, who’s only doing his duty in keeping you here with such a secret in your charge.”
“I have thought of that, too,” I replied quickly, “and I will hazard Thurot.”
Kilbride lowered himself into the small-boat, pushed off from the side of the frigate, and in silence half-drifted in the direction of the Dutch vessel. My plans were as clear in my head as if they had been printed on paper. First of all I took such provender as I could get from my cabin and placed it along with a breaker of water and a lamp in the cutter. Then I climbed the shrouds of the frigate, and cut away a small sail that I guessed would serve my purpose, letting it fall into the cutter. I made a shift at sheets and halyards and found that with a little contrivance I could spread enough canvas to take the cutter in that weather at a fair speed before the wind that had a blessed disposition towards the coast of England. I worked so fast it was a miracle, dreading at every rustle of the stolen sail – at every creak of the cutter on the fenders, that either the captain or his unconscious seaman would awake.
My work was scarcely done when the small-boat came off again from the hoy, and as she drew cautiously near I saw that MacKellar had with him the bulky figure of the priest. He climbed ponderously, at my signal, into the cutter, and MacKellar joined me for a moment on the deck of the frigate.
“He goes with us then?” I asked, indicating the priest.
“To the Indies if need be,” said Kilbride. “But the truth is that this accident is a perfect God-send to him, for England’s the one place below the firmament he would choose for a refuge at this moment. Is all ready?”
“If my sail-making’s to be relied on she’s in the best of trim,” I answered.
“And – what do ye call it? – all found?”
“A water breaker, a bottle of brandy, a bag of bread – ”
“Enough for a foray of fifty men!” he said heartily. “Give me meal and water in the heel of my shoe and I would count it very good vivers for a fortnight.”
He went into the cutter; I released the ropes that bound her to the frigate and followed him.
“Mon Dieu dear lad, ‘tis a world of most fantastic happenings,” was all the poor old priest said, shivering in the cold night air.
We had to use the oars of the frigate’s small-boat for a stroke or two so as to get the cutter round before the wind; she drifted quickly from the large ship’s side almost like a living thing with a crave for freedom at last realised; up speedily ran her sail, unhandsome yet sufficient, the friendly air filled out the rustling folds and drove her through the night into the open sea.
There is something in a moonlit night at sea that must touch in the most cloddish heart a spring of fancy. It is friendlier than the dawn that at its most glorious carries a hint of sorrow, or than the bravest sunset that reminds us life is a brief day at the best of it, and the one thing sempiternal yet will be the darkness. We sat in the well of the cutter – three odd adventurers, myself the most silent because I had the double share of dubiety about the enterprise, for who could tell how soon the doomster’s hand would be on me once my feet were again on British soil? Yet now when I think of it – of the moonlit sea, the swelling sail above us, the wake behind that shone with fire – I must count it one of the happiest experiences of my life.
The priest looked back at the low land of France receding behind us, with its scattered lights on the harbour and the shore, mere subjects to the queenly moon. “There goes poor Father Hamilton,” said he whimsically, “happy schoolboy, foolish lover in Louvain that had never but moonlit eves, parish priest of Dixmunde working two gardens, human and divine, understanding best the human where his bees roved, but loving all men good and ill. There goes the spoiled page, the botched effort, and here’s a fat old man at the start of a new life, and never to see his darling France again. Ah! the good mother; Dieu te bénisse!”
CHAPTER XL
MY INTERVIEW WITH PITT
Of our voyage across the Channel there need be no more said than that it was dull to the very verge of monotony, for the wind, though favourable, was often in a faint where our poor sail shook idly at the mast. Two days later we were in London, and stopped at the Queen’s Head above Craig’s Court in Charing Cross.
And now I had to make the speediest possible arrangement for a meeting with those who could make the most immediate and profitable use of the tidings I was in a position to lay before them, by no means an easy matter to decide upon for a person who had as little knowledge of London as he had of the Cities of the Plain.
MacKellar – ever the impetuous Gael – was for nothing less than a personal approach to his Majesty.
“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.
