Neil Munro

“ It was no great matter that I was to risk my life upon a drunkard's folly, but for the first time since I had come into the port of Dunkerque, and knew these men beside my bed, there intruded a fiery sense of alienation. It seemed a dream—a dreadful dream, that I should be lying in a foreign land, upon the eve, perhaps, of my own death or of another manslaughter, and in a correspondence with two such worldly men as those that sat there recalling combats innumerable with never a thought of the ultimate fearful retribution. ”

“ But no matter how eagerly I went forth upon my nightly airing in a roquelaure borrowed from Father Hamilton's friend, the adventure always ended, for me, in a sort of eerie terror of those close-hemming walls, those tangled lanes where slouched the outcast and the ne'er-do-weel, and not even the glitter of the moon upon the river between its laden isles would comfort me.
“La! la! la!” would Father Hamilton cry at me when I got home with a face like a fiddle. “Art the most ridiculous rustic ever ate a cabbage or set foot in Arcady. Why, man! the woman must be wooed—this Mademoiselle Lutetia. ”

“ Then the bending, gliding river again, the willow and the aspen edges, the hazy orchards and the emerald swards; hamlets, towns, farm-steadings, châteaux, kirks, and mills; the flying mallard, the leaping perch, the silver dawns, the starry nights, the ripple of the water in my dreams, and at last the city of Rouen. My ship of fortune went 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 over a hill that left Rouen and all its steeples, reeking at the bottom of a bowl. ”

“ He laughed enormously and fell into a chair, shaking the house as if the world itself had quaked. “Pardon, my dear Miss Walkinshaw,” said he when his breath was restored, “but, by the Mass, you must confess 'tis the deuce and all for a man—a real man that loves his viands, and sleeps well o' nights, and has a contented mind and grows flesh accordingly, to trip up to Paradise—” here he bowed, his neck swelling in massive folds—“to trip up to Paradise, where the angels are, as easily as a ballet-dancer—bless her!—skips to the other place where, by my faith! ”

“ Thou may'st have seen a sort of mask of happiness, a false face of jollity in Dunkerque parlours, and heard a well-simulated laughter now and then as we drank by wayside inns, but may I be called coxcomb if the miserable wretch who playacted then was half so light of heart as this that sits here at ease, and has only one regret—that he should have dragged Andrew Greig's nephew into trouble with him. What man can be perfectly happy that runs the risk of disappointment—which is the case of every man that fears or hopes for anything? ”

“ Paris, my Paul! Behold the lights of it—la ville lumière that is so fine I could spend eternity in it. Hearts are there, lad, kind and jocund-”
“And meditating a descent on unhappy Britain,” said I.
“Good neighbourly hearts, or I'm a gourd else,” he went on, unheeding my interruption. “The stars in heaven are not so good, are no more notably the expression of a glowing and fraternal spirit. There is laughter in the streets of her.”
“Not at this hour, Father Hamilton,” said I, and the both of us always whispering. ”

“ I felt sick for home: my mother's state, the girl at Kirkillstane, the dead lad on the moor, sounds of Earn Water, clouds and heather on the hill of Ballageich—those mingled matters swept through my thoughts as I sat with these blithe gentlemen, hearkening to a simple Doric tune, and my eyes filled irrestrainably with tears.
Miss Walkinshaw—for so her name was—saw what effect her music had produced; reddened, ceased her playing, took me to the window while the others discussed French poetry, and bade me tell her, as we looked out upon the street, all about myself and of my home. ”

“ The dawn by now had spread over half the heavens; behind us the mouth of the Firth gulped enormous clouds, and the fringe of Fife was as flat as a bannock; before us the sea spread chill, leaden, all unlovely. “My sorrow!” says I, “if this is travelling, give me the high-roads and the hot noon.”
Horn's face seemed more hollow and dark than ever in the wan morning. I waited his explanation. “I think ye said Halifax, Mr. Greig?” said he. “I signed on, mysel', for the same port, but you and me's perhaps the only ones on this ship that ever hoped to get there. ”

“ Had Mistress Grant a more attentive eye to her Culross griddle, what time the scones for her lodgers, breakfast were a-baking forty years ago, I would never have fled furth my native land in a mortal terror of the gallows: had her griddle, say, been higher on the swee-chain by a link or two, Paul Greig would never have foregathered with Dan Risk, the blackguard skipper of a notorious craft; nor pined in a foreign jail; nor connived, unwitting, at a prince's murder; nor marched the weary leagues of France and fought there on a beggar's wage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a small inn on the banks of the only rivulet I had seen in all the journey. I forget its name, but I remember there was a patch of heather on the side of it, and that I wished ardently the season had been autumn that I might have looked upon the purple bells.
“Tis a long lane that has no tavern,” said his reverence, and oozed out of his side of the coach with groanings. The innkeeper ran forth, louted, and kissed his hand.
“Jour, m'sieu jour!” said Father Hamilton hurriedly. “And now, what have you here that is worth while?” ”

“ There must be people in the world who are oddly affected by the names of places, peoples, things that have never come within their own experience. Till this day the name of Barbadoes influences me like a story of adventure; and when my Uncle Andrew—lank, bearded, drenched with storm, stood in our parlour glibly hinting at illimitable travel, I lost my anger with the tipsy wretch and felt a curious glow go through my being. ”

“ I jumped into the sunshine of a lovely day that streamed into the room, soused my head in water and in a little stood upon the street with my companion.
“Bon matin, Paul!” he cried cheerfully. “Faith, you sleep sur les deux oreilles, and we must be marching briskly to be at M. Bonnat's rendezvous at eight o'clock.”
We went through the town and out upon its edge at the Calais road. The sky was blue like another sea; the sea itself was all unvexed by wave; a sweeter day for slaughtering would pass the wit of man to fancy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had been infected by almost his first words the night he came to Hazel Den House, and made a magic chant of the mere names of foreign peoples; now I was fevered indeed; and when I put on the red shoes (as I did of an evening, impelled by some dandyism foreign to my nature hitherto) , they were like the seven-league boots for magic, as they set my imagination into every harbour Uncle Andy had frequented and made me a guest at every inn where he had met his boon companions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She came upon me unexpectedly, when the gentility of my shoes and the recollection of all that they had borne of manliness was making me walk along the road with a very high head and an unusually jaunty step.
She seemed struck as she came near, with her face displaying her confusion, and it seemed to me she was a new woman altogether—at least, not the Isobel I had been at school with and seen with an indifferent eye grow up like myself from pinafores. It seemed suddenly scandalous that the like of her should have any correspondence with so ill-suited a lover as David Borland of the Dreipps. ”

“ I hope you have tact, M. Greig. Your good uncle once did me the honour to call me a—what was it now?—a gomeral.”
“It was very like my uncle, that, your Royal Highness,” I said. “But I know that he loved you and your cause.”
“I daresay he did, Monsieur; I daresay he did,” said the Prince, flushing, and with a show of pleasure at my speech. “I have learned of late that the fair tongue is not always the friendliest. In spite of it all I liked M. Andrew Greig. I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing Monsieur Greig's nephew soon again. Au plaisir de vous revoir!” ”

“ And then Dunkerque at the moment was sparkling with attractions. Something was in its air to distract every waking hour, the pulse of drums, the sound of trumpets calling along the shores, troops manoeuvring, elation apparent in every countenance. I was Thurot's guest in a lodging over a boulangerie upon the sea front, and at daybreak I would look out from the little window to see regiments of horse and foot go by on their way to an enormous camp beside the old fort of Risebank. ”

“ Once, as we came close upon a loop of a brawling river, I wished with all fervency that we might fall in, and so end for ever this pitiful coil of trials whereto fate had obviously condemned poor Paul Greig. To die among strangers (as is widely known) is counted the saddest of deaths by our country people, and so, nowadays, it would seem to myself, but there and then it appeared an enviable conclusion to the Spoiled Horn that had blundered from folly to folly. To die there and then would be to leave no more than a regret and an everlasting wonder in the folks at home ”

“ It is where it ought to be—with a girl of the name of Isobel Fortune. Oh, the dear name! oh, the sweet name! And when you are on your travels with this priest do not be forgetting her. Oh, yes! I know you will tell me again that all is over between the pair of you, and that she loved another—but I am not believing a word of that, Mr. Greig, when I look at you— (and will ye say 'thank ye' for the compliment that's there?) —you will just go on thinking her the same, and you will be the better man for it. ”

“ Thurot turned to me, triumphant.
“Behold,” said he, “how ridiculously small the world is. Ma foi! I wonder how I manage so well to elude my creditors, even when I sail the high seas. Lord Clancarty, permit me to have the distinguished honour to introduce another Greig, who I hope has many more of his charming uncle's qualities than his handsome eyes and red shoes. I assume it is a nephew, because poor Monsieur Andrew was not of the marrying kind. Anyhow, 'tis a Greig of the blood, or Antoine Thurot is a bat! ”

“ Silence large and brooding lay upon the Seven Sisters as she lay in that obscuring haar that had fallen again; she might be Charon's craft pausing mid-way on the cursed stream, and waiting for the ferry cry upon the shore of Time. We were still in the estuary or firth, to judge by the bickering burn and the odors off-shore, above all the odour of rotting brake; and we rode at anchor, for her bows were up-water to the wind and tide, and above me, in the darkness, I could hear the idle sails faintly flapping in the breeze and the reef-points all tap-tapping. ”

“ Faith! a glass residence seems to breed an ungenerous disposition! If thou can'st credit me I know nothing of thine affair beyond what I may have suspected from a Greig travelling hurriedly and in red shoes. I make you my compliments, Monsieur, of your morality that must be horror-struck at my foolish play with a pistol, yet thinks me capable of a retort so vile as that you indicate. ”

“ Bernard (of all men in the world!) responded to my knock. I could have thrashed him with a cane if the same had been handy, but was bound to content myself with the somewhat barren comfort of affecting that I had never set eyes on him before. He smiled at first, as if not unpleased to see me, but changed his aspect at the unresponse of mine.
“I desire to see Miss Walkinshaw,” said I.
The rogue blandly intimated that she was not at home. There is more truth in a menial eye than in most others, and this man's fashionable falsehood extended no further than his lips. ”

“ CHAPTER VI MY DEED ON THE MOOR OF MEARNS Next day I shot David Borland of the Driepps.
It was the seventh of March, the first day I heard the laverock that season, and it sang like to burst its heart above the spot where the lad fell with a cry among the rushes. It rose from somewhere in our neighbourhood, aspiring to the heavens, but chained to earth by its own song; and even yet I can recall the eerie influence of that strange conjunction of sin and song as I stood knee-deep in the tangle of the moor with the pistol smoking in my hand. ”

“ Greig!—Britain, where honest John Walkinshaw is, that never said an ill word in his life, nor owed any man a penny: where the folks are guid and true, and fear God and want nothing but to be left to their crofts and herds. If it was England—if it was the palace of Saint James—no, but it's Scotland, too, and the men you saw marching up and down to-day are to be marching over the moor o' Mearns when the heather's red. ”