CHAPTER XIII
WHEREIN APPEARS A GENTLEMANLY CORSAIR AND A FRENCH-IRISH LORD
While it may be that the actual crisis of my manhood came to me on theday I first put on my Uncle Andrew's shoes, the sense of it was mineonly when I met with Captain Thurot. I had put the past for ever behindme (as I fancied) when I tore the verses of a moon-struck boy andcast them out upon the washing-green at Hazel Den, but I was boundto foregather with men like Thurot and his friends ere the scope andfashion of a man's world were apparent to me. Whether his influence onmy destiny in the long run was good or bad I would be the last to say;he brought me into danger, but--in a manner--he brought me good, thoughthat perhaps was never in his mind.
You must fancy this Thurot a great tall man, nearly half a footexceeding myself in stature, peak-bearded, straight as a lance, withplum-black eyes and hair, polished in dress and manner to the rarestdegree and with a good humour that never failed. He sat under a swinginglamp in his cabin when Horn and I were brought before him, and asked myname first in an accent of English that was if anything somewhat betterthan my own.
"Greig," said I; "Paul Greig," and he started as if I had pricked himwith a knife.
A little table stood between us, on which there lay a book he had beenreading when we were brought below, some hours after the _Seven Sisters_had gone down, and the search for the Kirkcaldy boat had been abandoned.He took the lamp off its hook, came round the table and held the lightso that he could see my face the clearer. At any time his aspect wasmanly and pleasant; most of all was it so when he smiled, and I wassingularly encouraged when he smiled at me, with a rapid survey of myperson that included the Hazel Den mole and my Uncle Andrew's shoes.
A seaman stood behind us; to him he spoke a message I could notcomprehend, as it was in French, of which I had but little. The seamanretired; we were offered a seat, and in a minute the seaman came backwith a gentleman--a landsman by his dress.
"Pardon, my lord," said the captain to his visitor, "but I thought thathere was a case--speaking of miracles--you would be interested in.Our friends here"--he indicated myself particularly with a graciousgesture--"are not, as you know, dropped from heaven, but come from thatunfortunate ship we saw go under a while ago. May I ask your lordship totell us--you will see the joke in a moment--whom we were talking of atthe moment our watch first announced the sight of that vessel?"
His lordship rubbed his chin and smilingly peered at the captain.
"Gad!" he said. "You are the deuce and all, Thurot. What are you in themood for now? Why, we talked of Greig--Andrew Greig, the best player of_passe-passe_ and the cheerfullest loser that ever cut a pack."
Thurot turned to me, triumphant.
"Behold," said he, "how ridiculously small the world is. _Ma foi!_ Iwonder how I manage so well to elude my creditors, even when I sail thehigh seas. Lord Clancarty, permit me to have the distinguished honourto introduce another Greig, who I hope has many more of his charminguncle's qualities than his handsome eyes and red shoes. I assume it isa nephew, because poor Monsieur Andrew was not of the marryingkind. Anyhow, 'tis a Greig of the blood, or Antoine Thurot is a bat!And--Monsieur Greig, it is my felicity to bid you know one of youruncle's best friends and heartiest admirers--Lord Clancarty."
"Lord Clancarty!" I cried, incredulous. "Why he figured in my uncle'slog-book a dozen years ago."
"A dozen, no less!" cried his lordship, with a grimace. "We need not beso particular about the period. I trust he set me down there a decentlygood companion; I could hardly hope to figure in a faithful scribe'stablets as an example otherwise," said his lordship, laughing and takingme cordially by the hand. "Gad! one has but to look at you to see AndrewGreig in every line. I loved your uncle, lad. He had a rugged, manlynature, and just sufficient folly, bravado, and sinfulness to keep apoor Irishman in countenance. Thurot, one must apologise for taking fromyour very lips the suggestion I see hesitating there, but sure 'tis anOccasion this; it must be a bottle--the best bottle on your adorable butsomewhat ill-found vessel. Why 'tis Andy Greig come young again. PoorAndy! I heard of his death no later than a month ago, and have ordereda score of masses for him--which by the way are still unpaid for to goodFather Hamilton. I could not sleep happily of an evening--of a forenoonrather--if I thought of our Andy suffering aught that a few candles andsuch-like could modify." And his lordship with great condescensiontapped and passed me his jewelled box of maccabaw.
You can fancy a raw lad, untutored and untravelled, fresh from theplough-tail, as it were, was vastly tickled at this introduction to thegenteel world. I was no longer the shivering outlaw, the victim of aRisk. I was honoured more or less for the sake of my uncle (whose esteemin this quarter my father surely would have been surprised at), and itseemed as though my new life in a new country were opening better than Ihad planned myself. I blessed my shoes--the Shoes of Sorrow--and for thetime forgot the tragedy from which I was escaping.
They birled the bottle between them, Clancarty and Thurot, myselfvirtually avoiding it, but clinking now and then, and laughing with themat the numerous exploits they recalled of him that was the bond betweenus; Horn elsewhere found himself well treated also; and listening tothese two gentlemen of the world, their allusions, off-hand, to thegreat, their indications of adventure, travel, intrigue, enterprise,gaiety, I saw my horizon expand until it was no longer a cabin on thesea I sat in, with the lamplight swinging over me, but a spacious worldof castles, palaces, forests, streets, churches, casernes, harbours,masquerades, routs, operas, love, laughter, and song. Perhaps they sawmy elation and fully understood, and smiled within them at my effortsto figure as a little man of the world too--as boys will--but they nevershowed me other than the finest sympathy and attention.
I found them fascinating at night; I found them much the same atmorning, which is the test of the thing in youth, and straightway made ahero of the foreigner Thurot. Clancarty was well enough, but withoutany method in his life, beyond a principle of keeping his character evertrim and presentable like his cravat. Thurot carried on his strenuouscareer as soldier, sailor, spy, politician, with a plausible enoughtheory that thus he got the very juice and pang of life, that at themost, as he would aye be telling me, was brief to an absurdity.
"Your Scots," he would say to me, "as a rule, are too phlegmatic--is itnot, Lord Clancarty?--but your uncle gave me, on my word, a regard foryour whole nation. He had aplomb--Monsieur Andrew; he had luck too, andif he cracked a nut anywhere there was always a good kernel in it." Andthe shoes see how I took the allusion to King George, and that gave me aflood of light upon my new position.
I remembered that in my uncle's log-book the greater part of thenarrative of his adventures in France had to do with politics and theintrigues of the Jacobite party. He was not, himself, apparently, "out,"as we call it, in the affair of the 'Forty-five, because he did notbelieve the occasion suitable, and thought the Prince precipitous, butbefore and after that untoward event for poor Scotland, he had beenactive with such men as Clancarty, Lord Clare, the Murrays, theMareschal, and such-like, which was not to be wondered at, perhaps, forour family had consistently been Jacobite, a fact that helped to itslatter undoing, though my father as nominal head of the house had takenno interest in politics; and my own sympathies had ever been with theChevalier, whom I as a boy had seen ride through the city of Glasgow,wishing myself old enough to be his follower in such a glitteringescapade as he was then embarked on.
But though I thought all this in a flash as it were, I betrayed nothingto Captain Thurot, who seemed somewhat dashed at my silence. There musthave been something in my face, however, to show that I fully realisedwhat he was feeling at, and was not too complacent, for Clancartylaughed.
"Sure, 'tis a good boy, Thurot," said he, "and loves his King Georgeproperly, like a true patriot."
"I won't believe it of a Greig," said Captain Thurot. "A pestilent,dull thing, loyalty in England; the other thing came much more readily,I remember, to the genius of Andrew Greig. Come! Monsieur Paul, to b
equite frank about it, have you no instincts of friendliness to theexiled house? M. Tete-de-fer has a great need at this particular momentfor English friends. Once he could count on your uncle to the lastditch; can he count on the nephew?"
"M. Tete-de-fer?" I repeated, somewhat bewildered.
"M. Tete-de-mouche, rather," cried my lord, testily, and then hurried tocorrect himself. "He alluded, Monsieur Greig, to Prince Charles Edward.We are all, I may confess, his Royal Highness's most humble servants;some of us, however--as our good friend, Captain Thurot--more activelythan others. For myself I begin to weary of a cause that hasbeen dormant for eight years, but no matter; sure one must have arecreation!"
I looked at his lordship to see if he was joking. He was the relic ofa handsome man, though still, I daresay, less than fifty years of age,with a clever face and gentle, just tinged by the tracery of smallsurface veins to a redness that accused him of too many late nights;his mouth and eyes, that at one time must have been fascinating, hadthe ultimate irresolution that comes to one who finds no fingerposts atlife's cross-roads and thinks one road just as good's another. He wasborn at Atena, near Hamburg (so much I had remembered from my uncle'smemoir), but he was, even in his accent, as Irish as Kerry. Someway Iliked and yet doubted him, in spite of all the praise of him that I hadread in a dead man's diurnal.
"_Fi donc! vous devriez avoir honte, milord_," cried Thurot, somewhatdisturbed, I saw, at this reckless levity.
"Ashamed!" said his lordship, laughing; "why, 'tis for his RoyalHighness who has taken a diligence to the devil, and left us poordependants to pay the bill at the inn. But no matter, Master Greig, I'llbe cursed if I say a single word more to spoil a charming picture ofroyalty under a cloud." And so saying he lounged away from us, a strangeexquisite for shipboard, laced up to the nines, as the saying goes,parading the deck as it had been the Rue St. Honore, with merry wordsfor every sailorman who tapped a forehead to him.
Captain Thurot looked at him, smiling, and shrugged his shoulders.
"_Tete-de-mouche!_ There it is for you, M. Paul--the head of abutterfly. Now you--" he commanded my eyes most masterfully--"now _you_have a Scotsman's earnestness; I should like to see you on the rightside. _Mon Dieu_, you owe us your life, no less; 'tis no more KingGeorge's, for one of his subjects has morally sent you to the bottom ofthe sea in a scuttled ship. I wish we had laid hands on your Risk andhis augers."
But I was learning my world; I was cautious; I said neither yea nor nay.