CHAPTER XXVII
WE ENTER PARIS AND FIND A SANCTUARY THERE
Of the town of Paris that is so lamentably notable in these days I havebut the recollection that one takes away from a new scene witnessedunder stress of mind due to matters more immediately affecting him thanthe colour, shape, and properties of things seen, and the thought I hadin certain parts of it is more clear to me to-day than the vision of theplace itself. It is, in my mind, like a fog that the bridges thunderedas our coach drove over them with our wretched fortunes on that earlymorning of our escape from Bicetre, but as clear as when it sprung tome from the uproar of the wheels comes back the dread that the whole ofthis community would be at their windows looking out to see what folksuntimeously disturbed their rest. We were delayed briefly at a gate uponthe walls; I can scarcely mind what manner of men they were that stoppedus and thrust a lantern in our faces, and what they asked eludes mealtogether, but I mind distinctly how I gasped relief when we werepermitted to roll on. Blurred, too--no better than the surplusage ofdreams, is my first picture of the river and its isles in the dawn, but,like a favourite song, I mind the gluck of waters on the quays and thatthey made me think of Earn and Cart and Clyde.
We stopped in the place of the Notre Dame at the corner of a street;the coach drove off to a _remise_ whence it had come, and we went to anhospital called the Hotel Dieu, in the neighbourhood, where Hamilton hada Jesuit friend in one of the heads, and where we were accommodated ina room that was generally set aside for clergymen. It was a place of themost wonderful surroundings, this Hotel Dieu, choked, as it were, amongtowers, the greatest of them those of Our Lady itself that were inthe Gothic taste, regarding which Father Hamilton used to say, "_Diregothique, c'est dire mauvais gout_," though, to tell the truth, Ithought the building pretty braw myself. Alleys and wynds were roundabout us, and so narrow that the sky one saw between them was but aribbon by day, while at night they seemed no better than ravines.
'Twas at night I saw most of the city, for only in the darkness didI dare to venture out of the Hotel Dieu. Daundering my lone along thecobbles, I took a pleasure in the exercise of tenanting these toweringlands with people having histories little different from the historiesof the folks far off in my Scottish home--their daughters marrying,their sons going throughither (as we say), their bairns wakening andcrying in their naked beds, and grannies sitting by the ingle-neukcheerfully cracking upon ancient days. Many a time in the by-going Ilooked up their pend closes seeking the eternal lovers of our own burghtowns and never finding them, for I take it that in love the foreigncharacter is coyer than our own. But no matter how eagerly I went forthupon my nightly airing in a _roquelaure_ borrowed from Father Hamilton'sfriend, the adventure always ended, for me, in a sort of eerie terrorof those close-hemming walls, those tangled lanes where slouched theoutcast and the ne'er-do-weel, and not even the glitter of the moon uponthe river between its laden isles would comfort me.
"La! la! la!" would Father Hamilton cry at me when I got home with a facelike a fiddle. "Art the most ridiculous rustic ever ate a cabbage orset foot in Arcady. Why, man! the woman must be wooed--this MademoiselleLutetia. Must take her front and rear, walk round her, ogling bravely.Call her dull! call her dreadful! _Ciel!_ Has the child never an eye inhis mutton head? I avow she is the queen of the earth this Paris. If Iwere young and wealthy I'd buy the glittering stars in constellationsand turn them into necklets for her. With thy plaguey gift of the sonnetI'd deave her with ecstasies and spill oceans of ink upon leaguesof paper to tell her about her eyes. Go to! Scotland, go to! Ghosts!ghosts! devil the thing else but ghosts in thy rustic skull, for to takea fear of Lutetia when her black hair is down of an evening and thoucanst not get a glimpse of that beautiful neck that is rounded like thesame in the Psyche of Praxiteles. Could I pare off a portion of thisrotundity and go out in a masque as Apollo I'd show thee things."
And all he saw of Paris himself was from the windows of the hospital,where he and I would stand by the hour looking out into the square.For the air itself he had to take it in a little garden at the back,surrounded by a high wall, and affording a seclusion that even thepriest could avail himself of without the hazard of discovery. He usedto sit in an arbour there in the warmth of the day, and it was thereI saw another trait of his character that helped me much to forget hisshortcomings.
Over his head, within the doorway of the bower, he hung a box and placedtherein the beginnings of a bird's nest. The thing was not many hoursdone when a pair of birds came boldly into his presence as he satsilent and motionless in the bower, and began to avail themselves of soexcellent a start in householding. In a few days there were eggs in thenest, and 'twas the most marvellous of spectacles to witness the hen sitcontent upon them over the head of the fat man underneath, and the cock,without concern, fly in and out attentive on his mate.
But, indeed, the man was the friend of all helpless things, and few ofthe same came his way without an instinct that told them it was so. Notthe birds in the nest alone were at ease in his society; he had butto walk along the garden paths whistling and chirping, and there cameflights of birds about his head and shoulders, and some would even perchupon his hand. I have never seen him more like his office than when hetalked with the creatures of the air, unless it was on another occasionwhen two bairns, the offspring of an inmate in the hospital, venturedinto the garden, finding there another child, though monstrous, who hadnot lost the key to the fields where blossom the flowers of infancy, andfrolic is a prayer.
But he dare not set a foot outside the walls of our retreat, for it wasas useless to hide Ballageich under a Kilmarnock bonnet as to seek adisguise for his reverence in any suit of clothes. Bernard would come tous rarely under cover of night, but alas! there were no letters for menow, and mine that were sent through him were fewer than before.And there was once an odd thing happened that put an end to theseintromissions; a thing that baffled me to understand at the time, andindeed for many a day thereafter, but was made plain to me later on ina manner that proved how contrary in his character was this mad priest,that was at once assassin and the noblest friend.
Father Hamilton was not without money, though all had been taken fromhim at Bicetre. It was an evidence of the width and power of the Jesuitmovement that even in the Hotel Dieu he could command what sums heneeded, and Bernard was habituated to come to him for moneys that mightpay for himself and the coachman and the horses at the _remise_. Onthe last of these occasions I took the chance to slip a letter for MissWalkinshaw into his hand. Instead of putting it in his pocket he laid itdown a moment on a table, and he and I were busy packing linen for thewash when a curious cry from Father Hamilton made us turn to see himwith the letter in his hand.
He was gazing with astonishment on the direction.
"Ah!" said he, "and so my Achilles is not consoling himself exclusivelywith the Haemonian lyre, but has taken to that far more dangerousinstrument the pen. The pen, my child, is the curse of youth. When weare young we use it for our undoing, and for the facture of regretsfor after years--even if it be no more than the reading of our wives'letters that I'm told are a bitter revelation to the married man. Andso--and so, Monsieur Croque-mort keeps up a correspondence with thelady. H'm!" He looked so curiously and inquiringly at me that I feltcompelled to make an explanation.
"It is quite true, Father Hamilton," said I. "After all, you gave me solittle clerkly work that I was bound to employ my pen somehow, and howbetter than with my countrywoman?"
"'Tis none of my affair--perhaps," he said, laying down the letter."And yet I have a curiosity. Have we here the essential Mercury?" and heindicated Bernard who seemed to me to have a greater confusion than thediscovery gave a cause for.
"Bernard has been good enough," said I. "You discover two Scots, FatherHamilton, in a somewhat sentimental situation. The lady did me thehonour to be interested in my little travels, and I did my best to keepher informed."
He turned away as he had been shot, hiding his face, but I saw from hisneck t
hat he had grown as white as parchment.
"What in the world have I done?" thinks I, and concluded that hewas angry for my taking the liberty to use the dismissed servant as ago-between. In a moment or two he turned about again, eying me closely,and at last he put his hand upon my shoulder as a schoolmaster might doupon a boy's.
"My good Paul," said he, "how old are you?"
"Twenty-one come Martinmas," I said.
"Expiscate! elucidate! 'Come Martinmas,'" says he, "and what does thatmean? But no matter--twenty-one says my barbarian; sure 'tis a rightyoung age, a very baby of an age, an age in frocks if one that has ithas lived the best of his life with sheep and bullocks."
"Sir," I said, indignant, "I was in very honest company among the samesheep and bullocks."
"Hush!" said he, and put up his hand, eying me with compassion andkindness. "If thou only knew it, lad, thou art due me a civil attentionat the very least. Sure there is no harm in my mentioning that thou artmighty ingenuous for thy years. 'Tis the quality I would be the lastto find fault with, but sometimes it has its inconveniences.And Bernard"--he turned to the Swiss who was still greatlydisturbed--"Bernard is a somewhat older gentleman. Perhaps he willsay--our good Bernard--if he was the person I have to thank for takingthe sting out of the wasp, for extracting the bullet from my pistol? Ah!I see he is the veritable person. Adorable Bernard, let that stand tohis credit!"
Then Bernard fell trembling like a saugh tree, and protested he did butwhat he was told.
"And a good thing, too," said the priest, still very pale but with nodispleasure. "And a good thing too, else poor Buhot, that I have seen aninfinity of headachy dawns with, had been beyond any interest in cardsor prisoners. For that I shall forgive you the rest that I can guess at.Take Monsieur Grog's letter where you have taken the rest, and be gone."
The Swiss went out much crestfallen from an interview that was beyond mycomprehension.
When he was gone Father Hamilton fell into a profound meditation,walking up and down his room muttering to himself.
"Faith, I never had such a problem presented to me before," said he,stopping his walk; "I know not whether to laugh or swear. I feel thatI have been made a fool of, and yet nothing better could have happened.And so my Croque-mort, my good Monsieur Propriety, has been writing thelady? I should not wonder if he thought she loved him."
"Nothing so bold," I cried. "You might without impropriety have seenevery one of my letters, and seen in them no more than a seaman's log."
"A seaman's log!" said he, smiling faintly and rubbing his massive chin;"nothing would give the lady more delight, I am sure. A seaman's log!And I might have seen them without impropriety, might I? That I'll swearwas what her ladyship took very good care to obviate. Come now, did shenot caution thee against telling me of this correspondence?"
I confessed it was so; that the lady naturally feared she might be madethe subject of light talk, and I had promised that in that respect sheshould suffer nothing for her kindly interest in a countryman.
The priest laughed consumedly at this.
"Interest in her countryman!" said he. "Oh, lad, wilt be the death of mefor thy unexpected spots of innocence."
"And as to that," I said, "you must have had a sort of correspondencewith her yourself."
"I!" said he. "_Comment!_"
"To be quite frank with you," said I, "it has been the cause of somevexatious thoughts to me that the letter I carried to the Prince wasdirected in Miss Walkinshaw's hand of write, and as Buhot informed me,it was the same letter that was to wile his Royal Highness to his fatein the Rue des Reservoirs." Father Hamilton groaned, as he did at anytime the terrible affair was mentioned.
"It is true, Paul, quite true," said he, "but the letter was a forgery.I'll give the lady the credit to say she never had a hand in it."
"I am glad to hear that, for it removes some perplexities that havetroubled me for a while back."
"Ah," said he, "and your perplexities and mine are not over even now,poor Paul. This Bernard is like to be the ruin of me yet. For you,however, I have no fear, but it is another matter with the poor old foolfrom Dixmunde."
His voice broke, he displayed thus and otherwise so troubled a mind andso great a reluctance to let me know the cause of it that I thought itwell to leave him for a while and let him recover his old manner.
To that end I put on my coat and hat and went out rather earlier thanusual for my evening walk.