by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXXV
BRINGS ME TO HELVOETSLUYS IN WINTER WEATHER
Kilbride and I parted company with the others once we had got within thelines of Holland; the cateran (as I would sometimes be calling him ina joke) giving them as much money as might take them leisuredly to thesouth they meant to make for, and he and I proceeded on our way acrossthe country towards the mouth of the River Maas.
It was never my lot before nor since to travel with a more cheerfulcompanion. Not the priest himself had greater humour in his composition,and what was more it was a jollity I was able the better to understand,for while much of Hamilton's _esprit_ missed the spark with me becauseit had a foreign savour, the pawkiness of Kilbride was just the marrowof that I had seen in folks at home. And still the man was strange, foroften he had melancholies. Put him in a day of rain and wind and youwould hear him singing like a laverock the daftest songs in Erse; orgive him a tickle task at haggling in the language of signs with abroad-bottomed bargeman, or the driver of a rattel-van, and the funwould froth in him like froth on boiling milk.
Indeed, and I should say like cream, for this Mac-Kellar man had, whatis common enough among the clans in spite of our miscalling, a heart ofjeel for the tender moment and a heart of iron for the hard. But black,black, were his vapours when the sun shone, which is surely the poorestof excuses for dolours. I think he hated the flatness of the land wetravelled in. To me it was none amiss, for though it was winter I couldfancy how rich would be the grass of July in the polders compared withour poor stunted crops at home, and that has ever a cheerful influenceon any man that has been bred in Lowland fields. But he (if I did notmisread his eye) looked all ungratefully on the stretching leagues thatever opened before us as we sailed on waterways or jolted on the roads.
"I do not ken how it may be with you, Mr. Greig," he said one day as,somewhere in Brabant, our sluggish vessel opened up a view of canal thatseemed to stretch so far it pricked the eye of the setting sun, andthe windmills whirled on either hand ridiculous like the games ofchildren--"I do not ken how it may be with you, but I'm sick of thiscountry. It's no better nor a bannock, and me so fond of Badenoch!"
"Indeed and there's a sameness about every part of it," I confessed,"and yet it has its qualities. See the sun on yonder island--'tispleasant enough to my notion, and as for the folk, they are not the cutof our own, but still they have very much in common with folks I've seenin Ayr."
He frowned at that unbelievingly, and cast a sour eye upon some womenthat stood upon a bridge. "Troth!" said he, "you would not compare theselimmers with our own. I have not seen a light foot and a right dark eyesince ever I put the back of me to the town of Inverness in the year of'Fifty-six.'"
"Nor I since I left the Mearns," I cried, suddenly thinking of Isobeland forgetting all that lay between that lass and me.
"Oh! oh!" cried Kilbride. "And that's the way of it? Therms more thanClemie Walkinshaw, is there? I was ill to convince that a nephew of AndyGreig's began the game at the age of twenty-odd with a lady that mighthave been his mother."
I felt very much ashamed that he should have any knowledge of this partof my history, and seeing it he took to bantering me.
"Come, come!" said he, "you must save my reputation with myself forpenetration, for I aye argued with Buhot that your tanglement withmadame was something short of innocency for all your mim look, and hewas for swearing the lady had found a fool."
"I am beat to understand how my affairs came to be the topic of disputewith you and Buhot?" said I, astonished.
"And what for no'?" said he. "Wasn't the man's business to find outthings, and would you have me with no interest in a ploy when it turnedup? There were but the two ways of it--you were all the gomeral in lovethat Buhot thought you, or you were Andy Greig's nephew and willing towin the woman's favour (for all her antiquity) by keeping Buhot in thenews of Hamilton's movements."
"Good God!" I cried, "that was a horrible alternative!" even thenfailing to grasp all that he implied.
"Maybe," he said pawkily; "but you cannot deny you kept them very wellinformed upon your master's movements, otherwise it had gone very hardperhaps with his Royal Highness."
"Me!" I cried. "I would have as soon informed upon my father. And whowas there to inform?"
Kilbride looked at me curiously as if he half doubted my innocence. "Itis seldom I have found the man Buhot in a lie of the sort," saidhe, "but he led me to understand that what information he had of themovements of the priest came from yourself."
I jumped to my feet, and almost choked in denying it.
"Oh, very well, very well!" said Kilbride coolly. "There is no need tomake a _fracas_ about the matter. I am just telling you what Buhot toldme. And troth! it was a circumstantial story he had of it; for he saidthat the Marshal Duke de Bellisle, and Monsieur Florentin, and MonsieurBerrier, and all the others of the Cabinet, had Fleuriau's name anddirection from yourself, and found the plot had some connection with theaffair of Damiens. George Kelly, the Prince's secretary, was anotherman that told me." He gazed along the deck of the scow we sat in, asif thinking hard, and then turned to me with a hesitating suggestion."Perhaps," said he, "you are forgetting. Perhaps you wrote the woman andtold her innocently enough, and that would come to the same thing."
I was overwhelmed with confusion at the idea, though the possibility ofmy letters being used had once before occurred to me.
"Well, if you must know, it is true I wrote some letters to MissWalkinshaw," I confessed shamefacedly. "But they were very carefullytransmitted by Bernard the Swiss to her, for I got her answers back."
He burst out laughing.
"For simplicity you beat all!" cried he. "You sent your news throughthe Swiss, that was in Buhot's pay, and took the charge from Hamilton'spistols, and did his part in helping you to escape from jyle with agreat degree of humour as those of us who knew what was afoot had toagree, and you think the man would swither about peeping into a letteryou entrusted to him, particularly if it was directed to hersel'! Thesleep-bag was under your head sure enough, as the other man said."
"And I was the unconscious wretch that betrayed our hiding in the HotelDieu!" I cried with much chagrin, seeing at a flash what all this meant."If I had Bernard here I could thraw his neck."
"Indeed," said he, "and what for should it be Bernard? The man but didwhat he was told, and there, by my troth! when I think of it, I'm no' sosure that he was any different from yourself."
"What do you mean?" said I.
"Oh, just that hersel' told you to keep her informed of your movementsand you did so. In Bernard and you she had a pair of spies instead ofonly the one had she trusted in either."
"And what in all the world would she be doing that for?"
"What but for her lover the prince?" said he with a sickening promptnessthat some way left me without a doubt he spoke with knowledge. "Foul fa'the day he ever clapt eyes on her! for she has the cunning of the fox,though by all accounts a pleasant person. They say she has a sisterthat's in the service of the queen at St. James's, and who kens but forall her pretended affection for Tearlach she may be playing all the timeinto the hands of his enemies? She made you and this Bernard themeans of putting an end to the Jesuit plot upon his Royal Highness bydiscovering the source of it, and now the Jesuits, as I'm told, are tobe driven furth the country and putten to the horn."
I was stunned by this revelation of what a tool I had been in the handsof one I fancied briefly that I was in love with. For long I sat silentpondering on it, and at last unable to make up my mind whether I shouldlaugh or swear. Kilbride, while affecting to pay no heed to me, was keenenough to see my perturbation, and had, I think, a sort of pride that hehad been able to display such an astuteness.
"I'm afraid," said I at last, "there is too much probability in all thatyou have said and thought. I am a stupendous ass, Mr. MacKellar, and youare a very clever man."
"Not at all, not at all!" he protested hurriedly. "I have just somenatural Hielan' interest in affair
s of intrigue, and you have not (byyour leave) had my advantages of the world, for I have seen much of theevil as well as the good of it, and never saw a woman's hand in aughtyet but I wondered what mischief she was planning. There's much,I'm telling you, to be learned about a place like Fontainebleau orVersailles, and I advantaged myself so well of my opportunities therethat you could not drive a hole but I would put a nail in it, as theother man said."
"Well," said I, "my hope is that I may never meet the woman again, andthat's without a single angry feeling to her."
"You need not fear about that," said he. "The thing that does not lie inyour road will never break your leg, as the other man said, and I'll besurprised if she puts herself in your way again now that her need foryou is done. A score of your friends in Dunkerque could have told youthat she was daft about him. I might be vexed for you if I did not knowfrom your own mouth of the other one in Mearns."
"We'll say nothing about that," I says, "for that's a tale that's bywi'. She's lost to me."
He gave a little chuckle and had that turn in the eye that showed he hada curious thought.
"What are you laughing at?" I asked. "Oh, just an old word we have inthe Language, that with a two-deer stag-hound it will be happening oftenthat a stag's amissing."
"There's another thing I would like you to tell me out of yourexperience," I said, "and that is the reason for the Prince's doing mea good turn with the one hand and a bad one with the other; using hisefforts to get me the lieutenancy and at the same time putting a man onmy track to quarrel with me?"
"It's as plain as the nose on your face," he cried. "It was no greatsituation he got you when it was in the Regiment d'Auvergne, as youhave discovered, but it would be got I'll warrant on the pressure of theWalkinshaw one. Just because she had that interest in you to press himfor the post, and you were in the trim to keep up a correspondence withher (though in his own interest, as he must know, so far as she wasconcerned), he would want you out of the road. Love is like lairdship,Hazel Den, and it puts up very poorly with fellowship, as the other mansaid."
I thought of the occasions when his Royal Highness had seen me at nightin front of a certain window in the Rue de la Boucherie, and concludedthat Kilbride in this too had probably hit the mark.
And so we passed through Holland in many changes of weather that finallyturned to a black frost, which covered the canals with ice whereonskated the Dutch folks very pleasantly, but we were the losers, as therest of our journey had to be made by post.
It was well on in the winter when we got to Helvoetsluys.
