“Take this letter, if you please, Monsieur de Lancize, to the Bailli de Givry at the Gouvernement. After that I shall not require your services further to-night.” And with those last words there was a glimpse of the smile which was reputed irresistible.
A moment later Lieutenant the Vicomte de Lancize had closed the door of Monsieur de Saxe’s room for the second time. He could guess at the information which he was conveying to the Governor of the town of Dunkirk in this letter sealed with the arms of the House of Wettin traversed by the bend sinister; it was to tell him that the enterprise was as dead as a doornail. But for himself, he was more concerned with the knowledge that his evening’s pleasure was now secured.
Although there were occasional lulls, it was still blowing very hard in the Parc de la Marine, where the Intendance was situated, and when the young dragoon, bearing to his right, crossed the bridge over the Canal de Furnes into the town, he staggered for a second against the parapet, bent nearly double as he was, and clutching his hat with one hand, his wildly beating cloak with the other. In the Place Royale, which he then skirted, there was not a soul to be seen, but as he passed along between the parish church of St. Eloi and its separate-standing tower he met a couple of priests with unruly cassocks, and after that a small squad of soldiers of the Régiment d’Eu. High above the roof-tops a pale, astonished ghost of a moon struggled to fend off the masses of scudding blackness. She looked, he thought, like a drowned face among seaweed. It was marvellous that there had not been more drowned faces out there in the rade. How unfortunate was the House of Stuart; that poor young prince at Gravelines, all ignorant of the orders recently received from Versailles, must be almost out of his mind with anxiety! With this sympathetic reflection M. de Lancize arrived at the building known as the Gouvernement.
By the time that he had discharged his mission rain had been added to the discomforts of the night. Undismayed, he set his face now in the direction of the water-side. The sight of Nicolle’s golden hair would compensate for much, and that the Trois Navires lay in such close proximity to those masts which even in harbour were to-night swaying and straining wildly, to those creaking hulls, would only make its interior the more attractive. Even though he would be wet as well as muddy, he did not anticipate the wench objecting on that score to sit upon his knee. Since the expedition was not now to sail, he would be unable to pursue any studies with regard to Nicolle’s counterparts in England. Well, the Low Countries were full of girls with fair skins and golden hair; he would probably be sick of them before long.
The rain-lashed streets seemed even more deserted than when he had left the Intendance. The young dragoon found himself plunging into one of whose name he was not sure, though he believed it to be the Rue des Minimes. It led, at any rate, in the right direction, and he pursued it whistling a little air which the wind slew on his lips. Borne in snatches on the blast came the tinkle and clang of various bells ringing for compline from the numerous religious houses of Dunkirk, the Conceptionnistes in his immediate vicinity or the Clarisses, the Pénitentes or the Dames Anglaises—or even the Minimes ahead of him. In this ruelle—for it was hardly more, so narrow was it and short—two lights only were visible; one at the further end, affixed for the guidance of the public to the wall of a house, and one of a different nature which streamed out from the uncurtained ground-floor window of some dwelling at the nearer. By the more distant light, which leapt violently at every fresh gust, something like the arm of a semaphore could be seen, though indistinctly, to swing to and fro.
The young officer’s immediate attention, however, was caught by this low, lighted window on his right hand, and as he neared it a quite purposeless curiosity prompted him to glance in. For the window was open—an unusual phenomenon on so wet and boisterous a night—and a man was standing at it, a tall man and a young, as far as could be guessed. Looking for the arrival of someone, perhaps. . . .
“She will not come, monsieur, in such weather,” remarked M. de Lancize, slackening his pace as he passed. “You would do better to go to bed!”
There was no answer, or none that reached his ears, and with this piece of impertinence the Comte de Saxe’s aide-de-camp passed on to what was awaiting him at the end of the street. It leapt down upon him, the smile still round his lips, with a noise like the clatter of several iron pots, with an astonishing souse of water and a simultaneous blow on head and shoulder that sent him reeling, astounded and indignant, into the rain-filled gutter in the middle of the ruelle, where, slipping in the slime of it, he fell his length.
Not without cause had the retired notary who dwelt in the corner house with the lantern feared that the whole of his already rickety gutter would carry away one of these nights if the gale continued.
CHAPTER II
When Mr. Ranald Maclean, younger of Fasnapoll in Askay, had opened the window of his lodging in the Rue des Minimes, it had only been because of the unconscious pressure of his thoughts. Were the elements never going to relent? A Jacobite by upbringing and conviction, he had nevertheless no more come to Dunkirk in order to join Prince Charles Edward and the French expedition than he had unfastened his casement through impatience of the advent of a lady, as that impudent French officer just passing in the rain had suggested. It was chance which had brought him, all unknowing, to Dunkirk on his way back to Scotland from the wine country of the Gironde—only to find Dunkirk a hive of war-like preparations, and all outgoing vessels forbidden to leave. In less than an hour he had discovered why; in less than two, finding that the Earl Marischal was among the Scottish Jacobites gathered there to accompany the expedition, he had waited upon him and placed his sword at the disposal of King James III and VIII.
That was last Thursday, before the first tempest; and this was Wednesday. What of the condition of the French flotilla now, what of all those brave hopes? “The wind blew and they were scattered.” Mr. Maclean did not know whence these words came to torment him; he thought from some English medal struck to commemorate the destruction of the Spanish Armada. Yes, the winds always fought for England; had they not wrecked the hopes of the Jacobite attempt of 1719 by scattering the Spanish fleet which was to bring such solid assistance to the Cause? He turned away from his contemplation of the streaming, howling dusk outside with something between a curse and a sigh, and, forgetting to close the inward opening casement, moved away, a tall, lean, muscular Highlander of eight-and-twenty or so, not ill-looking, rather grave of aspect, dark of complexion, grey-eyed and wearing his own dark hair. But after a moment, realising that the rain was coming in, he turned back to shut the window, and was just pushing it to when there came to his ears from without a sort of clattering and a cry. Pulling the casement wide again, he thrust out his head. The vacillating light at the end of the little street showed him a cloaked and falling figure. Ranald Maclean swung a leg over the low sill and vaulted out into the rain.
* * * * *
“Are you much hurt, sir?” asked a voice in Marie-Cyprien de Lancize’s ear, a voice which that young officer, a quarter stunned though he was, realised to be other than French, though it was using that language. Its owner was assisting him to rise.
“Parbleu, I hardly know!” Once upon his feet, the Vicomte carried a hand to his hatless head. His elegant white wig was askew and soiled in one place with the mud of the unsavoury channel in which lay his galooned and cockaded tricorne, upside down. His helper picked it up.
“May I offer you, sir,” he said, “the hospitality of my little room along there to put yourself to rights, and to repose yourself awhile if you wish?”
With thanks the Frenchman accepted the hat and the offer, too. “But I should like to know,” he added, looking up at the unbetraying, blank wall, “what enemy I can have in this little street, of whose name I am not even sure!”
“It is called the Rue des Minimes.”
“Eh bien, never have I serenaded any fair bourgeoise in the Rue des Minimes—yet to receive an iron cauldron full of water . . . by the way, I hope it was only water?”
The Highlander pointed to a twisted length