The Shoes of Fortune Read online

  CHAPTER III

  OF THE COMING OF UNCLE ANDREW WITH A SCARRED FOREHEAD AND A BRASS-BOUNDCHEST, AND HOW I TOOK AN INFECTION

  It was a night--as often happens in the uplands of our shire in autumnweather--of vast and brooding darkness: the world seemed to swound ina breathless oven, and I had scarcely come to my chamber when thunderbroke wild upon the world and torrential rain began to fall. I did notgo to bed, but sat with my candle extinguished and watched the lightningshow the landscape as if it had been flooded by the gleam of moon andstar.

  Between the roar of the thunder and the blatter of the rain there wereintervals of an astounding stillness of an ominous suspense, and itseemed oddly to me, as I sat in my room, that more than I was awake inHazel Den House. I felt sure my father and mother sat in theirroom, still clad and whispering; it was but the illusion of amoment--something felt by the instinct and not by reason--and then alouder, nearer peal of thunder dispelled the notion, and I made to go tobed.

  I stopped like one shot, with my waistcoat half undone.

  There was a sound of a horse's hoofs coming up the loan, with the beatof them in mire sounding soft enough to make me shiver at the notion ofthe rider's discomfort in that appalling night, and every now and thenthe metal click of shoes, showing the animal over-reached himself in thetrot.

  The rider drew up at the front; a flash of the lightning and the wildestthunder-peal of the night seemed to meet among our outhouses, and whenthe roll of the thunder ceased I heard a violent rapping at the outerdoor.

  The servants would be long ere they let this late visitor out of thestorm, I fancied, and I hurried down; but my father was there in thehall before me, all dressed, as my curious intuition had informed me,and his face strange and inscrutable in the light of a shaded candle.He was making to open the door. My appearance seemed to startle him. Hepaused, dubious and a trifle confused.

  "I thought you had been in bed long ago," said he, "and--"

  His sentence was not finished, for the horseman broke in upon it with amasterful rataplan upon the oak, seemingly with a whip-head or a pistolbutt, and a cry, new to my ear and uncanny, rose through the beatingrain.

  With a sigh the most distressing I can mind of, my father seemed toreconcile himself to some fate he would have warded off if he could. Heunbolted and threw back the door.

  Our visitor threw himself in upon us as if we held the keys ofparadise--a man like a rake for lankiness, as was manifest even throughthe dripping wrap-rascal that he wore; bearded cheek and chin in afashion that must seem fiendish in our shaven country; with a wild andangry eye, the Greig mole black on his temple, and an old scar lividacross his sunburned brow. He threw a three-cocked hat upon the floorwith a gesture of indolent possession.

  "Well, I'm damned!" cried he, "but this is a black welcome to one'spoor brother Andy," and scarcely looked upon my father standing withthe shaded candle in the wind. "What's to drink? Drink, do you hear thatQuentin? Drink--drink--d-r-i-n-k. A long strong drink too, and that'stelling you, and none of the whey that I'm hearing's running throughthe Greigs now, that once was a reputable family of three bottles and arummer to top all."

  "Whist, whist, man!" pleaded father tremulously, all the man out of himas he stood before this drunken apparition.

  "Whist I quo' he. Well stap me! do you no' ken the lean pup of thelitter?" hiccoughed our visitor, with a sort of sneer that made theblood run to my head, and for the first time I felt the great, thesplendid joy of a good cause to fight for.

  "You're Andrew," said my father simply, putting his hand upon the man'scoat sleeve in a sympathy for his drenchen clothes.

  That kindly hand was jerked off rudely, an act as insolent as if he hadsmitten his host upon the mouth: my heart leaped, and my fingers went athis throat. I could have spread him out against the wall, though I knewhim now my uncle; I could have given him the rogue's quittance with ablack face and a protruding tongue. The candle fell from my father'shand; the glass shade shattered; the hall of Hazel Den House was plungedin darkness, and the rain drave in through the open door upon us threestruggling.

  "Let him go, Paul," whispered my father, who I knew was in terror offrightening his wife, and he wrestled mightily with an arm of each ofus.

  Yet I could not let my uncle go, for with the other arm he held a knife,and he would perhaps have died for it had not another light come on thestair and my mother's voice risen in a pitiful cry.

  We fell asunder on a common impulse, and the drunken wanderer was thefirst to speak.

  "Katrine," said he; "it's always the old tale with Andy, you see;they must be misunderstanding me," and he bowed with a surprisinggentlemanliness that could have made me almost think him not the manwho had fouled our house with oaths and drawn a knife upon us in thedarkness. The blade of the same, by a trick of legerdemain, had gone upthe sleeve of his dripping coat. He seemed all at once sobered. He tookmy good mother by the hand as she stood trembling and never to knowclearly upon what elements of murder she had come.

  "It is you, Andrew," said she, bravely smiling. "What a night to comehome in after twenty years! I'm wae to see you in such a plight. Andyour horse?" said she again, lifting her candle and peering into thedarkness of the night. "I must cry up Sandy to stable your horse."

  I'll give my uncle the credit of a confusion at his own forgetfulness.

  "Good Lord! Katrine," said he, "if I did not clean forget the brute, afiddle-faced, spavined, spatter-dasher of a Gorbals mare, no' worth hercorn; but there's my bit kistie on her hump."

  The servant was round soon at the stabling of the mare, and my motherwas brewing something of what the gentleman had had too much already,though she could not guess that; and out of the dripping night hedragged in none of a rider's customary holsters but a little brass-boundchest.

  "Yon night I set out for my fortune, Quentin," said he, "I did not thinkI would come back with it a bulk so small as this; did you? It was thesight of the quiet house and the thought of all it contained that mademe act like an idiot as I came in. Still, we must just take the world aswe get it, Quentin; and I knew I was sure of a warm welcome in the oldhouse, from one side of it if not from the other, for the sake of langsyne. And this is your son, is it?" he went on, looking at my six feetof indignation not yet dead "Split me if there's whey in that piece! Younear jammed my hawze that time! Your Uncle Andrew's hawze, boy. Are younot ashamed of yourself?"

  "Not a bit," said I between my teeth; "I leave that to you."

  He smiled till his teeth shone white in his black beard, and "Lord!"cried he, "I'm that glad I came. It was but the toss of a bawbee, when Icame to Leith last week, whether I should have a try at the old doocot,or up Blue Peter again and off to the Indies. I hate ceiled rooms--theymind me of the tomb; I'm out of practice at sitting doing nothing ina parlour and saying grace before meat, and--I give you warning,Quentin--I'll be damned if I drink milk for supper. It was the notionof milk for supper and all that means that kept me from calling onKatrine--and you--any sooner. But I'm glad I came to meet a lad ofspirit like young Andy here."

  "Not Andy," said my father. "Paul is his name."

  My uncle laughed.

  "That was ill done of you, Quentin," said he; "I think it was as littleas Katrine and you could do to have kept up the family name. I supposeyou reckoned to change the family fate when you made him Paul. H'm! Youmust have forgotten that Paul the Apostle wandered most, and many waysfared worst of all the rest. I haven't forgotten my Bible, you see,Quentin."

  We were now in the parlour room; a servant lass was puffing up anew-lighted fire; my uncle, with his head in the shade, had hisgreatcoat off, and stood revealed in shabby garments that had once beenmost genteel; and his brass-bound fortune, that he seemed averse fromparting with a moment, was at his feet. Getting no answer to what he hadsaid of the disciples, he looked from one to the other of us and laughedslyly.

  "Take off your boots, Andy," said my father.

  "And where have you been since--since--the Plantations?"
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  "Stow that, Quentin!" cried my uncle, with an oath and his eye on me."What Plantations are you blethering about? And where have I been? Askme rather where have I not been. It makes me dizzy even to think of it:with rotten Jesuits and Pagan gentlemen; with France and Spain, andwith filthy Lascars, lying Greeks, Eboe slaves, stinking niggers, andslit-eyed Chinese! Oh! I tell you I've seen things in twenty years. Andplaces, too: this Scotland, with its infernal rain and its grey fieldsand its rags, looks like a nightmare to me yet. You may be sure I'll beout of it pretty fast again."

  "Poor Scotland!" said father ambiguously.

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