You may be sure I was not backward, and Alan’s furlough running towards an end, we set forth presently upon this joint adventure.
It was near dark of a January day when we rode at last into the town of Dunkirk. We left our horses at the post, and found a guide to Bazin’s Inn, which lay beyond the walls. Night was quite fallen, so that we were the last to leave that fortress, and heard the doors of it close behind us as we passed the bridge. On the other side there lay a lighted suburb, which we thridded for a while, then turned into a dark lane, and presently found ourselves wading in the night among deep sand where we could hear a bullering of the sea. We travelled in this fashion for some while, following our conductor mostly by the sound of his voice; and I had begun to think he was perhaps misleading us, when we came to the top of a small brae, and there appeared out of the darkness a dim light in a window.
“VOILA L’AUBERGE A BAZIN,” says the guide.
Alan smacked his lips. “An unco lonely bit,” said he, and I thought by his tone he was not wholly pleased.
A little after, and we stood in the lower storey of that house, which was all in the one apartment, with a stairs leading to the chambers at the side, benches and tables by the wall, the cooking fire at the one end of it, and shelves of bottles and the cellar-trap at the other. Here Bazin, who was an ill-looking, big man, told us the Scottish gentleman was gone abroad he knew not where, but the young lady was above, and he would call her down to us.
I took from my breast that kerchief wanting the corner, and knotted it about my throat. I could hear my heart go; and Alan patting me on the shoulder with some of his laughable expressions, I could scarce refrain from a sharp word. But the time was not long to wait. I heard her step pass overhead, and saw her on the stair. This she descended very quietly, and greeted me with a pale face and a certain seeming of earnestness, or uneasiness, in her manner that extremely dashed me.
“My father, James More, will be here soon. He will be very pleased to see you,” she said. And then of a sudden her face flamed, her eyes lightened, the speech stopped upon her lips; and I made sure she had observed the kerchief. It was only for a breath that she was discomposed; but methought it was with a new animation that she turned to welcome Alan. “And you will be his friend, Alan Breck?” she cried. “Many is the dozen times I will have heard him tell of you; and I love you already for all your bravery and goodness.”
“Well, well,” says Alan, holding her hand in his and viewing her, “and so this is the young lady at the last of it! David, ye’re an awful poor hand of a description.”
I do not know that ever I heard him speak so straight to people’s hearts; the sound of his voice was like song.
“What? will he have been describing me?” she cried.
“Little else of it since I ever came out of France!” says he, “forby a bit of a speciment one night in Scotland in a shaw of wood by Silvermills. But cheer up, my dear! ye’re bonnier than what he said. And now there’s one thing sure; you and me are to be a pair of friends. I’m a kind of a henchman to Davie here; I’m like a tyke at his heels; and whatever he cares for, I’ve got to care for too – and by the holy airn! they’ve got to care for me! So now you can see what way you stand with Alan Breck, and ye’ll find ye’ll hardly lose on the transaction. He’s no very bonnie, my dear, but he’s leal to them he loves.”
“I thank you from my heart for your good words,” said she. “I have that honour for a brave, honest man that I cannot find any to be answering with.”
Using travellers’ freedom, we spared to wait for James More, and sat down to meat, we threesome. Alan had Catriona sit by him and wait upon his wants: he made her drink first out of his glass, he surrounded her with continual kind gallantries, and yet never gave me the most small occasion to be jealous; and he kept the talk so much in his own hand, and that in so merry a note, that neither she nor I remembered to be embarrassed. If any had seen us there, it must have been supposed that Alan was the old friend and I the stranger. Indeed, I had often cause to love and to admire the man, but I never loved or admired him better than that night; and I could not help remarking to myself (what I was sometimes rather in danger of forgetting) that he had not only much experience of life, but in his own way a great deal of natural ability besides. As for Catriona, she seemed quite carried away; her laugh was like a peal of bells, her face gay as a May morning; and I own, although I was well pleased, yet I was a little sad also, and thought myself a dull, stockish character in comparison of my friend, and very unfit to come into a young maid’s life, and perhaps ding down her gaiety.
But if that was like to be my part, I found that at least I was not alone in it; for, James More returning suddenly, the girl was changed into a piece of stone. Through the rest of that evening, until she made an excuse and slipped to bed, I kept an eye upon her without cease; and I can bear testimony that she never smiled, scarce spoke, and looked mostly on the board in front of her. So that I really marvelled to see so much devotion (as it used to be) changed into the very sickness of hate.
Of James More it is unnecessary to say much; you know the man already, what there was to know of him; and I am weary of writing out his lies. Enough that he drank a great deal, and told us very little that was to any possible purpose. As for the business with Alan, that was to be reserved for the morrow and his private hearing.
It was the more easy to be put off, because Alan and I were pretty weary with four day’s ride, and sat not very late after Catriona.
We were soon alone in a chamber where we were to make-shift with a single bed. Alan looked on me with a queer smile.
“Ye muckle ass!” said he.
“What do ye mean by that?” I cried.
“Mean? What do I mean! It’s extraordinar, David man,” say he, “that you should be so mortal stupit.”
Again I begged him to speak out.
“Well, it’s this of it,” said he. “I told ye there were the two kinds of women – them that would sell their shifts for ye, and the others. Just you try for yoursel, my bonny man! But what’s that neepkin at your craig?”
I told him.
“I thocht it was something thereabout” said he.
Nor would he say another word though I besieged him long with importunities.
Chapter XXX – THE LETTER FROM THE SHIP
DAYLIGHT showed us how solitary the inn stood. It was plainly hard upon the sea, yet out of all view of it, and beset on every side with scabbit hills of sand. There was, indeed, only one thing in the nature of a prospect, where there stood out over a brae the two sails of a windmill, like an ass’s ears, but with the ass quite hidden. It was strange (after the wind rose, for at first it was dead calm) to see the turning and following of each other of these great sails behind the hillock. Scarce any road came by there; but a number of footways travelled among the bents in all directions up to Mr. Bazin’s door. The truth is, he was a man of many trades, not any one of them honest, and the position of his inn was the best of his livelihood. Smugglers frequented it; political agents and forfeited persons bound across the water came there to await their passages; and I daresay there was worse behind, for a whole family might have been butchered in that house and nobody the wiser.
I slept little and ill. Long ere it was day, I had slipped from beside my bedfellow, and was warming myself at the fire or walking to and fro before the door. Dawn broke mighty sullen; but a little after, sprang up a wind out of the west, which burst the clouds, let through the sun, and set the mill to the turning. There was something of spring in the sunshine, or else it was in my heart; and the appearing of the great sails one after another from behind the hill, diverted me extremely. At times I could hear a creak of the machinery; and by half-past eight of the day, and I thought this dreary, desert place was like a paradise.