The Shoes of Fortune
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Munro Neil. The Shoes of Fortune
CHAPTER I. NARRATES HOW I CAME TO QUIT THE STUDY OF LATIN AND THE LIKE, AND TAKE TO HARD WORK IN A MOORLAND COUNTRY
CHAPTER II. MISS FORTUNE’S TRYST BY WATER OF EARN, AND HOW I MARRED THE SAME UNWITTINGLY
CHAPTER III. OF THE COMING OF UNCLE ANDREW WITH A SCARRED FOREHEAD AND A BRASS-BOUND CHEST, AND HOW I TOOK AN INFECTION
CHAPTER IV. I COME UPON THE RED SHOES
CHAPTER V. A SPOILED TRYST, AND OTHER THINGS THAT FOLLOWED ON THE OPENING OF THE CHEST
CHAPTER VI. MY DEED ON THE MOOR OF MEARNS
CHAPTER VII. QUENTIN GREIG LOSES A SON, AND I SET OUT WITH A HORSE AS ALL MY FORTUNE
CHAPTER VIII. I RIDE BY NIGHT ACROSS SCOTLAND, AND MEET A MARINER WITH A GLEED EYE
CHAPTER IX. WHEREIN THE “SEVEN SISTERS” ACTS STRANGELY, AND I SIT WAITING FOR THE MANACLES
CHAPTER X. THE STRUGGLE IN THE CABIN, AND AN EERIE SOUND OF RUNNING WATER
CHAPTER XI. THE SCUTTLED SHIP
CHAPTER XII. MAKES PLAIN THE DEEPEST VILLAINY OF RISK AND SETS ME ON A FRENCHMAN
CHAPTER XIII. WHEREIN APPEARS A GENTLEMANLY CORSAIR AND A FRENCH-IRISH LORD
CHAPTER XIV. IN DUNKERQUE – A LADY SPEAKS TO ME IN SCOTS AND A FAT PRIEST SEEMS TO HAVE SOMETHING ON HIS MIND
CHAPTER XV. WHEREIN A SITUATION OFFERS AND I ENGAGE TO GO TRAVELLING WITH THE PRIEST
CHAPTER XVI. RELATES HOW I INDULGED MY CURIOSITY AND HOW LITTLE CAME OF IT
CHAPTER XVII. WITNESSES THE LAST OF A BLATE YOUNG MAN
CHAPTER XIX. A RAP IN THE EARLY MORNING AWAKENS ME AND I START IN A GLASS COACH UPON THE ODDEST OF JOURNEYS
CHAPTER XX. LEADS ME TO THE FRONT OF A COFFEE-HOUSE WHERE I AM STARTLED TO SEE A FACE I KNOW
CHAPTER XXI. THE ATTEMPT ON THE PRINCE
CHAPTER XXII. OF A NIGHT JOURNEY AND BLACK BICETRE AT THE END OF IT
CHAPTER XXIV. PHILOSOPHY IN A FELON’S CELL
CHAPTER XXV. WE ATTEMPT AN ESCAPE
CHAPTER XXVI. A RIMEY NIGHT ON ROOF-TOPS, AND A NEW USE FOR AN OLD KIRK BELL
CHAPTER XXVII. WE ENTER PARIS AND FIND A SANCTUARY THERE
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MAN WITH THE TARTAN WAISTCOAT
CHAPTER XXIX. WHEREIN THE PRIEST LEAVES ME, AND I MAKE AN INLAND VOYAGE
CHAPTER XXX. A GUID CONCEIT OF MYSELF LEADS ME FAR ASTRAY
CHAPTER XXXI. THE BARD OF LOVE WHO WROTE WITH OLD MATERIALS. CHAPTER XXXII. THE DUEL IN THE AUBERGE GARDEN
CHAPTER XXXIII. FAREWELL TO MISS WALKINSHAW
CHAPTER XXXIV. OF MY WINTER CAMPAIGN IN PRUSSIA, AND ANOTHER MEETING WITH MACKELLAR OF KILBRIDE
CHAPTER XXXV. BRINGS ME TO HELVOETSLUYS IN WINTER WEATHER
CHAPTER XXXVI. FATHER HAMILTON IS THREATENED BY THE JESUITS AND WE ARE FORCED TO FLY AGAIN
CHAPTER XXXVII. I OVERHEAR THE PLAN OF BRITAIN’S INVASION
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THUROT’S PRISONER. MY FRIEND THE WATCH
CHAPTER XXXIX. DISCLOSES THE MANNER OF MY ESCAPE AND HOW WE SET SAIL FOR ALBION
CHAPTER XL. MY INTERVIEW WITH PITT
CHAPTER XLI. TREATS OF FATHER HAMILTON’S DEATH
CHAPTER XLII. I DEPART IN THE MIDST OF ILLUMINATION AND COME TO A JAIL, BAD NEWS, AND AN OLD ENEMY
CHAPTER XLIII. BACK TO THE MOORLAND
CHAPTER XLIV. WHEREIN THE SHOES OF FORTUNE BRING ME HOME
Отрывок из книги
For the most part of a year I toiled and moiled like any crofter’s son on my father’s poor estate, and dreary was the weird I had to dree, for my being there at all was an advertisement to the countryside of what a fool was young Paul Greig. “The Spoiled Horn” was what they called me in the neighbourhood (I learned it in the taunt of a drunken packman), for I had failed at being the spoon I was once designed for, and there was not a ne’er-do-weel peasant nor a bankrupt portioner came craving some benefit to my father’s door but made up for his deference to the laird by his free manner with the laird’s son. The extra tenderness of my mother (if that were possible) only served to swell my rebel heart, for I knew she was but seeking to put me in a better conceit of myself, and I found a place whereof I had before been fond exceedingly assume a new complexion. The rain seemed to fall constantly that year, and the earth in spring was sodden and sour. Hazel Den House appeared sunk in the rotten leafage of the winter long after the lambs came home and the snipe went drumming on the marsh, and the rookery in the holm plantation was busy with scolding parents tutoring their young. A solemn house at its best – it is so yet, sometimes I think, when my wife is on a jaunt at her sister’s and Walter’s bairns are bedded – it was solemn beyond all description that spring, and little the better for the coming of summer weather. For then the trees about it, that gave it over long billows of untimbered countryside an aspect of dark importance, by the same token robbed it (as I thought then) of its few amenities. How it got the name of Hazel Den I cannot tell, for autumn never browned a nut there. It was wych elm and ash that screened Hazel Den House; the elms monstrous and grotesque with knotty growths: when they were in their full leaf behind the house they hid the valley of the Clyde and the Highland hills, that at bleaker seasons gave us a sense of companionship with the wide world beyond our infield of stunted crops. The ash towered to the number of two score and three towards the south, shutting us off from the view there, and working muckle harm to our kitchen-garden. Many a time my father was for cutting them down, but mother forbade it, though her syboes suffered from the shade and her roses grew leggy and unblooming. “That,” said she, “is the want of constant love: flowers are like bairns; ye must be aye thinking of them kindly to make them thrive.” And indeed there might be something in the notion, for her apple-ringie and Dutch Admiral, jonquils, gillyflowers, and peony-roses throve marvellously, better then they did anywhere in the shire of Renfrew while she lived and tended them and have never been quite the same since she died, even with a paid gardener to look after them.
A winter loud with storm, a spring with rain-rot in the fallen leaf, a summer whose foliage but made our home more solitary than ever, a short autumn of stifling heats – that was the year the Spoiled Horn tasted the bitterness of life, the bitterness that comes from the want of an aim (that is better than the best inheritance in kind) and from a consciousness that the world mistrusts your ability. And to cap all, there was no word about my returning to the prelections of Professor Reid, for a reason which I could only guess at then, but learned later was simply the want of money.
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There must be people in the world who are oddly affected by the names of places, peoples, things that have never come within their own experience. Till this day the name of Barbadoes influences me like a story of adventure; and when my Uncle Andrew – lank, bearded, drenched with storm, stood in our parlour glibly hinting at illimitable travel, I lost my anger with the tipsy wretch and felt a curious glow go through my being.
“Sorrow here or sorrow there, Isobel,” I said, “they are the shoes to take me away sooner or later from Hazel Den.”
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