The Master of Ballantrae
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Robert Louis Stevenson >> The Master of Ballantrae
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The supper-things still lay upon the table; the shutters were still
closed, although day peeped in the divisions; and the great room
was lighted only with a single taper and some lurching
reverberation of the fire. Close in the chimney sat two men. The
one that was wrapped in a cloak and wore boots, I knew at once: it
was the bird of ill omen back again. Of the other, who was set
close to the red embers, and made up into a bundle like a mummy, I
could but see that he was an alien, of a darker hue than any man of
Europe, very frailly built, with a singular tall forehead, and a
secret eye. Several bundles and a small valise were on the floor;
and to judge by the smallness of this luggage, and by the condition
of the Master's boots, grossly patched by some unscrupulous country
cobbler, evil had not prospered.
He rose upon my entrance; our eyes crossed; and I know not why it
should have been, but my courage rose like a lark on a May morning.
"Ha!" said I, "is this you?" - and I was pleased with the unconcern
of my own voice.
"It is even myself, worthy Mackellar," says the Master.
"This time you have brought the black dog visibly upon your back,"
I continued.
"Referring to Secundra Dass?" asked the Master. "Let me present
you. He is a native gentleman of India."
"Hum!" said I. "I am no great lover either of you or your friends,
Mr. Bally. But I will let a little daylight in, and have a look at
you." And so saying, I undid the shutters of the eastern window.
By the light of the morning I could perceive the man was changed.
Later, when we were all together, I was more struck to see how
lightly time had dealt with him; but the first glance was
otherwise.
"You are getting an old man," said I.
A shade came upon his face. "If you could see yourself," said he,
"you would perhaps not dwell upon the topic."
"Hut!" I returned, "old age is nothing to me. I think I have been
always old; and I am now, I thank God, better known and more
respected. It is not every one that can say that, Mr. Bally! The
lines in your brow are calamities; your life begins to close in
upon you like a prison; death will soon be rapping at the door; and
I see not from what source you are to draw your consolations."
Here the Master addressed himself to Secundra Dass in Hindustanee,
from which I gathered (I freely confess, with a high degree of
pleasure) that my remarks annoyed him. All this while, you may be
sure, my mind had been busy upon other matters, even while I
rallied my enemy; and chiefly as to how I should communicate
secretly and quickly with my lord. To this, in the breathing-space
now given me, I turned all the forces of my mind; when, suddenly
shifting my eyes, I was aware of the man himself standing in the
doorway, and, to all appearance, quite composed. He had no sooner
met my looks than he stepped across the threshold. The Master
heard him coming, and advanced upon the other side; about four feet
apart, these brothers came to a full pause, and stood exchanging
steady looks, and then my lord smiled, bowed a little forward, and
turned briskly away.
"Mackellar," says he, "we must see to breakfast for these
travellers."
It was plain the Master was a trifle disconcerted; but he assumed
the more impudence of speech and manner. "I am as hungry as a
hawk," says he. "Let it be something good, Henry."
My lord turned to him with the same hard smile.
"Lord Durrisdeer," says he.
"Oh! never in the family," returned the Master.
"Every one in this house renders me my proper title," says my lord.
"If it please you to make an exception, I will leave you to
consider what appearance it will bear to strangers, and whether it
may not be translated as an effect of impotent jealousy."
I could have clapped my hands together with delight: the more so
as my lord left no time for any answer, but, bidding me with a sign
to follow him, went straight out of the hall.
"Come quick," says he; "we have to sweep vermin from the house."
And he sped through the passages, with so swift a step that I could
scarce keep up with him, straight to the door of John Paul, the
which he opened without summons and walked in. John was, to all
appearance, sound asleep, but my lord made no pretence of waking
him.
"John Paul," said he, speaking as quietly as ever I heard him, "you
served my father long, or I would pack you from the house like a
dog. If in half an hour's time I find you gone, you shall continue
to receive your wages in Edinburgh. If you linger here or in St.
Bride's - old man, old servant, and altogether - I shall find some
very astonishing way to make you smart for your disloyalty. Up and
begone. The door you let them in by will serve for your departure.
I do not choose my son shall see your face again."
"I am rejoiced to find you bear the thing so quietly," said I, when
we were forth again by ourselves.
"Quietly!" cries he, and put my hand suddenly against his heart,
which struck upon his bosom like a sledge.
At this revelation I was filled with wonder and fear. There was no
constitution could bear so violent a strain - his least of all,
that was unhinged already; and I decided in my mind that we must
bring this monstrous situation to an end.
"It would be well, I think, if I took word to my lady," said I.
Indeed, he should have gone himself, but I counted - not in vain -
on his indifference.
"Aye," says he, "do. I will hurry breakfast: we must all appear
at the table, even Alexander; it must appear we are untroubled."
I ran to my lady's room, and with no preparatory cruelty disclosed
my news.
"My mind was long ago made up," said she. "We must make our
packets secretly to-day, and leave secretly to-night. Thank
Heaven, we have another house! The first ship that sails shall
bear us to New York."
"And what of him?" I asked.
"We leave him Durrisdeer," she cried. "Let him work his pleasure
upon that."
"Not so, by your leave," said I. "There shall be a dog at his
heels that can hold fast. Bed he shall have, and board, and a
horse to ride upon, if he behave himself; but the keys - if you
think well of it, my lady - shall be left in the hands of one
Mackellar. There will be good care taken; trust him for that."
"Mr. Mackellar," she cried, "I thank you for that thought. All
shall be left in your hands. If we must go into a savage country,
I bequeath it to you to take our vengeance. Send Macconochie to
St. Bride's, to arrange privately for horses and to call the
lawyer. My lord must leave procuration."
At that moment my lord came to the door, and we opened our plan to
him.
"I will never hear of it," he cried; "he would think I feared him.
I will stay in my own house, please God, until I die. There lives
not the man can beard me out of it. Once and for all, here I am,
and here I stay in spite of all the devils in hell." I can give no
idea of the vehemency of his words and utterance; but we both stood
aghast, and I in particular, who had been a witness of his former
self-restraint.
My lady looked at me with an appeal that went to my heart and
recalled me to my wits. I made her a private sign to go, and when
my lord and I were alone, went up to him where he was racing to and
fro in one end of the room like a half-lunatic, and set my hand
firmly on his shoulder.
"My lord," says I, "I am going to be the plain-dealer once more; if
for the last time, so much the better, for I am grown weary of the
part."
"Nothing will change me," he answered. "God forbid I should refuse
to hear you; but nothing will change me." This he said firmly,
with no signal of the former violence, which already raised my
hopes.
"Very well," said I "I can afford to waste my breath." I pointed
to a chair, and he sat down and looked at me. "I can remember a
time when my lady very much neglected you," said I.
"I never spoke of it while it lasted," returned my lord, with a
high flush of colour; "and it is all changed now."'
"Do you know how much?" I said. "Do you know how much it is all
changed? The tables are turned, my lord! It is my lady that now
courts you for a word, a look - ay, and courts you in vain. Do you
know with whom she passes her days while you are out gallivanting
in the policies? My lord, she is glad to pass them with a certain
dry old grieve (8) of the name of Ephraim Mackellar; and I think
you may be able to remember what that means, for I am the more in a
mistake or you were once driven to the same company yourself."
"Mackellar!" cries my lord, getting to his feet. "O my God,
Mackellar!"
"It is neither the name of Mackellar nor the name of God that can
change the truth," said I; "and I am telling you the fact. Now for
you, that suffered so much, to deal out the same suffering to
another, is that the part of any Christian? But you are so
swallowed up in your new friend that the old are all forgotten.
They are all clean vanished from your memory. And yet they stood
by you at the darkest; my lady not the least. And does my lady
ever cross your mind? Does it ever cross your mind what she went
through that night? - or what manner of a wife she has been to you
thenceforward? - or in what kind of a position she finds herself
to-day? Never. It is your pride to stay and face him out, and she
must stay along with you. Oh! my lord's pride - that's the great
affair! And yet she is the woman, and you are a great hulking man!
She is the woman that you swore to protect; and, more betoken, the
own mother of that son of yours!"
"You are speaking very bitterly, Mackellar," said he; "but, the
Lord knows, I fear you are speaking very true. I have not proved
worthy of my happiness. Bring my lady back."
My lady was waiting near at hand to learn the issue. When I
brought her in, my lord took a hand of each of us, and laid them
both upon his bosom. "I have had two friends in my life," said he.
"All the comfort ever I had, it came from one or other. When you
two are in a mind, I think I would be an ungrateful dog - " He
shut his mouth very hard, and looked on us with swimming eyes. "Do
what ye like with me," says he, "only don't think - " He stopped
again. "Do what ye please with me: God knows I love and honour
you." And dropping our two hands, he turned his back and went and
gazed out of the window. But my lady ran after, calling his name,
and threw herself upon his neck in a passion of weeping.
I went out and shut the door behind me, and stood and thanked God
from the bottom of my heart.
At the breakfast board, according to my lord's design, we were all
met. The Master had by that time plucked off his patched boots and
made a toilet suitable to the hour; Secundra Dass was no longer
bundled up in wrappers, but wore a decent plain black suit, which
misbecame him strangely; and the pair were at the great window,
looking forth, when the family entered. They turned; and the black
man (as they had already named him in the house) bowed almost to
his knees, but the Master was for running forward like one of the
family. My lady stopped him, curtseying low from the far end of
the hall, and keeping her children at her back. My lord was a
little in front: so there were the three cousins of Durrisdeer
face to face. The hand of time was very legible on all; I seemed
to read in their changed faces a MEMENTO MORI; and what affected me
still more, it was the wicked man that bore his years the
handsomest. My lady was quite transfigured into the matron, a
becoming woman for the head of a great tableful of children and
dependents. My lord was grown slack in his limbs; he stooped; he
walked with a running motion, as though he had learned again from
Mr. Alexander; his face was drawn; it seemed a trifle longer than
of old; and it wore at times a smile very singularly mingled, and
which (in my eyes) appeared both bitter and pathetic. But the
Master still bore himself erect, although perhaps with effort; his
brow barred about the centre with imperious lines, his mouth set as
for command. He had all the gravity and something of the splendour
of Satan in the "Paradise Lost." I could not help but see the man
with admiration, and was only surprised that I saw him with so
little fear.
But indeed (as long as we were at the table) it seemed as if his
authority were quite vanished and his teeth all drawn. We had
known him a magician that controlled the elements; and here he was,
transformed into an ordinary gentleman, chatting like his
neighbours at the breakfast-board. For now the father was dead,
and my lord and lady reconciled, in what ear was he to pour his
calumnies? It came upon me in a kind of vision how hugely I had
overrated the man's subtlety. He had his malice still; he was
false as ever; and, the occasion being gone that made his strength,
he sat there impotent; he was still the viper, but now spent his
venom on a file. Two more thoughts occurred to me while yet we sat
at breakfast: the first, that he was abashed - I had almost said,
distressed - to find his wickedness quite unavailing; the second,
that perhaps my lord was in the right, and we did amiss to fly from
our dismasted enemy. But my poor man's leaping heart came in my
mind, and I remembered it was for his life we played the coward.
When the meal was over, the Master followed me to my room, and,
taking a chair (which I had never offered him), asked me what was
to be done with him.
"Why, Mr. Bally," said I, "the house will still be open to you for
a time."
"For a time?" says he. "I do not know if I quite take your
meaning."
"It is plain enough," said I. "We keep you for our reputation; as
soon as you shall have publicly disgraced yourself by some of your
misconduct, we shall pack you forth again."
"You are become an impudent rogue," said the Master, bending his
brows at me dangerously.
"I learned in a good school," I returned. "And you must have
perceived yourself that with my old lord's death your power is
quite departed. I do not fear you now, Mr. Bally; I think even -
God forgive me - that I take a certain pleasure in your company."
He broke out in a burst of laughter, which I clearly saw to be
assumed.
"I have come with empty pockets," says he, after a pause.
"I do not think there will be any money going," I replied. "I
would advise you not to build on that."
"I shall have something to say on the point," he returned.
"Indeed?" said I. "I have not a guess what it will be, then."
"Oh! you affect confidence," said the Master. "I have still one
strong position - that you people fear a scandal, and I enjoy it."
"Pardon me, Mr. Bally," says I. "We do not in the least fear a
scandal against you."
He laughed again. "You have been studying repartee," he said.
"But speech is very easy, and sometimes very deceptive. I warn you
fairly: you will find me vitriol in the house. You would do wiser
to pay money down and see my back." And with that he waved his
hand to me and left the room.
A little after, my lord came with the lawyer, Mr. Carlyle; a bottle
of old wine was brought, and we all had a glass before we fell to
business. The necessary deeds were then prepared and executed, and
the Scotch estates made over in trust to Mr. Carlyle and myself.
"There is one point, Mr. Carlyle," said my lord, when these affairs
had been adjusted, "on which I wish that you would do us justice.
This sudden departure coinciding with my brother's return will be
certainly commented on. I wish you would discourage any
conjunction of the two."
"I will make a point of it, my lord," said Mr. Carlyle. "The Mas-
Bally does not, then, accompany you?"
"It is a point I must approach," said my lord. "Mr. Bally remains
at Durrisdeer, under the care of Mr. Mackellar; and I do not mean
that he shall even know our destination."
"Common report, however - " began the lawyer.
"Ah! but, Mr. Carlyle, this is to be a secret quite among
ourselves," interrupted my lord. "None but you and Mackellar are
to be made acquainted with my movements."
"And Mr. Bally stays here? Quite so," said Mr. Carlyle. "The
powers you leave - " Then he broke off again. "Mr. Mackellar, we
have a rather heavy weight upon us."
"No doubt," said I.
"No doubt," said he. "Mr. Bally will have no voice?"
"He will have no voice," said my lord; "and, I hope, no influence.
Mr. Bally is not a good adviser."
"I see," said the lawyer. "By the way, has Mr. Bally means?"
"I understand him to have nothing," replied my lord. "I give him
table, fire, and candle in this house."
"And in the matter of an allowance? If I am to share the
responsibility, you will see how highly desirable it is that I
should understand your views," said the lawyer. "On the question
of an allowance?"
"There will be no allowance," said my lord. "I wish Mr. Bally to
live very private. We have not always been gratified with his
behaviour."
"And in the matter of money," I added, "he has shown himself an
infamous bad husband. Glance your eye upon that docket, Mr.
Carlyle, where I have brought together the different sums the man
has drawn from the estate in the last fifteen or twenty years. The
total is pretty."
Mr. Carlyle made the motion of whistling. "I had no guess of
this," said he. "Excuse me once more, my lord, if I appear to push
you; but it is really desirable I should penetrate your intentions.
Mr. Mackellar might die, when I should find myself alone upon this
trust. Would it not be rather your lordship's preference that Mr.
Bally should - ahem - should leave the country?"
My lord looked at Mr. Carlyle. "Why do you ask that?" said he.
"I gather, my lord, that Mr. Bally is not a comfort to his family,"
says the lawyer with a smile.
My lord's face became suddenly knotted. "I wish he was in hell!"
cried he, and filled himself a glass of wine, but with a hand so
tottering that he spilled the half into his bosom. This was the
second time that, in the midst of the most regular and wise
behaviour, his animosity had spirted out. It startled Mr. Carlyle,
who observed my lord thenceforth with covert curiosity; and to me
it restored the certainty that we were acting for the best in view
of my lord's health and reason.
Except for this explosion the interview was very successfully
conducted. No doubt Mr. Carlyle would talk, as lawyers do, little
by little. We could thus feel we had laid the foundations of a
better feeling in the country, and the man's own misconduct would
certainly complete what we had begun. Indeed, before his
departure, the lawyer showed us there had already gone abroad some
glimmerings of the truth.
"I should perhaps explain to you, my lord," said he, pausing, with
his hat in his hand, "that I have not been altogether surprised
with your lordship's dispositions in the case of Mr. Bally.
Something of this nature oozed out when he was last in Durrisdeer.
There was some talk of a woman at St. Bride's, to whom you had
behaved extremely handsome, and Mr. Bally with no small degree of
cruelty. There was the entail, again, which was much controverted.
In short, there was no want of talk, back and forward; and some of
our wise-acres took up a strong opinion. I remained in suspense,
as became one of my cloth; but Mr. Mackellar's docket here has
finally opened my eyes. I do not think, Mr. Mackellar, that you
and I will give him that much rope."
The rest of that important day passed prosperously through. It was
our policy to keep the enemy in view, and I took my turn to be his
watchman with the rest. I think his spirits rose as he perceived
us to be so attentive, and I know that mine insensibly declined.
What chiefly daunted me was the man's singular dexterity to worm
himself into our troubles. You may have felt (after a horse
accident) the hand of a bone-setter artfully divide and interrogate
the muscles, and settle strongly on the injured place? It was so
with the Master's tongue, that was so cunning to question; and his
eyes, that were so quick to observe. I seemed to have said
nothing, and yet to have let all out. Before I knew where I was
the man was condoling with me on my lord's neglect of my lady and
myself, and his hurtful indulgence to his son. On this last point
I perceived him (with panic fear) to return repeatedly. The boy
had displayed a certain shrinking from his uncle; it was strong in
my mind his father had been fool enough to indoctrinate the same,
which was no wise beginning: and when I looked upon the man before
me, still so handsome, so apt a speaker, with so great a variety of
fortunes to relate, I saw he was the very personage to captivate a
boyish fancy. John Paul had left only that morning; it was not to
be supposed he had been altogether dumb upon his favourite subject:
so that here would be Mr. Alexander in the part of Dido, with a
curiosity inflamed to hear; and there would be the Master, like a
diabolical AEneas, full of matter the most pleasing in the world to
any youthful ear, such as battles, sea-disasters, flights, the
forests of the West, and (since his later voyage) the ancient
cities of the Indies. How cunningly these baits might be employed,
and what an empire might be so founded, little by little, in the
mind of any boy, stood obviously clear to me. There was no
inhibition, so long as the man was in the house, that would be
strong enough to hold these two apart; for if it be hard to charm
serpents, it is no very difficult thing to cast a glamour on a
little chip of manhood not very long in breeches. I recalled an
ancient sailor-man who dwelt in a lone house beyond the Figgate
Whins (I believe, he called it after Portobello), and how the boys
would troop out of Leith on a Saturday, and sit and listen to his
swearing tales, as thick as crows about a carrion: a thing I often
remarked as I went by, a young student, on my own more meditative
holiday diversion. Many of these boys went, no doubt, in the face
of an express command; many feared and even hated the old brute of
whom they made their hero; and I have seen them flee from him when
he was tipsy, and stone him when he was drunk. And yet there they
came each Saturday! How much more easily would a boy like Mr.
Alexander fall under the influence of a high-looking, high-spoken
gentleman-adventurer, who should conceive the fancy to entrap him;
and, the influence gained, how easy to employ it for the child's
perversion!
I doubt if our enemy had named Mr. Alexander three times before I
perceived which way his mind was aiming - all this train of thought
and memory passed in one pulsation through my own - and you may say
I started back as though an open hole had gaped across a pathway.
Mr. Alexander: there was the weak point, there was the Eve in our
perishable paradise; and the serpent was already hissing on the
trail.
I promise you, I went the more heartily about the preparations; my
last scruple gone, the danger of delay written before me in huge
characters. From that moment forth I seem not to have sat down or
breathed. Now I would be at my post with the Master and his
Indian; now in the garret, buckling a valise; now sending forth
Macconochie by the side postern and the wood-path to bear it to the
trysting-place; and, again, snatching some words of counsel with my
lady. This was the VERSO of our life in Durrisdeer that day; but
on the RECTO all appeared quite settled, as of a family at home in
its paternal seat; and what perturbation may have been observable,
the Master would set down to the blow of his unlooked-for coming,
and the fear he was accustomed to inspire.
Supper went creditably off, cold salutations passed and the company
trooped to their respective chambers. I attended the Master to the
last. We had put him next door to his Indian, in the north wing;
because that was the most distant and could be severed from the
body of the house with doors. I saw he was a kind friend or a good
master (whichever it was) to his Secundra Dass - seeing to his
comfort; mending the fire with his own hand, for the Indian
complained of cold; inquiring as to the rice on which the stranger
made his diet; talking with him pleasantly in the Hindustanee,
while I stood by, my candle in my hand, and affected to be overcome
with slumber. At length the Master observed my signals of
distress. "I perceive," says he, "that you have all your ancient
habits: early to bed and early to rise. Yawn yourself away!"
Once in my own room, I made the customary motions of undressing, so
that I might time myself; and when the cycle was complete, set my
tinder-box ready, and blew out my taper. The matter of an hour
afterward I made a light again, put on my shoes of list that I had
worn by my lord's sick-bed, and set forth into the house to call
the voyagers. All were dressed and waiting - my lord, my lady,
Miss Katharine, Mr. Alexander, my lady's woman Christie; and I
observed the effect of secrecy even upon quite innocent persons,
that one after another showed in the chink of the door a face as
white as paper. We slipped out of the side postern into a night of
darkness, scarce broken by a star or two; so that at first we
groped and stumbled and fell among the bushes. A few hundred yards
up the wood-path Macconochie was waiting us with a great lantern;
so the rest of the way we went easy enough, but still in a kind of
guilty silence. A little beyond the abbey the path debauched on
the main road and some quarter of a mile farther, at the place
called Eagles, where the moors begin, we saw the lights of the two
carriages stand shining by the wayside. Scarce a word or two was
uttered at our parting, and these regarded business: a silent
grasping of hands, a turning of faces aside, and the thing was
over; the horses broke into a trot, the lamplight sped like Will-
o'-the-Wisp upon the broken moorland, it dipped beyond Stony Brae;
and there were Macconochie and I alone with our lantern on the
road. There was one thing more to wait for, and that was the
reappearance of the coach upon Cartmore. It seems they must have
pulled up upon the summit, looked back for a last time, and seen
our lantern not yet moved away from the place of separation. For a
lamp was taken from a carriage, and waved three times up and down
by way of a farewell. And then they were gone indeed, having
looked their last on the kind roof of Durrisdeer, their faces
toward a barbarous country. I never knew before, the greatness of
that vault of night in which we two poor serving-men - the one old,
and the one elderly - stood for the first time deserted; I had
never felt before my own dependency upon the countenance of others.
The sense of isolation burned in my bowels like a fire. It seemed
that we who remained at home were the true exiles, and that
Durrisdeer and Solwayside, and all that made my country native, its
air good to me, and its language welcome, had gone forth and was
far over the sea with my old masters.
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