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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Vol. 10
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
SWANSTON EDITION
VOLUME X
_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale._
_This is No._ ...........
[Illustration: SKETCH OF THE CRUISE OF THE BRIG "COVENANT" AND THE
PROBABLE COURSE OF DAVID BALFOUR'S WANDERINGS]
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
VOLUME TEN
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXI
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND 3
II. IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND 9
III. IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HARVEST HOME 15
IV. THE SECOND SOWING 21
V. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 26
VI. THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD 32
VII. A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB 44
VIII. SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTILITY OF PASS-KEYS 54
IX. IN WHICH MR. NICHOLSON CONCEDES THE PRINCIPLE OF AN
ALLOWANCE 65
KIDNAPPED
I. I SET OFF UPON MY JOURNEY TO THE HOUSE OF SHAWS 77
II. I COME TO MY JOURNEY'S END 82
III. I MAKE ACQUAINTANCE OF MY UNCLE 88
IV. I RUN A GREAT DANGER IN THE HOUSE OF SHAWS 96
V. I GO TO THE QUEEN'S FERRY 105
VI. WHAT BEFELL AT THE QUEEN'S FERRY 112
VII. I GO TO SEA IN THE BRIG _COVENANT_ OF DYSART 118
VIII. THE ROUND-HOUSE 126
IX. THE MAN WITH THE BELT OF GOLD 132
X. THE SIEGE OF THE ROUND-HOUSE 142
XI. THE CAPTAIN KNUCKLES UNDER 149
XII. I HEAR OF THE "RED FOX" 154
XIII. THE LOSS OF THE BRIG 163
XIV. THE ISLET 169
XV. THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON: THROUGH THE ISLE OF
MULL 178
XVI. THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON: ACROSS MORVEN 187
XVII. THE DEATH OF THE RED FOX 195
XVIII. I TALK WITH ALAN IN THE WOOD OF LETTERMORE 201
XIX. THE HOUSE OF FEAR 210
XX. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS 217
XXI. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE HEUGH OF CORRYNAKIEGH 226
XXII. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE MOOR 234
XXIII. CLUNY'S CAGE 242
XXIV. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE QUARREL 251
XXV. IN BALQUHIDDER 262
XXVI. END OF THE FLIGHT: WE PASS THE FORTH 269
XXVII. I come to Mr. Rankeillor 280
XXVIII. I go in Quest of My Inheritance 288
XXIX. I come into my Kingdom 296
XXX. Good-bye 303
THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON
THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND
John Varey Nicholson was stupid; yet stupider men than he are now
sprawling in Parliament, and lauding themselves as the authors of their
own distinction. He was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and inclined
to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life; and possibly this
attitude of mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this
hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in with
the more ready explanation that he was detested of the gods.
His father--that iron gentleman--had long ago enthroned himself on the
heights of the Disruption Principles. What these are (and in spite of
their grim name they are quite innocent) no array of terms would render
thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often
prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the milk of
lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their
annual assemblies, he was to be seen descending the Mound in the company
of divers red-headed clergymen: these voluble, he only contributing
oracular nods, brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his
stretched upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in
these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residuary
Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little
theological kingdom of Scotland might have listened and gathered
literally nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew this,
and raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside to whom
Disruption Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes; the paper
brought him chill whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who had asked
lightly if he did not belong to the Church of Scotland, and then had
failed to be much interested by his elucidation of that nice point; it
was an evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in _dozenedness_, for
nothing short of a Scots word will paint this Scotsman's feelings. And
when he entered his own house in Randolph Crescent (south side), and
shut the door behind him, his heart swelled with security. Here, at
least, was a citadel unassailable by right-hand defections or left-hand
extremes. Here was a family where prayers came at the same hour, where
the Sabbath literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who
should have leaned to any false opinion was instantly set down, and over
which there reigned all the week, and grew denser on Sundays, a silence
that was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he found comfortable.
Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, and left him with three children:
a daughter two years and a son about eight years younger than John; and
John himself, the unfortunate protagonist of the present history. The
daughter, Maria, was a good girl--dutiful, pious, dull, but so easily
startled that to speak to her was quite a perilous enterprise. "I don't
think I care to talk about that, if you please," she would say, and
strike the boldest speechless by her unmistakable pain; this upon all
topics--dress, pleasure, morality, politics, in which the formula was
changed to "my papa thinks otherwise," and even religion, unless it was
approached with a particular whining tone of voice. Alexander, the
younger brother, was sickly, clever, fond of books and drawing, and full
of satirical remarks. In the midst of these, imagine that natural,
clumsy, unintelligent and mirthful animal, John; mighty well-behaved in
comparison with many lads, although not up to the standard of the house
in Randolph Crescent; full of a sort of blundering affection, full of
caresses which were never very warmly received; full of sudden and loud
laughter which rang out in that still house like curses. Mr. Nicholson
himself had a great fund of humour, of the Scots order--intellectual,
turning on the observation of men; his own character, for instance--if
he could have seen it in another--would have been a rare feast to him;
but his son's empty guffaws over a broken plate, and empty, almost
light-headed remarks, struck him with pain as the indices of a weak
mind.
Outside the family John had early attached himself (much as a dog may
follow a marquess) to the steps of Alan Houston, a lad about a year
older than himself, idle, a trifle wild, the heir to a good estate which
was still in the hands of a rigorous trustee, and so royally content
with himself that he took John's devotion as a thing of course. The
intimacy was gall to Mr. Nicholson; it took his son from the house, and
he was a jealous parent; it kept him from the office, and he was a
martinet; lastly, Mr. Nicholson was ambitious for his family (in which,
and in the Disruption Principles, he entirely lived), and hated to see a
son of his play second fiddle to an idler. After some hesitation, he
ordered that the friendship should cease--an unfair command, though
seemingly inspired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, saying nothing,
continued to disobey the order under the rose.
John was nearly nineteen when he was one day dismissed rather earlier
than usual from his father's office, where he was studying the practice
of the law. It was Saturday; and except that he had a matter of four
hundred pounds in his pocket, which it was his duty to hand over to the
British Linen Company's Bank, he had the whole afternoon at his
disposal. He went by Princes Street enjoying the mild sunshine, and the
little thrill of easterly wind that tossed the flags along that terrace
of palaces, and tumbled the green trees in the garden. The band was
playing down in the valley under the Castle; and when it came to the
turn of the pipers, he heard their wild sounds with a stirring of the
blood. Something distantly martial woke in him; and he thought of Miss
Mackenzie, the daughter of a retired captain of Highlanders, whom he was
to meet that day at dinner in his father's house.
Now, it is undeniable that he should have gone directly to the bank; but
right in the way stood the billiard-room of the hotel where Alan was
almost certain to be found; and the temptation proved too strong. He
entered the billiard-room, and was instantly greeted by his friend, cue
in hand.
"Nicholson," said he, "I want you to lend me a pound or two till
Monday."
"You've come to the right shop, haven't you?" returned John. "I have
twopence."
"Nonsense," said Alan. "You can get some. Go and borrow at your
tailor's; they all do it. Or I'll tell you what: pop your watch."
"O yes, I daresay," said John. "And how about my father?"
"How is he to know? He doesn't wind it up for you at night, does he?"
inquired Alan, at which John guffawed. "No, seriously; I am in a fix,"
continued the tempter. "I have lost some money to a man here. I'll give
it you to-night, and you can get the heirloom out again on Monday. Come;
it's a small service, after all. I would do a good deal more for you."
Whereupon John went forth, and pawned his gold watch under the assumed
name of John Froggs, 85 Pleasance. But the nervousness that assailed him
at the door of that inglorious haunt, a pawnshop, and the effort
necessary to invent the pseudonym (which somehow seemed to him a
necessary part of the procedure), had taken more time than he imagined;
and when he returned to the billiard-room with the spoils, the bank had
already closed its doors.
This was a shrewd knock. "A piece of business had been neglected." He
heard these words in his father's trenchant voice, and trembled, and
then dodged the thought. After all, who was to know? He must carry four
hundred pounds about with him till Monday, when the neglect could be
surreptitiously repaired; and meanwhile, he was free to pass the
afternoon on the encircling divan of the billiard-room, smoking his
pipe, sipping a pint of ale, and enjoying to the mast-head the modest
pleasures of admiration.
None can admire like a young man. Of all youth's passions and pleasures,
this is the most common and least alloyed; and every flash of Alan's
black eyes; every aspect of his curly head; every graceful reach and
easy, stand-off attitude of waiting; everything about him down even to
his shirt-sleeves and wrist-links, were seen by John through a luxurious
glory. He valued himself by the possession of that royal friend, hugged
himself upon the thought, and swam in warm azure; his own defects, like
vanquished difficulties, becoming things on which to plume himself. Only
when he thought of Miss Mackenzie there fell upon his mind a shadow of
regret; that young lady was worthy of better things than plain John
Nicholson, still known among schoolmates by the derisive name of
"Fatty"; and he felt that if he could chalk a cue, or stand at ease,
with such a careless grace as Alan, he could approach the object of his
sentiments with a less crushing sense of inferiority.
Before they parted, Alan made a proposal that was startling in the
extreme. He would be at Collette's that night about twelve, he said. Why
should not John come there and get the money? To go to Collette's was to
see life indeed; it was wrong; it was against the laws; it partook, in a
very dingy manner, of adventure. Were it known, it was the sort of
exploit that disconsidered a young man for good with the more serious
classes, but gave him a standing with the riotous. And yet Collette's
was not a hell; it could not come, without vaulting hyperbole, under the
description of a gilded saloon; and if it was a sin to go there, the sin
was merely local and municipal. Collette was simply an unlicensed
publican, who gave suppers after eleven at night, the Edinburgh hour of
closing. If you belonged to a club, you could get a much better supper
at the same hour, and lose not a jot in public esteem. But if you lacked
that qualification, and were an-hungered, or inclined towards
conviviality at unlawful hours, Collette's was your only port. You were
very ill supplied. The company was not recruited from the Senate or the
Church, though the Bar was very well represented on the only occasion on
which I flew in the face of my country's laws, and, taking my reputation
in my hand, penetrated into that grim supper-house. And Collette's
frequenters, thrillingly conscious of wrong-doing and "that two-handed
engine (the policeman) at the door," were perhaps inclined to somewhat
feverish excess. But the place was in no sense a very bad one; and it is
somewhat strange to me, at this distance of time, how it had acquired
its dangerous repute.
In precisely the same spirit as a man may debate a project to ascend the
Matterhorn or to cross Africa, John considered Alan's proposal, and,
greatly daring, accepted it. As he walked home, the thoughts of this
excursion out of the safe places of life into the wild and arduous,
stirred and struggled in his imagination with the image of Flora
Mackenzie--incongruous and yet kindred thoughts, for did not each imply
unusual tightening of the pegs of resolution? did not each woo him forth
and warn him back again into himself?
Between these two considerations, at least, he was more than usually
moved; and when he got to Randolph Crescent, he quite forgot the four
hundred pounds in the inner pocket of his greatcoat, hung up the coat,
with its rich freight, upon his particular pin of the hat-stand; and in
the very action sealed his doom.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND
About half-past ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer his arm to
Miss Mackenzie, and escort her home. The night was chill and starry; all
the way eastward the trees of the different gardens rustled and looked
black. Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, the
breeze made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering; and
when at last they mounted to the Royal Terrace, where Captain Mackenzie
lived, a great salt freshness came in their faces from the sea. These
phases of the walk remained written on John's memory, each emphasised by
the touch of that light hand on his arm; and behind all these aspects of
the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's eye, a picture of the lighted
drawing-room at home where he had sat talking with Flora; and his
father, from the other end, had looked on with a kind and ironical
smile. John had read the significance of that smile, which might have
escaped a stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglement
with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it still was a
thought contemptuous, had implied consent.
At the captain's door the girl held out her hand with a certain
emphasis; and John took it and kept it a little longer, and said,
"Good-night, Flora, dear," and was instantly thrown into much fear by
his presumption. But she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the
bell; and while she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in the
porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a fortification. She
had a knitted shawl over her head; her blue Highland eyes took the
light from the neighbouring street-lamp and sparkled; and when the door
opened and closed upon her, John felt cruelly alone.
He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when he
came to Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crown
of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay the way to Collette's, where Alan
would soon be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have no
more consented to go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the
touch of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his
father's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him was the way
home, which pointed only to bed, a place of little ease for one whose
fancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent heart
was just then tumultuously moved. The hill-top, the cool air of the
night, the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city under
his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew
him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned that way; and by that
quite innocent deflection ripened the crop of his venial errors for the
sickle of destiny.
On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps half an hour,
looking down upon the lamps of Edinburgh, and up at the lamps of heaven.
Wonderful were the resolves he formed; beautiful and kindly were the
vistas of future life that sped before him. He uttered to himself the
name of Flora in so many touching and dramatic keys that he became at
length fairly melted with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. At that
juncture a certain creasing in his greatcoat caught his ear. He put his
hand into the pocket, pulled forth the envelope that held the money, and
sat stupefied. The Calton Hill, about this period, had an ill name of
nights; and to be sitting there with four hundred pounds that did not
belong to him was hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a very
bad hat, a little on one side of him, apparently looking at the scenery;
from a little on the other a second night-walker was drawing very
quietly near. Up jumped John. The envelope fell from his hands; he
stooped to get it, and at the same moment both men ran in and closed
with him.
A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the poorer by a
purse which contained exactly one penny postage-stamp, by a cambric
handkerchief, and by the all-important envelope.
Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of loverly
exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported alone; and
not many hundred yards away his greatest friend was sitting at
supper--ay, and even expecting him. Was it not in the nature of man that
he should run there? He went in quest of sympathy--in quest of that
droll article that we all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait,
and have agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, with vague but
rather splendid expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or would be so
when he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he might remedy this
misfortune, and avert that dreaded interview with Mr. Nicholson, from
which John now shrank in imagination as the hand draws back from fire.
Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow avenue, part
street, part by-road. The head of it faces the doors of the prison; its
tail descends into the sunless slums of the Low Calton. On one hand it
is overhung by the crags of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard.
Between these two the roadway runs in a trench, sparsely lighted at
night, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it has cleared the
place of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of these was the
house of Collette; and at his door our ill-starred John was presently
beating for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealous
inquiries of the contraband hotel-keeper; in an evil hour he penetrated
into the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was there,
seated in a room lit by noisy gas-jets, beside a dirty table-cloth,
engaged on a coarse meal, and in the company of several tipsy members of
the junior Bar. But Alan was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds
upon a horse-race, had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, in
default of any possible means of extrication, drowning the memory of his
predicament. He to help John! The thing was impossible; he couldn't help
himself.
"If you have a beast of a father," said he, "I can tell you I have a
brute of a trustee."
"I'm not going to hear my father called a beast," said John, with a
beating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound rivet of the chain
that bound him to life.
But Alan was quite good-natured.
"All right, old fellow," said he. "Mos' respec'able man your father."
And he introduced his friend to his companions as "old Nicholson the
what-d'ye-call-um's son."
John sat in dumb agony. Collette's foul walls and spotted table-linen,
everything even down to Collette's villainous casters, seemed like
objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a
scurrying: the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill,
appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken _flagrante delicto_, with
their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the police
office, and all duly summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent
case against that arch-shebeener, Collette.
It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came forth again.
The vague terror of public opinion weighed generally on them all; but
there were private and particular horrors on the minds of individuals.
Alan stood in dread of his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the
group was the son of a country minister, another of a judge; John, the
unhappiest of all, had David Nicholson to father, the idea of facing
whom on such a scandalous subject was physically sickening. They stood a
while consulting under the buttresses of St. Giles'; thence they
adjourned to the lodgings of one of the number in North Castle Street,
where (for that matter) they might have had quite as good a supper, and
far better drink, than in the dangerous paradise from which they had
been routed. There, over an almost tearful glass, they debated their
position. Each explained that he had the world to lose if the affair
went on, and he appeared as a witness. It was remarkable what bright
prospects were just then in the very act of opening before each of that
little company of youths, and what pious consideration for the feelings
of their families began now to well from them. Each, moreover, was in an
odd state of destitution. Not one could bear his share of the fine; not
one but evinced a wonderful twinkle of hope that each of the others (in
succession) was the very man who could step in to make good the deficit.
One took a high hand: he could not pay his share; if it went to a trial,
he should bolt; he had always felt the English Bar to be his true
sphere. Another branched out into touching details about his family, to
which no one listened. John, in the midst of this disorderly competition
of poverty and meanness, sat stunned, contemplating the mountain bulk of
his misfortunes.
At last, upon a pledge that each should apply to his family with a
common frankness, this convention of unhappy young asses broke up, went
down the common stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, with the
streets lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on into the
daylight in diminished lustre, and the birds beginning to sound
premonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went each his own
way with bowed head and echoing footfall.
The rooks were awake in Randolph Crescent; but the windows looked down,
discreetly blinded, on the return of the prodigal. John's pass-key was a
recent privilege; this was the first time it had been used; and, O! with
what a sickening sense of his unworthiness he now inserted it into the
well-oiled lock and entered that citadel of the proprieties! All slept;
the gas in the hall had been left faintly burning to light his return; a
dreadful stillness reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eight-day
clock. He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the hall, waiting and
counting the minutes, longing for any human countenance. But when at
last he heard the alarm-clock spring its rattle in the lower story, and
the servants begin to be about, he instantly lost heart, and fled to his
own room, where he threw himself upon the bed.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HARVEST HOME
Shortly after breakfast, at which he assisted with a highly tragical
countenance, John sought his father where he used to sit, presumably in
religious meditation, on the Sabbath mornings. The old gentleman looked
up with that sour inquisitive expression that came so near to smiling
and was so different in effect.
"This is a time when I do not like to be disturbed," he said.
"I know that," returned John; "but I have--I want--I've made a dreadful
mess of it," he broke out, and turned to the window.
Mr. Nicholson sat silent for an appreciable time while his unhappy son
surveyed the poles in the back green, and a certain yellow cat that was
perched upon the wall. Despair sat upon John as he gazed: and he raged
to think of the dreadful series of his misdeeds, and the essential
innocence that lay behind them.
"Well," said the father, with an obvious effort, but in very quiet
tones, "what is it?"
"Maclean gave me four hundred pounds to put in the bank, sir," began
John; "and I'm sorry to say that I've been robbed of it!"
"Robbed of it?" cried Mr. Nicholson, with a strong rising inflection.
"Robbed? Be careful what you say, John!"
"I can't say anything else, sir; I was just robbed of it," said John, in
desperation, sullenly.
"And where and when did this extraordinary event take place?" inquired
the father.
"On the Calton Hill about twelve last night."
"The Calton Hill?" repeated Mr. Nicholson. "And what were you doing
there at such a time of the night?"
"Nothing, sir," says John.
Mr. Nicholson drew in his breath.
"And how came the money in your hands at twelve last night?" he asked
sharply.
"I neglected that piece of business," said John, anticipating comment;
and then in his own dialect: "I clean forgot all about it."
"Well," said his father, "it's a most extraordinary story. Have you
communicated with the police?"
"I have," answered poor John, the blood leaping to his face. "They think
they know the men that did it. I daresay the money will be recovered, if
that was all," said he, with a desperate indifference, which his father
set down to levity; but which sprang from the consciousness of worse
behind.
"Your mother's watch, too?" asked Mr. Nicholson.
"O, the watch is all right!" cried John. "At least, I mean I was coming
to the watch--the fact is, I am ashamed to say, I--I had pawned the
watch before. Here is the ticket; they didn't find that; the watch can
be redeemed; they don't sell pledges." The lad panted out these phrases,
one after another, like minute-guns; but at the last word, which rang in
that stately chamber like an oath, his heart failed him utterly; and the
dreaded silence settled on father and son.
It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking up the pawn-ticket: "John Froggs,
85 Pleasance," he read; and then turning upon John, with a brief flash
of passion and disgust, "Who is John Froggs?" he cried.
"Nobody," said John. "It was just a name."
"An _alias_," his father commented.
"O! I think scarcely quite that," said the culprit; "it's a form, they
all do it, the man seemed to understand; we had a great deal of fun over
the name----"
He paused at that, for he saw his father wince at the picture like a
man physically struck; and again there was silence.
"I do not think," said Mr. Nicholson at last, "that I am an ungenerous
father. I have never grudged you money within reason, for any avowable
purpose; you had just to come to me and speak. And now I find that you
have forgotten all decency and all natural feeling, and actually
pawned--pawned--your mother's watch. You must have had some temptation;
I will do you justice to suppose it was a strong one. What did you want
with this money?"
"I would rather not tell you, sir," said John. "It will only make you
angry."
"I will not be fenced with," cried his father. "There must be an end of
disingenuous answers. What did you want with this money?"
"To lend it to Houston, sir," says John.
"I thought I had forbidden you to speak to that young man?" asked the
father.
"Yes, sir," said John; "but I only met him."
"Where?" came the deadly question.
And "In a billiard-room" was the damning answer. Thus had John's single
departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other
purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he
had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it
appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts upon his own
account.
Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile tidings in silence; and when
John stole a glance at his father's countenance, he was abashed to see
the marks of suffering.
"Well," said the old gentleman at last, "I cannot pretend not to be
simply bowed down. I rose this morning what the world calls a happy
man--happy, at least, in a son of whom I thought I could be reasonably
proud----"
But it was beyond human nature to endure this longer, and John
interrupted almost with a scream. "O, wheest!" he cried, "that's not
all, that's not the worst of it--it's nothing! How could I tell you
were proud of me? O! I wish, I wish that I had known; but you always
said I was such a disgrace! And the dreadful thing is this: we were all
taken up last night, and we have to pay Collette's fine among the six,
or we'll be had up for evidence--shebeening it is. They made me swear to
tell you; but for my part," he cried, bursting into tears, "I just wish
that I was dead!" And he fell on his knees before a chair and hid his
face.
Whether his father spoke, and whether he remained long in the room or at
once departed, are points lost to history. A horrid turmoil of mind and
body; bursting sobs; broken, vanishing thoughts, now of indignation, now
of remorse; broken elementary whiffs of consciousness, of the smell of
the horse-hair on the chair-bottom, of the jangling of church bells that
now began to make day horrible throughout the confines of the city, of
the hard floor that bruised his knees, of the taste of tears that found
their way into his mouth: for a period of time, the duration of which I
cannot guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these were
the whole of God's world for John Nicholson.
When at last, as by the touching of a spring, he returned again to
clearness of consciousness and even a measure of composure, the bells
had but just done ringing, and the Sabbath silence was still marred by
the patter of belated feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by
these more speaking signs, the service had not long begun; and the
unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church, might count on
near two hours of only comparative unhappiness. With his father, the
superlative degree returned infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking
fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain,
at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an
hour and three-quarters, if the Doctor was long-winded, and then would
begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the
present, he shrank as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the
family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the Psalm-books, Maria
with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled and critical;
and at once he was struck with indignation, not unjustly. It was inhuman
to go off to church and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished,
unforgiven. And at the very touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity
was lessened; yet the paternal terror only grew; and the two strands of
feeling drew him in the same direction.
And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his father should have
locked him in. The notion had no ground in sense; it was probably no
more than a reminiscence of similar calamities in childhood, for his
father's room had always been the chamber of inquisition and the scene
of punishment; but it stuck so rigorously in his mind that he must
instantly approach the door and prove its untruth. As he went, he struck
upon a drawer left open in the business table. It was the money-drawer,
a measure of his father's disarray: the money-drawer--perhaps a pointing
providence! Who is to decide, when even divines differ, between a
providence and a temptation? or who, sitting calmly under his own vine,
is to pass a judgment on the doings of a poor, hunted dog, slavishly
afraid, slavishly rebellious, like John Nicholson on that particular
Sunday? His hand was in the drawer almost before his mind had conceived
the hope; and rising to his new situation, he wrote, sitting in his
father's chair and using his father's blotting-pad, his pitiful apology
and farewell--
"MY DEAR FATHER,--I have taken the money, but I will pay it back as
soon as I am able. You will never hear of me again. I did not mean any
harm by anything, so I hope you will try and forgive me. I wish you
would say good-bye for me to Alexander and Maria, but not if you don't
want to. I could not wait to see you, really. Please try to forgive
me."
"Your affectionate son, JOHN NICHOLSON."
The coins abstracted and the missive written, he could not be gone too
soon from the scene of these transgressions; and remembering how his
father had once returned from church, on some slight illness, in the
middle of the second psalm, he durst not even make a packet of a change
of clothes. Attired as he was, he slipped from the paternal doors, and
found himself in the cool spring air, the thin spring sunshine, and the
great Sabbath quiet of the city, which was now only pointed by the
cawing of the rooks. There was not a soul in Randolph Crescent, nor a
soul in Queensferry Street; in this outdoor privacy and the sense of
escape, John took heart again; and with a pathetic sense of
leave-taking, he even ventured up the lane and stood a while, a strange
peri at the gates of a quaint paradise, by the west end of St. George's
Church. They were singing within; and by a strange chance the tune was
"St. George's, Edinburgh," which bears the name, and was first sung in
the choir, of that church. "Who is this King of Glory?" went the voices
from within; and to John this was like the end of all Christian
observances, for he was now to be a wild man like Ishmael, and his life
was to be cast in homeless places and with godless people.
It was thus, with no rising sense of the adventurous, but in mere
desolation and despair, that he turned his back on his native city, and
set out on foot for California--with a more immediate eye to Glasgow.
CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND SOWING
It is no part of mine to narrate the adventures of John Nicholson, which
were many, but simply his more momentous misadventures, which were more
than he desired, and by human standards more than he deserved; how he
reached California, how he was rooked, and robbed, and beaten, and
starved; how he was at last taken up by charitable folk, restored to
some degree of self-complacency, and installed as a clerk in a bank in
San Francisco, it would take too long to tell; nor in these episodes
were there any marks of the peculiar Nicholsonic destiny, for they were
just such matters as befell some thousands of other young adventurers in
the same days and places. But once posted in the bank, he fell for a
time into a high degree of good fortune, which, as it was only a longer
way about to fresh disaster, it behoves me to explain.
It was his luck to meet a young man in what is technically called a
"dive," and, thanks to his monthly wages, to extricate this new
acquaintance from a position of present disgrace and possible danger in
the future. This young man was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill
magnates, who run the San Francisco Stock Exchange much as more humble
adventurers, in the corner of some public park at home, may be seen to
perform the simple artifice of pea and thimble: for their own profit,
that is to say, and the discouragement of public gambling. It was hence
in his power--and, as he was of grateful temper, it was among the things
that he desired--to put John in the way of growing rich; and thus,
without thought or industry, or so much as even understanding the game
at which he played, but by simply buying and selling what he was told to
buy and sell, that plaything of fortune was presently at the head of
between eleven and twelve thousand pounds, or, as he reckoned it, of
upwards of sixty thousand dollars.
How he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than how he had formerly
earned disgrace at home, was a problem beyond the reach of his philosophy.
It was true that he had been industrious at the bank, but no more so than
the cashier, who had seven small children and was visibly sinking in a
decline. Nor was the step which had determined his advance--a visit to a
dive with a month's wages in his pocket--an act of such transcendent
virtue, or even wisdom, as to seem to merit the favour of the gods. From
some sense of this and of the dizzy see-saw--heaven-high, hell-deep--on
which men sit clutching; or perhaps fearing that the sources of his
fortune might be insidiously traced to some root in the field of petty
cash; he stuck to his work, said not a word of his new circumstances, and
kept his account with a bank in a different quarter of the town. The
concealment, innocent as it seems, was the first step in the second
tragicomedy of John's existence.
Meanwhile he had never written home. Whether from diffidence or shame,
or a touch of anger, or mere procrastination, or because (as we have
seen) he had no skill in literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes
tempted to suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents young
men--not otherwise beasts--from the performance of this simple act of
piety:--months and years had gone by, and John had never written. The
habit of not writing, indeed, was already fixed before he had begun to
come into his fortune; and it was only the difficulty of breaking this
long silence that withheld him from an instant restitution of the money
he had stolen or (as he preferred to call it) borrowed. In vain he sat
before paper, attending on inspiration; that heavenly nymph, beyond
suggesting the words "My dear father," remained obstinately silent; and
presently John would crumple up the sheet and decide, as soon as he had
"a good chance," to carry the money home in person. And this delay,
which is indefensible, was his second step into the snares of fortune.
Ten years had passed, and John was drawing near to thirty. He had kept
the promise of his boyhood, and was now of a lusty frame, verging
towards corpulence; good features, good eyes, a genial manner, a ready
laugh, a long pair of sandy whiskers, a dash of an American accent, a
close familiarity with the great American joke, and a certain likeness
to a R-y-l P-rs-n-ge, who shall remain nameless for me, made up the
man's externals, as he could be viewed in society. Inwardly, in spite of
his gross body and highly masculine whiskers, he was more like a maiden
lady than a man of twenty-nine.
It chanced one day, as he was strolling down Market Street on the eve of
his fortnight's holiday, that his eye was caught by certain railway
bills, and in very idleness of mind he calculated that he might be home
for Christmas if he started on the morrow. The fancy thrilled him with
desire, and in one moment he decided he would go.
There was much to be done: his portmanteau to be packed, a credit to be
got from the bank where he was a wealthy customer, and certain offices
to be transacted for that other bank in which he was a humble clerk; and
it chanced, in conformity with human nature, that out of all this
business it was the last that came to be neglected. Night found him not
only equipped with money of his own, but once more (as on that former
occasion) saddled with a considerable sum of other people's.
Now it chanced there lived in the same boarding-house a fellow-clerk of
his, an honest fellow, with what is called a weakness for drink--though
it might, in this case, have been called a strength, for the victim had
been drunk for weeks together without the briefest intermission. To this
unfortunate John intrusted a letter with an inclosure of bonds,
addressed to the bank manager. Even as he did so he thought he
perceived a certain haziness of eye and speech in his trustee; but he
was too hopeful to be stayed, silenced the voice of warning in his
bosom, and with one and the same gesture committed the money to the
clerk, and himself into the hands of destiny.
I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on John's minutest errors, his case
being so perplexing to the moralist; but we have done with them now, the
roll is closed, the reader has the worst of our poor hero, and I leave
him to judge for himself whether he or John has been the less deserving.
Henceforth we have to follow the spectacle of a man who was a mere
whip-top for calamity; on whose unmerited misadventures not even the
humorist can look without pity, and not even the philosopher without
alarm.
That same night the clerk entered upon a bout of drunkenness so
consistent as to surprise even his intimate acquaintance. He was
speedily ejected from the boarding-house; deposited his portmanteau with
a perfect stranger, who did not even catch his name; wandered he knew
not where, and was at last hove-to, all standing, in a hospital at
Sacramento. There, under the impenetrable _alias_ of the number of his
bed, the crapulous being lay for some more days unconscious of all
things, and of one thing in particular: that the police were after him.
Two months had come and gone before the convalescent in the Sacramento
hospital was identified with Kirkman, the absconding San Francisco
clerk; even then, there must elapse nearly a fortnight more till the
perfect stranger could be hunted up, the portmanteau recovered, and
John's letter carried at length to its destination, the seal still
unbroken, the inclosure still intact.
Meanwhile John had gone upon his holidays without a word, which was
irregular; and there had disappeared with him a certain sum of money,
which was out of all bounds of palliation. But he was known to be
careless, and believed to be honest; the manager besides had a regard
for him; and little was said, although something was no doubt thought,
until the fortnight was finally at an end, and the time had come for
John to reappear. Then, indeed, the affair began to look black; and when
inquiries were made, and the penniless clerk was found to have amassed
thousands of dollars, and kept them secretly in a rival establishment,
the stoutest of his friends abandoned him, the books were overhauled for
traces of ancient and artful fraud, and though none were found, there
still prevailed a general impression of loss. The telegraph was set in
motion; and the correspondent of the bank in Edinburgh, for which place
it was understood that John had armed himself with extensive credits,
was warned to communicate with the police.
Now this correspondent was a friend of Mr. Nicholson's; he was well
acquainted with the tale of John's calamitous disappearance from
Edinburgh; and putting one thing with another, hasted with the first
word of this scandal, not to the police, but to his friend. The old
gentleman had long regarded his son as one dead; John's place had been
taken, the memory of his faults had already fallen to be one of those
old aches, which awaken again indeed upon occasion, but which we can
always vanquish by an effort of the will; and to have the long lost
resuscitated in a fresh disgrace was doubly bitter.
"MacEwen," said the old man, "this must be hushed up, if possible. If I
give you a cheque for this sum, about which they are certain, could you
take it on yourself to let the matter rest?"
"I will," said MacEwen. "I will take the risk of it."
"You understand," resumed Mr. Nicholson, speaking precisely, but with
ashen lips, "I do this for my family, not for that unhappy young man. If
it should turn out that these suspicions are correct, and he has
embezzled large sums, he must lie on his bed as he has made it." And
then looking up at MacEwen with a nod, and one of his strange smiles:
"Good-bye," said he; and MacEwen, perceiving the case to be too grave
for consolation, took himself off, and blessed God on his way home that
he was childless.
CHAPTER V
THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN
By a little after noon on the eve of Christmas, John had left his
portmanteau in the cloak-room, and stepped forth into Princes Street
with a wonderful expansion of the soul, such as men enjoy on the
completion of long-nourished schemes. He was at home again, incognito
and rich; presently he could enter his father's house by means of the
pass-key, which he had piously preserved through all his wanderings; he
would throw down the borrowed money; there would be a reconciliation,
the details of which he frequently arranged; and he saw himself, during
the next month, made welcome in many stately houses at many frigid
dinner-parties, taking his share in the conversation with the freedom of
the man and the traveller, and laying down the law upon finance with the
authority of the successful investor. But this programme was not to be
begun before evening--not till just before dinner, indeed, at which meal
the re-assembled family were to sit roseate, and the best wine, the
modern fatted calf, should flow for the prodigal's return.
Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminiscences crowding round
him, sad ones also, both with the same surprising pathos. The keen
frosty air; the low, rosy, wintry sun; the Castle, hailing him like an
old acquaintance; the names of friends on door-plates; the sight of
friends whom he seemed to recognise, and whom he eagerly avoided, in the
streets; the pleasant chant of the north-country accent; the dome of St.
George's reminding him of his last penitential moments in the lane, and
of that King of Glory whose name had echoed ever since in the saddest
corner of his memory; and the gutters where he had learned to slide,
and the shop where he had bought his skates, and the stones on which he
had trod, and the railings in which he had rattled his clacken as he
went to school; and all those thousand and one nameless particulars
which the eye sees without noting, which the memory keeps indeed yet
without knowing, and which, taken one with another, build up for us the
aspect of the place that we call home: all these besieged him, as he
went, with both delight and sadness.
His first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Regent Terrace, kept
for him in old days by an aunt. The door was opened (to his surprise)
upon the chain, and a voice asked him from within what he wanted.
"I want Mr. Houston--Mr. Alan Houston," said he.
"And who are you?" said the voice.
"This is most extraordinary," thought John; and then aloud he told his
name.
"No' young Mr. John?" cried the voice, with a sudden increase of
Scottish accent, testifying to a friendlier feeling.
"The very same," said John.
And the old butler removed his defences, remarking only, "I thocht ye
were that man." But his master was not there; he was staying, it
appeared, at the house in Murrayfield; and though the butler would have
been glad enough to have taken his place and given all the news of the
family, John, struck with a little chill, was eager to be gone. Only,
the door was scarce closed again, before he regretted that he had not
asked about "that man."
He was to pay no more visits till he had seen his father and made all
well at home; Alan had been the only possible exception, and John had
not time to go as far as Murrayfield. But here he was on Regent Terrace;
there was nothing to prevent him going round the end of the hill, and
looking from without on the Mackenzies' house. As he went he reflected
that Flora must now be a woman of near his own age, and it was within
the bounds of possibility that she was married; but this dishonourable
doubt he dammed down.
There was the house, sure enough; but the door was of another colour,
and what was this--two door-plates? He drew nearer; the top one bore,
with dignified simplicity, the words, "Mr. Proudfoot"; the lower one was
more explicit, and informed the passer-by that here was likewise the
abode of "Mr. J. A. Dunlop Proudfoot, Advocate." The Proudfoots must be
rich, for no advocate could look to have much business in so remote a
quarter; and John hated them for their wealth and for their name, and
for the sake of the house they desecrated with their presence. He
remembered a Proudfoot he had seen at school, not known: a little,
whey-faced urchin, the despicable member of some lower class. Could it
be this abortion that had climbed to be an advocate, and now lived in
the birthplace of Flora and the home of John's tenderest memories? The
chill that had first seized upon him when he heard of Houston's absence
deepened and struck inward. For a moment, as he stood under the doors of
that estranged house, and looked east and west along the solitary
pavement of the Royal Terrace, where not a cat was stirring, the sense
of solitude and desolation took him by the throat, and he wished himself
in San Francisco.
And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, his whiskers,
the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now lit, recurred to
his mind in consolatory comparison with that of a certain maddened lad
who, on a certain spring Sunday ten years before, and in the hour of
church-time silence, had stolen from that city by the Glasgow road. In
the face of these changes it were impious to doubt fortune's kindness.
All would be well yet; the Mackenzies would be found, Flora, younger and
lovelier and kinder than before; Alan would be found, and would have so
nicely discriminated his behaviour as to have grown, on the one hand,
into a valued friend of Mr. Nicholson's, and to have remained, upon the
other, of that exact shade of joviality which John desired in his
companions. And so, once more, John fell to work discounting the
delightful future: his first appearance in the family pew; his first
visit to his uncle Greig, who thought himself so great a financier, and
on whose purblind Edinburgh eyes John was to let in the dazzling
daylight of the West; and the details in general of that unrivalled
transformation scene, in which he was to display to all Edinburgh a
portly and successful gentleman in the shoes of the derided fugitive.
The time began to draw near when his father would have returned from the
office, and it would be the prodigal's cue to enter. He strolled
westward by Albany Street, facing the sunset embers, pleased, he knew
not why, to move in that cold air and indigo twilight, starred with
street-lamps. But there was one more disenchantment waiting him by the
way.
At the corner of Pitt Street he paused to light a fresh cigar; the vesta
threw, as he did so, a strong light upon his features, and a man of
about his own age stopped at sight of it.
"I think your name must be Nicholson," said the stranger.
It was too late to avoid recognition; and besides, as John was now
actually on the way home, it hardly mattered, and he gave way to the
impulse of his nature.
"Great Scott!" he cried, "Beatson!" and shook hands with warmth. It
scarce seemed he was repaid in kind.
"So you're home again?" said Beatson. "Where have you been all this long
time?"
"In the States," said John--"California. I've made my pile though; and
it suddenly struck me it would be a noble scheme to come home for
Christmas."
"I see," said Beatson. "Well, I hope we'll see something of you now
you're here."
"I guess so," said John, a little frozen.
"Well, ta-ta," concluded Beatson, and he shook hands again and went.
This was a cruel first experience. It was idle to blink facts: here was
John home again, and Beatson--Old Beatson--did not care a rush. He
recalled Old Beatson in the past--the merry and affectionate lad--and
their joint adventures and mishaps, the window they had broken with a
catapult in India Place, the escalade of the Castle rock, and many
another inestimable bond of friendship; and his hurt surprise grew
deeper. Well, after all, it was only on a man's own family that he could
count: blood was thicker than water, he remembered; and the net result
of this encounter was to bring him to the doorstep of his father's house
with tenderer and softer feelings.
The night had come; the fanlight over the door shone bright; the two
windows of the dining-room where the cloth was being laid, and the three
windows of the drawing-room where Maria would be waiting dinner, glowed
softer through yellow blinds. It was like a vision of the past. All this
time of his absence, life had gone forward with an equal foot, and the
fires and the gas had been lighted, and the meals spread, at the
accustomed hours. At the accustomed hour, too, the bell had sounded
thrice to call the family to worship. And at the thought a pang of
regret for his demerit seized him; he remembered the things that were
good and that he had neglected, and the things that were evil and that
he had loved; and it was with a prayer upon his lips that he mounted the
steps and thrust the key into the keyhole.
He stepped into the lighted hall, shut the door softly behind him, and
stood there fixed in wonder. No surprise of strangeness could equal the
surprise of that complete familiarity. There was the bust of Chalmers
near the stair-railings, there was the clothes-brush in the accustomed
place; and there, on the hat-stand, hung hats and coats that must surely
be the same as he remembered. Ten years dropped from his life, as a pin
may slip between the fingers; and the ocean and the mountains, and the
mines, and the crowded marts and mingled races of San Francisco, and his
own fortune and his own disgrace, became, for that one moment, the
figures of a dream that was over.
He took off his hat, and moved mechanically towards the stand; and there
he found a small change that was a great one to him. The pin that had
been his from boyhood, where he had flung his balmoral when he loitered
home from the Academy, and his first hat when he came briskly back from
college or the office--his pin was occupied. "They might have at least
respected my pin!" he thought, and he was moved as by a slight, and
began at once to recollect that he was here an interloper, in a strange
house, which he had entered almost by a burglary, and where at any
moment he might be scandalously challenged.
He moved at once, his hat still in his hand, to the door of his father's
room, opened it, and entered. Mr. Nicholson sat in the same place and
posture as on that last Sunday morning; only he was older, and greyer,
and sterner; and as he now glanced up and caught the eye of his son, a
strange commotion and a dark flush sprang into his face.
"Father," said John steadily, and even cheerfully, for this was a moment
against which he was long ago prepared, "Father, here I am, and here is
the money that I took from you. I have come back to ask your
forgiveness, and to stay Christmas with you and the children."
"Keep your money," said the father, "and go!"
"Father!" cried John; "for God's sake don't receive me this way. I've
come for----"
"Understand me," interrupted Mr. Nicholson; "you are no son of mine; and
in the sight of God, I wash my hands of you. One last thing I will tell
you; one warning I will give you: all is discovered, and you are being
hunted for your crimes; if you are still at large it is thanks to me;
but I have done all that I mean to do; and from this time forth I would
not raise one finger--not one finger--to save you from the gallows! And
now," with a low voice of absolute authority, and a single weighty
gesture of the finger, "and now--go!"
CHAPTER VI
THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD
How John passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind, in what
squalls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what pacing of streets
and plunging into public-houses, it would profit little to relate. His
misery, if it were not progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish;
for in proportion as grief and indignation abated, fear began to take
their place. At first, his father's menacing words lay by in some safe
drawer of memory, biding their hour. At first, John was all thwarted
affection and blighted hope; next bludgeoned vanity raised its head
again, with twenty mortal gashes; and the father was disowned even as he
had disowned the son. What was this regular course of life, that John
should have admired it? what were these clock-work virtues, from which
love was absent? Kindness was the test, kindness the aim and soul; and
judged by such a standard, the discarded prodigal--now rapidly drowning
his sorrows and his reason in successive drams--was a creature of a
lovelier morality than his self-righteous father. Yes, he was the better
man; he felt it, glowed with the consciousness, and entering a
public-house at the corner of Howard Place (whither he had somehow
wandered) he pledged his own virtues in a glass--perhaps the fourth
since his dismissal. Of that he knew nothing, keeping no account of what
he did or where he went; and in the general crashing hurry of his
nerves, unconscious of the approach of intoxication. Indeed, it is a
question whether he were really growing intoxicated, or whether at first
the spirits did not even sober him. For it was even as he drained this
last glass that his father's ambiguous and menacing words--popping from
their hiding-place in memory--startled him like a hand laid upon his
shoulder. "Crimes, hunted, the gallows." They were ugly words; in the
ears of an innocent man, perhaps all the uglier; for if some judicial
error were in act against him, who should set a limit to its grossness
or to how far it might be pushed? Not John, indeed; he was no believer
in the powers of innocence, his cursed experience pointing in quite
other ways; and his fears, once wakened, grew with every hour and hunted
him about the city streets.
It was perhaps nearly nine at night; he had eaten nothing since lunch,
he had drunk a good deal, and he was exhausted by emotion, when the
thought of Houston came into his head. He turned, not merely to the man
as a friend, but to his house as a place of refuge. The danger that
threatened him was still so vague, that he knew neither what to fear nor
where he might expect it; but this much at least seemed undeniable, that
a private house was safer than a public inn. Moved by these counsels, he
turned at once to the Caledonian Station, passed (not without alarm)
into the bright lights of the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from
the cloak-room, and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow road.
The change of movement and position, the sight of the lamps twinkling to
the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw which clung
about the vehicle, wrought in him strange alternations of lucidity and
mortal giddiness.
"I have been drinking," he discovered; "I must go straight to bed, and
sleep." And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness that came upon his mind
in waves.
From one of these spells he was awakened by the stoppage of the cab;
and, getting down, found himself in quite a country road, the last lamp
of the suburb shining some way below, and the high walls of a garden
rising before him in the dark. The Lodge (as the place was named) stood,
indeed, very solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, but
standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on all other
sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of Corstorphine Hill,
or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or downward towards the valley of
the Leith. The effect of seclusion was aided by the great height of the
garden walls, which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in
former days, defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of the cab threw a
gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle of the bell.
"Shall I ring for ye?" said the cabman, who had descended from his
perch, and was slapping his chest, for the night was bitter.
"I wish you would," said John, putting his hand to his brow in one of
his accesses of giddiness.
The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell replied from
further in the garden; twice and thrice he did it, with sufficient
intervals; in the great, frosty silence of the night the sounds fell
sharp and small.
"Does he expect ye?" asked the driver, with that manner of familiar
interest that well became his port-wine face; and when John had told him
no, "Well, then," said the cabman, "if ye'll tak' my advice of it, we'll
just gang back. And that's disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in
the Glesgie road."
"The servants must hear," said John.
"Hout!" said the driver. "He keeps no servants here, man. They're a' in
the town house; I drive him often; it's just a kind of a hermitage
this."
"Give me the bell," said John; and he plucked at it like a man
desperate.
The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon the
gravel, and a voice of singular nervous irritability cried to them
through the door, "Who are you, and what do you want?"
"Alan," said John, "it's me--it's Fatty--John, you know. I'm just come
home, and I've come to stay with you."
There was no reply for a moment, and then the door was opened.
"Get the portmanteau down," said John to the driver.
"Do nothing of the kind," said Alan; and then to John, "Come in here a
moment. I want to speak to you."
John entered the garden, and the door was closed behind him. A candle
stood on the gravel walk, winking a little in the draughts; it threw
inconstant sparkles on the clumped holly, struck the light and darkness
to and fro like a veil on Alan's features, and sent his shadow hovering
behind him. All beyond was inscrutable; and John's dizzy brain rocked
with the shadow. Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was pale, and his
voice, when he spoke, unnatural.
"What brings you here to-night?" he began. "I don't want, God knows, to
seem unfriendly; but I cannot take you in, Nicholson; I cannot do it."
"Alan," said John, "you've just got to! You don't know the mess I'm in;
the governor's turned me out, and I daren't show face in an inn, because
they're down on me for murder or something!"
"For what?" cried Alan, starting.
"Murder, I believe," says John.
"Murder!" repeated Alan, and passed his hand over his eyes. "What was
that you were saying?" he asked again.
"That they were down on me," said John. "I'm accused of murder, by what
I can make out; and I've really had a dreadful day of it, Alan, and I
can't sleep on the roadside on a night like this--at least, not with a
portmanteau," he pleaded.
"Hush!" said Alan, with his head on one side; and then, "Did you hear
nothing?" he asked.
"No," said John, thrilling, he knew not why, with communicated terror.
"No, I heard nothing; why?" And then, as there was no answer, he
reverted to his pleading: "But I say, Alan, you've just got to take me
in. I'll go right away to bed if you have anything to do. I seem to have
been drinking; I was that knocked over. I wouldn't turn you away, Alan,
if you were down on your luck."
"No?" returned Alan. "Neither will I you, then. Come and let's get your
portmanteau."
The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, lamp-lit hill, and the
two friends stood on the side-walk beside the portmanteau till the last
rumble of the wheels had died in silence. It seemed to John as though
Alan attached importance to this departure of the cab; and John, who was
in no state to criticise, shared profoundly in the feeling.
When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shouldered the
portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked the garden door; and
then, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon him, and he stood with
his hand on the key, until the cold began to nibble at John's fingers.
"Why are we standing here?" asked John.
"Eh?" said Alan blankly.
"Why, man, you don't seem yourself," said the other.
"No, I'm not myself," said Alan; and he sat down on the portmanteau and
put his face in his hands.
John stood beside him swaying a little, and looking about him at the
swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady stars overhead,
until the windless cold began to touch him through his clothes on the
bare skin. Even in his bemused intelligence, wonder began to awake.
"I say, let's come on to the house," he said at last.
"Yes, let's come on to the house," repeated Alan.
And he rose at once, re-shouldered the portmanteau, and, taking the
candle in his other hand, moved forward to the Lodge. This was a long,
low building, smothered in creepers; and now, except for some chinks of
light between the dining-room shutters, it was plunged in darkness and
silence.
In the hall Alan lit another candle, gave it to John, and opened the
door of a bedroom.
"Here," said he; "go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You'll be sorry for me
when you know."
"Wait a bit," returned John; "I've got so cold with all that standing
about. Let's go into the dining-room a minute. Just one glass to warm
me, Alan."
On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with a whisky label
on a tray. It was plain the bottle had been just opened, for the cork
and corkscrew lay beside it.
"Take that," said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then with a certain
roughness pushed his friend into the bedroom, and closed the door behind
him.
John stood amazed; then he shook the bottle, and, to his further wonder,
found it partly empty. Three or four glasses were gone. Alan must have
uncorked a bottle of whisky and drunk three or four glasses one after
the other, without sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his
own cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully explained his
eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. Poor
Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing was drink, and what a
slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in this unsociable, uncomfortable
fashion! The man who would drink alone, except for health's sake--as
John was now doing--was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and
felt hazier but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau and
finding his night things; and before he was undressed, the cold had
struck home to him once more. "Well," said he; "just a drop more.
There's no sense in getting ill with all this other trouble." And
presently dreamless slumber buried him.
When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already high in the
heavens, but his watch had stopped, and it was impossible to tell the
hour exactly. Ten, he guessed it, and made haste to dress, dismal
reflections crowding on his mind. But it was less from terror than from
regret that he now suffered; and with his regret there were mingled
cutting pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel,
indeed, but yet only the punishment of old misdoing; and he had rebelled
and plunged into fresh sin. The rod had been used to chasten, and he had
bit the chastening fingers. His father was right: John had justified
him; John was no guest for decent people's houses, and no fit associate
for decent people's children. And had a broader hint been needed, there
was the case of his old friend. John was no drunkard, though he could at
times exceed; and the picture of Houston drinking neat spirits at his
hall-table struck him with something like disgust. He hung back from
meeting his old friend. He could have wished he had not come to him; and
yet, even now, where else was he to turn?
These musings occupied him while he dressed, and accompanied him into
the lobby of the house. The door stood open on the garden; doubtless
Alan had stepped forth; and John did as he supposed his friend had done.
The ground was hard as iron, the frost still rigorous; as he brushed
among the hollies, icicles jingled and glittered in their fall; and
wherever he went, a volley of eager sparrows followed him. Here were
Christmas weather and Christmas morning duly met, to the delight of
children. This was the day of reunited families, the day to which he had
so long looked forward, thinking to awake in his own bed in Randolph
Crescent, reconciled with all men and repeating the footprints of his
youth; and here he was alone, pacing the alleys of a wintry garden and
filled with penitential thoughts.
And that reminded him: why was he alone? and where was Alan? The thought
of the festal morning and the due salutations reawakened his desire for
his friend, and he began to call for him by name. As the sound of his
voice died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence that
environed him. But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunching
of his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world of air
seemed to hang over him entranced, and the stillness weighed upon his
mind with a horror of solitude.
Still calling at intervals, but now with a moderated voice, he made the
hasty circuit of the garden, and finding neither man nor trace of man in
all its evergreen coverts, turned at last to the house. About the house
the silence seemed to deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open as
before; but the windows were still shuttered, the chimneys breathed no
stain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir
(perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the
flesh) by which a house announces and betrays its human lodgers. And yet
Alan must be there--Alan locked in drunken slumbers, forgetful of the
return of day, of the holy season, and of the friend whom he had so
coldly received and was now so churlishly neglecting. John's disgust
redoubled at the thought; but hunger was beginning to grow stronger than
repulsion, and as a step to breakfast, if to nothing else, he must find
and arouse the sleeper.
He made the circuit of the bedroom quarters. All, until he came to
Alan's chamber, were locked from without, and bore the marks of a long
disuse. But Alan's was a room in commission, filled with clothes,
knick-knacks, letters, books, and the conveniences of a solitary man.
The fire had been lit; but it had long ago burnt out, and the ashes were
stone cold. The bed had been made, but it had not been slept in.
Worse and worse, then: Alan must have fallen where he sat, and now
sprawled brutishly, no doubt, upon the dining-room floor.
The dining-room was a very long apartment, and was reached through a
passage; so that John, upon his entrance, brought but little light with
him, and must move towards the windows with spread arms, groping and
knocking on the furniture. Suddenly he tripped and fell his length over
a prostrate body. It was what he had looked for, yet it shocked him; and
he marvelled that so rough an impact should not have kicked a groan out
of the drunkard. Men had killed themselves ere now in such excesses, a
dreary and degraded end that made John shudder. What if Alan were dead?
There would be a Christmas Day!
By this, John had his hand upon the shutters, and flinging them back,
beheld once again the blessed face of the day. Even by that light the
room had a discomfortable air. The chairs were scattered, and one had
been overthrown; the table-cloth, laid as if for dinner, was twitched
upon one side, and some of the dishes had fallen to the floor. Behind
the table lay the drunkard, still unaroused, only one foot visible to
John.
But now that light was in the room, the worst seemed over; it was a
disgusting business, but not more than disgusting; and it was with no
great apprehension that John proceeded to make the circuit of the table:
his last comparatively tranquil moment for that day. No sooner had he
turned the corner, no sooner had his eyes alighted on the body, than he
gave a smothered, breathless cry, and fled out of the room and out of
the house.
It was not Alan who lay there, but a man well up in years, of stern
countenance and iron-grey locks; and it was no drunkard, for the body
lay in a black pool of blood and the open eyes stared upon the ceiling.
To and fro walked John before the door. The extreme sharpness of the air
acted on his nerves like an astringent, and braced them swiftly.
Presently, he not relaxing in his disordered walk, the images began to
come clearer and stay longer in his fancy; and next the power of thought
came back to him, and the horror and danger of his situation rooted him
to the ground.
He grasped his forehead, and staring on one spot of gravel, pieced
together what he knew and what he suspected. Alan had murdered some one:
possibly "that man" against whom the butler chained the door in Regent
Terrace; possibly another; some one at least: a human soul, whom it was
death to slay and whose blood lay spilt upon the floor. This was the
reason of the whisky-drinking in the passage, of his unwillingness to
welcome John, of his strange behaviour and bewildered words; this was
why he had started at and harped upon the name of murder; this was why
he had stood and hearkened, or sat and covered his eyes, in the black
night. And now he was gone, now he had basely fled; and to all his
perplexities and dangers John stood heir.
"Let me think, let me think," he said aloud, impatiently, even
pleadingly, as if to some merciless interrupter. In the turmoil of his
wits, a thousand hints and hopes and threats and terrors dinning
continuously in his ears, he was like one plunged in the hubbub of a
crowd. How was he to remember--he, who had not a thought to spare--that
he was himself the author, as well as the theatre, of so much confusion?
But in hours of trial the junto of man's nature is dissolved, and
anarchy succeeds.
It was plain he must stay no longer where he was, for here was a new
Judicial Error in the very making. It was not so plain where he must go,
for the old Judicial Error, vague as a cloud, appeared to fill the
habitable world; whatever it might be, it watched for him, full-grown,
in Edinburgh; it must have had its birth in San Francisco; it stood
guard, no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank where he should cash his
credit; and though there were doubtless many other places, who should
say in which of them it was not ambushed? No, he could not tell where he
was to go; he must not lose time on these insolubilities. Let him go
back to the beginning. It was plain he must stay no longer where he was.
It was plain, too, that he must not flee as he was, for he could not
carry his portmanteau, and to flee and leave it was to plunge deeper in
the mire. He must go, leave the house unguarded, find a cab, and
return--return after an absence? Had he courage for that?
And just then he spied a stain about a hand's breadth on his
trousers-leg, and reached his finger down to touch it. The finger was
stained red: it was blood; he stared upon it with disgust, and awe, and
terror, and in the sharpness of the new sensation fell instantly to act.
He cleansed his finger in the snow, returned into the house, drew near
with hushed footsteps to the dining-room door, and shut and locked it.
Then he breathed a little freer, for here at least was an oaken barrier
between himself and what he feared. Next, he hastened to his room, tore
off the spotted trousers, which seemed in his eyes a link to bind him to
the gallows, flung them in a corner, donned another pair, breathlessly
crammed his night-things into his portmanteau, locked it, swung it with
an effort from the ground, and with a rush of relief came forth again
under the open heavens.
The portmanteau, being of Occidental build, was no feather-weight; it
had distressed the powerful Alan; and as for John, he was crushed under
its bulk, and the sweat broke upon him thickly. Twice he must set it
down to rest before he reached the gate; and when he had come so far, he
must do as Alan did, and take his seat upon one corner. Here, then, he
sat a while and panted; but now his thoughts were sensibly lightened;
now, with the trunk standing just inside the door, some part of his
dissociation from the house of crime had been effected, and the cabman
need not pass the garden wall. It was wonderful how that relieved him;
for the house, in his eyes, was a place to strike the most cursory
beholder with suspicion, as though the very windows had cried murder.
But there was to be no remission of the strokes of fate. As he thus sat,
taking breath in the shadow of the wall, and hopped about by sparrows,
it chanced that his eye roved to the fastening of the door; and what he
saw plucked him to his feet. The thing locked with a spring; once the
door was closed, the bolt shot of itself; and without a key there was no
means of entering from the road.
He saw himself compelled to one of two distasteful and perilous
alternatives: either to shut the door altogether and set his portmanteau
out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the door
ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in and
stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, his
mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved.
He peered out, and down the long road: it lay dead empty. He went to
the corner of the by-road that comes by way of Dean; there also not a
passenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide of
his affairs; and he drew the door as close as he durst, slipped a pebble
in the chink, and made off downhill to find a cab.
Half-way down a gate opened, and a troop of Christmas children sallied
forth in the most cheerful humour, followed more soberly by a smiling
mother.
"And this is Christmas Day!" thought John; and could have laughed aloud
in tragic bitterness of heart.
CHAPTER VII
A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB
In front of Donaldson's Hospital, John counted it good fortune to
perceive a cab a great way off, and by much shouting and waving of his
arm, to catch the notice of the driver. He counted it good fortune, for
the time was long to him till he should have done for ever with the
Lodge; and the farther he must go to find a cab, the greater the chance
that the inevitable discovery had taken place, and that he should return
to find the garden full of angry neighbours. Yet when the vehicle drew
up he was sensibly chagrined to recognise the port-wine cabman of the
night before. "Here," he could not but reflect, "here is another link in
the Judicial Error."
The driver, on the other hand, was pleased to drop again upon so liberal
a fare; and as he was a man--the reader must already have perceived--of
easy, not to say familiar, manners, he dropped at once into a vein of
friendly talk, commenting on the weather, on the sacred season, which
struck him chiefly in the light of a day of liberal gratuities, on the
chance which had reunited him to a pleasing customer, and on the fact
that John had been (as he was pleased to call it) visibly "on the
ran-dan" the night before.
"And ye look dreidful bad the-day, sir, I must say that," he continued.
"There's nothing like a dram for ye--if ye'll take my advice of it; and
bein' as it's Christmas, I'm no' saying," he added, with a fatherly
smile, "but what I would join ye mysel'."
John had listened with a sick heart.
"I'll give you a dram when we've got through," said he, affecting a
sprightliness which sat on him most unhandsomely, "and not a drop till
then. Business first and pleasure afterwards."
With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to clamber to his place
and drive, with hideous deliberation, to the door of the Lodge. There
were no signs as yet of any public emotion; only, two men stood not far
off in talk, and their presence, seen from afar, set John's pulses
buzzing. He might have spared himself his fright, for the pair were lost
in some dispute of a theological complexion, and, with lengthened upper
lip and enumerating fingers, pursued the matter of their difference, and
paid no heed to John.
But the cabman proved a thorn in the flesh. Nothing would keep him on
his perch; he must clamber down, comment upon the pebble in the door
(which he regarded as an ingenious but unsafe device), help John with
the portmanteau, and enliven matters with a flow of speech, and
especially of questions, which I thus condense:--
"He'll no' be here himsel', will he? No? Well, he's an eccentric man--a
fair oddity--if ye ken the expression. Great trouble with his tenants,
they tell me. I've driven the faim'ly for years. I drove a cab at his
father's waddin'. What'll your name be?--I should ken your face.
Baigrey, ye say? There were Baigreys about Gilmerton; ye'll be one of
that lot? Then this'll be a friend's portmantie, like? Why? Because the
name upon it's Nucholson! O, if ye're in a hurry, that's another job.
Waverley Brig'? Are ye for away?"
So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept John's heart in a
flutter. But to this also, as to other evils under the sun, there came a
period; and the victim of circumstances began at last to rumble towards
the railway terminus at Waverley Bridge. During the transit he sat with
raised glasses in the frosty chill and mouldy foetor of his chariot, and
glanced out sidelong on the holiday face of things, the shuttered shops,
and the crowds along the pavement, much as the rider in the Tyburn cart
may have observed the concourse gathering to his execution.
At the station his spirits rose again; another stage of his escape was
fortunately ended--he began to spy blue water. He called a railway
porter, and bade him carry the portmanteau to the cloak-room: not that
he had any notion of delay; flight, instant flight, was his design, no
matter whither; but he had determined to dismiss the cabman ere he
named, or even chose, his destination, thus possibly baulking the
Judicial Error of another link. This was his cunning aim, and now with
one foot on the roadway, and one still on the coach-step, he made haste
to put the thing in practice, and plunged his hand into his
trousers-pocket.
There was nothing there!
O, yes; this time he was to blame. He should have remembered, and when
he deserted his blood-stained pantaloons, he should not have deserted
along with them his purse. Make the most of his error, and then compare
it with the punishment. Conceive his new position, for I lack words to
picture it; conceive him condemned to return to that house, from the
very thought of which his soul revolted, and once more to expose himself
to capture on the very scene of the misdeed: conceive him linked to the
mouldy cab and the familiar cabman. John cursed the cabman silently, and
then it occurred to him that he must stop the incarceration of his
portmanteau; that, at least, he must keep close at hand, and he returned
to recall the porter. But his reflections, brief as they had appeared,
must have occupied him longer than he supposed, and there was the man
already returning with the receipt.
Well, that was settled; he had lost his portmanteau also; for the
sixpence with which he had paid the Murrayfield Toll was one that had
strayed alone into his waistcoat-pocket, and unless he once more
successfully achieved the adventure of the house of crime, his
portmanteau lay in the cloak-room in eternal pawn, for lack of a penny
fee. And then he remembered the porter, who stood suggestively
attentive, words of gratitude hanging on his lips.
John hunted right and left; he found a coin--prayed God that it was a
sovereign--drew it out, beheld a halfpenny, and offered it to the
porter.
The man's jaw dropped.
"It's only a halfpenny," he said, startled out of railway decency.
"I know that," said John piteously.
And here the porter recovered the dignity of man.
"Thank you, sir," said he, and would have returned the base gratuity.
But John, too, would none of it; and as they struggled, who must join in
but the cabman?
"Hoots, Mr. Baigrey," said he, "you surely forget what day it is!"
"I tell you I have no change!" cried John.
"Well," said the driver, "and what then? I would rather give a man a
shillin' on a day like this than put him off with a derision like a
bawbee. I'm surprised at the like of you, Mr. Baigrey!"
"My name is not Baigrey!" broke out John, in mere childish temper and
distress.
"Ye told me it was yoursel'," said the cabman.
"I know I did; and what the devil right had you to ask?" cried the
unhappy one.
"O very well," said the driver. "I know my place, if you know yours--if
you know yours!" he repeated, as one who should imply grave doubts; and
muttered inarticulate thunders, in which the grand old name of gentleman
was taken seemingly in vain.
O to have been able to discharge this monster, whom John now perceived,
with tardy clear-sightedness, to have begun betimes the festivities of
Christmas! But far from any such ray of consolation visiting the lost,
he stood bare of help and helpers, his portmanteau sequestered in one
place, his money deserted in another and guarded by a corpse; himself,
so sedulous of privacy, the cynosure of all men's eyes about the
station; and, as if these were not enough mischances, he was now fallen
in ill-blood with the beast to whom his poverty had linked him! In
ill-blood, as he reflected dismally, with the witness who perhaps might
hang or save him! There was no time to be lost; he durst not linger any
longer in that public spot; and whether he had recourse to dignity or to
conciliation, the remedy must be applied at once. Some happily surviving
element of manhood moved him to the former.
"Let us have no more of this," said he, his foot once more upon the
step. "Go back to where we came from."
He had avoided the name of any destination, for there was now quite a
little band of railway folk about the cab, and he still kept an eye upon
the court of justice, and laboured to avoid concentric evidence. But
here again the fatal jarvey out-manoeuvred him.
"Back to the Ludge?" cried he, in shrill tones of protest.
"Drive on at once!" roared John, and slammed the door behind him, so
that the crazy chariot rocked and jingled.
Forth trundled the cab into the Christmas streets, the fare within
plunged in the blackness of a despair that neighboured on
unconsciousness, the driver on the box digesting his rebuke and his
customer's duplicity. I would not be thought to put the pair in
competition; John's case was out of all parallel. But the cabman, too,
is worth the sympathy of the judicious; for he was a fellow of genuine
kindliness and a high sense of personal dignity incensed by drink; and
his advances had been cruelly and publicly rebuffed. As he drove,
therefore, he counted his wrongs, and thirsted for sympathy and drink.
Now, it chanced he had a friend, a publican in Queensferry Street, from
whom, in view of the sacredness of the occasion, he thought he might
extract a dram. Queensferry Street lies something off the direct road to
Murrayfield. But then there is the hilly cross-road that passes by the
valley of the Leith and the Dean Cemetery; and Queensferry Street is on
the way to that. What was to hinder the cabman, since his horse was
dumb, from choosing the cross-roads, and calling on his friend in
passing? So it was decided; and the charioteer, already somewhat
mollified, turned aside his horse to the right.
John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his chin sunk upon his chest, his mind
in abeyance. The smell of the cab was still faintly present to his
senses, and a certain leaden chill about his feet; all else had
disappeared in one vast oppression of calamity and physical faintness.
It was drawing on to noon--two-and-twenty hours since he had broken
bread; in the interval he had suffered tortures of sorrow and alarm, and
had been partly tipsy; and though it was impossible to say he slept, yet
when the cab stopped, and the cabman thrust his head into the window,
his attention had to be recalled from depths of vacancy.
"If you'll no' _stand_ me a dram," said the driver, with a well-merited
severity of tone and manner, "I daresay ye'll have no objection to my
taking one mysel'?"
"Yes--no--do what you like," returned John; and then, as he watched his
tormentor mount the stairs and enter the whisky-shop, there floated into
his mind a sense as of something long ago familiar. At that he started
fully awake, and stared at the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them; but when?
and how? Long since, he thought; and then, casting his eye through the
front glass, which had been recently occluded by the figure of the
jarvey, he beheld the tree-tops of the rookery in Randolph Crescent. He
was close to home--home, where he had thought, at that hour, to be
sitting in the well-remembered drawing-room in friendly converse; and,
instead----!
It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the cab; his next,
to cover his face with his hands. So he sat, while the cabman toasted
the publican, and the publican toasted the cabman, and both reviewed the
affairs of the nation; so he still sat, when his master condescended to
return, and drive off at last downhill, along the curve of Lynedoch
Place; but even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street,
he took one glance from between shielding fingers, and beheld a doctor's
carriage at the door.
"Well, just so," thought he; "I'll have killed my father! And this is
Christmas Day!"
If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must journey to the
grave; and down this road, on the same errand, his wife had preceded him
years before; and many other leading citizens, with the proper trappings
and attendance of the end. And now, in that frosty, ill-smelling,
straw-carpeted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with his breath congealing on
the glasses, towards what other destination was John himself advancing?
The thought stirred his imagination, which began to manufacture many
thousand pictures, bright and fleeting like the shapes in a
kaleidoscope; and now he saw himself, ruddy and comfortered, sliding in
the gutter; and again a little woe-begone, bored urchin tricked forth in
crape and weepers, descending this same hill at the foot's-pace of
mourning coaches, his mother's body just preceding him; and yet again,
his fancy, running far in front, showed him the house at
Murrayfield--now standing solitary in the low sunshine, with the
sparrows hopping on the threshold and the dead man within staring at the
roof, and now, with a sudden change, thronged about with white-faced,
hand-uplifting neighbours, the doctor bursting through their midst and
fixing his stethoscope as he went, the policeman shaking a sagacious
head beside the body. It was to this he feared that he was driving; in
the midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint
explanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his shoulder.
Heavens! how he wished he had played the manlier part; how he despised
himself that he had fled that fatal neighbourhood when all was quiet,
and should now be tamely travelling back when it was thronging with
avengers!
Any strong degree of passion lends, even to the dullest, the forces of
the imagination. And so now as he dwelt on what was probably awaiting
him at the end of this distressful drive--John, who saw things little,
remembered them less, and could not have described them at all, beheld
in his mind's eye the garden of the Lodge, detailed as in a map; he went
to and fro in it, feeling his terrors; he saw the hollies, the snowy
borders, the paths where he had sought Alan, the high, conventual walls,
the shut door--what! was the door shut? Ay, truly, he had shut it--shut
in his money, his escape, his future life--shut it with these hands, and
none could now open it! He heard the snap of the spring-lock like
something bursting in his brain, and sat astonied.
And then he woke again, terror jarring through his vitals. This was no
time to be idle; he must be up and doing, he must think. Once at the end
of this ridiculous cruise, once at the Lodge door, there would be
nothing for it but to turn the cab and trundle back again. Why, then, go
so far? why add another feature of suspicion to a case already so
suggestive? why not turn at once? It was easy to say, turn, but whither?
He had nowhere now to go to; he could never--he saw it in letters of
blood--he could never pay that cab; he was saddled with that cab for
ever. O that cab! his soul yearned to be rid of it. He forgot all other
cares. He must first quit himself of this ill-smelling vehicle and of
the human beast that guided it--first do that; do that at least; do that
at once.
And just then the cab suddenly stopped, and there was his persecutor
rapping on the front glass. John let it down, and beheld the port-wine
countenance flamed with intellectual triumph.
"I ken wha ye are!" cried the husky voice. "I mind ye now. Ye're a
Nucholson. I drove ye to Hermiston to a Christmas party, and ye came
back on the box, and I let ye drive."
It was a fact. John knew the man; they had been even friends. His enemy,
he now remembered, was a fellow of great good-nature--endless
good-nature--with a boy; why not with a man? Why not appeal to his
better side? He grasped at the new hope.
"Great Scott; and so you did," he cried, as if in a transport of
delight, his voice sounding false in his own ears. "Well, if that's so,
I've something to say to you. I'll just get out, I guess. Where are we,
any way?"
The driver had fluttered his ticket in the eyes of the branch
toll-keeper, and they were now brought to on the highest and most
solitary part of the by-road. On the left, a row of field-side trees
beshaded it; on the right it was bordered by naked fallows, undulating
downhill to the Queensferry Road; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised its
snow-bedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John looked all about
him, drinking the clear air like wine; then, his eyes returned to the
cabman's face as he sat, not ungleefully, awaiting John's communication,
with the air of one looking to be tipped.
The features of that face were hard to read, drink had so swollen them,
drink had so painted them, in tints that varied from brick-red to
mulberry. The small grey eyes blinked, the lips moved, with greed; greed
was the ruling passion; and though there was some good-nature, some
genuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the old toper, his greed was
now so set afire by hope, that all other traits of character lay
dormant. He sat there a monument of gluttonous desire.
John's heart slowly fell. He had opened his lips, but he stood there and
uttered nought. He sounded the well of his courage, and it was dry. He
groped in his treasury of words, and it was vacant. A devil of dumbness
had him by the throat; a devil of terror babbled in his ears; and
suddenly, without a word uttered, with no conscious purpose formed in
his will, John whipped about, tumbled over the roadside wall, and began
running for his life across the fallows.
He had not gone far, he was not past the midst of the first field, when
his whole brain thundered within him, "Fool! You have your watch!" The
shock stopped him and he faced once more towards the cab. The driver was
leaning over the wall, brandishing his whip, his face empurpled, roaring
like a bull. And John saw (or thought) that he had lost the chance. No
watch would pacify the man's resentment now; he would cry for vengeance
also. John would be under the eye of the police; his tale would be
unfolded, his secret plumbed, his destiny would close on him at last,
and for ever.
He uttered a deep sigh; and just as the cabman, taking heart of grace,
was beginning at last to scale the wall, his defaulting customer fell
again to running and disappeared into the farther fields.
CHAPTER VIII
SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTILITY OF PASS-KEYS
Where he ran at first, John never very clearly knew; nor yet how long a
time elapsed ere he found himself in the by-road near the lodge of
Ravelston, propped against the wall, his lungs heaving like bellows, his
legs leaden-heavy, his mind possessed by one sole desire--to lie down
and be unseen. He remembered the thick coverts round the quarry-hole
pond, an untrodden corner of the world where he might surely find
concealment till the night should fall. Thither he passed down the lane;
and when he came there, behold! he had forgotten the frost, and the pond
was alive with young people skating, and the pond-side coverts were
thick with lookers-on. He looked on awhile himself. There was one tall,
graceful maiden, skating hand in hand with a youth, on whom she bestowed
her bright eyes perhaps too patently; and it was strange with what anger
John beheld her. He could have broken forth in curses; he could have
stood there, like a mortified tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his
gall upon her by the hour--or so he thought; and the next moment his
heart bled for the girl. "Poor creature, it's little she knows!" he
sighed. "Let her enjoy herself while she can!" But was it possible, when
Flora used to smile at him on the Braid ponds, she could have looked so
fulsome to a sick-hearted bystander?
The thought of one quarry, in his frozen wits, suggested another; and he
plodded off towards Craigleith. A wind had sprung up out of the
north-west; it was cruel keen, it dried him like a fire, and racked his
finger-joints. It brought clouds, too; pale, swift, hurrying clouds,
that blotted heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled up among
the hazelled rubbish-heaps that surround the cauldron of the quarry, and
lay flat upon the stones. The wind searched close along the earth, the
stones were cutting and icy, the bare hazels wailed about him; and soon
the air of the afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal
harpings that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's limbs to a
harrowing impatience and blind desire of change; now he would roll in
his harsh lair, and when the flints abraded him was almost pleased; now
he would crawl to the edge of the huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw
the spiral of the descending roadway, the steep crags, the clinging
bushes, the peppering of snow-wreaths, and, far down in the bottom, the
diminished crane. Here, no doubt, was a way to end it. But it somehow
did not take his fancy.
And suddenly he was aware that he was hungry; ay, even through the
tortures of the cold, even through the frosts of despair, a gross,
desperate longing after food, no matter what, no matter how, began to
wake and spur him. Suppose he pawned his watch? But no, on Christmas
Day--this was Christmas Day!--the pawn-shop would be closed. Suppose he
went to the public-house close by at Blackhall, and offered the watch,
which was worth ten pounds, in payment for a meal of bread and cheese?
The incongruity was too remarkable; the good folks would either put him
to the door, or only let him in to send for the police. He turned his
pockets out one after another; some San Francisco tram-car checks, one
cigar, no lights, the pass-key to his father's house, a
pocket-handkerchief, with just a touch of scent: no--money could be
raised on none of these. There was nothing for it but to starve; and
after all, what mattered it! That also was a door of exit.
He crept close among the bushes, the wind playing round him like a lash;
his clothes seemed thin as paper, his joints burned, his skin curdled on
his bones. He had a vision of a high-lying cattle-drive in California,
and the bed of a dried stream with one muddy pool, by which the vaqueros
had encamped: splendid sun over all, the big bonfire blazing, the strips
of cow browning and smoking on a skewer of wood; how warm it was, how
savoury the steam of scorching meat! And then again he remembered his
manifold calamities, and burrowed and wallowed in the sense of his
disgrace and shame. And next he was entering Frank's restaurant in
Montgomery Street, San Francisco; he had ordered a pan-stew and venison
chops, of which he was immoderately fond, and as he sat waiting, Munroe,
the good attendant, brought him a whisky-punch; he saw the strawberries
float on the delectable cup, he heard the ice chink about the straws.
And then he woke again to his detested fate, and found himself sitting,
humped together, in a windy combe of quarry-refuse--darkness thick about
him, thin flakes of snow lying here and there like rags of paper, and
the strong shuddering of his body clashing his teeth like a hiccough.
We have seen John in nothing but the stormiest conditions; we have seen
him reckless, desperate, tried beyond his moderate powers: of his daily
self, cheerful, regular, not unthrifty, we have seen nothing; and it may
thus be a surprise to the reader to learn that he was studiously careful
of his health. This favourite pre-occupation now awoke. If he were to
sit there and die of cold, there would be mighty little gained; better
the police cell and the chances of a jury trial, than the miserable
certainty of death at a dyke-side before the next winter's dawn, or
death a little later in the gas-lit wards of an infirmary.
He rose on aching legs, and stumbled here and there among the
rubbish-heaps, still circumvented by the yawning crater of the quarry;
or perhaps he only thought so, for the darkness was already dense, the
snow was growing thicker, and he moved like a blind man, and with a
blind man's terrors. At last he climbed a fence, thinking to drop into
the road, and found himself staggering, instead, among the iron furrows
of a ploughland, endless, it seemed, as a whole county. And next he was
in a wood, beating among young trees; and then he was aware of a house
with many lighted windows, Christmas carriages waiting at the doors, and
Christmas drivers (for Christmas has a double edge) becoming swiftly
hooded with snow. From this glimpse of human cheerfulness he fled like
Cain; wandered in the night, unpiloted, careless of whither he went;
fell and lay, and then rose again and wandered farther; and at last,
like a transformation scene, behold him in the lighted jaws of the city,
staring at a lamp which had already donned the tilted night-cap of the
snow. It came thickly now, a "Feeding Storm"; and while he yet stood
blinking at the lamp, his feet were buried. He remembered something like
it in the past, a street lamp crowned and caked upon the windward side
with snow, the wind uttering its mournful hoot, himself looking on, even
as now; but the cold had struck too sharply on his wits, and memory
failed him as to the date and sequel of the reminiscence.
His next conscious moment was on the Dean Bridge; but whether he was
John Nicholson of a bank in California Street, or some former John, a
clerk in his father's office, he had now clean forgotten. Another blank,
and he was thrusting his pass-key into the door-lock of his father's
house.
Hours must have passed. Whether crouched on the cold stones or wandering
in the fields among the snow, was more than he could tell; but hours had
passed. The finger of the hall clock was close on twelve; a narrow peep
of gas in the hall-lamp shed shadows; and the door of the back room--his
father's room--was open and emitted a warm light. At so late an hour all
this was strange; the lights should have been out, the doors locked, the
good folk safe in bed. He marvelled at the irregularity, leaning on the
hall table; and marvelled to himself there; and thawed and grew once
more hungry in the warmer air of the house.
The clock uttered its premonitory catch; in five minutes Christmas Day
would be among the days of the past--Christmas!--what a Christmas! Well,
there was no use waiting; he had come into that house, he scarce knew
how; if they were to thrust him forth again, it had best be done at
once; and he moved to the door of the back room and entered.
O, well--then he was insane, as he had long believed.
There, in his father's room, at midnight, the fire was roaring, and the
gas blazing; the papers, the sacred papers--to lay a hand on which was
criminal--had all been taken off and piled along the floor; a cloth was
spread, and a supper laid, upon the business table; and in his father's
chair a woman, habited like a nun, sat eating. As he appeared in the
doorway, the nun rose, gave a low cry, and stood staring. She was a
large woman, strong, calm, a little masculine, her features marked with
courage and good sense; and as John blinked back at her, a faint
resemblance dodged about his memory, as when a tune haunts us, and yet
will not be recalled.
"Why, it's John!" cried the nun.
"I daresay I'm mad," said John, unconsciously following King Lear; "but,
upon my word, I do believe you're Flora."
"Of course I am," replied she.
And yet it is not Flora at all, thought John; Flora was slender, and
timid, and of changing colour, and dewy-eyed; and had Flora such an
Edinburgh accent? But he said none of these things, which was perhaps as
well. What he said was, "Then why are you a nun?"
"Such nonsense!" said Flora. "I'm a sick-nurse; and I am here nursing
your sister, with whom, between you and me, there is precious little the
matter. But that is not the question. The point is: How do you come
here? and are you not ashamed to show yourself?"
"Flora," said John sepulchrally, "I haven't eaten anything for three
days. Or, at least, I don't know what day it is; but I guess I'm
starving."
"You unhappy man!" she cried. "Here, sit down and eat my supper; and
I'll just run upstairs and see my patient; not but what I doubt she's
fast asleep, for Maria is a _malade imadginaire_."
With this specimen of the French, not of Stratford-atte-Bowe, but of a
finishing establishment in Moray Place, she left John alone in his
father's sanctum. He fell at once upon the food; and it is to be
supposed that Flora had found her patient wakeful, and been detained
with some details of nursing, for he had time to make a full end of all
there was to eat, and not only to empty the teapot, but to fill it again
from a kettle that was fitfully singing on his father's fire. Then he
sat torpid, and pleased, and bewildered; his misfortunes were then half
forgotten; his mind considering, not without regret, this unsentimental
return to his old love.
He was thus engaged when that bustling woman noiselessly re-entered.
"Have you eaten?" said she. "Then tell me all about it."
It was a long and (as the reader knows) a pitiful story; but Flora heard
it with compressed lips. She was lost in none of those questionings of
human destiny that have, from time to time, arrested the flight of my
own pen; for women, such as she, are no philosophers, and behold the
concrete only. And women, such as she, are very hard on the imperfect
man.
"Very well," said she, when he had done; "then down upon your knees at
once, and beg God's forgiveness."
And the great baby plumped upon his knees, and did as he was bid; and
none the worse for that! But while he was heartily enough requesting
forgiveness on general principles, the rational side of him
distinguished, and wondered if, perhaps, the apology were not due upon
the other part. And when he rose again from that becoming exercise, he
first eyed the face of his old love doubtfully, and then, taking heart,
uttered his protest.
"I must say, Flora," said he, "in all this business I can see very
little fault of mine."
"If you had written home," replied the lady, "there would have been none
of it. If you had even gone to Murrayfield reasonably sober, you would
never have slept there, and the worst would not have happened. Besides,
the whole thing began years ago. You got into trouble, and when your
father, honest man, was disappointed, you took the pet, or got afraid,
and ran away from punishment. Well, you've had your own way of it, John,
and I don't suppose you like it."
"I sometimes fancy I'm not much better than a fool," sighed John.
"My dear John," said she, "not much!"
He looked at her and his eye fell. A certain anger rose within him; here
was a Flora he disowned: she was hard; she was of a set colour; a
settled, mature, undecorative manner; plain of speech, plain of
habit--he had come near saying, plain of face. And this changeling
called herself by the same name as the many-coloured, clinging maid of
yore; she of the frequent laughter, and the many sighs, and the kind,
stolen glances. And to make all worse, she took the upper hand with him,
which (as John well knew) was not the true relation of the sexes. He
steeled his heart against this sick-nurse.
"And how do you come to be here?" he asked.
She told him how she had nursed her father in his long illness, and when
he died, and she was left alone, had taken to nurse others, partly from
habit, partly to be of some service in the world; partly, it might be,
for amusement. "There's no accounting for taste," said she. And she told
him how she went largely to the houses of old friends, as the need
arose; and how she was thus doubly welcome, as an old friend first, and
then as an experienced nurse, to whom doctors would confide the gravest
case.
"And, indeed, it's a mere farce my being here for poor Maria," she
continued; "but your father takes her ailments to heart, and I cannot
always be refusing him. We are great friends, your father and I; he was
very kind to me long ago--ten years ago."
A strange stir came in John's heart. All this while had he been thinking
only of himself? All this while, why had he not written to Flora? In
penitential tenderness, he took her hand, and, to his awe and trouble,
it remained in his, compliant. A voice told him this was Flora, after
all--told him so quietly, yet with a thrill of singing.
"And you never married?" said he.
"No, John; I never married," she replied.
The hall clock striking two recalled them to the sense of time.
"And now," said she, "you have been fed and warmed, and I have heard
your story, and now it's high time to call your brother."
"O!" cried John, chapfallen; "do you think that absolutely necessary?"
"_I_ can't keep you here; I am a stranger," said she. "Do you want to
run away again? I thought you had enough of that."
He bowed his head under the reproof. She despised him, he reflected, as
he sat once more alone; a monstrous thing for a woman to despise a man;
and, strangest of all, she seemed to like him. Would his brother despise
him, too? And would his brother like him?
And presently the brother appeared, under Flora's escort; and, standing
afar off beside the doorway, eyed the hero of this tale.
"So this is you?" he said at length.
"Yes, Alick, it's me--it's John," replied the elder brother feebly.
"And how did you get in here?" inquired the younger.
"O, I had my pass-key," says John.
"The deuce you had!" said Alexander. "Ah, you lived in a better world!
There are no pass-keys going now."
"Well, father was always averse to them," sighed John. And the
conversation then broke down, and the brothers looked askance at one
another in silence.
"Well, and what the devil are we to do?" said Alexander. "I suppose if
the authorities got wind of you, you would be taken up?"
"It depends on whether they've found the body or not," returned John.
"And then there's that cabman, to be sure!"
"O, bother the body!" said Alexander. "I mean about the other thing.
That's serious."
"Is that what my father spoke about?" asked John. "I don't even know
what it is."
"About your robbing your bank in California, of course," replied
Alexander.
It was plain, from Flora's face, that this was the first she had heard
of it; it was plainer still, from John's, that he was innocent.
"I!" he exclaimed. "I rob my bank! My God! Flora, this is too much; even
you must allow that."
"Meaning you didn't?" asked Alexander.
"I never robbed a soul in all my days," cried John: "except my father,
if you call that robbery; and I brought him back the money in this room,
and he wouldn't even take it!"
"Look here, John," said his brother; "let us have no misunderstanding
upon this. MacEwen saw my father; he told him a bank you had worked for
in San Francisco was wiring over the habitable globe to have you
collared--that it was supposed you had nailed thousands; and it was dead
certain you had nailed three hundred. So MacEwen said, and I wish you
would be careful how you answer. I may tell you also, that your father
paid the three hundred on the spot."
"Three hundred?" repeated John. "Three hundred pounds, you mean? That's
fifteen hundred dollars. Why, then, it's Kirkman!" he broke out. "Thank
Heaven! I can explain all that. I gave them to Kirkman to pay for me
the night before I left--fifteen hundred dollars, and a letter to the
manager. What do they suppose I would steal fifteen hundred dollars for?
I'm rich; I struck it rich in stocks. It's the silliest stuff I ever
heard of. All that's needful is to cable to the manager: Kirkman has the
fifteen hundred--find Kirkman. He was a fellow-clerk of mine, and a hard
case; but to do him justice I didn't think he was as hard as this."
"And what do you say to that, Alick?" asked Flora.
"I say the cablegram shall go to-night!" cried Alexander, with energy.
"Answer prepaid, too. If this can be cleared away--and upon my word I do
believe it can--we shall all be able to hold up our heads again. Here,
you John, you stick down the address of your bank manager. You, Flora,
you can pack John into my bed, for which I have no further use to-night.
As for me, I am off to the post-office, and thence to the High Street
about the dead body. The police ought to know, you see, and they ought
to know through John; and I can tell them some rigmarole about my
brother being a man of a highly nervous organisation, and the rest of
it. And then; I'll tell you what, John--did you notice the name upon the
cab?"
John gave the name of the driver, which, as I have not been able to
commend the vehicle, I here suppress.
"Well," resumed Alexander, "I'll call round at their place before I come
back, and pay your shot for you. In that way, before breakfast-time,
you'll be as good as new."
John murmured inarticulate thanks. To see his brother thus energetic in
his service moved him beyond expression; if he could not utter what he
felt, he showed it legibly in his face; and Alexander read it there, and
liked it the better in that dumb delivery.
"But there's one thing," said the latter, "cablegrams are dear; and I
daresay you remember enough of the governor to guess the state of my
finances."
"The trouble is," said John, "that all my stamps are in that beastly
house."
"All your what?" asked Alexander.
"Stamps--money," explained John. "It's an American expression; I'm
afraid I contracted one or two."
"I have some," said Flora. "I have a pound-note upstairs."
"My dear Flora," returned Alexander, "a pound-note won't see us very
far; and besides, this is my father's business, and I shall be very much
surprised if it isn't my father who pays for it."
"I would not apply to him yet; I do not think that can be wise,"
objected Flora.
"You have a very imperfect idea of my resources, and none at all of my
effrontery," replied Alexander. "Please observe."
He put John from his way, chose a stout knife among the supper things,
and with surprising quickness broke into his father's drawer.
"There's nothing easier when you come to try," he observed, pocketing
the money.
"I wish you had not done that," said Flora. "You will never hear the
last of it."
"O, I don't know," returned the young man; "the governor is human, after
all. And now, John, let me see your famous pass-key. Get into bed, and
don't move for any one till I come back. They won't mind you not
answering when they knock; I generally don't myself."
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH MR. NICHOLSON CONCEDES THE PRINCIPLE OF AN ALLOWANCE
In spite of the horrors of the day and the tea-drinking of the night,
John slept the sleep of infancy. He was wakened by the maid, as it might
have been ten years ago, tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was
painting the east; and as the window was to the back of the house, it
shone into the room with many strange colours of refracted light.
Without, the houses were all cleanly roofed with snow; the garden walls
were coped with it a foot in height; the greens lay glittering. Yet
strange as snow had grown to John during his years upon the Bay of San
Francisco, it was what he saw within that most affected him. For it was
to his own room that Alexander had been promoted; there was the old
paper with the device of flowers, in which a cunning fancy might yet
detect the face of Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John's former dominie;
there was the old chest of drawers; there were the chairs--one, two,
three--three as before. Only the carpet was new, and the litter of
Alexander's clothes and books and drawing materials, and a
pencil-drawing on the wall, which (in John's eyes) appeared a marvel of
proficiency.
He was thus lying, and looking, and dreaming, hanging, as it were,
between two epochs of his life, when Alexander came to the door, and
made his presence known in a loud whisper. John let him in, and jumped
back into the warm bed.
"Well, John," said Alexander, "the cablegram is sent in your name, and
twenty words of answer paid. I have been to the cab office and paid
your cab, even saw the old gentleman himself, and properly apologised.
He was mighty placable, and indicated his belief you had been drinking.
Then I knocked up old MacEwen out of bed, and explained affairs to him
as he sat and shivered in a dressing-gown. And before that I had been to
the High Street, where they have heard nothing of your dead body, so
that I incline to the idea that you dreamed it."
"Catch me!" said John.
"Well, the police never do know anything," assented Alexander; "and at
any rate, they have despatched a man to inquire and to recover your
trousers and your money, so that really your bill is now fairly clean;
and I see but one lion in your path--the governor."
"I'll be turned out again, you'll see," said John dismally.
"I don't imagine so," returned the other; "not if you do what Flora and
I have arranged; and your business now is to dress, and lose no time
about it. Is your watch right? Well, you have a quarter of an hour. By
five minutes before the half-hour you must be at table, in your old
seat, under Uncle Duthie's picture. Flora will be there to keep you
countenance; and we shall see what we shall see."
"Wouldn't it be wiser for me to stay in bed?" said John.
"If you mean to manage your own concerns, you can do precisely what you
like," replied Alexander; "but if you are not in your place five minutes
before the half-hour I wash my hands of you, for one."
And thereupon he departed. He had spoken warmly, but the truth is, his
heart was somewhat troubled. And as he hung over the banisters, watching
for his father to appear, he had hard ado to keep himself braced for the
encounter that must follow.
"If he takes it well, I shall be lucky," he reflected. "If he takes it
ill, why, it'll be a herring across John's tracks, and perhaps all for
the best. He's a confounded muff, this brother of mine, but he seems a
decent soul."
At that stage a door opened below with a certain emphasis, and Mr.
Nicholson was seen solemnly to descend the stairs, and pass into his own
apartment. Alexander followed, quaking inwardly, but with a steady face.
He knocked, was bidden to enter, and found his father standing in front
of the forced drawer, to which he pointed as he spoke.
"This is a most extraordinary thing," said he; "I have been robbed!"
"I was afraid you would notice it," observed his son; "it made such a
beastly hash of the table."
"You were afraid I would notice it?" repeated Mr. Nicholson. "And, pray,
what may that mean?"
"That I was the thief, sir," returned Alexander. "I took all the money
in case the servants should get hold of it; and here is the change, and
a note of my expenditure. You were gone to bed, you see, and I did not
feel at liberty to knock you up; but I think when you have heard the
circumstances you will do me justice. The fact is, I have reason to
believe there has been some dreadful error about my brother John; the
sooner it could be cleared up the better for all parties; it was a piece
of business, sir--and so I took it, and decided, on my own
responsibility, to send a telegram to San Francisco. Thanks to my
quickness, we may hear to-night. There appears to be no doubt, sir, that
John has been abominably used."
"When did this take place?" asked the father.
"Last night, sir, after you were asleep," was the reply.
"It's most extraordinary," said Mr. Nicholson. "Do you mean to say you
have been out all night?"
"All night, as you say, sir. I have been to the telegraph and the police
office, and Mr. MacEwen's. O, I had my hands full," said Alexander.
"Very irregular," said the father. "You think of no one but yourself."
"I do not see that I have much to gain in bringing back my elder
brother," returned Alexander shrewdly.
The answer pleased the old man; he smiled. "Well, well, I will go into
this after breakfast," said he.
"I'm sorry about the table," said the son.
"The table is a small matter; I think nothing of that," said the father.
"It's another example," continued the son, "of the awkwardness of a man
having no money of his own. If I had a proper allowance, like other
fellows of my age, this would have been quite unnecessary."
"A proper allowance!" repeated his father, in tones of blighting
sarcasm, for the expression was not new to him. "I have never grudged
you money for any proper purpose."
"No doubt, no doubt," said Alexander, "but then you see you aren't
always on the spot to have the thing explained to you. Last night, for
instance--"
"You could have wakened me last night," interrupted his father.
"Was it not some similar affair that first got John into a mess?" asked
the son, skilfully evading the point.
But the father was not less adroit. "And pray, sir, how did you come and
go out of the house?" he asked.
"I forgot to lock the door, it seems," replied Alexander.
"I have had cause to complain of that too often," said Mr. Nicholson.
"But still I do not understand. Did you keep the servants up?"
"I propose to go into all that at length after breakfast," returned
Alexander. "There is the half-hour going; we must not keep Miss
Mackenzie waiting."
And, greatly daring, he opened the door.
Even Alexander, who, it must have been perceived, was on terms of
comparative freedom with his parent--even Alexander had never before
dared to cut short an interview in this high-handed fashion. But the
truth is, the very mass of his son's delinquencies daunted the old
gentleman. He was like the man with the cart of apples--this was beyond
him! That Alexander should have spoiled his table, taken his money,
stayed out all night, and then coolly acknowledged all, was something
undreamed of in the Nicholsonian philosophy, and transcended comment.
The return of the change, which the old gentleman still carried in his
hand, had been a feature of imposing impudence; it had dealt him a
staggering blow. Then there was the reference to John's original
flight--a subject which he always kept resolutely curtained in his own
mind; for he was a man who loved to have made no mistakes, and, when he
feared he might have made one, kept the papers sealed. In view of all
these surprises and reminders, and of his son's composed and masterful
demeanour, there began to creep on Mr. Nicholson a sickly misgiving. He
seemed beyond his depth; if he did or said anything, he might come to
regret it. The young man, besides, as he had pointed out himself, was
playing a generous part. And if wrong had been done--and done to one who
was after, and in spite of all, a Nicholson--it should certainly be
righted.
All things considered, monstrous as it was to be cut short in his
inquiries, the old gentleman submitted, pocketed the change, and
followed his son into the dining-room. During these few steps he once
more mentally revolted, and once more, and this time finally, laid down
his arms: a still, small voice in his bosom having informed him
authentically of a piece of news: that he was afraid of Alexander. The
strange thing was that he was pleased to be afraid of him. He was proud
of his son; he might be proud of him; the boy had character and grit,
and knew what he was doing.
These were his reflections as he turned the corner of the dining-room
door. Miss Mackenzie was in the place of honour, conjuring with a teapot
and a cosy; and, behold! there was another person present, a large,
portly, whiskered man of a very comfortable and respectable air, who now
rose from his seat and came forward, holding out his hand.
"Good-morning, father," said he.
Of the contention of feeling that ran high in Mr. Nicholson's starched
bosom, no outward sign was visible; nor did he delay long to make a
choice of conduct. Yet in that interval he had reviewed a great field of
possibilities both past and future: whether it was possible he had not
been perfectly wise in his treatment of John; whether it was possible
that John was innocent; whether, if he turned John out a second time, as
his outraged authority suggested, it was possible to avoid a scandal;
and whether, if he went to that extremity, it was possible that
Alexander might rebel.
"Hum!" said Mr. Nicholson, and put his hand, limp and dead, into John's.
And then, in an embarrassed silence, all took their places; and even the
paper--from which it was the old gentleman's habit to suck mortification
daily, as he marked the decline of our institutions--even the paper lay
furled by his side.
But presently Flora came to the rescue. She slid into the silence with a
technicality, asking if John still took his old inordinate amount of
sugar. Thence it was but a step to the burning question of the day; and
in tones a little shaken, she commented on the interval since she had
last made tea for the prodigal, and congratulated him on his return. And
then addressing Mr. Nicholson, she congratulated him also in a manner
that defied his ill-humour; and from that launched into the tale of
John's misadventures, not without some suitable suppressions.
Gradually Alexander joined; between them, whether he would or no, they
forced a word or two from John; and these fell so tremulously, and spoke
so eloquently of a mind oppressed with dread, that Mr. Nicholson
relented. At length even he contributed a question: and before the meal
was at an end all four were talking even freely.
Prayers followed, with the servants gaping at this newcomer whom no one
had admitted; and after prayers there came that moment on the clock
which was the signal for Mr. Nicholson's departure.
"John," said he, "of course you will stay here. Be very careful not to
excite Maria, if Miss Mackenzie thinks it desirable that you should see
her.--Alexander, I wish to speak with you alone." And then, when they
were both in the back-room: "You need not come to the office to-day,"
said he; "you can stay and amuse your brother, and I think it would be
respectful to call on Uncle Greig. And, by-the-by" (this spoken with a
certain--dare we say?--bashfulness), "I agree to concede the principle
of an allowance; and I will consult Dr. Durie, who is quite a man of the
world and has sons of his own, as to the amount. And, my fine fellow,
you may consider yourself in luck!" he added, with a smile.
"Thank you," said Alexander.
Before noon a detective had restored to John his money, and brought
news, sad enough in truth, but perhaps the least sad possible. Alan
Houston had been found in his own house in Regent Terrace, under care of
the terrified butler. He was quite mad, and instead of going to prison,
had been taken to Morningside Asylum. The murdered man, it appeared, was
an evicted tenant who had for nearly a year pursued his late landlord
with threats and insults; and beyond this, the cause and details of the
tragedy were lost.
When Mr. Nicholson returned for dinner they were able to put a despatch
into his hands:--"John V. Nicholson, Randolph Crescent,
Edinburgh.--Kirkman has disappeared; police looking for him. All
understood. Keep mind quite easy.--AUSTIN." Having had this explained to
him, the old gentleman took down the cellar key and departed for two
bottles of the 1820 port. Uncle Greig dined there that day, and cousin
Robina, and, by an odd chance, Mr. MacEwen; and the presence of these
strangers relieved what might have been otherwise a somewhat strained
relation. Ere they departed the family was welded once more into a fair
semblance of unity.
In the end of April John led Flora--or, let us say, as more descriptive,
Flora led John--to the altar, if altar that may be called which was
indeed the drawing-room mantelpiece in Mr. Nicholson's house, the
Reverend Dr. Durie posted on the hearthrug in the guise of Hymen's
priest.
The last I saw of them, on a recent visit to the north, was at a
dinner-party in the house of my old friend Gellatly Macbride; and after
we had, in classic phrase, "rejoined the ladies," I had an opportunity
to overhear Flora conversing with another married woman on the much
canvassed matter of a husband's tobacco.
"O yes!" said she; "I only allow Mr. Nicholson four cigars a day. Three
he smokes at fixed times--after a meal, you know, my dear; and the
fourth he can take when he likes with any friend."
"Bravo!" thought I to myself; "this is the wife for my friend John!"
KIDNAPPED
BEING MEMOIRS OF THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR
IN THE YEAR 1751 HOW HE WAS KIDNAPPED AND CAST AWAY: HIS SUFFERINGS IN
A DESERT ISLE: HIS JOURNEY IN THE WILD HIGHLANDS: HIS ACQUAINTANCE
WITH ALAN BRECK STEWART AND OTHER NOTORIOUS HIGHLAND JACOBITES: WITH
ALL THAT HE SUFFERED AT THE HANDS OF HIS UNCLE EBENEZER BALFOUR OF
SHAWS, FALSELY SO-CALLED: WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, AND NOW SET FORTH BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
_DEDICATION_
_My dear Charles Baxter,_
_If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions
than I should care to answer: as, for instance, how the Appin murder has
come to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near
to Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches
David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if you
tried me on the point of Alan's guilt or innocence, I think I could
defend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the tradition
of Appin clear in Alan's favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that
the descendants of "the other man" who fired the shot are in the country
to this day. But that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shall
not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the
congenial exercise of keeping it. I might go on for long to justify one
point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once
how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture
for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room
when the tasks are over, and the hour for bed draws near; and honest
Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day, has in this new avatar
no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention
from his "Ovid," carry him a while into the Highlands and the last
century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with
his dreams._
_As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like this tale.
But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to
find his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the mean while it pleases
me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some
(now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange
for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these
bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread
the same streets--who may to-morrow open the door of the old
Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the
beloved and inglorious Macbean--or may pass the corner of the close
where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its
beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see
you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes
those places that have now become for your companion a part of the
scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present business, the past
must echo in your memory! Let it not echo often without some kind
thoughts of your friend,_
_R. L. S._
_Skerryvore,
Bournemouth._
KIDNAPPED
CHAPTER I
I SET OFF UPON MY JOURNEY TO THE HOUSE OF SHAWS
I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in
the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the
last time out of the door of my father's house. The sun began to shine
upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I
had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the
garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of
the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.
Mr. Campbell, the minister of Essendean, was waiting for me by the
garden gate, good man! He asked me if I had breakfasted; and hearing
that I lacked for nothing, he took my hand in both of his and clapped it
kindly under his arm.
"Well, Davie lad," said he, "I will go with you as far as the ford, to
set you on the way."
And we began to walk forward in silence.
"Are ye sorry to leave Essendean?" said he, after a while.
"Why, sir," said I, "if I knew where I was going, or what was likely to
become of me, I would tell you candidly. Essendean is a good place
indeed, and I have been very happy there; but then I have never been
anywhere else. My father and mother, since they are both dead, I shall
be no nearer to in Essendean than in the Kingdom of Hungary; and, to
speak truth, if I thought I had a chance to better myself where I was
going I would go with a good will."
"Ay?" said Mr. Campbell. "Very well, Davie. Then it behoves me to tell
your fortune; or so far as I may. When your mother was gone, and your
father (the worthy, Christian man) began to sicken for his end, he gave
me in charge a certain letter, which he said was your inheritance. 'So
soon,' says he, 'as I am gone, and the house is redd up and the gear
disposed of' (all which, Davie, hath been done), 'give my boy this
letter into his hand, and start him off to the house of Shaws, not far
from Cramond. That is the place I came from,' he said, 'and it's where
it befits that my boy should return. He is a steady lad,' your father
said, 'and a canny goer; and I doubt not he will come safe, and be well
liked where he goes.'"
"The house of Shaws!" I cried. "What had my poor father to do with the
house of Shaws?"
"Nay," said Mr. Campbell, "who can tell that for a surety? But the name
of that family, Davie boy, is the name you bear--Balfours of Shaws: an
ancient, honest, reputable house, peradventure in these latter days
decayed. Your father, too, was a man of learning as befitted his
position; no man more plausibly conducted school; nor had he the manner
or the speech of a common dominie; but (as ye will yourself remember) I
took aye a pleasure to have him to the manse to meet the gentry; and
those of my own house, Campbell of Kilrennet, Campbell of Dunswire,
Campbell of Minch, and others, all well-kenned gentlemen, had pleasure
in his society. Lastly, to put all the elements of this affair before
you, here is the testamentary letter itself, superscrived by the own
hand of our departed brother."
He gave me the letter, which was addressed in these words: "To the hands
of Ebenezer Balfour, Esquire, of Shaws, in his house of Shaws, these
will be delivered by my son, David Balfour." My heart was beating hard
at this great prospect now suddenly opening before a lad of seventeen
years of age, the son of a poor country dominie in the Forest of
Ettrick.
"Mr. Campbell," I stammered, "and if you were in my shoes, would you
go?"
"Of a surety," said the minister, "that would I, and without pause. A
pretty lad like you should get to Cramond (which is near in by
Edinburgh) in two days of walk. If the worst came to the worst, and your
high relations (as I cannot but suppose them to be somewhat of your
blood) should put you to the door, ye can but walk the two days back
again and risp at the manse door. But I would rather hope that ye shall
be well received, as your poor father forecast for you, and for anything
that I ken come to be a great man in time. And here, Davie laddie," he
resumed, "it lies near upon my conscience to improve this parting, and
set you on the right guard against the dangers of the world."
Here he cast about for a comfortable seat, lighted on a big boulder
under a birch by the trackside, sate down upon it with a very long,
serious upper lip, and, the sun now shining in upon us between two
peaks, put his pocket-handkerchief over his cocked hat to shelter him.
There, then, with uplifted forefinger, he first put me on my guard
against a considerable number of heresies, to which I had no temptation,
and urged upon me to be instant in my prayers and reading of the Bible.
That done, he drew a picture of the great house that I was bound to, and
how I should conduct myself with its inhabitants.
"Be soople, Davie, in things immaterial," said he. "Bear ye this in
mind, that, though gentle born, ye have had a country rearing. Dinna
shame us, Davie, dinna shame us! In yon great muckle house, with all
these domestics, upper and under, show yourself as nice, as circumspect,
as quick at the conception, and as slow of speech as any. As for the
laird--remember he's the laird; I say no more: honour to whom honour.
It's a pleasure to obey a laird; or should be, to the young."
"Well, sir," said I, "it may be; and I'll promise you I'll try to make
it so."
"Why, very well said," replied Mr. Campbell heartily. "And now to come
to the material, or (to make a quibble) to the immaterial. I have here a
little packet which contains four things." He tugged it, as he spoke,
and with some great difficulty, from the skirt-pocket of his coat. "Of
these four things, the first is your legal due: the little pickle money
for your father's books and plenishing, which I have bought (as I have
explained from the first) in the design of re-selling at a profit to the
incoming dominie. The other three are gifties that Mrs. Campbell and
myself would be blithe of your acceptance. The first, which is round,
will likely please ye best at the first off-go; but, O Davie laddie,
it's but a drop of water in the sea; it'll help you but a step, and
vanish like the morning. The second, which is flat and square and
written upon, will stand by you through life, like a good staff for the
road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. And as for the last,
which is cubical, that'll see you, it's my prayerful wish, into a better
land."
With that he got upon his feet, took off his hat, and prayed a little
while aloud, and in affecting terms, for a young man setting out into
the world; then suddenly took me in his arms and embraced me very hard;
then held me at arm's length, looking at me with his face all working
with sorrow; and then whipped about, and, crying good-bye to me, set off
backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. It might
have been laughable to another; but I was in no mind to laugh. I watched
him as long as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying, nor once
looked back. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow
at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard and fast, because I,
for my part, was overjoyed to get away out of that quiet country-side,
and go to a great, busy house, among rich and respected gentlefolk of my
own name and blood.
"Davie, Davie," I thought, "was ever seen such black ingratitude? Can
you forget old favours and old friends at the mere whistle of a name?
Fie, fie; think shame!"
And I sat down on the boulder the good man had just left, and opened the
parcel to see the nature of my gifts. That which he had called cubical I
had never had much doubt of; sure enough, it was a little Bible, to
carry in a plaid-neuk. That which he had called round I found to be a
shilling piece; and the third, which was to help me so wonderfully both
in health and sickness all the days of my life, was a little piece of
coarse yellow paper, written upon thus in red ink:
"TO MAKE LILLY OF THE VALLEY WATER.--Take the flowers of lilly of the
valley and distil them in sack, and drink a spooneful or two as there
is occasion. It restores speech to those that have the dumb palsey. It
is good against the Gout; it comforts the heart and strengthens the
memory; and the flowers, put into a Glasse, close stopt, and set into
ane hill of ants for a month, then take it out, and you will find a
liquor which comes from the flowers, which keep in a vial; it is good,
ill or well, and whether man or woman."
And then, in the minister's own hand, was added:
"Likewise for sprains, rub it in; and for the cholic, a great
spooneful in the hour."
To be sure, I laughed over this: but it was rather tremulous laughter;
and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff's end and set out over the
ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till just as I came on the
green drove-road running wide through the heather, I took my last look
of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the
kirkyard where my father and my mother lay.
CHAPTER II
I COME TO MY JOURNEY'S END
On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw
all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of
this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a
kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying
anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I
could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my
mouth.
Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a
rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond; and so, from one to
another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by Colinton, till
I came out upon the Glasgow road. And there, to my great pleasure and
wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time;
an old red-faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the
other the company of grenadiers, with their Pope's-hats. The pride of
life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the
hearing of that merry music.
A little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began
to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a
word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I
thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that
all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place
to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the
same look and the same answer, I began to take it into my head there was
something strange about the Shaws itself.
The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries;
and, spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his
cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the
house of Shaws.
He stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others.
"Ay," said he. "What for?"
"It's a great house?" I asked.
"Doubtless," says he. "The house is a big muckle house."
"Ay," said I, "but the folk that are in it?"
"Folk?" cried he. "Are ye daft? There's nae folk there--to call folk."
"What?" say I; "not Mr. Ebenezer?"
"Ou, ay," says the man; "there's the laird, to be sure, if it's him
you're wanting. What'll like be your business, mannie?"
"I was led to think that I would get a situation," I said, looking as
modest as I could.
"What?" cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse
started; and then, "Well, mannie," he added, "it's nane of my affairs;
but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye'll take a word from me, ye'll
keep clear of the Shaws."
The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful
white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well
that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man
was Mr Balfour of the Shaws.
"Hoot, hoot, hoot," said the barber, "nae kind of a man, nae kind of a
man at all"; and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was; but
I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next
customer no wiser than he came.
I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. The more
indistinct the accusations were, the less I liked them, for they left
the wider field to fancy. What kind of a great house was this, that all
the parish should start and stare to be asked the way to it? or what
sort of a gentleman, that his ill-fame should be thus current on the
wayside? If an hour's walking would have brought me back to Essendean, I
had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Campbell's.
But when I had come so far a way already, mere shame would not suffer me
to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; I was bound,
out of mere self-respect, to carry it through; and little as I liked the
sound of what I heard, and slow as I began to travel, I still kept
asking my way and still kept advancing.
It was drawing on to sundown when I met a stout, dark, sour-looking
woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when I had put my usual
question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had
just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare
upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant
round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and
the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared
to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of
the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank.
"That!" I cried.
The woman's face lit up with a malignant anger. "That is the house of
Shaws!" she cried. "Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it;
blood shall bring it down. See here!" she cried again--"I spit upon the
ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall! If ye see the
laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and
nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and
his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or
bairn--black, black be their fall!"
And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song,
turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my
hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled
at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest
me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs.
I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked, the
pleasanter that country-side appeared; being all set with hawthorn
bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of
rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate; and yet the
barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy.
Country-folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the
ditch, but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e'en. At last the sun
went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of
smoke go mounting, not much thicker, as it seemed to me, than the smoke
of a candle; but still there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and
cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this
comforted my heart.
So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my
direction. It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of
habitation; yet I saw no other. Presently it brought me to stone
uprights, with an unroofed lodge beside them, and coats of arms upon the
top. A main entrance it was plainly meant to be, but never finished;
instead of gates of wrought-iron, a pair of hurdles were tied across
with a straw rope; and as there were no park walls, nor any sign of
avenue, the track that I was following passed on the right hand of the
pillars, and went wandering on toward the house.
The nearer I got to that, the drearier it appeared. It seemed like the
one wing of a house that had never been finished. What should have been
the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky
with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. Many of the windows were
unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote.
The night had begun to fall as I got close; and in three of the lower
windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well barred, the
changing light of a little fire began to glimmer.
Was this the palace I had been coming to? Was it within these walls
that I was to seek new friends and begin great fortunes? Why, in my
father's house on Essen-Waterside, the fire and the bright lights would
show a mile away, and the door open to a beggar's knock!
I came forward cautiously, and, giving ear as I came, heard some one
rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits;
but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked.
The door, as well as I could see it in the dim light, was a great piece
of wood all studded with nails; and I lifted my hand with a faint heart
under my jacket, and knocked once. Then I stood and waited. The house
had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing
stirred but the bats overhead. I knocked again, and hearkened again. By
this time my ears had grown so accustomed to the quiet, that I could
hear the ticking of the clock inside as it slowly counted out the
seconds; but whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have
held his breath.
I was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand,
and I began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout
out aloud for Mr. Balfour. I was in full career, when I heard the cough
right overhead, and, jumping back and looking up, beheld a man's head in
a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the
first-story windows.
"It's loaded," said a voice.
"I have come here with a letter," I said, "to Mr. Ebenezer Balfour of
Shaws. Is he here?"
"From whom is it?" asked the man with the blunderbuss.
"That is neither here nor there," said I, for I was growing very wroth.
"Well," was the reply, "ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off
with ye."
"I will do no such thing," I cried. "I will deliver it into Mr.
Balfour's hands, as it was meant I should. It is a letter of
introduction."
"A what?" cried the voice sharply.
I repeated what I had said.
"Who are ye yourself?" was the next question, after a considerable
pause.
"I am not ashamed of my name," said I. "They call me David Balfour."
At that I made sure the man started, for I heard the blunderbuss rattle
on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a
curious change of voice, that the next question followed:
"Is your father dead?"
I was so much surprised at this, that I could find no voice to answer,
but stood staring.
"Ay," the man resumed, "he'll be dead, no doubt; and that'll be what
brings ye chapping to my door." Another pause, and then defiantly,
"Well, man," he said, "I'll let ye in"; and he disappeared from the
window.
CHAPTER III
I MAKE ACQUAINTANCE OF MY UNCLE
Presently there came a great rattling of chains and bolts, and the door
was cautiously opened and shut to again behind me as soon as I had
passed.
"Go into the kitchen and touch naething," said the voice; and while the
person of the house set himself to replacing the defences of the door, I
groped my way forward and entered the kitchen.
The fire had burned up fairly bright, and showed me the barest room I
think I ever put my eyes on. Half-a-dozen dishes stood upon the shelves;
the table was laid for supper with a bowl of porridge, a horn spoon, and
a cup of small beer. Besides what I have named, there was not another
thing in that great, stone-vaulted, empty chamber but lockfast chests
arranged along the wall and a corner-cupboard with a padlock.
As soon as the last chain was up, the man rejoined me. He was a mean,
stooping, narrow-shouldered, clay-faced creature; and his age might have
been anything between fifty and seventy. His nightcap was of flannel,
and so was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat,
over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed
and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor
look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was
more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable
serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big house upon
board wages.
"Are ye sharp-set?" he asked, glancing at about the level of my knee.
"Ye can eat that drop parritch?"
I said I feared it was his own supper.
"O," said he, "I can do fine wanting it. I'll take the ale, though, for
it slockens[1] my cough." He drank the cup about half out, still keeping
an eye upon me as he drank; and then suddenly held out his hand. "Let's
see the letter," said he.
I told him the letter was for Mr. Balfour; not for him.
"And who do ye think I am?" says he. "Give me Alexander's letter!"
"You know my father's name?"
"It would be strange if I didna," he returned, "for he was my born
brother; and little as ye seem to like either me or my house, or my good
parritch, I'm your born uncle, Davie my man, and you my born nephew. So
give us the letter, and sit down and fill your kyte."
If I had been some years younger, what with shame, weariness, and
disappointment, I believe I had burst into tears. As it was, I could
find no words, neither black nor white, but handed him the letter, and
sat down to the porridge with as little appetite for meat as ever a
young man had.
Meanwhile my uncle, stooping over the fire, turned the letter over and
over in his hands.
"Do ye ken what's in it?" he asked suddenly.
"You see for yourself, sir," said I, "that the seal has not been
broken."
"Ay," said he, "but what brought you here?"
"To give the letter," said I.
"No," says he cunningly, "but ye'll have had some hopes, nae doubt?"
"I confess, sir," said I, "when I was told that I had kinsfolk
well-to-do, I did indeed indulge the hope that they might help me in my
life. But I am no beggar; I look for no favours at your hands, and I
want none that are not freely given. For, as poor as I appear, I have
friends of my own that will be blithe to help me."
"Hoot-toot!" said uncle Ebenezer, "dinna fly up in the snuff at me.
We'll agree fine yet. And, Davie my man, if you're done with that bit
parritch, I could just take a sup of it myself. Ay," he continued, as
soon as he had ousted me from the stool and spoon, "they're fine,
halesome food--they're grand food, parritch." He murmured a little grace
to himself and fell-to. "Your father was very fond of his meat, I mind;
he was a hearty, if not a great eater; but as for me, I could never do
mair than pyke at food." He took a pull at the small beer, which
probably reminded him of hospitable duties, for his next speech ran
thus: "If ye're dry, ye'll find water behind the door."
To this I returned no answer, standing stiffly on my two feet, and
looking down upon my uncle with a mighty angry heart. He, on his part,
continued to eat like a man under some pressure of time, and to throw
out little darting glances now at my shoes and now at my home-spun
stockings. Once only, when he had ventured to look a little higher, our
eyes met; and no thief taken with a hand in a man's pocket could have
shown more lively signals of distress. This set me in a muse, whether
his timidity arose from too long a disuse of any human company; and
whether perhaps, upon a little trial, it might pass off, and my uncle
change into an altogether different man. From this I was awakened by his
sharp voice.
"Your father's been long dead?" he asked.
"Three weeks, sir," said I.
"He was a secret man, Alexander--a secret, silent man," he continued.
"He never said muckle when he was young. He'll never have spoken muckle
of me?"
"I never knew, sir, till you told it me yourself, that he had any
brother."
"Dear me, dear me!" said Ebenezer. "Nor yet of Shaws, I daresay?"
"Not so much as the name, sir," said I.
"To think o' that!" said he. "A strange nature of a man!" For all that,
he seemed singularly satisfied, but whether with himself, or me, or with
this conduct of my father's, was more than I could read. Certainly,
however, he seemed to be outgrowing that distaste, or ill-will, that he
had conceived at first against my person; for presently he jumped up,
came across the room behind me, and hit me a smack upon the shoulder.
"We'll agree fine yet!" he cried. "I'm just as glad I let you in. And
now come awa' to your bed."
To my surprise, he lit no lamp or candle, but set forth into the dark
passage, groped his way, breathing deeply, up a flight of steps, and
paused before a door, which he unlocked. I was close upon his heels,
having stumbled after him as best I might; and then he bade me go in,
for that was my chamber. I did as he bid, but paused after a few steps,
and begged a light to go to bed with.
"Hoot-toot!" said uncle Ebenezer, "there's a fine moon."
"Neither moon nor star, sir, and pit-mirk,"[2] said I. "I canna see the
bed."
"Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!" said he. "Lights in a house is a thing I dinna
agree with. I'm unco feared of fires. Good-night to ye, Davie my man."
And before I had time to add a further protest, he pulled the door to,
and I heard him lock me in from the outside.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry. The room was as cold as a well,
and the bed, when I had found my way to it, as damp as a peat-hag; but
by good fortune I had caught up my bundle and my plaid, and rolling
myself in the latter, I lay down upon the floor under lee of the big
bedstead, and fell speedily asleep.
With the first peep of day I opened my eyes, to find myself in a great
chamber, hung with stamped leather, furnished with fine embroidered
furniture, and lit by three fair windows. Ten years ago, or perhaps
twenty, it must have been as pleasant a room to lie down or to awake in
as a man could wish; but damp, dirt, disuse, and the mice and spiders
had done their worst since then. Many of the window-panes, besides, were
broken; and indeed this was so common a feature in that house, that I
believe my uncle must at some time have stood a siege from his indignant
neighbours--perhaps with Jennet Clouston at their head.
Meanwhile the sun was shining outside; and being very cold in that
miserable room, I knocked and shouted till my gaoler came and let me
out. He carried me to the back of the house, where was a draw-well, and
told me to "wash my face there, if I wanted"; and when that was done, I
made the best of my own way back to the kitchen, where he had lit the
fire and was making the porridge. The table was laid with two bowls and
two horn spoons, but the same single measure of small beer. Perhaps my
eye rested on this particular with some surprise, and perhaps my uncle
observed it; for he spoke up as if in answer to my thought, asking me if
I would like to drink ale--for so he called it.
I told him such was my habit, but not to put himself about.
"Na, na," said he; "I'll deny you nothing in reason."
He fetched another cup from the shelf; and then, to my great surprise,
instead of drawing more beer, he poured an accurate half from one cup to
the other. There was a kind of nobleness in this that took my breath
away; if my uncle was certainly a miser, he was one of that thorough
breed that goes near to make the vice respectable.
When we had made an end of our meal, my uncle Ebenezer unlocked a
drawer, and drew out of it a clay pipe and a lump of tobacco, from which
he cut one fill before he locked it up again. Then he sat down in the
sun at one of the windows, and silently smoked. From time to time his
eyes came coasting round to me, and he shot out one of his questions.
Once it was, "And your mother?" and when I had told him that she, too,
was dead, "Ay, she was a bonny lassie!" Then after another long pause,
"Wha were these friends o' yours?"
I told him they were different gentlemen of the name of Campbell:
though, indeed, there was only one, and that the minister, that had ever
taken the least note of me; but I began to think my uncle made too light
of my position, and finding myself all alone with him, I did not wish
him to suppose me helpless.
He seemed to turn this over in his mind; and then, "Davie, my man," said
he, "ye've come to the right bit when ye came to your uncle Ebenezer.
I've a great notion of the family, and I mean to do the right by you;
but while I'm taking a bit think to mysel' of what's the best thing to
put you to--whether the law, or the meenistry, or maybe the army, whilk
is what boys are fondest of--I wouldna like the Balfours to be humbled
before a wheen Hieland Campbells, and I'll ask you to keep your tongue
within your teeth. Nae letters; nae messages; no kind of word to
onybody; or else--there's my door."
"Uncle Ebenezer," said I, "I've no manner of reason to suppose you mean
anything but well by me. For all that, I would have you to know that I
have a pride of my own. It was by no will of mine that I came seeking
you; and if you show me your door again, I'll take you at the word."
He seemed grievously put out. "Hoots-toots," said he, "ca' cannie,
man--ca' cannie! Bide a day or two. I'm nae warlock, to find a fortune
for you in the bottom of a parritch-bowl; but just you give me a day or
two, and say naething to naebody, and as sure as sure, I'll do the right
by you."
"Very well," said I, "enough said. If you want to help me, there's no
doubt but I'll be glad of it, and none but I'll be grateful."
It seemed to me (too soon, I daresay) that I was getting the upper hand
of my uncle; and I began next to say that I must have the bed and
bedclothes aired and put to sun-dry; for nothing would make me sleep in
such a pickle.
"Is this my house or yours?" said he, in his keen voice, and then all of
a sudden broke off. "Na, na," said he, "I did na mean that. What's mine
is yours, Davie my man, and what's yours is mine. Blood's thicker than
water; and there's naebody but you and me that ought the name." And then
on he rambled about the family, and its ancient greatness, and his
father that began to enlarge the house, and himself that stopped the
building as a sinful waste; and this put it in my head to give him
Jennet Clouston's message.
"The limmer!" he cried. "Twelve hunner and fifteen--that's every day
since I had the limmer rowpit![3] Dod, David, I'll have her roasted on
red peats before I'm by with it! A witch--a proclaimed witch! I'll aff
and see the session-clerk."
And with that he opened a chest, and got out a very old and
well-preserved blue coat and waistcoat, and a good enough beaver hat,
both without lace. These he threw on anyway, and, taking a staff from
the cupboard, locked all up again, and was for setting out, when a
thought arrested him.
"I canna leave you by yoursel' in the house," said he. "I'll have to
lock you out."
The blood came to my face. "If you lock me out," I said, "it'll be the
last you'll see of me in friendship."
He turned very pale, and sucked his mouth in. "This is no' the way," he
said, looking wickedly at a corner of the floor--"this is no' the way to
win my favour, David."
"Sir," says I, "with a proper reverence for your age and our common
blood, I do not value your favour at a bodle's purchase. I was brought
up to have a good conceit of myself; and if you were all the uncle, and
all the family, I had in the world, ten times over, I wouldn't buy your
liking at such prices."
Uncle Ebenezer went and looked out of the window for a while. I could
see him all trembling and twitching, like a man with palsy. But when he
turned round, he had a smile upon his face.
"Well, well," said he, "we must bear and forbear. I'll no' go; that's
all that's to be said of it."
"Uncle Ebenezer," I said, "I can make nothing out of this. You use me
like a thief; you hate to have me in this house; you let me see it,
every word and every minute: it's not possible that you can like me; and
as for me, I've spoken to you as I never thought to speak to any man.
Why do you seek to keep me, then? Let me gang back--let me gang back to
the friends I have, and that like me!"
"Na, na; na, na," he said, very earnestly. "I like you fine; we'll agree
fine yet; and for the honour of the house I couldna let you leave the
way ye came. Bide here quiet, there's a good lad; just you bide here
quiet a bittie, and ye'll find that we agree."
"Well, sir," said I, after I had thought the matter out in silence,
"I'll stay a while. It's more just I should be helped by my own blood
than strangers; and if we don't agree, I'll do my best it shall be
through no fault of mine."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Moistens.
[2] Dark as the pit.
[3] Sold up.
CHAPTER IV
I RUN A GREAT DANGER IN THE HOUSE OF SHAWS
For a day that was begun so ill, the day passed fairly well. We had the
porridge cold again at noon, and hot porridge at night; porridge and
small beer was my uncle's diet. He spoke but little, and that in the
same way as before, shooting a question at me after a long silence; and,
when I sought to lead him in talk about my future, slipped out of it
again. In a room next door to the kitchen, where he suffered me to go, I
found a great number of books, both Latin and English, in which I took
great pleasure all the afternoon. Indeed the time passed so lightly in
this good company, that I began to be almost reconciled to my residence
at Shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and his eyes playing
hide and seek with mine, revived the force of my distrust.
One thing I discovered, which put me in some doubt. This was an entry on
the fly-leaf of a chap-book (one of Patrick Walker's) plainly written by
my father's hand and thus conceived: "To my brother Ebenezer on his
fifth birthday." Now, what puzzled me was this: That as my father was of
course the younger brother, he must either have made some strange error,
or he must have written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear,
manly hand of writing.
I tried to get this out of my head; but though I took down many
interesting authors, old and new, history, poetry, and story-book, this
notion of my father's hand of writing stuck to me; and when at length I
went back into the kitchen, and sat down once more to porridge and small
beer, the first thing I said to uncle Ebenezer was to ask him if my
father had not been very quick at his book.
"Alexander? No' him!" was the reply. "I was far quicker mysel'; I was a
clever chappie when I was young. Why, I could read as soon as he could."
This puzzled me yet more; and, a thought coming into my head, I asked if
he and my father had been twins.
He jumped upon his stool, and the horn spoon fell out of his hand upon
the floor. "What gars ye ask that?" he said, and he caught me by the
breast of the jacket, and looked this time straight into my eyes: his
own were little and light, and bright like a bird's, blinking and
winking strangely.
"What do you mean?" I asked, very calmly, for I was far stronger than
he, and not easily frightened. "Take your hand from my jacket. This is
no way to behave."
My uncle seemed to make a great effort upon himself. "Dod, man, David,"
he said, "ye shouldna speak to me about your father. That's where the
mistake is." He sat a while and shook, blinking in his plate: "He was
all the brother that ever I had," he added, but with no heart in his
voice; and then he caught up his spoon and fell to supper again, but
still shaking.
Now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and sudden
profession of love for my dead father, went so clean beyond my
comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope. On the one hand, I
began to think my uncle was perhaps insane, and might be dangerous; on
the other, there came up into my mind (quite unbidden by me, and even
discouraged) a story like some ballad I had heard folk singing, of a
poor lad that was a rightful heir and a wicked kinsman that tried to
keep him from his own. For why should my uncle play a part with a
relative that came, almost a beggar, to his door, unless in his heart he
had some cause to fear him?
With this notion, all unacknowledged, but nevertheless getting firmly
settled in my head, I now began to imitate his covert looks; so that we
sat at table like a cat and a mouse, each stealthily observing the
other. Not another word had he to say to me, black or white, but was
busy turning something secretly over in his mind; and the longer we sat
and the more I looked at him, the more certain I became that the
something was unfriendly to myself.
When he had cleared the platter, he got out a single pipeful of tobacco,
just as in the morning, turned round a stool into the chimney-corner,
and sat a while smoking, with his back to me.
"Davie," he said at length, "I've been thinking"; then he paused, and
said it again. "There's a wee bit siller that I half promised ye before
ye were born," he continued; "promised it to your father. O, naething
legal, ye understand; just gentlemen daffing at their wine. Well, I
keepit that bit money separate--it was a great expense, but a promise is
a promise--and it has grown by now to be a maitter of just
precisely--just exactly"--and here he paused and stumbled--"of just
exactly forty pounds!" This last he rapped out with a sidelong glance
over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream,
"Scots!"
The pound Scots being the same thing as an English shilling, the
difference made by this second thought was considerable; I could see,
besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it
puzzled me to guess; and I made no attempt to conceal the tone of
raillery in which I answered--
"O, think again, sir! Pounds sterling, I believe!"
"That's what I said," returned my uncle: "pounds sterling! And if you'll
step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it
is, I'll get it out to ye and call ye in again."
I did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think I
was so easily to be deceived. It was a dark night, with a few stars low
down; and as I stood just outside the door, I heard a hollow moaning of
wind far off among the hills. I said to myself there was something
thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast
importance that should prove to me before the evening passed.
When I was called in again, my uncle counted out into my hand
seven-and-thirty golden guinea pieces; the rest was in his hand, in
small gold and silver; but his heart failed him there and he crammed the
change into his pocket.
"There," said he, "that'll show you! I'm a queer man, and strange wi'
strangers; but my word is my bond, and there's the proof of it."
Now, my uncle seemed so miserly that I was struck dumb by this sudden
generosity, and could find no words in which to thank him.
"No' a word!" said he. "Nae thanks; I want nae thanks. I do my duty; I'm
no' saying that everybody would have done it; but for my part (though
I'm a careful body, too) it's a pleasure to me to do the right by my
brother's son; and it's a pleasure to me to think that now we'll agree
as such near friends should."
I spoke him in return as handsomely as I was able; but all the while I
was wondering what would come next, and why he had parted with his
precious guineas; for, as to the reason he had given, a baby would have
refused it.
Presently he looked towards me sideways.
"And see here," says he, "tit for tat."
I told him I was ready to prove my gratitude in any reasonable degree,
and then waited, looking for some monstrous demand. And yet, when at
last he plucked up courage to speak, it was only to tell me (very
properly, as I thought) that he was growing old and a little broken, and
that he would expect me to help him with the house and the bit garden.
I answered, and expressed my readiness to serve.
"Well," he said, "let's begin." He pulled out of his pocket a rusty key.
"There," says he, "there's the key of the stair-tower at the far end of
the house. Ye can only win into it from the outside, for that part of
the house is no' finished. Gang ye in there, and up the stairs, and
bring me down the chest that's at the top. There's papers in't," he
added.
"Can I have a light, sir?" said I.
"Na," said he, very cunningly. "Nae lights in my house."
"Very well, sir," said I. "Are the stairs good?"
"They're grand," said he; and then as I was going, "Keep to the wall,"
he added; "there's nae banisters. But the stairs are grand under foot."
Out I went into the night. The wind was still moaning in the distance,
though never a breath of it came near the house of Shaws. It had fallen
blacker than ever; and I was glad to feel along the wall, till I came
the length of the stair-tower door at the far end of the unfinished
wing. I had got the key into the keyhole and had just turned it, when
all upon a sudden, without sound of wind or thunder, the whole sky
lighted up with wild-fire and went black again. I had to put my hand
over my eyes to get back to the colour of the darkness; and indeed I was
already half blinded when I stepped into the tower.
It was so dark inside, it seemed a body could scarce breathe; but I
pushed out with foot and hand, and presently struck the wall with the
one, and the lowermost round of the stair with the other. The wall, by
the touch, was of fine hewn stone; the steps too, though somewhat steep
and narrow, were of polished mason-work, and regular and solid under
foot. Minding my uncle's word about the banisters, I kept close to the
tower side, and felt my way in the pitch darkness with a beating heart.
The house of Shaws stood some five full stories high, not counting
lofts. Well, as I advanced, it seemed to me the stair grew airier and a
thought more lightsome; and I was wondering what might be the cause of
this change, when a second blink of the summer lightning came and went.
If I did not cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if
I did not fall, it was more by Heaven's mercy than my own strength. It
was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in
the wall, so that I seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold,
but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal
length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches of
the well.
This was the grand stair! I thought; and with the thought, a gust of a
kind of angry courage came into my heart. My uncle had sent me here,
certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle
that "perhaps," if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my
hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch,
and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the
stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have
redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled and my mind
confounded by a great stir of bats in the top part of the tower, and the
foul beasts, flying downwards, sometimes beat about my face and body.
The tower, I should have said, was square; and in every corner the step
was made of a great stone of a different shape, to join the flights.
Well, I had come close to one of these turns, when, feeling forward as
usual, my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness
beyond it. The stair had been carried no higher: to set a stranger
mounting it in the darkness was to send him straight to his death; and
(although, thanks to the lightning and my own precautions, I was safe
enough) the mere thought of the peril in which I might have stood, and
the dreadful height I might have fallen from, brought out the sweat upon
my body and relaxed my joints.
But I knew what I wanted now, and turned and groped my way down again,
with a wonderful anger in my heart. About half-way down, the wind sprang
up in a clap and shook the tower and died again; the rain followed; and
before I had reached the ground level it fell in buckets. I put out my
head into the storm, and looked along towards the kitchen. The door,
which I had shut behind me when I left, now stood open, and shed a
little glimmer of light; and I thought I could see a figure standing in
the rain, quite still, like a man hearkening. And then there came a
blinding flash, which showed me my uncle plainly, just where I had
fancied him to stand; and hard upon the heels of it, a great tow-row of
thunder.
Now, whether my uncle thought the crash to be the sound of my fall, or
whether he heard in it God's voice denouncing murder, I will leave you
to guess. Certain it is, at least, that he was seized on by a kind of
panic fear, and that he ran into the house and left the door open behind
him. I followed as softly as I could, and, coming unheard into the
kitchen, stood and watched him.
He had found time to open the corner cupboard and bring out a great
case-bottle of aqua vitæ, and now sat with his back towards me at the
table. Ever and again he would be seized with a fit of deadly shuddering
and groan aloud, and, carrying the bottle to his lips, drink down the
raw spirits by the mouthful.
I stepped forward, came close behind him where he sat, and suddenly
clapping my two hands down upon his shoulders--"Ah!" cried I.
My uncle gave a kind of broken cry like a sheep's bleat, flung up his
arms, and tumbled to the floor like a dead man. I was somewhat shocked
at this; but I had myself to look to first of all, and did not hesitate
to let him lie as he had fallen. The keys were hanging in the cupboard;
and it was my design to furnish myself with arms before my uncle should
come again to his senses and the power of devising evil. In the cupboard
were a few bottles, some apparently of medicine; a great many bills and
other papers, which I should willingly enough have rummaged, had I had
the time; and a few necessaries, that were nothing to my purpose. Thence
I turned to the chests. The first was full of meal; the second of
money-bags and papers tied into sheaves; in the third, with many other
things (and these for the most part clothes) I found a rusty,
ugly-looking Highland dirk without the scabbard. This, then, I concealed
inside my waistcoat, and turned to my uncle.
He lay as he had fallen, all huddled, with one knee up and one arm
sprawling abroad; his face had a strange colour of blue, and he seemed
to have ceased breathing. Fear came on me that he was dead; then I got
water and dashed it in his face; and with that he seemed to come a
little to himself, working his mouth and fluttering his eyelids. At last
he looked up and saw me, and there came into his eyes a terror that was
not of this world.
"Come, come," said I; "sit up."
"Are ye alive?" he sobbed. "O man, are ye alive?"
"That am I," said I. "Small thanks to you!"
He had begun to seek for his breath with deep sighs. "The blue phial,"
said he--"in the aumry--the blue phial." His breath came slower still.
I ran to the cupboard, and, sure enough, found there a blue phial of
medicine, with the dose written on it on a paper, and this I
administered to him with what speed I might.
"It's the trouble," said he, reviving a little; "I have a trouble,
Davie. It's the heart."
I set him on a chair and looked at him. It is true I felt some pity for
a man that looked so sick, but I was full besides of righteous anger;
and I numbered over before him the points on which I wanted explanation:
why he lied to me at every word; why he feared that I should leave him;
why he disliked it to be hinted that he and my father were twins--"Is
that because it is true?" I asked; why he had given me money to which I
was convinced I had no claim; and, last of all, why he had tried to kill
me. He heard me all through in silence; and then, in a broken voice,
begged me to let him go to bed.
"I'll tell ye the morn," he said; "as sure as death I will."
And so weak was he that I could do nothing but consent. I locked him
into his room, however, and pocketed the key; and then returning to the
kitchen, made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long
year, and, wrapping myself in my plaid, lay down upon the chests and
fell asleep.
CHAPTER V
I GO TO THE QUEEN'S FERRY
Much rain fell in the night; and the next morning there blew a bitter
wintry wind out of the north-west, driving scattered clouds. For all
that, and before the sun began to peep or the last of the stars had
vanished, I made my way to the side of the burn, and had a plunge in a
deep whirling pool. All aglow from my bath, I sat down once more beside
the fire, which I replenished, and began gravely to consider my
position.
There was now no doubt about my uncle's enmity; there was no doubt I
carried my life in my hand, and he would leave no stone unturned that he
might compass my destruction. But I was young and spirited, and, like
most lads that have been country-bred, I had a great opinion of my
shrewdness. I had come to his door no better than a beggar and little
more than a child; he had met me with treachery and violence; it would
be a fine consummation to take the upper hand, and drive him like a herd
of sheep.
I sat there nursing my knee and smiling at the fire; and I saw myself in
fancy smell out his secrets one after another, and grow to be that man's
king and ruler. The warlock of Essendean, they say, had made a mirror in
which men could read the future; it must have been of other stuff than
burning coal; for in all the shapes and pictures that I sat and gazed
at, there was never a ship, never a seaman with a hairy cap, never a big
bludgeon for my silly head, or the least sign of all those tribulations
that were ripe to fall on me.
Presently, all swollen with conceit, I went upstairs and gave my
prisoner his liberty. He gave me good-morning civilly; and I gave the
same to him, smiling down upon him from the heights of my sufficiency.
Soon we were set to breakfast, as it might have been the day before.
"Well, sir," said I, with a jeering tone, "have you nothing more to say
to me?" And then, as he made no articulate reply, "It will be time, I
think, to understand each other," I continued. "You took me for a
country Johnny Raw, with no more mother-wit or courage than a
porridge-stick. I took you for a good man, or no worse than others at
the least. It seems we were both wrong. What cause you have to fear me,
to cheat me, and to attempt my life----"
He murmured something about a jest, and that he liked a bit of fun; and
then, seeing me smile, changed his tone, and assured me he would make
all clear as soon as we had breakfasted. I saw by his face that he had
no lie ready for me, though he was hard at work preparing one; and I
think I was about to tell him so when we were interrupted by a knocking
at the door.
Bidding my uncle sit where he was, I went to open it, and found on the
doorstep a half-grown boy in sea-clothes. He had no sooner seen me than
he began to dance some steps of the sea-hornpipe (which I had never
before heard of, far less seen), snapping his fingers in the air and
footing it right cleverly. For all that, he was blue with the cold; and
there was something in his face, a look between tears and laughter, that
was highly pathetic and consisted ill with this gaiety of manner.
"What cheer, mate?" says he, with a cracked voice.
I asked him soberly to name his pleasure.
"O, pleasure!" says he; and then began to sing:
"For it's my delight, of a shiny night,
In the season of the year."
"Well," said I, "if you have no business at all, I will even be so
unmannerly as to shut you out."
"Stay, brother!" he cried. "Have you no fun about you? or do you want
to get me thrashed? I've brought a letter from old Heasy-oasy to Mr.
Belflower." He showed me a letter as he spoke. "And I say, mate," he
added; "I'm mortal hungry."
"Well," said I, "come into the house, and you shall have a bite if I go
empty for it."
With that I brought him in and set him down to my own place, where he
fell to greedily on the remains of breakfast, winking to me
between-whiles, and making many faces, which I think the poor soul
considered manly. Meanwhile, my uncle had read the letter and sat
thinking; then, suddenly, he got to his feet with a great air of
liveliness, and pulled me apart into the farthest corner of the room.
"Read that," said he, and put the letter in my hand.
Here it is, lying before me as I write:
"The Hawes Inn, at the Queen's Ferry.
"Sir,--I lie here with my hawser up and down, and send my cabin-boy to
informe. If you have any further commands for over-seas, to-day will
be the last occasion, as the wind will serve us well out of the firth.
I will not seek to deny that I have had crosses with your doer,[4] Mr.
Rankeillor; of which, if not speedily redd up, you may looke to see
some losses follow. I have drawn a bill upon you, as per margin, and
am, sir, your most obedt., humble servant,
"ELIAS HOSEASON."
"You see, Davie," resumed my uncle, as soon as he saw that I had done,
"I have a venture with this man Hoseason, the captain of a trading brig,
the _Covenant_, of Dysart. Now, if you and me was to walk over with yon
lad, I could see the captain at the Hawes, or maybe on board the
_Covenant_ if there was papers to be signed; and, so far from a loss of
time, we can jog on to the lawyer, Mr. Rankeillor's. After a' that's
come and gone, ye would be sweer[5] to believe me upon my naked word;
but ye'll believe Rankeillor. He's factor to half the gentry in these
parts; an auld man forbye: highly respeckit; and he kenned your father."
I stood awhile and thought. I was going to some place of shipping,
which was doubtless populous, and where my uncle durst attempt no
violence, and, indeed, even the society of the cabin-boy so far
protected me. Once there, I believed I could force on the visit to the
lawyer, even if my uncle were now insincere in proposing it; and,
perhaps, in the bottom of my heart, I wished a nearer view of the sea
and ships. You are to remember I had lived all my life in the inland
hills, and just two days before had my first sight of the firth lying
like a blue floor, and the sailed ships moving on the face of it, no
bigger than toys. One thing with another, I made up my mind.
"Very well," says I, "let us go to the Ferry."
My uncle got into his hat and coat, and buckled an old rusty cutlass on;
and then we trod the fire out, locked the door, and set forth upon our
walk.
The wind, being in that cold quarter, the north-west, blew nearly in our
faces as we went. It was the month of June; the grass was all white with
daisies and the trees with blossom; but, to judge by our blue nails and
aching wrists, the time might have been winter and the whiteness a
December frost.
Uncle Ebenezer trudged in the ditch, jogging from side to side like an
old ploughman coming home from work. He never said a word the whole way;
and I was thrown for talk on the cabin-boy. He told me his name was
Ransome, and that he had followed the sea since he was nine, but could
not say how old he was, as he had lost his reckoning. He showed me
tattoo marks, baring his breast in the teeth of the wind and in spite of
my remonstrances, for I thought it was enough to kill him; he swore
horribly whenever he remembered, but more like a silly schoolboy than a
man; and boasted of many wild and bad things that he had done; stealthy
thefts, false accusations, ay, and even murder; but all with such a
dearth of likelihood in the details, and such a weak and crazy swagger
in the delivery, as disposed me rather to pity than to believe him.
I asked him of the brig (which he declared was the finest ship that
sailed) and of Captain Hoseason, in whose praises he was equally loud.
Heasy-oasy (for so he still named the skipper) was a man, by his
account, that minded for nothing either in heaven or earth; one that, as
people said, would "crack on all sail into the day of judgment"; rough,
fierce, unscrupulous, and brutal; and all this my poor cabin-boy had
taught himself to admire as something seamanlike and manly. He would
only admit one flaw in his idol. "He ain't no seaman," he admitted.
"That's Mr. Shuan that navigates the brig; he's the finest seaman in the
trade, only for drink; and I tell you I believe it! Why, look 'ere"; and
turning down his stocking he showed me a great raw red wound that made
my blood run cold. "He done that--Mr. Shuan done it," he said, with an
air of pride.
"What!" I cried, "do you take such savage usage at his hands? Why, you
are no slave, to be so handled!"
"No," said the poor moon-calf, changing his tune at once, "and so he'll
find. See 'ere"; and he showed me a great case-knife, which he told me
was stolen. "O," says he, "let me see him try; I dare him to; I'll do
for him! O, he ain't the first!" And he confirmed it with a poor, silly,
ugly oath.
I have never felt such pity for any one in this wide world as I felt for
that half-witted creature; and it began to come over me that the brig
_Covenant_ (for all her pious name) was little better than a hell upon
the seas.
"Have you no friends?" said I.
He said he had a father in some English seaport, I forget which. "He was
a fine man, too," he said; "but he's dead."
"In heaven's name," cried I, "can you find no reputable life on shore?"
"O no," says he, winking and looking very sly; "they would put me to a
trade. I know a trick worth two of that, I do!"
I asked him what trade could be so dreadful as the one he followed,
where he ran the continual peril of his life, not alone from wind and
sea, but by the horrid cruelty of those who were his masters. He said it
was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a
pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it
like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called
stick-in-the-mud boys. "And then it's not all as bad as that," says he;
"there's worse off than me: there's the twenty-pounders. O laws! you
should see them taking on. Why, I've seen a man as old as you, I
dessay"--(to him I seemed old)--"ah, and he had a beard too--well, and
as soon as we cleared out of the river, and he had the drug out of his
head--my! how he cried and carried on! I made a fine fool of him, I tell
you! And then there's little uns, too: O, little by me! I tell you, I
keep them in order. When we carry little uns, I have a rope's-end of my
own to wollop 'em." And so he ran on, until it came in on me what he
meant by twenty-pounders were those unhappy criminals who were sent
over-seas to slavery in North America, or the still more unhappy
innocents who were kidnapped or trepanned (as the word went) for private
interest or vengeance.
Just then we came to the top of the hill, and looked down on the Ferry
and the Hope. The Firth of Forth (as is very well known) narrows at this
point to the width of a good-sized river, which makes a convenient ferry
going north, and turns the upper reach into a land-locked haven for all
manner of ships. Right in the midst of the narrows lies an islet with
some ruins; on the south shore they have built a pier for the service of
the Ferry; and at the end of the pier, on the other side of the road,
and backed against a pretty garden of holly-trees and hawthorns, I could
see the building which they call the "Hawes Inn."
The town of Queensferry lies farther west, and the neighbourhood of the
inn looked pretty lonely at that time of day, for the boat had just gone
north with passengers. A skiff, however, lay beside the pier, with some
seamen sleeping on the thwarts; this, as Ransome told me, was the brig's
boat waiting for the captain; and about half a mile off, and all alone
in the anchorage, he showed me the _Covenant_ herself. There was a
sea-going bustle on board; yards were swinging into place; and as the
wind blew from that quarter, I could hear the song of the sailors as
they pulled upon the ropes. After all I had listened to upon the way, I
looked at that ship with an extreme abhorrence; and from the bottom of
my heart I pitied all poor souls that were condemned to sail in her.
We had all three pulled up on the brow of the hill; and now I marched
across the road and addressed my uncle. "I think it right to tell you,
sir," says I, "there's nothing that will bring me on board that
_Covenant_."
He seemed to waken from a dream. "Eh?" he said. "What's that?"
I told him over again.
"Well, well," he said, "we'll have to please ye, I suppose. But what are
we standing here for? It's perishing cold; and, if I'm no' mistaken,
they're busking the _Covenant_ for sea."
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Agent.
[5] Unwilling.
CHAPTER VI
WHAT BEFELL AT THE QUEEN'S FERRY
As soon as we came to the inn, Ransome led us up the stair to a small
room, with a bed in it, and heated like an oven by a great fire of coal.
At a table hard by the chimney, a tall, dark, sober looking man sat
writing. In spite of the heat of the room, he wore a thick sea-jacket,
buttoned to the neck, and a tall hairy cap drawn down over his ears; yet
I never saw any man, not even a judge upon the bench, look cooler, or
more studious and self-possessed, than this ship-captain.
He got to his feet at once, and, coming forward, offered his large hand
to Ebenezer. "I am proud to see you, Mr. Balfour," said he, in a fine
deep voice, "and glad that ye are here in time. The wind's fair, and the
tide upon the turn; we'll see the old coal-bucket burning on the Isle of
May before to-night."
"Captain Hoseason," returned my uncle, "you keep your room unco hot."
"It's a habit I have, Mr. Balfour," said the skipper. "I'm a coldrife
man by my nature; I have a cold blood, sir. There's neither fur nor
flannel--no, sir, nor hot rum, will warm up what they call the
temperature. Sir, it's the same with most men that have been
carbonadoed, as they call it, in the tropic seas."
"Well, well, captain," replied my uncle, "we must all be the way we're
made."
But it chanced that this fancy of the captain's had a great share in my
misfortunes. For though I had promised myself not to let my kinsman out
of sight, I was both so impatient for a nearer look of the sea, and so
sickened by the closeness of the room, that when he told me to "run
down-stairs and play myself awhile," I was fool enough to take him at
his word.
Away I went, therefore, leaving the two men sitting down to a bottle and
a great mass of papers; and, crossing the road in front of the inn,
walked down upon the beach. With the wind in that quarter, only little
wavelets, not much bigger than I had seen upon a lake, beat upon the
shore. But the weeds were new to me--some green, some brown and long,
and some with little bladders that crackled between my fingers. Even so
far up the firth, the smell of the sea-water was exceedingly salt and
stirring; the _Covenant_, besides, was beginning to shake out her sails,
which hung upon the yards in clusters; and the spirit of all that I
beheld put me in thoughts of far voyages and foreign places.
I looked, too, at the seamen with the skiff--big brown fellows, some in
shirts, some with jackets, some with coloured handkerchiefs about their
throats, one with a brace of pistols stuck into his pockets, two or
three with knotty bludgeons, and all with their case-knives. I passed
the time of day with one that looked less desperate than his fellows,
and asked him of the sailing of the brig. He said they would get under
way as soon as the ebb set, and expressed his gladness to be out of a
port where there were no taverns and fiddlers; but all with such
horrifying oaths, that I made haste to get away from him.
This threw me back on Ransome, who seemed the least wicked of that gang,
and who soon came out of the inn and ran to me, crying for a bowl of
punch. I told him I would give him no such thing, for neither he nor I
was of an age for such indulgences. "But a glass of ale you may have,
and welcome," said I. He mopped and mowed at me, and called me names;
but he was glad to get the ale for all that; and presently we were set
down at a table in the front room of the inn, and both eating and
drinking with a good appetite.
Here it occurred to me that, as the landlord was a man of that county,
I might do well to make a friend of him. I offered him a share, as was
much the custom in those days; but he was far too great a man to sit
with such poor customers as Ransome and myself, and he was leaving the
room, when I called him back to ask if he knew Mr. Rankeillor.
"Hoot ay," says he, "and a very honest man. And O, by the by," says he,
"was it you that came in with Ebenezer?" And, when I had told him yes,
"Ye'll be no friend of his?" he asked, meaning, in the Scottish way,
that I would be no relative.
I told him no, none.
"I thought not," said he, "and yet ye have a kind of gliff[6] of Mr.
Alexander."
I said it seemed that Ebenezer was ill-seen in the country.
"Nae doubt," said the landlord. "He's a wicked auld man, and there's
many would like to see him girning in a tow:[7] Jennet Clouston and mony
mair that he has harried out of house and hame. And yet he was ance a
fine young fellow too. But that was before the sough[8] gaed abroad
about Mr. Alexander; that was like the death of him."
"And what was it?" I asked.
"Ou, just that he had killed him," said the landlord. "Did ye never hear
that?"
"And what would he kill him for?" said I.
"And what for, but just to get the place," said he.
"The place?" said I. "The Shaws?"
"Nae other place that I ken," said he.
"Ay, man?" said I. "Is that so? Was my--was Alexander the eldest son?"
"'Deed was he," said the landlord. "What else would he have killed him
for?"
And with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the
beginning.
Of course, I had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to
guess, another to know; and I sat stunned with my good fortune, and
could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in
the dust from Ettrick Forest not two days ago, was now one of the rich
of the earth, and had a house and broad lands, and might mount his horse
to-morrow. All these pleasant things, and a thousand others, crowded
into my mind, as I sat staring before me out of the inn window, and
paying no heed to what I saw; only I remember that my eye lighted on
Captain Hoseason down on the pier among his seamen and speaking with
some authority. And presently he came marching back towards the house,
with no mark of a sailor's clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall
figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave
expression on his face. I wondered if it was possible that Ransome's
stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill
with the man's looks. But, indeed, he was neither so good as I supposed
him, nor quite so bad as Ransome did; for, in fact, he was two men, and
left the better one behind as soon as he set foot on board his vessel.
The next thing, I heard my uncle calling me, and found the pair in the
road together. It was the captain who addressed me, and that with an air
(very flattering to a young lad) of grave equality.
"Sir," said he, "Mr. Balfour tells me great things of you; and for my
own part, I like your looks. I wish I was for longer here, that we might
make the better friends; but we'll make the most of what we have. Ye
shall come on board my brig for half an hour, till the ebb sets, and
drink a bowl with me."
Now I longed to see the inside of a ship more than words can tell; but I
was not going to put myself in jeopardy, and I told him my uncle and I
had an appointment with a lawyer.
"Ay, ay," said he, "he passed me word of that. But, ye see, the boat'll
set ye ashore at the town pier, and that's but a penny stonecast from
Rankeillor's house." And here he suddenly leaned down and whispered in
my ear: "Take care of the old tod;[9] he means mischief. Come aboard
till I can get a word with ye." And then, passing his arm through mine,
he continued aloud, as he set off towards his boat: "But come, what can
I bring ye from the Carolinas? Any friend of Mr. Balfour's can command.
A roll of tobacco? Indian featherwork? A skin of a wild beast? a stone
pipe? the mocking-bird that mews for all the world like a cat? the
cardinal-bird that is as red as blood?--take your pick and say your
pleasure."
By this time we were at the boat-side, and he was handing me in. I did
not dream of hanging back; I thought (the poor fool!) that I had found a
good friend and helper, and I was rejoiced to see the ship. As soon as
we were all set in our places, the boat was thrust off from the pier and
began to move over the waters; and what with my pleasure in this new
movement, and my surprise at our low position, and the appearance of the
shores, and the growing bigness of the brig as we drew near to it, I
could hardly understand what the captain said, and must have answered
him at random.
As soon as we were alongside (where I sat fairly gaping at the ship's
height, the strong humming of the tide against its sides, and the
pleasant cries of the seamen at their work) Hoseason, declaring that he
and I must be the first aboard, ordered a tackle to be sent down from
the main-yard. In this I was whipped into the air and set down again on
the deck, where the captain stood ready waiting for me, and instantly
slipped back his arm under mine. There I stood some while, a little
dizzy with the unsteadiness of all around me, perhaps a little afraid,
and yet vastly pleased with these strange sights; the captain meanwhile
pointing out the strangest, and telling me their names and uses.
"But where is my uncle?" said I suddenly.
"Ay," said Hoseason, with a sudden grimness, "that's the point."
I felt I was lost. With all my strength, I plucked myself clear of him
and ran to the bulwarks. Sure enough, there was the boat pulling for the
town, with my uncle sitting in the stern. I gave a piercing cry--"Help,
help! Murder!"--so that both sides of the anchorage rang with it, and my
uncle turned round where he was sitting, and showed me a face full of
cruelty and terror.
It was the last I saw. Already strong hands had been plucking me back
from the ship's side; and now a thunder-bolt seemed to strike me; I saw
a great flash of fire, and fell senseless.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Look.
[7] Rope.
[8] Report.
[9] Fox.
CHAPTER VII
I GO TO SEA IN THE BRIG COVENANT OF DYSART
I came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and
deafened by many unfamiliar noises. There sounded in my ears a roaring
of water as of a huge mill-dam, the thrashing of heavy sprays, the
thundering of the sails, and the shrill cries of seamen. The whole world
now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and
hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a
long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a
fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in
the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened
to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a
blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion
of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft me of my senses.
When I returned again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and
violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other
pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman
on the sea. In that time of my adventurous youth I suffered many
hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by
so few hopes, as these first hours aboard the brig.
I heard a gun fire, and supposed the storm had proved too strong for us,
and we were firing signals of distress. The thought of deliverance, even
by death in the deep sea, was welcome to me. Yet it was no such matter;
but (as I was afterwards told) a common habit of the captain's, which I
here set down to show that even the worst man may have his kindlier
side. We were then passing, it appeared, within some miles of Dysart,
where the brig was built, and where old Mrs. Hoseason, the captain's
mother, had come some years before to live; and whether outward or
inward bound, the _Covenant_ was never suffered to go by that place by
day, without a gun fired and colours shown.
I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling
cavern of the ship's bowels where I lay; and the misery of my situation
drew out the hours to double. How long, therefore, I lay waiting to hear
the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head-foremost into
the depths of the sea, I have not the means of computation. But sleep at
length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow.
I was wakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small
man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood
looking down at me.
"Well," said he, "how goes it?"
I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and
set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp.
"Ay," said he, "a sore dunt.[10] What, man? Cheer up! The world's no'
done; you've made a bad start of it, but you'll make a better. Have you
had any meat?"
I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and
water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself.
The next time he came to see me, I was lying betwixt sleep and waking,
my eyes wide open in the darkness, the sickness quite departed, but
succeeded by a horrid giddiness and swimming that was almost worse to
bear. I ached, besides, in every limb, and the cords that bound me
seemed to be of fire. The smell of the hole in which I lay seemed to
have become a part of me; and during the long interval since his last
visit I had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the
ship's rats, that sometimes pattered on my very face, and now from the
dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever.
The glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the
heaven's sunlight: and though it only showed me the strong, dark beams
of the ship that was my prison I could have cried aloud for gladness.
The man with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and I
noticed that he came somewhat unsteadily. He was followed by the
captain. Neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and
dressed my wound as before, while Hoseason looked me in my face with an
odd, black look.
"Now, sir, you see for yourself," said the first: "a high fever, no
appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means."
"I am no conjurer, Mr. Riach," said the captain.
"Give me leave, sir," said Riach; "you've a good head upon your
shoulders, and a good Scots tongue to ask with; but I will leave you no
manner of excuse: I want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the
forecastle."
"What ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel',"
returned the captain; "but I can tell ye that which is to be. Here he
is; here he shall bide."
"Admitting that you have been paid in a proportion," said the other, "I
will crave leave humbly to say that I have not. Paid I am, and none too
much, to be the second officer of this old tub; and you ken very well if
I do my best to earn it. But I was paid for nothing more."
"If ye could hold back your hand from the tin pan, Mr. Riach, I would
have no complaint to make of ye," returned the skipper; "and instead of
asking riddles, I make bold to say that ye would keep your breath to
cool your porridge. We'll be required on deck," he added, in a sharper
note, and set one foot upon the ladder.
But Mr. Riach caught him by the sleeve.
"Admitting that you have been paid to do a murder----" he began.
Hoseason turned upon him with a flash.
"What's that?" he cried. "What kind of talk is that?"
"It seems it is the talk that you can understand," said Mr. Riach,
looking him steadily in the face.
"Mr. Riach, I have sailed with ye three cruises," replied the captain.
"In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I'm a stiff
man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now--fie, fie!--it comes
from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the lad will die----"
"Ay, will he!" said Mr. Riach.
"Well, sir, is not that enough?" said Hoseason. "Flit him where ye
please!"
Thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and I, who had lain silent
throughout this strange conversation, beheld Mr. Riach turn after him
and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision.
Even in my then state of sickness I perceived two things: that the mate
was touched with liquor, as the captain hinted, and that (drunk or
sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend.
Five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, I was hoisted on a man's
back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some
sea-blankets; where the first thing that I did was to lose my senses.
It was a blessed thing indeed to open my eyes again upon the daylight,
and to find myself in the society of men. The forecastle was a roomy
place enough, set all about with berths, in which the men of the watch
below were seated smoking or lying down asleep. The day being calm and
the wind fair, the scuttle was open, and not only the good daylight, but
from time to time (as the ship rolled) a dusty beam of sunlight, shone
in, and dazzled and delighted me. I had no sooner moved, moreover, than
one of the men brought me a drink of something healing which Mr. Riach
had prepared, and bade me lie still and I should soon be well again.
There were no bones broken, he explained: "A clour[11] on the head was
naething. Man," said he, "it was me that gave it ye!"
Here I lay for the space of many days, a close prisoner, and not only
got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough
lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the
kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas,
with masters no less cruel. There were some among them that had sailed
with the pirates, and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of;
some were men that had run from the king's ships, and went with a halter
round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying
goes, were "at a word and a blow" with their best friends. Yet I had not
been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my
first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as
though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad;
but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine
were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I
suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to
them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and
had some glimmerings of honesty.
There was one man, of maybe forty, that would sit on my berth-side for
hours and tell me of his wife and child. He was a fisher that had lost
his boat, and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging. Well, it is
years ago now: but I have never forgotten him. His wife (who was "young
by him," as he often told me) waited in vain to see her man return: he
would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the
bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the
event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal
fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ill of the
dead.
Among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had
been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, I was
very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was
going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; and you must not suppose
that I was going to that place merely as an exile. The trade was even
then much depressed; since that, and with the rebellion of the colonies
and the formation of the United States, it has, of course, come to an
end; but in those days of my youth, white men were still sold into
slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked
uncle had condemned me.
The cabin-boy Ransome (from whom I had first heard of these atrocities)
came in at times from the round-house, where he berthed and served, now
nursing a bruised limb in silent agony, now raving against the cruelty
of Mr. Shuan. It made my heart bleed; but the men had a great respect
for the chief mate, who was, as they said, "the only seaman of the whole
jing-bang, and none such a bad man when he was sober." Indeed, I found
there was a strange peculiarity about our two mates: that Mr. Riach was
sullen, unkind, and harsh when he was sober, and Mr. Shuan would not
hurt a fly except when he was drinking. I asked about the captain; but I
was told drink made no difference upon that man of iron.
I did my best in the small time allowed me to make something like a man,
or rather I should say something like a boy, of the poor creature,
Ransome. But his mind was scarce truly human. He could remember nothing
of the time before he came to sea; only that his father had made clocks,
and had a starling in the parlour, which could whistle "The North
Countrie"; all else had been blotted out in these years of hardship and
cruelties. He had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from
sailors' stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind
of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed
and clapped into foul prisons. In a town he thought every second person
a decoy, and every third house a place in which seamen would be drugged
and murdered. To be sure, I would tell him how kindly I had myself been
used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and
carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been
recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he
was in his usual crack-brain humour, or (still more) if he had had a
glass of spirits in the round-house, he would deride the notion.
It was Mr. Riach (Heaven forgive him!) who gave the boy drink; and it
was, doubtless, kindly meant; but besides that it was ruin to his
health, it was the pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy,
unfriended creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew not
what. Some of the men laughed, but not all; others would grow as black
as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of their own childhood or their own
children) and bid him stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing.
As for me, I felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor child still comes
about me in my dreams.
All this time, you should know, the Covenant was meeting continual
head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the
scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a
swinging lantern on a beam. There was constant labour for all hands; the
sails had to be made and shortened every hour; the strain told on the
men's temper; there was a growl of quarrelling all day long from berth
to berth; and as I was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can
picture to yourselves how weary of my life I grew to be, and how
impatient for a change.
And a change I was to get, as you shall hear; but I must first tell of a
conversation I had with Mr. Riach, which put a little heart in me to
bear my troubles. Getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed
he never looked near me when he was sober) I pledged him to secrecy, and
told him my whole story.
He declared it was like a ballad; that he would do his best to help me;
that I should have paper, pen, and ink, and write one line to Mr.
Campbell and another to Mr. Rankeillor; and that if I had told the
truth, ten to one he would be able (with their help) to pull me through
and set me in my rights.
"And in the meantime," says he, "keep your heart up. You're not the
only one, I'll tell you that. There's many a man hoeing tobacco
over-seas that should be mounting his horse at his own door at home;
many and many! And life is all a variorum at the best. Look at me: I'm a
laird's son and more than half a doctor, and here I am, man-Jack to
Hoseason!"
I thought it would be civil to ask him for his story.
He whistled loud.
"Never had one," said he. "I liked fun, that's all." And he skipped out
of the forecastle.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Stroke.
[11] Blow.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ROUND-HOUSE
One night, about eleven o'clock, a man of Mr. Riach's watch (which was
on deck) came below for his jacket; and instantly there began to go a
whisper about the forecastle that "Shuan had done for him at last."
There was no need of a name; we all knew who was meant; but we had
scarce time to get the idea rightly in our heads, far less to speak of
it, when the scuttle was again flung open, and Captain Hoseason came
down the ladder. He looked sharply round the bunks in the tossing light
of the lantern; and then, walking straight up to me, he addressed me, to
my surprise, in tones of kindness.
"My man," said he, "we want ye to serve in the round-house. You and
Ransome are to change berths. Run away aft with ye."
Even as he spoke, two seamen appeared in the scuttle, carrying Ransome
in their arms; and the ship at that moment giving a great sheer into the
sea, and the lantern swinging, the light fell direct on the boy's face.
It was as white as wax, and had a look upon it like a dreadful smile.
The blood in me ran cold, and I drew in my breath as if I had been
struck.
"Run away aft; run away aft with ye!" cried Hoseason.
And at that I brushed by the sailors and the boy (who neither spoke nor
moved), and ran up the ladder on deck.
The brig was sheering swiftly and giddily through a long, cresting
swell. She was on the starboard tack, and on the left hand, under the
arched foot of the foresail, I could see the sunset still quite bright.
This, at such an hour of the night, surprised me greatly; but I was too
ignorant to draw the true conclusion--that we were going north-about
round Scotland, and were now on the high sea between the Orkney and
Shetland Islands, having avoided the dangerous currents of the Pentland
Firth. For my part, who had been so long shut in the dark and knew
nothing of head-winds, I thought we might be half-way or more across the
Atlantic. And indeed (beyond that I wondered a little at the lateness of
the sunset light) I gave no heed to it, and pushed on across the decks,
running between the seas, catching at ropes, and only saved from going
overboard by one of the hands on deck, who had been always kind to me.
The round-house, for which I was bound, and where I was now to sleep and
serve, stood some six feet above the decks, and, considering the size of
the brig, was of good dimensions. Inside were a fixed table and bench,
and two berths, one for the captain and the other for the two mates,
turn and turn about. It was all fitted with lockers from top to bottom,
so as to stow away the officers' belongings and a part of the ship's
stores; there was a second store-room underneath, which you entered by a
hatchway in the middle of the deck; indeed, all the best of the meat and
drink and the whole of the powder were collected in this place; and all
the fire-arms, except the two pieces of brass ordnance, were set in a
rack in the aftermost wall of the round-house. The most of the cutlasses
were in another place.
A small window with a shutter on each side, and a skylight in the roof,
gave it light by day; and after dark there was a lamp always burning. It
was burning when I entered, not brightly, but enough to show Mr. Shuan
sitting at the table, with the brandy-bottle and a tin pannikin in front
of him. He was a tall man, strongly made and very black; and he stared
before him on the table like one stupid.
He took no notice of my coming in; nor did he move when the captain
followed and leant on the berth beside me, looking darkly at the mate. I
stood in great fear of Hoseason, and had my reasons for it; but
something told me I need not be afraid of him just then; and I
whispered in his ear, "How is he?" He shook his head like one that does
not know and does not wish to think, and his face was very stern.
Presently Mr. Riach came in. He gave the captain a glance that meant the
boy was dead as plain as speaking, and took his place like the rest of
us; so that we all three stood without a word, staring down at Mr.
Shuan, and Mr. Shuan (on his side) sat without a word, looking hard upon
the table.
All of a sudden he put out his hand to take the bottle; and at that Mr.
Riach started forward and caught it away from him, rather by surprise
than violence, crying out, with an oath, that there had been too much of
this work altogether, and that a judgment would fall upon the ship. And
as he spoke (the weather sliding-doors standing open) he tossed the
bottle into the sea.
Mr. Shuan was on his feet in a trice; he still looked dazed, but he
meant murder, ay, and would have done it, for the second time that
night, had not the captain stepped in between him and his victim.
"Sit down!" roars the captain. "Ye sot and swine, do ye know what ye've
done? Ye've murdered the boy!"
Mr. Shuan seemed to understand; for he sat down again, and put up his
hand to his brow.
"Well," he said, "he brought me a dirty pannikin!"
At that word, the captain and I and Mr. Riach all looked at each other
for a second with a kind of frightened look; and then Hoseason walked up
to his chief officer, took him by the shoulder, led him across to his
bunk, and bade him lie down and go to sleep, as you might speak to a bad
child. The murderer cried a little, but he took off his sea-boots and
obeyed.
"Ah!" cried Mr. Riach, with a dreadful voice, "ye should have interfered
lang syne. It's too late now."
"Mr. Riach," said the captain, "this night's work must never be kennt in
Dysart. The boy went overboard, sir; that's what the story is; and I
would give five pounds out of my pocket it was true!" He turned to the
table. "What made ye throw the good bottle away?" he added. "There was
nae sense in that, sir.--Here, David, draw me another. They're in the
bottom locker"; and he tossed me a key.--"Ye'll need a glass yourself,
sir," he added to Riach. "Yon was an ugly thing to see."
So the pair sat down and hob-a-nobbed; and while they did so, the
murderer, who had been lying and whimpering in his berth, raised himself
upon his elbow and looked at them and at me.
That was the first night of my new duties; and in the course of the next
day I had got well into the run of them. I had to serve at the meals,
which the captain took at regular hours, sitting down with the officer
who was off duty; all the day through I would be running with a dram to
one or other of my three masters; and at night I slept on a blanket
thrown on the deck boards at the aftermost end of the round-house, and
right in the draught of the two doors. It was a hard and a cold bed; nor
was I suffered to sleep without interruption; for some one would be
always coming in from deck to get a dram, and when a fresh watch was to
be set, two and sometimes all three would sit down and brew a bowl
together. How they kept their health I know not, any more than how I
kept my own.
And yet in other ways it was an easy service. There was no cloth to lay;
the meals were either of oatmeal porridge or salt junk, except twice a
week, when there was duff: and though I was clumsy enough and (not being
firm on my sea-legs) sometimes fell with what I was bringing them, both
Mr. Riach and the captain were singularly patient. I could not but fancy
they were making up lee-way with their consciences, and that they would
scarce have been so good with me if they had not been worse with
Ransome.
As for Mr. Shuan, the drink, or his crime, or the two together, had
certainly troubled his mind. I cannot say I ever saw him in his proper
wits. He never grew used to my being there, stared at me continually
(sometimes, I could have thought, with terror), and more than once drew
back from my hand when I was serving him. I was pretty sure from the
first that he had no clear mind of what he had done, and on my second
day in the round-house I had the proof of it. We were alone, and he had
been staring at me a long time, when, all at once, up he got, as pale as
death, and came close up to me, to my great terror. But I had no cause
to be afraid of him.
"You were not here before?" he asked.
"No, sir," said I.
"There was another boy?" he asked again; and when I had answered him,
"Ah!" says he, "I thought that," and went and sat down, without another
word, except to call for brandy.
You may think it strange, but for all the horror I had, I was still
sorry for him. He was a married man, with a wife in Leith; but whether
or no he had a family, I have now forgotten; I hope not.
Altogether it was no very hard life for the time it lasted, which (as
you are to hear) was not long. I was as well fed as the best of them;
even their pickles, which were the great dainty, I was allowed my share
of; and had I liked I might have been drunk from morning to night, like
Mr. Shuan. I had company, too, and good company of its sort. Mr. Riach,
who had been to the college, spoke to me like a friend when he was not
sulking, and told me many curious things, and some that were informing;
and even the captain, though he kept me at the stick's end the most part
of the time, would sometimes unbuckle a bit, and tell me of the fine
countries he had visited.
The shadow of poor Ransome, to be sure, lay on all four of us, and on me
and Mr. Shuan in particular, most heavily. And then I had another
trouble of my own. Here I was, doing dirty work for three men that I
looked down upon, and one of whom, at least, should have hung upon a
gallows; that was for the present; and as for the future, I could only
see myself slaving alongside of negroes in the tobacco-fields. Mr.
Riach, perhaps from caution, would never suffer me to say another word
about my story; the captain, whom I tried to approach, rebuffed me like
a dog and would not hear a word; and as the days came and went, my heart
sank lower and lower, till I was even glad of the work, which kept me
from thinking.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WITH THE BELT OF GOLD
More than a week went by, in which the ill-luck that had hitherto
pursued the _Covenant_ upon this voyage grew yet more strongly marked.
Some days she made a little way; others, she was driven actually back.
At last we were beaten so far to the south that we tossed and tacked to
and fro the whole of the ninth day, within sight of Cape Wrath and the
wild, rocky coast on either hand of it. There followed on that a council
of the officers, and some decision which I did not rightly understand,
seeing only the result: that we had made a fair wind of a foul one and
were running south.
The tenth afternoon there was a falling swell and a thick, wet, white
fog that hid one end of the brig from the other. All afternoon, when I
went on deck, I saw men and officers listening hard over the
bulwarks--"for breakers," they said; and though I did not so much as
understand the word, I felt danger in the air, and was excited.
Maybe about ten at night, I was serving Mr. Riach and the captain at
their supper, when the ship struck something with a great sound, and we
heard voices singing out. My two masters leaped to their feet.
"She's struck!" said Mr. Riach.
"No, sir," said the captain. "We've only run a boat down."
And they hurried out.
The captain was in the right of it. We had run down a boat in the fog,
and she had parted in the midst and gone to the bottom with all her crew
but one. This man (as I heard afterwards) had been sitting in the stern
as a passenger, while the rest were on the benches rowing. At the moment
of the blow, the stern had been thrown into the air, and the man (having
his hands free, and for all he was encumbered with a frieze overcoat
that came below his knees) had leaped up and caught hold of the brig's
bowsprit. It showed he had luck and much agility and unusual strength,
that he should have thus saved himself from such a pass. And yet, when
the captain brought him into the round-house, and I set eyes on him for
the first time, he looked as cool as I did.
He was smallish in stature, but well set and as nimble as a goat; his
face was of a good open expression, but sun-burnt very dark, and heavily
freckled and pitted with the small-pox; his eyes were unusually light,
and had a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and
alarming; and when he took off his great-coat, he laid a pair of fine
silver-mounted pistols on the table, and I saw that he was belted with a
great sword. His manners, besides, were elegant, and he pledged the
captain handsomely. Altogether I thought of him, at the first sight,
that here was a man I would rather call my friend than my enemy.
The captain, too, was taking his observations, but rather of the man's
clothes than his person. And to be sure, as soon as he had taken off the
great-coat, he showed forth mighty fine for the round-house of a
merchant brig: having a hat with feathers, a red waistcoat, breeches of
black plush, and a blue coat with silver buttons and handsome silver
lace; costly clothes, though somewhat spoiled with the fog and being
slept in.
"I'm vexed, sir, about the boat," says the captain.
"There are some pretty men gone to the bottom," said the stranger, "that
I would rather see on the dry land again than half a score of boats."
"Friends of yours?" said Hoseason.
"You have none such friends in your country," was the reply. "They would
have died for me like dogs."
"Well, sir," said the captain, still watching him, "there are more men
in the world than boats to put them in."
"And that's true too," cried the other, "and ye seem to be a gentleman
of great penetration."
"I have been in France, sir," says the captain, so that it was plain he
meant more by the words than showed upon the face of them.
"Well, sir," says the other, "and so has many a pretty man, for the
matter of that."
"No doubt, sir," says the captain, "and fine coats."
"Oho!" says the stranger, "is that how the wind sets?" And he laid his
hand quickly on his pistols.
"Don't be hasty," said the captain. "Don't do a mischief before ye see
the need of it. Ye've a French soldier's coat upon your back and a Scots
tongue in your head, to be sure; but so has many an honest fellow in
these days, and I daresay none the worse of it."
"So?" said the gentleman in the fine coat: "are ye of the honest party?"
(meaning, Was he a Jacobite? for each side, in these sort of civil
broils, takes the name of honesty for its own).
"Why, sir," replied the captain, "I am a true-blue Protestant, and I
thank God for it." (It was the first word of any religion I had ever
heard from him, but I learnt afterwards he was a great church-goer while
on shore.) "But for all that," says he, "I can be sorry to see another
man with his back to the wall."
"Can ye so, indeed?" asked the Jacobite. "Well, sir, to be quite plain
with ye, I am one of those honest gentlemen that were in trouble about
the years forty-five and six; and (to be still quite plain with ye) if I
got into the hands of any of the red-coated gentry it's like it would go
hard with me. Now, sir, I was for France; and there was a French ship
cruising here to pick me up; but she gave us the go-by in the fog--as I
wish from the heart that ye had done yoursel'! And the best that I can
say is this: If ye can set me ashore where I was going, I have that
upon me will reward you highly for your trouble."
"In France?" says the captain. "No, sir; that I cannot do. But where ye
come from--we might talk of that."
And then, unhappily, he observed me standing in my corner, and packed me
off to the galley to get supper for the gentleman. I lost no time, I
promise you; and when I came back into the round-house, I found the
gentleman had taken a money-belt from about his waist, and poured out a
guinea or two upon the table. The captain was looking at the guineas,
and then at the belt, and then at the gentleman's face; and I thought he
seemed excited.
"Half of it," he cried, "and I'm your man!"
The other swept back the guineas into the belt, and put it on again
under his waistcoat. "I have told ye, sir," said he, "that not one doit
of it belongs to me. It belongs to my chieftain," and here he touched
his hat--"and while I would be but a silly messenger to grudge some of
it that the rest might come safe, I should show myself a hound indeed if
I bought my own carcass any too dear. Thirty guineas on the seaside, or
sixty if ye set me on the Linnhe Loch. Take it, if ye will; if not, ye
can do your worst."
"Ay," said Hoseason. "And if I give ye over to the soldiers?"
"Ye would make a fool's bargain," said the other. "My chief, let me tell
you, sir, is forfeited, like every honest man in Scotland. His estate is
in the hands of the man they call King George; and it is his officers
that collect the rents, or try to collect them. But for the honour of
Scotland, the poor tenant bodies take a thought upon their chief lying
in exile; and this money is a part of that very rent for which King
George is looking. Now, sir, ye seem to me to be a man that understands
things: bring this money within the reach of Government, and how much of
it'll come to you?"
"Little enough, to be sure," said Hoseason; and then, "if they knew,"
he added drily. "But I think, if I was to try, that I could hold my
tongue about it."
"Ah, but I'll begowk[12] ye there!" cried the gentleman. "Play me false,
and I'll play you cunning. If a hand's laid upon me, they shall ken what
money it is."
"Well," returned the captain, "what must be must. Sixty guineas and
done. Here's my hand upon it."
"And here's mine," said the other.
And thereupon the captain went out (rather hurriedly, I thought), and
left me alone in the round-house with the stranger.
At that period (so soon after the forty-five) there were many exiled
gentlemen coming back at the peril of their lives, either to see their
friends or to collect a little money; and, as for the Highland chiefs
that had been forfeited, it was a common matter of talk how their
tenants would stint themselves to send them money, and their clansmen
outface the soldiery to get it in, and run the gauntlet of our great
navy to carry it across. All this I had, of course, heard tell of; and
now I had a man under my eyes whose life was forfeit on all these
counts, and upon one more, for he was not only a rebel and a smuggler of
rents, but had taken service with King Louis of France. And as if all
this were not enough, he had a belt full of golden guineas round his
loins. Whatever my opinions, I could not look on such a man without a
lively interest.
"And so you're a Jacobite?" said I, as I set meat before him.
"Ay," said he, beginning to eat. "And you, by your long face, should be
a Whig?"[13]
"Betwixt and between," said I, not to annoy him; for indeed I was as
good a Whig as Mr. Campbell could make me.
"And that's naething," said he. "But I'm saying, Mr.
Betwixt-and-Between," he added, "this bottle of yours is dry; and it's
hard if I'm to pay sixty guineas and be grudged a dram upon the back of
it."
"I'll go and ask for the key," said I, and stepped on deck.
The fog was as close as ever, but the swell almost down. They had laid
the brig to, not knowing precisely where they were, and the wind (what
little there was of it) not serving well for their true course. Some of
the hands were still hearkening for breakers; but the captain and the
two officers were in the waist with their heads together. It struck me
(I don't know why) that they were after no good; and the first word I
heard, as I drew softly near, more than confirmed me.
It was Mr. Riach, crying out as if upon a sudden thought:
"Couldn't we wile him out of the round-house?"
"He's better where he is," returned Hoseason; "he hasn't room to use his
sword."
"Well, that's true," said Riach; "but he's hard to come at."
"Hut!" said Hoseason. "We can get the man in talk, one upon each side,
and pin him by the two arms; or, if that'll not hold, sir, we can make a
run by both the doors and get him under hand before he has the time to
draw."
At this hearing I was seized with both fear and anger at these
treacherous, greedy, bloody men that I sailed with. My first mind was to
run away; my second was bolder.
"Captain," said I, "the gentleman is seeking a dram, and the bottle's
out. Will you give me the key?"
They all started and turned about.
"Why, here's our chance to get the fire-arms!" Riach cried; and then to
me: "Hark ye, David," he said, "do ye ken where the pistols are?"
"Ay, ay," put in Hoseason. "David kens; David's a good lad. Ye see,
David my man, yon wild Hielandman is a danger to the ship, besides being
a rank foe to King George, God bless him!"
I had never been so be-Davided since I came on board: but I said Yes, as
if all I heard were quite natural.
"The trouble is," resumed the captain, "that all our firelocks, great
and little, are in the round-house under this man's nose; likewise the
powder. Now, if I, or one of the officers, was to go in and take them,
he would fall to thinking. But a lad like you, David, might snap up a
horn and a pistol or two without remark. And if ye can do it cleverly,
I'll bear it in mind when it'll be good for you to have friends; and
that's when we come to Carolina."
Here Mr. Riach whispered him a little.
"Very right, sir," said the captain; and then to myself: "And see here,
David, yon man has a beltful of gold, and I give you my word that you
shall have your fingers in it."
I told him I would do as he wished, though indeed I had scarce breath to
speak with; and upon that he gave me the key of the spirit-locker, and I
began to go slowly back to the round-house. What was I to do? They were
dogs and thieves; they had stolen me from my own country; they had
killed poor Ransome; and was I to hold the candle to another murder? But
then, upon the other hand, there was the fear of death very plain before
me; for what could a boy and a man, if they were as brave as lions,
against a whole ship's company?
I was still arguing it back and forth, and getting no great clearness,
when I came into the round-house and saw the Jacobite eating his supper
under the lamp; and at that my mind was made up all in a moment. I have
no credit by it; it was by no choice of mine, but as if by compulsion,
that I walked right up to the table and put my hand on his shoulder.
"Do ye want to be killed?" said I.
He sprang to his feet, and looked a question at me as clear as if he had
spoken.
"O!" cried I, "they're all murderers here; it's a ship full of them!
They've murdered a boy already. Now it's you."
"Ay, ay," said he; "but they haven't got me yet." And then, looking at
me curiously, "Will ye stand with me?"
"That will I!" said I. "I am no thief, nor yet murderer. I'll stand by
you."
"Why, then," said he, "what's your name?"
"David Balfour," said I; and then, thinking that a man with so fine a
coat must like fine people, I added for the first time, "of Shaws."
It never occurred to him to doubt me, for a Highlander is used to see
great gentle-folk in great poverty; but as he had no estate of his own,
my words nettled a very childish vanity he had.
"My name is Stewart," he said, drawing himself up. "Alan Breck, they
call me. A king's name is good enough for me, though I bear it plain and
have the name of no farm-midden to clap to the hind-end of it."
And having administered this rebuke, as though it were something of a
chief importance, he turned to examine our defences.
The round-house was built very strong, to support the breaching of the
seas. Of its five apertures, only the skylight and the two doors were
large enough for the passage of a man. The doors, besides, could be
drawn close: they were of stout oak, and ran in grooves, and were fitted
with hooks to keep them either shut or open, as the need arose. The one
that was already shut I secured in this fashion; but when I was
proceeding to slide to the other, Alan stopped me.
"David," said he--"for I canna bring to mind the name of your landed
estate, and so will make so bold as to call you David--that door, being
open, is the best part of my defences."
"It would be yet better shut," says I.
"Not so, David," says he. "Ye see, I have but one face; but so long as
that door is open and my face to it, the best part of my enemies will be
in front of me, where I would aye wish to find them."
Then he gave me from the rack a cutlass (of which there were a few
besides the fire-arms), choosing it with great care, shaking his head
and saying he had never in all his life seen poorer weapons; and next he
set me down to the table with a powder-horn, a bag of bullets and all
the pistols, which he bade me charge.
"And that will be better work, let me tell you," said he, "for a
gentleman of decent birth, than scraping plates and raxing[14] drams to
a wheen tarry sailors."
Thereupon he stood up in the midst with his face to the door, and
drawing his great sword, made trial of the room he had to wield it in.
"I must stick to the point," he said, shaking his head; "and that's a
pity too. It doesn't set my genius, which is all for the upper guard.
And now," said he, "do you keep on charging the pistols, and give heed
to me."
I told him I would listen closely. My chest was tight, my mouth dry, the
light dark to my eyes; the thought of the numbers that were soon to leap
in upon us kept my heart in a flutter; and the sea, which I heard
washing round the brig, and where I thought my dead body would be cast
ere morning, ran in my mind strangely.
"First of all," said he, "how many are against us?"
I reckoned them up; and such was the hurry of my mind, I had to cast the
numbers twice. "Fifteen," said I.
Alan whistled. "Well," said he, "that can't be cured. And now follow me.
It is my part to keep this door, where I look for the main battle. In
that ye have no hand. And mind and dinna fire to this side unless they
get me down; for I would rather have ten foes in front of me than one
friend like you cracking pistols at my back."
I told him, indeed I was no great shot.
"And that's very bravely said," he cried, in a great admiration of my
candour. "There's many a pretty gentleman that wouldna dare to say it."
"But then, sir," said I, "there is the door behind you, which they may
perhaps break in."
"Ay," said he, "and that is a part of your work. No sooner the pistols
charged than ye must climb up into yon bed where ye're handy at the
window; and if they lift hand against the door, ye're to shoot. But
that's not all. Let's make a bit of a soldier of ye, David. What else
have ye to guard?"
"There's the skylight," said I. "But indeed, Mr. Stewart, I would need
to have eyes upon both sides to keep the two of them; for when my face
is at the one my back is to the other."
"And that's very true," said Alan. "But have ye no ears to your head?"
"To be sure!" cried I. "I must hear the bursting of the glass!"
"Ye have some rudiments of sense," said Alan grimly.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Befool.
[13] Whig, or Whigamore, was the cant name for those who were loyal to
King George.
[14] Reaching.
CHAPTER X
THE SIEGE OF THE ROUND-HOUSE
But now our time of truce was come to an end. Those on deck had waited
for my coming till they grew impatient; and scarce had Alan spoken when
the captain showed face in the open door.
"Stand!" cried Alan, and pointed his sword at him.
The captain stood, indeed; but he neither winced nor drew back a foot.
"A naked sword!" says he. "This is a strange return for hospitality."
"Do ye see me?" said Alan. "I am come of kings; I bear a king's name. My
badge is the oak. Do ye see my sword? It has slashed the heads off mair
Whigamores than you have toes upon your feet. Call up your vermin to
your back, sir, and fall on! The sooner the clash begins the sooner
ye'll taste this steel throughout your vitals."
The captain said nothing to Alan, but he looked over at me with an ugly
look. "David," said he, "I'll mind this"; and the sound of his voice
went through me with a jar.
Next moment he was gone.
"And now," said Alan, "let your hand keep your head, for the grip is
coming."
Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run
in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered up into the berth with an
armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the
window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I
could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and
the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great
stillness in the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of
muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon
the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses and one
had been let fall; and after that, silence again.
I do not know if I was what you call afraid; but my heart beat like a
bird's, both quick and little; and there was a dimness came before my
eyes which I continually rubbed away, and which continually returned. As
for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger
against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was
able. I tried to pray, I remember, but that same hurry of my mind, like
a man running, would not suffer me to think upon the words; and my chief
wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it.
It came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and
then a shout from Alan, and a sound of blows and some one crying out as
if hurt. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw Mr. Shuan in the
doorway, crossing blades with Alan.
"That's him that killed the boy!" I cried.
"Look to your window!" said Alan; and as I turned back to my place, I
saw him pass his sword through the mate's body.
It was none too soon for me to look to my own part; for my head was
scarce back at the window, before five men, carrying a spare yard for a
battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. I had
never fired with a pistol in my life, and not often with a gun; far less
against a fellow-creature. But it was now or never; and just as they
swang the yard, I cried out, "Take that!" and shot into their midst.
I must have hit one of them, for he sang out and gave back a step, and
the rest stopped as if a little disconcerted. Before they had time to
recover I sent another ball over their heads; and at my third shot
(which went as wide as the second) the whole party threw down the yard
and ran for it.
Then I looked round again into the deck-house. The whole place was full
of the smoke of my own firing, just as my ears seemed to be burst with
the noise of the shots. But there was Alan, standing as before; only now
his sword was running blood to the hilt, and himself so swelled with
triumph and fallen into so fine an attitude, that he looked to be
invincible. Right before him on the floor was Mr. Shuan, on his hands
and knees; the blood was pouring from his mouth, and he was sinking
slowly lower, with a terrible, white face; and just as I looked, some of
those from behind caught hold of him by the heels and dragged him bodily
out of the round-house. I believe he died as they were doing it.
"There's one of your Whigs for ye!" cried Alan; and then turning to me,
he asked if I had done much execution.
I told him I had winged one, and thought it was the captain.
"And I've settled two," says he. "No, there's not enough blood let;
they'll be back again. To your watch, David. This was but a dram before
meat."
I settled back to my place, re-charging the three pistols I had fired,
and keeping watch with both eye and ear.
Our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, and that so loudly
that I could hear a word or two above the washing of the seas.
"It was Shuan bauchled[15] it," I heard one say.
And another answered him with a "Wheesht, man! He's paid the piper."
After that the voices fell again into the same muttering as before. Only
now, one person spoke most of the time, as though laying down a plan,
and first one and then another answered him briefly, like men taking
orders. By this, I made sure they were coming on again, and told Alan.
"It's what we have to pray for," said he. "Unless we can give them a
good distaste of us, and done with it, there'll be nae sleep for either
you or me. But this time, mind, they'll be in earnest."
By this, my pistols were ready, and there was nothing to do but listen
and wait. While the brush lasted, I had not the time to think if I was
frighted; but now, when all was still again, my mind ran upon nothing
else. The thought of the sharp swords and the cold steel was strong in
me; and presently, when I began to hear stealthy steps and a brushing of
men's clothes against the round-house wall, and knew they were taking
their places in the dark, I could have found it in my mind to cry out
aloud.
All this was upon Alan's side; and I had begun to think my share of the
fight was at an end, when I heard some one drop softly on the roof above
me.
Then there came a single call on the sea-pipe, and that was the signal.
A knot of them made one rush of it, cutlass in hand, against the door;
and at the same moment the glass of the skylight was dashed in a
thousand pieces, and a man leaped through and landed on the floor.
Before he got his feet, I had clapped a pistol to his back, and might
have shot him too; only at the touch of him (and him alive) my whole
flesh misgave me, and I could no more pull the trigger than I could have
flown.
He had dropped his cutlass as he jumped, and when he felt the pistol,
whipped straight round and laid hold of me, roaring out an oath; and at
that either my courage came again, or I grew so much afraid as came to
the same thing; for I gave a shriek and shot him in the midst of the
body. He gave the most horrible ugly groan and fell to the floor. The
foot of a second fellow, whose legs were dangling through the skylight,
struck me at the same time upon the head; and at that I snatched another
pistol and shot this one through the thigh, so that he slipped through
and tumbled in a lump on his companion's body. There was no talk of
missing, any more than there was time to aim. I clapped the muzzle to
the very place and fired.
I might have stood and stared at them for long, but I heard Alan shout
as if for help, and that brought me to my senses.
He had kept the door so long; but one of the seamen, while he was
engaged with others, had run in under his guard and caught him about the
body. Alan was dirking him with his left hand, but the fellow clung like
a leech. Another had broken in and had his cutlass raised. The door was
thronged with their faces. I thought we were lost, and, catching up my
cutlass, fell on them in flank.
But I had not time to be of help. The wrestler dropped at last; and
Alan, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a bull,
roaring as he went. They broke before him like water, turning, and
running, and falling one against another in their haste. The sword in
his hands flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing
enemies; and at every flash there came the scream of a man hurt. I was
still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and Alan was
driving them along the deck as a sheep-dog chases sheep.
Yet he was no sooner out than he was back again, being as cautious as he
was brave; and meanwhile the seamen continued running and crying out as
if he was still behind them; and we heard them tumble one upon another
into the forecastle, and clap-to the hatch upon the top.
The round-house was like a shambles; three were dead inside, another lay
in his death-agony across the threshold; and there were Alan and I
victorious and unhurt.
He came up to me with open arms. "Come to my arms!" he cried, and
embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheeks. "David," said he, "I love
you like a brother. And O, man," he cried in a kind of ecstasy, "am I
no' a bonny fighter?"
Thereupon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through
each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other. As he
did so, he kept humming and singing and whistling to himself, like a man
trying to recall an air; only what _he_ was trying was to make one. All
the while, the flush was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a
five-year-old child's with a new toy. And presently he sat down upon
the table, sword in hand; the air that he was making all the time began
to run a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst
with a great voice into a Gaelic song.
I have translated it here, not in verse (of which I have no skill) but
at least in the king's English. He sang it often afterwards, and the
thing became popular; so that I have heard it, and had it explained to
me, many's the time.
This is the song of the sword of Alan:
The smith made it,
The fire set it;
Now it shines in the hand of Alan Breck.
Their eyes were many and bright,
Swift were they to behold,
Many the hands they guided:
The sword was alone.
The dun deer troop over the hill,
They are many, the hill is one:
The dun deer vanish,
The hill remains.
Come to me from the hills of heather,
Come from the isles of the sea.
O far-beholding eagles,
Here is your meat.
Now this song which he made (both words and music) in the hour of our
victory, is something less than just to me, who stood beside him in the
tussle. Mr. Shuan and five more were either killed outright or
thoroughly disabled; but of these, two fell by my hand, the two that
came by the skylight. Four more were hurt, and of that number, one (and
he not the least important) got his hurt from me. So that, altogether, I
did my fair share both of the killing and the wounding, and might have
claimed a place in Alan's verses. But poets have to think upon their
rhymes; and in good prose talk Alan always did me more than justice.
In the meanwhile, I was innocent of any wrong being done me. For not
only I knew no word of the Gaelic; but what with the long suspense of
the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting,
and, more than all, the horror I had of some of my own share in it, the
thing was no sooner over than I was glad to stagger to a seat. There was
that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought of
the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a
sudden, and before I had a guess of what was coming, I began to sob and
cry like any child.
Alan clapped my shoulder, and said I was a brave lad and wanted nothing
but a sleep.
"I'll take the first watch," said he. "Ye've done well by me, David,
first and last; and I wouldn't lose you for all Appin--no, nor for
Breadalbane."
So I made up my bed on the floor; and he took the first spell, pistol in
hand and sword on knee, three hours by the captain's watch upon the
wall. Then he roused me up, and I took my turn of three hours; before
the end of which it was broad day, and a very quiet morning, with a
smooth, rolling sea that tossed the ship and made the blood run to and
fro on the round-house floor, and a heavy rain that drummed upon the
roof. All my watch there was nothing stirring; and by the banging of the
helm I knew they had even no one at the tiller. Indeed (as I learned
afterwards) there were so many of them hurt or dead, and the rest in so
ill a temper, that Mr. Riach and the captain had to take turn and turn
like Alan and me, or the brig might have gone ashore and nobody the
wiser. It was a mercy the night had fallen so still, for the wind had
gone down as soon as the rain began. Even as it was, I judged by the
wailing of a great number of gulls that went crying and fishing round
the ship, that she must have drifted pretty near the coast or one of the
islands of the Hebrides; and at last, looking out of the door of the
round-house, I saw the great stone hills of Skye on the right hand, and,
a little more astern, the strange isle of Rum.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] Bungled.
CHAPTER XI
THE CAPTAIN KNUCKLES UNDER
Alan and I sat down to breakfast about six of the clock. The floor was
covered with broken glass and in a horrid mess of blood, which took away
my hunger. In all other ways we were in a situation not only agreeable
but merry; having ousted the officers from their own cabin, and having
at command all the drink in the ship--both wine and spirits--and all the
dainty part of what was eatable, such as the pickles and the fine sort
of bread. This, of itself, was enough to set us in good humour; but the
richest part of it was this, that the two thirstiest men that ever came
out of Scotland (Mr. Shuan being dead) were now shut in the fore-part of
the ship and condemned to what they hated most--cold water.
"And depend upon it," Alan said, "we shall hear more of them ere long.
Ye may keep a man from the fighting but never from his bottle."
We made good company for each other. Alan, indeed, expressed himself
most lovingly; and taking a knife from the table, cut me off one of the
silver buttons from his coat.
"I had them," says he, "from my father, Duncan Stewart; and now give ye
one of them to be a keepsake for last night's work. And wherever ye go
and show that button, the friends of Alan Breck will come around you."
He said this as if he had been Charlemagne, and commanded armies; and
indeed, much as I admired his courage, I was always in danger of smiling
at his vanity: in danger, I say, for had I not kept my countenance, I
would be afraid to think what a quarrel might have followed.
As soon as we were through with our meal, he rummaged in the captain's
locker till he found a clothes-brush; and then, taking off his coat,
began to visit his suit and brush away the stains, with such care and
labour as I supposed to have been only usual with women. To be sure, he
had no other; and, besides (as he said), it belonged to a king, and so
behoved to be royally looked after.
For all that, when I saw what care he took to pluck out the threads
where the button had been cut away, I put a higher value on his gift.
He was still so engaged when we were hailed by Mr. Riach from the deck,
asking for a parley; and I, climbing through the skylight and sitting on
the edge of it, pistol in hand and with a bold front, though inwardly in
fear of broken glass, hailed him back again and bade him speak out. He
came to the edge of the round-house, and stood on a coil of rope, so
that his chin was on a level with the roof; and we looked at each other
a while in silence. Mr. Riach, as I do not think he had been very
forward in the battle, so he had got off with nothing worse than a blow
upon the cheek: but he looked out of heart and very weary, having been
all night afoot, either standing watch or doctoring the wounded.
"This is a bad job," said he at last, shaking his head.
"It was none of our choosing," said I.
"The captain," says he, "would like to speak with your friend. They
might speak at the window."
"And how do we know what treachery he means?" cried I.
"He means none, David," returned Mr. Riach, "and if he did, I'll tell ye
the honest truth, we couldna get the men to follow."
"Is that so?" said I.
"I'll tell ye more than that," said he. "It's not only the men; it's me.
I'm frich'ened, Davie." And he smiled across at me. "No," he continued,
"what we want is to be shut of him."
Thereupon I consulted with Alan, and the parley was agreed to and parole
given upon either side; but this was not the whole of Mr. Riach's
business, and he now begged me for a dram with such instancy and such
reminders of his former kindness, that at last I handed him a pannikin
with about a gill of brandy. He drank a part, and then carried the rest
down upon the deck, to share it (I suppose) with his superior.
A little after, the captain came (as was agreed) to one of the windows,
and stood there in the rain, with his arm in a sling, and looking stern
and pale, and so old that my heart smote me for having fired upon him.
Alan at once held a pistol in his face.
"Put that thing up!" said the captain. "Have I not passed my word, sir?
or do you seek to affront me?"
"Captain," says Alan, "I doubt your word is a breakable. Last night ye
haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife; and then passed me your
word, and gave me your hand to back it; and ye ken very well what was
the upshot. Be damned to your word!" says he.
"Well, well, sir," said the captain, "ye'll get little good by
swearing." (And truly that was a fault of which the captain was quite
free.) "But we have other things to speak," he continued bitterly.
"Ye've made a sore hash of my brig; I haven't hands enough left to work
her; and my first officer (whom I could ill spare) has got your sword
throughout his vitals, and passed without speech. There is nothing left
me, sir, but to put back into the port of Glasgow after hands; and there
(by your leave) ye will find them that are better able to talk to you."
"Ay?" said Alan; "and faith, I'll have a talk with them mysel'! Unless
there's naebody speaks English in that town, I have a bonny tale for
them. Fifteen tarry sailors upon the one side, and a man and a halfling
boy upon the other! O, man, it's peetiful."
Hoseason flushed red.
"No," continued Alan, "that'll no' do. Ye'll just have to set me ashore
as we agreed."
"Ay," said Hoseason, "but my first officer is dead--ye ken best how.
There's none of the rest of us acquaint with this coast, sir; and it's
one very dangerous to ships."
"I give ye your choice," says Alan. "Set me on dry ground in Appin, or
Ardgour, or in Morven, or Arisaig, or Morar; or, in brief, where ye
please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of
the Campbells. That's a broad target. If ye miss that, ye must be as
feckless at the sailoring as I have found ye at the fighting. Why, my
poor country-people in their bit cobles[16] pass from island to island
in all weathers--ay, and by night too, for the matter of that."
"A coble's not a ship, sir," said the captain. "It has nae draught of
water."
"Well, then, to Glasgow if ye list!" says Alan. "We'll have the laugh of
ye at the least."
"My mind runs little upon laughing," said the captain. "But all this
will cost money, sir."
"Well, sir," says Alan, "I am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye
land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put me in the Linnhe Loch."
"But see, sir, where we lie we are but a few hours' sail from
Ardnamurchan," said Hoseason. "Give me sixty, and I'll set ye there."
"And I'm to wear my brogues and run jeopardy of the red-coats to please
you?" cries Alan. "No, sir; if ye want sixty guineas earn them, and set
me in my own country."
"It's to risk the brig, sir," said the captain, "and your own lives
along with her."
"Take it or want it," says Alan.
"Could ye pilot us at all?" asked the captain, who was frowning to
himself.
"Well, it's doubtful," said Alan. "I'm more of a fighting man (as ye
have seen for yoursel') than a sailor-man. But I have been often enough
picked up and set down upon this coast and should ken something of the
lie of it."
The captain shook his head, still frowning.
"If I had lost less money on this unchancy cruise," says he, "I would
see you in a rope's-end before I risked my brig, sir. But be it as ye
will. As soon as I get a slant of wind (and there's some coming, or I'm
the more mistaken) I'll put it in hand. But there's one thing more. We
may meet in with a King's ship, and she may lay us aboard, sir, with no
blame of mine: they keep the cruisers thick upon this coast, ye ken who
for. Now, sir, if that was to befall, ye might leave the money."
"Captain," says Alan, "if ye see a pennant it shall be your part to run
away.--And now, as I hear you're a little short of brandy in the
fore-part, I'll offer ye a change: a bottle of brandy against two
buckets of water."
That was the last clause of the treaty, and was duly executed on both
sides; so that Alan and I could at last wash out the round-house and be
quit of the memorials of those whom we had slain, and the captain and
Mr. Riach could be happy again in their own way, the name of which was
drink.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] Coble: a small boat used in fishing.
CHAPTER XII
I HEAR OF THE "RED FOX"
Before we had done cleaning out the round-house a breeze sprang up from
a little to the east of north. This blew off the rain and brought out
the sun.
And here I must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map.
On the day when the fog fell and we ran down Alan's boat, we had been
running through the Little Minch. At dawn after the battle, we lay
becalmed to the west of the Isle of Canna, or between that and Isle
Eriska in the chain of the Long Island. Now to get from there to the
Linnhe Loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the Sound of
Mull. But the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his brig so
deep among the islands; and, the wind serving well, he preferred to go
by west of Tiree and come up under the southern coast of the great Isle
of Mull.
All day the breeze held in the same point, and rather freshened than
died down; and towards afternoon a swell began to set in from round the
outer Hebrides. Our course, to go round about the inner isles, was to
the west of south, so that at first we had this swell upon our beam, and
were much rolled about. But after nightfall, when we had turned the end
of Tiree and began to head more to the east, the sea came right astern.
Meanwhile, the early part of the day, before the swell came up, was very
pleasant; sailing, as we were, in a bright sunshine and with many
mountainous islands upon different sides. Alan and I sat in the
round-house with the doors open on each side (the wind being straight
astern), and smoked a pipe or two of the captain's fine tobacco. It was
at this time we heard each other's stories, which was the more
important to me, as I gained some knowledge of that wild Highland
country on which I was so soon to land. In those days, so close on the
back of the great rebellion, it was needful a man should know what he
was doing when he went upon the heather.
It was I that showed the example, telling him all my misfortune; which
he heard with great good-nature. Only, when I came to mention that good
friend of mine, Mr. Campbell the minister, Alan fired up and cried out
that he hated all that were of that name.
"Why," said I, "he is a man you should be proud to give your hand to."
"I know nothing I would help a Campbell to," says he, "unless it was a
leaden bullet. I would hunt all of that name like blackcocks. If I lay
dying I would crawl upon my knees to my chamber window for a shot at
one."
"Why, Alan," I cried, "what ails ye at the Campbells?"
"Well," says he, "ye ken very well that I am an Appin Stewart, and the
Campbells have long harried and wasted those of my name; ay, and got
lands of us by treachery--but never with the sword," he cried loudly,
and with the word brought down his fist upon the table. But I paid the
less attention to this, for I knew it was usually said by those who have
the underhand. "There's more than that," he continued, "and all in the
same story: lying words, lying papers, tricks fit for a peddler, and the
show of what's legal over all, to make a man the more angry."
"You that are so wasteful of your buttons," said I, "I can hardly think
you would be a good judge of business."
"Ah!" says he, falling again to smiling, "I got my wastefulness from the
same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan
Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and
the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to
say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He
was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other
gentleman privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for
him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland
swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to
London town, to let him see it at the best. So they were had into the
palace and showed the whole art of the sword for two hours at a stretch,
before King George and Queen Carline, and the Butcher Cumberland, and
many more of whom I havena mind. And when they were through, the King
(for all he was a rank usurper) spoke them fair, and gave each man three
guineas in his hand. Now, as they were going out of the palace they had
a porter's lodge to go by; and it came in on my father, as he was
perhaps the first private Hieland gentleman that had ever gone by that
door, it was right he should give the poor porter a proper notion of
their quality. So he gives the King's three guineas into the man's hand,
as if it was his common custom; the three others that came behind him
did the same; and there they were on the street, never a penny the
better for their pains. Some say it was one that was the first to fee
the King's porter; and some say it was another; but the truth of it is
that it was Duncan Stewart, as I am willing to prove with either sword
or pistol. And that was the father that I had, God rest him!"
"I think he was not the man to leave you rich," said I.
"And that's true," said Alan. "He left me my breeks to cover me, and
little besides. And that was how I came to enlist, which was a black
spot upon my character at the best of times, and would still be a sore
job for me if I fell among the red-coats."
"What," cried I, "were you in the English army?"
"That was I," said Alan. "But I deserted to the right side at
Prestonpans--and that's some comfort."
I could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an
unpardonable fault in honour. But for all I was so young, I was wiser
than say my thought. "Dear, dear," says I, "the punishment is death."
"Ay," said he, "if they got hands on me it would be a short shrift and a
lang tow for Alan! But I have the King of France's commission in my
pocket, which would aye be some protection."
"I misdoubt it much," said I.
"I have doubts mysel'," said Alan drily.
"And, good heaven, man," cried I, "you that are a condemned rebel, and a
deserter, and a man of the French King's--what tempts ye back into this
country? It's a braving of Providence."
"Tut!" says Alan, "I have been back every year since forty-six!"
"And what brings ye, man?" cried I.
"Well, ye see, I weary for my friends and country," said he. "France is
a braw place, nae doubt; but I weary for the heather and the deer. And
then I have bit things that I attend to. Whiles I pick up a few lads to
serve the King of France: recruits, ye see; and that's aye a little
money. But the heart of the matter is the business of my chief,
Ardshiel."
"I thought they called your chief Appin," said I.
"Ay, but Ardshiel is the captain of the clan," said he, which scarcely
cleared my mind. "Ye see, David, he that was all his life so great a
man, and come of the blood and bearing the name of kings, is now brought
down to live in a French town like a poor and private person. He that
had four hundred swords at his whistle, I have seen, with these eyes of
mine, buying butter in the market-place, and taking it home in a
kale-leaf. This is not only a pain but a disgrace to us of his family
and clan. There are the bairns forbye, the children and the hope of
Appin, that must be learned their letters and how to hold a sword, in
that far country. Now, the tenants of Appin have to pay a rent to King
George; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and
what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the
poor folk scrape up a second rent for Ardshiel. Well, David, I'm the
hand that carries it." And he struck the belt about his body, so that
the guineas rang.
"Do they pay both?" cried I.
"Ay, David, both," says he.
"What! two rents?" I repeated.
"Ay, David," says he. "I told a different tale to yon captain man; but
this is the truth of it. And it's wonderful to me how little pressure is
needed. But that's the handiwork of my good kinsman and my father's
friend, James of the Glens; James Stewart that is: Ardshiel's
half-brother. He it is that gets the money in, and does the management."
This was the first time I heard the name of that James Stewart, who was
afterwards so famous at the time of his hanging. But I took little heed
at the moment, for all my mind was occupied with the generosity of these
poor Highlanders.
"I call it noble," I cried. "I'm a Whig, or little better; but I call it
noble."
"Ay," said he, "ye're a Whig, but ye're a gentleman; and that's what
does it. Now, if ye were one of the cursed race of Campbell, ye would
gnash your teeth to hear tell of it. If ye were the Red Fox".... And at
that name his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking. I have seen
many a grim face, but never a grimmer than Alan's when he had named the
Red Fox.
"And who is the Red Fox?" I asked, daunted, but still curious.
"Who is he?" cried Alan. "Well, and I'll tell you that. When the men of
the clans were broken at Culloden, and the good cause went down, and the
horses rode over the fetlocks in the best blood of the north, Ardshiel
had to flee like a poor deer upon the mountains--he and his lady and his
bairns. A sair job we had of it before we got him shipped; and while he
still lay in the heather, the English rogues, that couldna come at his
life, were striking at his rights. They stripped him of his powers; they
stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of
his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries; ay, and the
very clothes off their backs--so that it's now a sin to wear a tartan
plaid, and a man may be cast into a gaol if he has but a kilt about his
legs. One thing they couldna kill. That was the love the clansmen bore
their chief. These guineas are the proof of it. And now, in there steps
a man, a Campbell, red-headed Colin of Glenure----"
"Is that him you call the Red Fox?" said I.
"Will ye bring me his brush?" cries Alan fiercely. "Ay, that's the man.
In he steps, and gets papers from King George, to be so-called King's
factor on the lands of Appin. And at first he sings small, and is
hail-fellow-well-met with Sheamus--that's James of the Glens, my
chieftain's agent. But by-and-by, that came to his ears that I have just
told you; how the poor commons of Appin, the farmers and the crofters
and the boumen, were wringing their very plaids to get a second rent,
and send it over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. What was it ye
called it, when I told ye?"
"I called it noble, Alan," said I.
"And you little better than a common Whig!" cries Alan. "But when it
came to Colin Roy, the black Campbell blood in him ran wild. He sat
gnashing his teeth at the wine-table. What! should a Stewart get a bite
of bread, and him not be able to prevent it? Ah! Red Fox, if ever I hold
you at a gun's end, the Lord have pity upon ye!" (Alan stopped to
swallow down his anger.) "Well, David, what does he do? He declares all
the farms to let. And, thinks he, in his black heart, 'I'll soon get
other tenants that'll overbid these Stewarts, and Maccolls, and Macrobs'
(for these are all names in my clan, David), 'and then,' thinks he,
'Ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a French roadside.'"
"Well," said I, "what followed?"
Alan laid down his pipe, which he had long since suffered to go out, and
set his two hands upon his knees.
"Ay," said he, "ye'll never guess that! For these same Stewarts, and
Maccolls, and Macrobs (that had two rents to pay, one to King George by
stark force, and one to Ardshiel by natural kindness) offered him a
better price than any Campbell in all broad Scotland; and far he sent
seeking them--as far as to the sides of Clyde and the cross of
Edinburgh--seeking, and fleeching, and begging them to come, where there
was a Stewart to be starved and a red-headed hound of a Campbell to be
pleasured!"
"Well, Alan," said I, "that is a strange story, and a fine one too. And
Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten."
"Him beaten?" echoed Alan. "It's little ye ken of Campbells, and less of
the Red Fox. Him beaten? No: nor will be, till his blood's on the
hillside! But if the day comes, David man, that I can find time and
leisure for a bit of hunting, there grows not enough heather in all
Scotland to hide him from my vengeance!"
"Man Alan," said I, "ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow
off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no
harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he
next?"
"And that's a good observe, David," said Alan. "Troth and indeed, they
will do him no harm; the more's the pity! And barring that about
Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae
Christian), I am much of your mind."
"Opinion here or opinion there," said I, "it's a kennt thing that
Christianity forbids revenge."
"Ay," said he, "it's well seen it was a Campbell taught ye! It would be
a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing
as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush! But that's nothing to the
point. This is what he did."
"Ay," said I, "come to that."
"Well, David," said he, "since he couldna be rid of the loyal commons by
fair means, he swore he would be rid of them by foul. Ardshiel was to
starve: that was the thing he aimed at. And since them that fed him in
his exile wouldna be bought out--right or wrong, he would drive them
out. Therefore he sent for lawyers, and papers, and red-coats to stand
at his back. And the kindly folk of that country must all pack and
tramp, every father's son out of his father's house, and out of the
place where he was bred and fed, and played when he was a callant. And
who are to succeed them? Bare-leggit beggars! King George is to whistle
for his rents; he maun dow with less; he can spread his butter thinner:
what cares Red Colin? If he can hurt Ardshiel, he has his wish; if he
can pluck the meat from my chieftain's table, and the bit toys out of
his children's hands, he will gang hame singing to Glenure!"
"Let me have a word," said I. "Be sure, if they take less rents, be sure
Government has a finger in the pie. It's not this Campbell's fault,
man--it's his orders. And if ye killed this Colin to-morrow, what better
would ye be? There would be another factor in his shoes, as fast as spur
can drive."
"Ye're a good lad in a fight," said Alan; "but, man! ye have Whig blood
in ye!"
He spoke kindly enough, but there was so much anger under his contempt
that I thought it was wise to change the conversation. I expressed my
wonder how, with the Highlands covered with troops, and guarded like a
city in a siege, a man in his situation could come and go without
arrest.
"It's easier than ye would think," said Alan. "A bare hillside (ye see)
is like all one road; if there's a sentry at one place, ye just go by
another. And then the heather's a great help. And everywhere there are
friends' houses and friends' byres and haystacks. And besides, when folk
talk of a country covered with troops, it's but a kind of a byword at
the best. A soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles. I have
fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a
fine trout; and I have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another,
and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling. This was it," said
he, and whistled me the air.
"And then, besides," he continued, "it's no' sae bad now as it was in
forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with
never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what
tenty[17] folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to
ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like
Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and
oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to decide what
folk'll bear, and what they will not. Or why would Red Colin be riding
his horse all over my poor country of Appin, and never a pretty lad to
put a bullet in him?"
And with this Alan fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad
and silent.
I will add the rest of what I have to say about my friend, that he was
skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipe-music; was a
well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in
French and English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent
fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon.
For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But the
worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick
quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle
of the round-house. But whether it was because I had done well myself,
or because I had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more
than I can tell. For though he had a great taste for courage in other
men, yet he admired it most in Alan Breck.
FOOTNOTE:
[17] Careful.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LOSS OF THE BRIG
It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that
season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright),
when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door.
"Here," said he, "come out and see if ye can pilot."
"Is this one of your tricks?" asked Alan.
"Do I look like tricks?" cries the captain. "I have other things to
think of--my brig's in danger!"
By the concerned look of his face, and above all by the sharp tones in
which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly
earnest; and so Alan and I, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on
deck.
The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of
daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly.
The brig was close-hauled, so as to round the south-west corner of the
Island of Mull, the hills of which (and Ben More above them all, with a
wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the larboard bow. Though
it was no good point of sailing for the _Covenant_, she tore through the
seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the
westerly swell.
Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun
to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when, the
brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to
us to look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the
moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.
"What do ye call that?" asked the captain gloomily.
"The sea breaking on a reef," said Alan. "And now ye ken where it is;
and what better would ye have?"
"Ay," said Hoseason, "if it was the only one."
And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther
to the south.
"There!" said Hoseason. "Ye see for yourself. If I had kennt of these
reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared, it's not sixty
guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a
stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?"
"I'm thinking," said Alan, "these'll be what they call the Torran
Rocks."
"Are there many of them?" says the captain.
"Truly, sir, I am nae pilot," said Alan; "but it sticks in my mind there
are ten miles of them."
Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.
"There's a way through them, I suppose?" said the captain.
"Doubtless," said Alan, "but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once
more that it is clearer under the land."
"So?" said Hoseason. "We'll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Riach; we'll
have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we can take her, sir;
and even then we'll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that
stoneyard on our lee. Well, we're in for it now, and may as well crack
on."
With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to the
foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these
being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their
work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Riach to go aloft, and he sat there
looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw.
"The sea to the south is thick," he cried; and then, after a while, "it
does seem clearer in by the land."
"Well, sir," said Hoseason to Alan, "we'll try your way of it. But I
think I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God you're right."
"Pray God I am!" says Alan to me. "But where did I hear it? Well, well,
it will be as it must."
As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here
and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes cried down to us to
change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so
close on the brig's weather-board that when a sea burst upon it the
lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain.
The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day,
which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of
the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the
other, and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and
looking and as steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown well
in the fighting, but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and
admired them all the more because I found Alan very white.
"Ochone, David," says he, "this is no' the kind of death I fancy!"
"What, Alan!" I cried, "you're not afraid?"
"No," said he, wetting his lips, "but you'll allow yourself it's a cold
ending."
By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a
reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and
begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the tail of the land ran very
strong, and threw the brig about. Two hands were put to the helm, and
Hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to see
three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a
living thing) struggle against and drive them back. This would have been
the greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of
obstacles. Mr. Riach, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear
water ahead.
"Ye were right," said Hoseason to Alan. "Ye have saved the brig, sir;
I'll mind that when we come to clear accounts," and I believe he not
only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did
the _Covenant_ hold in his affections.
But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise
than he forecast.
"Keep her away a point," sings out Mr. Riach. "Reef to windward!"
And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind
out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next
moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the
deck, and came near to shake Mr. Riach from his place upon the mast.
I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck was close
in under the south-west end of Mull, off a little isle they call
Earraid, which lay low and black upon the larboard. Sometimes the swell
broke clean over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the
reef, so that we could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with
the great noise of the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the
flying of the spray in the moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think
my head must have been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand
the things I saw.
Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and,
still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set
my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for
the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the
heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all
wrought like horses while we could.
Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the
fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in
their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved.
The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He stood
holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud
whenever the ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like wife and child
to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor
Ransome; but, when it came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with
her.
All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one other
thing: that I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what country it
was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was the
land of the Campbells.
We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and
cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when
this man sang out pretty shrill: "For God's sake, hold on!" We knew by
his tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough,
there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted
her over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too
weak, I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean
over the bulwarks into the sea.
I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the
moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I
cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how
often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while, I was
being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed
whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits that I was neither
sorry nor afraid.
Presently I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And
then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself.
It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far
I had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain
she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether
or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low
down to see.
While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us
where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and
bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract
swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a
glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I
had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know
it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so
fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that
play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.
I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold
as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see
in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in
the rocks.
"Well," thought I to myself, "if I cannot get as far as that, it's
strange!"
I had no skill of swimming, Essen Water being small in our
neighbourhood; but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and
kicked out with both feet, I soon began to find that I was moving. Hard
work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking and
splashing, I had got well in between the points of a sandy bay
surrounded by low hills.
The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon
shone clear; and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so
desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so
shallow that I could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, I
cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both at least, I was:
tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to God as I trust I
have been often, though never with more cause.
CHAPTER XIV
THE ISLET
With my stepping ashore I began the most unhappy part of my adventures.
It was half-past twelve in the morning, and though the wind was broken
by the land, it was a cold night. I dared not sit down (for I thought I
should have frozen), but took off my shoes and walked to and fro upon
the sand, barefoot, and beating my breast with infinite weariness. There
was no sound of man or cattle; not a cock crew, though it was about the
hour of their first waking; only the surf broke outside in the distance,
which put me in mind of my perils and those of my friend. To walk by the
sea at that hour of the morning, and in a place so desert-like and so
lonesome, struck me with a kind of fear.
As soon as the day began to break I put on my shoes and climbed a
hill--the ruggedest scramble I ever undertook--falling, the whole way,
between big blocks of granite, or leaping from one to another. When I
got to the top the dawn was come. There was no sign of the brig, which
must have lifted from the reef and sunk. The boat, too, was nowhere to
be seen. There was never a sail upon the ocean; and in what I could see
of the land was neither house nor man.
I was afraid to think what had befallen my shipmates, and afraid to look
longer at so empty a scene. What with my wet clothes and weariness, and
my belly, that now began to ache with hunger, I had enough to trouble me
without that. So I set off eastward along the south coast, hoping to
find a house where I might warm myself, and perhaps get news of those I
had lost. And at the worst, I considered the sun would soon rise and dry
my clothes.
After a little, my way was stopped by a creek or inlet of the sea, which
seemed to run pretty deep into the land; and as I had no means to get
across, I must needs change my direction to go about the end of it. It
was still the roughest kind of walking; indeed the whole, not only of
Earraid, but of the neighbouring part of Mull (which they call the Ross)
is nothing but a jumble of granite rocks with heather in among. At first
the creek kept narrowing as I had looked to see; but presently to my
surprise it began to widen out again. At this I scratched my head, but
had still no notion of the truth; until at last I came to a rising
ground, and it burst upon me all in a moment that I was cast upon a
little barren isle, and cut off on every side by the salt seas.
Instead of the sun rising to dry me, it came on to rain, with a thick
mist; so that my case was lamentable.
I stood in the rain, and shivered, and wondered what to do, till it
occurred to me that perhaps the creek was fordable. Back I went to the
narrowest point and waded in. But not three yards from shore I plumped
in head over ears; and if ever I was heard of more it was rather by
God's grace than my own prudence. I was no wetter (for that could hardly
be), but I was all the colder for this mishap; and having lost another
hope was the more unhappy.
And now, all at once, the yard came in my head. What had carried me
through the roost would surely serve me to cross this little quiet creek
in safety. With that I set off, undaunted, across the top of the isle,
to fetch and carry it back. It was a weary tramp in all ways, and if
hope had not buoyed me up, I must have cast myself down and given up.
Whether with the sea salt, or because I was growing fevered, I was
distressed with thirst, and had to stop, as I went, and drink the peaty
water out of the hags.
I came to the bay at last, more dead than alive; and at the first glance
I thought the yard was something farther out than when I left it. In I
went, for the third time, into the sea. The sand was smooth and firm,
and shelved gradually down, so that I could wade out till the water was
almost to my neck and the little waves splashed into my face. But at
that depth my feet began to leave me, and I durst venture in no farther.
As for the yard, I saw it bobbing very quietly some twenty feet beyond.
I had borne up well until this last disappointment; but at that I came
ashore, and flung myself down upon the sands and wept.
The time I spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me,
that I must pass it lightly over. In all the books I have read of people
cast away, they had either their pockets full of tools, or a chest of
things would be thrown upon the beach along with them, as if on purpose.
My case was very different. I had nothing in my pockets but money and
Alan's silver button; and, being inland bred, I was as much short of
knowledge as of means.
I knew indeed that shell-fish were counted good to eat; and among the
rocks of the isle I found a great plenty of limpets, which at first I
could scarcely strike from their places, not knowing quickness to be
needful. There were, besides, some of the little shells that we call
buckies; I think periwinkle is the English name. Of these two I made my
whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as I found them; and so hungry
was I, that at first they seemed to me delicious.
Perhaps they were out of season, or perhaps there was something wrong in
the sea about my island. But at least I had no sooner eaten my first
meal than I was seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long
time no better than dead. A second trial of the same food (indeed I had
no other) did better with me, and revived my strength. But as long as I
was on the island, I never knew what to expect when I had eaten;
sometimes all was well, and sometimes I was thrown into a miserable
sickness; nor could I ever distinguish what particular fish it was that
hurt me.
All day it streamed rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry
spot to be found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders
that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog.
The second day I crossed the island to all sides. There was no one part
of it better than another; it was all desolate and rocky; nothing living
on it but game birds which I lacked the means to kill, and the gulls
which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. But the creek,
or strait, that cut off the isle from the main land of the Ross, opened
out on the north into a bay, and the bay again opened into the sound of
Iona; and it was the neighbourhood of this place that I chose to be my
home; though if I had thought upon the very name of home in such a spot,
I must have burst out weeping.
I had good reasons for my choice. There was in this part of the isle a
little hut of a house like a pig's hut, where fishers used to sleep when
they came there upon their business; but the turf roof of it had fallen
entirely in; so that the hut was of no use to me, and gave me less
shelter than my rocks. What was more important, the shell-fish on which
I lived grew there in great plenty; when the tide was out I could gather
a peck at a time: and this was doubtless a convenience. But the other
reason went deeper. I had become in no way used to the horrid solitude
of the isle, but still looked round me on all sides (like a man that was
hunted), between fear and hope that I might see some human creature
coming. Now, from a little up the hill-side over the bay, I could catch
a sight of the great, ancient church and the roofs of the people's
houses in Iona. And on the other hand, over the low country of the Ross,
I saw smoke go up, morning and evening, as if from a homestead in a
hollow of the land.
I used to watch this smoke, when I was wet and cold, and had my head
half turned with loneliness; and think of the fireside and the company,
till my heart burned. It was the same with the roofs of Iona.
Altogether, this sight I had of men's homes and comfortable lives,
although it put a point on my own sufferings, yet it kept hope alive,
and helped me to eat my raw shell-fish (which had soon grown to be a
disgust) and saved me from the sense of horror I had whenever I was
quite alone with dead rocks, and fowls, and the rain, and the cold sea.
I say it kept hope alive; and indeed it seemed impossible that I should
be left to die on the shores of my own country, and within view of a
church tower and the smoke of men's houses. But the second day passed;
and though as long as the light lasted I kept a bright look-out for
boats on the Sound or men passing on the Ross, no help came near me. It
still rained, and I turned in to sleep, as wet as ever, and with a cruel
sore throat, but a little comforted, perhaps, by having said good-night
to my next neighbours, the people of Iona.
Charles the Second declared a man could stay outdoors more days in the
year in the climate of England than in any other. This was very like a
king, with a palace at his back and changes of dry clothes. But he must
have had better luck on his flight from Worcester than I had on that
miserable isle. It was the height of the summer; yet it rained for more
than twenty-four hours, and did not clear until the afternoon of the
third day.
This was the day of incidents. In the morning I saw a red deer, a buck
with a fine spread of antlers, standing in the rain on the top of the
island; but he had scarce seen me rise from under my rock, before he
trotted off upon the other side. I supposed he must have swum the
strait; though what should bring any creature to Earraid was more than I
could fancy.
A little after, as I was jumping about after my limpets, I was startled
by a guinea-piece, which fell upon a rock in front of me and glanced off
into the sea. When the sailors gave me my money again, they kept back
not only about a third of the whole sum, but my father's leather purse;
so that from that day out, I carried my gold loose in a pocket with a
button. I now saw there must be a hole, and clapped my hand to the place
in a great hurry. But this was to lock the stable-door after the steed
was stolen. I had left the shore at Queensferry with near on fifty
pounds; now I found no more than two guinea-pieces and a silver
shilling.
It is true I picked up a third guinea a little after, where it lay
shining on a piece of turf. That made a fortune of three pounds and four
shillings, English money, for a lad, the rightful heir of an estate, and
now starving on an isle at the extreme end of the wild Highlands.
This state of my affairs dashed me still further; and indeed my plight
on that third morning was truly pitiful. My clothes were beginning to
rot; my stockings in particular were quite worn through, so that my
shanks went naked; my hands had grown quite soft with the continual
soaking; my throat was very sore, my strength had much abated, and my
heart so turned against the horrid stuff I was condemned to eat, that
the very sight of it came near to sicken me.
And yet the worst was not yet come.
There is a pretty high rock on the north-west of Earraid, which (because
it had a flat top and overlooked the Sound) I was much in the habit of
frequenting; not that ever I stayed in one place, save when asleep, my
misery giving me no rest. Indeed, I wore myself down with continual and
aimless goings and comings in the rain.
As soon, however, as the sun came out, I lay down on the top of that
rock to dry myself. The comfort of the sunshine is a thing I cannot
tell. It set me thinking hopefully of my deliverance, of which I had
begun to despair; and I scanned the sea and the Ross with a fresh
interest. On the south of my rock, a part of the island jutted out and
hid the open ocean, so that a boat could thus come quite near me upon
that side, and I be none the wiser.
Well, all of a sudden, a coble with a brown sail and a pair of fishers
aboard of it, came flying round that corner of the isle, bound for Iona.
I shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and reached up my
hands and prayed to them. They were near enough to hear--I could even
see the colour of their hair; and there was no doubt but they observed
me, for they cried out in the Gaelic tongue, and laughed. But the boat
never turned aside, and flew on, right before my eyes, for Iona.
I could not believe such wickedness, and ran along the shore from rock
to rock, crying on them piteously; even after they were out of reach of
my voice, I still cried and waved to them; and when they were quite
gone, I thought my heart would have burst. All the time of my troubles I
wept only twice. Once, when I could not reach the yard, and now, the
second time, when these fishers turned a deaf ear to my cries. But this
time I wept and roared like a wicked child, tearing up the turf with my
nails, and grinding my face in the earth. If a wish would kill men,
those two fishers would never have seen morning, and I should likely
have died upon my island.
When I was a little over my anger, I must eat again, but with such
loathing of the mess as I could now scarce control. Sure enough, I
should have done as well to fast, for my fishes poisoned me again. I had
all my first pains; my throat was so sore I could scarce swallow; I had
a fit of strong shuddering, which clucked my teeth together; and there
came on me that dreadful sense of illness which we have no name for
either in Scots or English. I thought I should have died, and made my
peace with God, forgiving all men, even my uncle and the fishers; and as
soon as I had thus made up my mind to the worst, clearness came upon me:
I observed the night was falling dry; my clothes were dried a good deal;
truly, I was in a better case than ever before, since I had landed on
the isle; and so I got to sleep at last, with a thought of gratitude.
The next day (which was the fourth of this horrible life of mine) I
found my bodily strength run very low. But the sun shone, the air was
sweet, and what I managed to eat of the shell-fish agreed well with me
and revived my courage.
I was scarce back on my rock (where I went always the first thing after
I had eaten) before I observed a boat coming down the Sound, and with
her head, as I thought, in my direction.
I began at once to hope and fear exceedingly; for I thought these men
might have thought better of their cruelty and be coming back to my
assistance. But another disappointment, such as yesterday's, was more
than I could bear. I turned my back, accordingly, upon the sea, and did
not look again till I had counted many hundreds. The boat was still
heading for the island. The next time I counted the full thousand, as
slowly as I could, my heart beating so as to hurt me. And then it was
out of all question! She was coming straight to Earraid!
I could no longer hold myself back, but ran to the seaside, and out,
from one rock to another, as far as I could go. It is a marvel I was not
drowned; for when I was brought to a stand at last, my legs shook under
me, and my mouth was so dry I must wet it with the sea-water before I
was able to shout.
All this time the boat was coming on; and now I was able to perceive it
was the same boat and the same two men as yesterday. This I knew by
their hair, which the one had of a bright yellow and the other black.
But now there was a third man along with them, who looked to be of a
better class.
As soon as they were come within easy speech, they let down their sail
and lay quiet. In spite of my supplications, they drew no nearer in,
and, what frightened me most of all, the new man tee-hee'd with laughter
as he talked and looked at me.
Then he stood up in the boat and addressed me a long while, speaking
fast and with many wavings of his hand. I told him I had no Gaelic; and
at this he became very angry, and I began to suspect he thought he was
talking English. Listening very close, I caught the word "whateffer"
several times; but all the rest was Gaelic, and might have been Greek
and Hebrew for me.
"Whatever," said I, to show him I had caught a word.
"Yes, yes--yes, yes," says he, and then he looked at the other men, as
much as to say, "I told you I spoke English," and began again as hard as
ever in the Gaelic.
This time I picked out another word, "tide." Then I had a flash of hope.
I remembered he was always waving his hand towards the mainland of the
Ross.
"Do you mean when the tide is out----?" I cried, and could not finish.
"Yes, yes," said he. "Tide."
At that I turned tail upon their boat (where my adviser had once more
begun to tee-hee with laughter), leaped back the way I had come, from
one stone to another, and set off running across the isle as I had never
run before. In about half an hour I came out upon the shores of the
creek; and, sure enough, it was shrunk into a little trickle of water,
through which I dashed, not above my knees, and landed with a shout on
the main island.
A sea-bred boy would not have stayed a day on Earraid; which is only
what they call a tidal islet, and except in the bottom of the neaps, can
be entered and left twice in every twenty-four hours, either dry-shod,
or at the most by wading. Even I who had the tide going out and in
before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get
my shell-fish--even I (I say) if I had sat down to think, instead of
raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. It
was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. The wonder was rather
that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to
come back. I had starved with cold and hunger on that island for close
upon one hundred hours. But for the fishers, I might have left my bones
there, in pure folly. And even as it was, I had paid for it pretty dear,
not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like
a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat.
I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe
they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.
CHAPTER XV
THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON THROUGH THE ISLE OF MULL
The Ross of Mull, which I had now got upon, was rugged and trackless,
like the isle I had just left; being all bog, and briar, and big stone.
There may be roads for them that know that country well; but for my part
I had no better guide than my own nose, and no other landmark than Ben
More.
I aimed as well as I could for the smoke I had seen so often from the
island; and with all my great weariness and the difficulty of the way
came upon the house in the bottom of a little hollow about five or six
at night. It was low and longish, roofed with turf, and built of
unmortared stones; and on a mound in front of it an old gentleman sat
smoking his pipe in the sun.
With what little English he had, he gave me to understand that my
shipmates had got safe ashore, and had broken bread in that very house
on the day after.
"Was there one," I asked, "dressed like a gentleman?"
He said they all wore rough great-coats; but to be sure, the first of
them, the one that came alone, wore breeches and stockings, while the
rest had sailors' trousers.
"Ah," said I, "and he would have a feathered hat?"
He told me, no, that he was bareheaded like myself.
At first I thought Alan might have lost his hat; and then the rain came
in my mind, and I judged it more likely he had it out of harm's way
under his great-coat. This set me smiling, partly because my friend was
safe, partly to think of his vanity in dress.
And then the old gentleman clapped his hand to his brow, and cried out
that I must be the lad with the silver button.
"Why, yes!" said I, in some wonder.
"Well, then," said the old gentleman, "I have a word for you, that you
are to follow your friend to his country, by Torosay."
He then asked me how I had fared, and I told him my tale. A
south-country man would certainly have laughed; but this old gentleman
(I call him so because of his manners, for his clothes were dropping off
his back) heard me all through with nothing but gravity and pity. When I
had done, he took me by the hand, led me into his hut (it was no better)
and presented me before his wife, as if she had been the Queen and I a
duke.
The good woman set oat-bread before me and a cold grouse, patting my
shoulder and smiling to me all the time, for she had no English; and the
old gentleman (not to be behind) brewed me a strong punch out of their
country spirit. All the while I was eating, and after that when I was
drinking the punch, I could scarce come to believe in my good fortune;
and the house, though it was thick with the peat-smoke and as full of
holes as a colander, seemed like a palace.
The punch threw me in a strong sweat and a deep slumber; the good people
let me lie; and it was near noon of the next day before I took the road,
my throat already easier and my spirits quite restored by good fare and
good news. The old gentleman, although I pressed him hard, would take no
money, and gave me an old bonnet for my head; though I am free to own I
was no sooner out of view of the house than I very jealously washed this
gift of his in a wayside fountain.
Thought I to myself: "If these are the wild Highlanders, I could wish my
own folk wilder."
I not only started late, but I must have wandered nearly half the time.
True, I met plenty of people, grubbing in little miserable fields that
would not keep a cat, or herding little kine about the bigness of asses.
The Highland dress being forbidden by law since the rebellion, and the
people condemned to the Lowland habit, which they much disliked, it was
strange to see the variety of their array. Some went bare, only for a
hanging cloak or great-coat, and carried their trousers on their backs
like a useless burthen: some had made an imitation of the tartan with
little parti-coloured stripes patched together like an old wife's quilt;
others, again, still wore the Highland philabeg, but by putting a few
stitches between the legs, transformed it into a pair of trousers like a
Dutchman's. All those makeshifts were condemned and punished, for the
law was harshly applied, in hopes to break up the clan spirit; but in
that out-of-the-way, sea-bound isle, there were few to make remarks and
fewer to tell tales.
They seemed in great poverty; which was no doubt natural, now that
rapine was put down, and the chiefs kept no longer an open house; and
the roads (even such a wandering, country by-track as the one I
followed) were infested with beggars. And here again I marked a
difference from my own part of the country. For our Lowland
beggars--even the gownsmen themselves, who beg by patent--had a louting,
flattering way with them, and if you gave them a plack and asked change,
would very civilly return you a boddle. But these Highland beggars stood
on their dignity, asked alms only to buy snuff (by their account) and
would give no change.
To be sure, this was no concern of mine, except in so far as it
entertained me by the way. What was much more to the purpose, few had
any English, and these few (unless they were of the brotherhood of
beggars) not very anxious to place it at my service. I knew Torosay to
be my destination, and repeated the name to them and pointed; but
instead of simply pointing in reply, they would give me a screed of the
Gaelic that set me foolish; so it was small wonder if I went out of my
road as often as I stayed in it.
At last, about eight at night, and already very weary, I came to a lone
house where I asked admittance, and was refused until I bethought me of
the power of money in so poor a country, and held up one of my guineas
in my finger and thumb. Thereupon, the man of the house, who had
hitherto pretended to have no English, and driven me from his door by
signals, suddenly began to speak as clearly as was needful, and agreed
for five shillings to give me a night's lodging and guide me the next
day to Torosay.
I slept uneasily that night, fearing I should be robbed; but I might
have spared myself the pain; for my host was no robber, only miserably
poor and a great cheat. He was not alone in his poverty; for the next
morning we must go five miles about to the house of what he called a
rich man to have one of my guineas changed. This was perhaps a rich man
for Mull; he would have scarce been thought so in the south; for it took
all he had--the whole house was turned upside down, and a neighbour
brought under contribution, before he could scrape together twenty
shillings in silver. The odd shilling he kept for himself, protesting he
could ill afford to have so great a sum of money lying "locked up." For
all that he was very courteous and well spoken, made us both sit down
with his family to dinner, and brewed punch in a fine china bowl, over
which my rascal guide grew so merry that he refused to start.
I was for getting angry, and appealed to the rich man (Hector Maclean
was his name), who had been a witness to our bargain and to my payment
of the five shillings. But Maclean had taken his share of the punch, and
vowed that no gentleman should leave his table after the bowl was
brewed; so there was nothing for it but to sit and hear Jacobite toasts
and Gaelic songs, till all were tipsy and staggered off to the bed or
the barn for their night's rest.
Next day (the fourth of my travels) we were up before five upon the
clock; but my rascal guide got to the bottle at once, and it was three
hours before I had him clear of the house, and then (as you shall hear)
only for a worse disappointment.
As long as we went down a heathery valley that lay before Mr. Maclean's
house all went well; only my guide looked constantly over his shoulder,
and, when I asked him the cause, only grinned at me. No sooner, however,
had we crossed the back of a hill, and got out of sight of the house
windows, than he told me Torosay lay right in front, and that a hill-top
(which he pointed out) was my best land-mark.
"I care very little for that," said I, "since you are going with me."
The impudent cheat answered me in the Gaelic that he had no English.
"My fine fellow," I said, "I know very well your English comes and goes.
Tell me what will bring it back? Is it more money you wish?"
"Five shillings mair," said he, "and hersel' will bring ye there."
I reflected a while and then offered him two, which he accepted
greedily, and insisted on having in his hands at once--"for luck," as he
said, but I think it was rather for my misfortune.
The two shillings carried him not quite as many miles; at the end of
which distance he sat down upon the wayside and took off his brogues
from his feet, like a man about to rest.
I was now red-hot. "Ha!" said I, "have you no more English?"
He said impudently, "No."
At that I boiled over, and lifted my hand to strike him; and he, drawing
a knife from his rags, squatted back and grinned at me like a wild cat.
At that, forgetting everything but my anger, I ran in upon him, put
aside his knife with my left, and struck him in the mouth with the
right. I was a strong lad, and very angry, and he but a little man; and
he went down before me heavily. By good luck, his knife flew out of his
hand as he fell.
I picked up both that and his brogues, wished him a good morning, and
set off upon my way, leaving him barefoot and disarmed. I chuckled to
myself as I went, being sure I was done with that rogue, for a variety
of reasons. First, he knew he could have no more of my money; next, the
brogues were worth in that country only a few pence; and lastly, the
knife, which was really a dagger, it was against the law for him to
carry.
In about half an hour of walk I overtook a great, ragged man, moving
pretty fast, but feeling before him with a staff. He was quite blind,
and told me he was a catechist, which should have put me at my ease. But
his face went against me; it seemed dark and dangerous and secret; and
presently, as we began to go on alongside, I saw the steel butt of a
pistol sticking from under the flap of his coat-pocket. To carry such a
thing meant a fine of fifteen pounds sterling upon a first offence, and
transportation to the colonies upon a second. Nor could I quite see why
a religious teacher should go armed, or what a blind man could be doing
with a pistol.
I told him about my guide, for I was proud of what I had done, and my
vanity for once got the heels of my prudence. At the mention of the five
shillings he cried out so loud that I made up my mind I should say
nothing of the other two, and was glad he could not see my blushes.
"Was it too much?" I asked, a little faltering.
"Too much!" cries he. "Why, I will guide you to Torosay myself for a
dram of brandy. And give you the great pleasure of my company (me that
is a man of some learning) in the bargain."
I said I did not see how a blind man could be a guide: but at that he
laughed aloud, and said his stick was eyes enough for an eagle.
"In the Isle of Mull, at least," says he, "where I knew every stone and
heather-bush by mark of head. See, now," he said, striking right and
left, as if to make sure, "down there a burn is running; and at the head
of it there stands a bit of a small hill with a stone cocked upon the
top of that; and it's hard at the foot of the hill that the way runs by
to Torosay; and the way here, being for droves, is plainly trodden, and
will show grassy through the heather."
I had to own he was right in every feature, and told my wonder.
"Ha!" says he, "that's nothing. Would ye believe me now, that before the
Act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, I could
shoot? Ay could I!" cries he and then with a leer: "If ye had such a
thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show you how it's done."
I told him I had nothing of the sort, and gave him a wider berth. If he
had known, his pistol stuck at that time quite plainly out of his
pocket, and I could see the sun twinkle on the steel of the butt. But,
by the better luck for me, he knew nothing, thought all was covered, and
lied on in the dark.
He then began to question me cunningly, where I came from, whether I was
rich, whether I could change a five-shilling piece for him (which he
declared he had that moment in his sporran), and all the time he kept
edging up to me and I avoiding him. We were now upon a sort of green
cattle-track which crossed the hills towards Torosay, and we kept
changing sides upon that like dancers in a reel. I had so plainly the
upper hand that my spirits rose, and indeed I took a pleasure in this
game of blindman's-buff; but the catechist grew angrier and angrier, and
at last began to swear in Gaelic and to strike for my legs with his
staff.
Then I told him that, sure enough, I had a pistol in my pocket as well
as he, and if he did not strike across the hill due south I would even
blow his brains out.
He became at once very polite; and after trying to soften me for some
time, but quite in vain, he cursed me once more in Gaelic and took
himself off. I watched him striding along through bog and briar, tapping
with his stick, until he turned the end of a hill and disappeared in the
next hollow. Then I struck on again for Torosay, much better pleased to
be alone than to travel with that man of learning. This was an unlucky
day; and these two, of whom I had just rid myself, one after the other,
were the two worst men I met with in the Highlands.
At Torosay, on the Sound of Mull, and looking over to the mainland of
Morven, there was an inn with an innkeeper, who was a Maclean, it
appeared, of a very high family; for to keep an inn is thought even more
genteel in the Highlands than it is with us, perhaps as partaking of
hospitality, or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken. He spoke
good English, and, finding me to be something of a scholar, tried me
first in French, where he easily beat me, and then in the Latin, in
which I don't know which of us did best. This pleasant rivalry put us at
once upon friendly terms; and I sat up and drank punch with him (or, to
be more correct, sat up and watched him drink it), until he was so tipsy
that he wept upon my shoulder.
I tried him, as if by accident, with a sight of Alan's button; but it
was plain he had never seen or heard of it. Indeed, he bore some grudge
against the family and friends of Ardshiel, and before he was drunk he
read me a lampoon, in very good Latin, but with a very ill meaning,
which he had made in elegiac verses upon a person of that house.
When I told him of my catechist, he shook his head, and said I was lucky
to have got clear off. "That is a very dangerous man," he said; "Duncan
Mackiegh is his name; he can shoot by the ear at several yards, and has
been often accused of highway robberies, and once of murder."
"The cream of it is," says I, "that he called himself a catechist."
"And why should he not?" says he, "when that is what he is. It was
Maclean of Duart gave it to him because he was blind. But perhaps it was
a peety," says my host, "for he is always on the road, going from one
place to another to hear the young folk say their religion, and
doubtless that is a great temptation to the poor man."
At last, when my landlord could drink no more, he showed me to a bed,
and I lay down in very good spirits; having travelled the greater part
of that big and crooked Island of Mull, from Earraid to Torosay, fifty
miles as the crow flies, and (with my wanderings) much nearer a hundred,
in four days and with little fatigue. Indeed, I was by far in better
heart and health of body at the end of that long tramp than I had been
at the beginning.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON ACROSS MORVEN
There is a regular ferry from Torosay to Kinlochaline on the mainland.
Both shores of the sound are in the country of the strong clan of the
Macleans, and the people that passed the ferry with me were almost all
of that clan. The skipper of the boat, on the other hand, was called
Neil Roy Macrob; and since Macrob was one of the names of Alan's
clansmen, and Alan himself had sent me to that ferry, I was eager to
come to private speech of Neil Roy.
In the crowded boat this was of course impossible, and the passage was a
very slow affair. There was no wind, and as the boat was wretchedly
equipped, we could pull but two oars on one side, and one on the other.
The men gave way, however, with a good will, the passengers taking
spells to help them, and the whole company giving the time in Gaelic
boat-songs. And what with the songs, and the sea-air, and the
good-nature and spirit of all concerned, and the bright weather, the
passage was a pretty thing to have seen.
But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of Loch Aline we found a
great sea-going ship at anchor; and this I supposed at first to be one
of the King's cruisers which were kept along that coast, both summer and
winter, to prevent communication with the French. As we got a little
nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise; and, what still
more puzzled me, not only her decks, but the sea-beach also, were quite
black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between
them. Yet nearer, and there began to come to our ears a great sound of
mourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and
lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart.
Then I understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the American
colonies.
We put the ferry-boat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the
bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow-passengers,
among whom they counted some near friends. How long this might have gone
on I do not know, for they seemed to have no sense of time: but at last
the captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself (and no great
wonder) in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and
begged us to depart.
Thereupon Neil sheered off; and the chief singer in our boat struck into
a melancholy air, which was presently taken up both by the emigrants and
their friends upon the beach, so that it sounded from all sides like a
lament for the dying. I saw the tears run down the cheeks of the men and
women in the boat, even as they bent at the oars; and the circumstances
and the music of the song (which is one called "Lochaber no more") were
highly affecting even to myself.
At Kinlochaline I got Neil Roy upon one side on the beach, and said I
made sure he was one of Appin's men.
"And what for no?" said he.
"I am seeking somebody," said I; "and it comes in my mind that you will
have news of him. Alan Breck Stewart is his name." And very foolishly,
instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his
hand.
At this he drew back. "I am very much affronted," he said; "and this is
not the way that one shentleman should behave to another at all. The man
you ask for is in France; but if he was in my sporran," says he, "and
your belly full of shillings, I would not hurt a hair upon his body."
I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and, without wasting time upon
apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm.
"Aweel, aweel," said Neil; "and I think ye might have begun with that
end of the stick, whatever! But if ye are the lad with the silver
button, all is well, and I have the word to see that ye come safe. But
if ye will pardon me to speak plainly," says he, "there is a name that
you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan
Breck; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer
your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman."
It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was
the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman
until he told me so. Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his
dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he
made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the night in
Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour,
and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was
warned that I might come; the third day to be set across one loch at
Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of
James of the Glens, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal
of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the
mountains and winding about their roots. It makes the country strong to
hold and difficult to travel, but full of prodigious wild and dreadful
prospects.
I had some other advice from Neil: to speak with no one by the way, to
avoid Whigs, Campbells, and the "red-soldiers"; to leave the road and
lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming, "for it was never
chancy to meet in with them"; and, in brief, to conduct myself like a
robber or a Jacobite agent, as perhaps Neil thought me.
The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs
were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders. I was not
only discontented with my lodging, but with myself for my mismanagement
of Neil, and thought I could hardly be worse off. But very wrongly, as I
was soon to see; for I had not been half an hour at the inn (standing in
the door most of the time, to ease my eyes from the peat-smoke) when a
thunderstorm came close by, the springs broke in a little hill on which
the inn stood, and one end of the house became a running water. Places
of public entertainment were bad enough all over Scotland in those days;
yet it was a wonder to myself, when I had to go from the fireside to the
bed in which I slept, wading over the shoes.
Early in my next day's journey I overtook a little, stout, solemn man,
walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a
book, and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed
decently and plainly in something of a clerical style.
This I found to be another catechist, but of a different order from the
blind man of Mull: being indeed one of those sent out by the Edinburgh
Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, to evangelise the more
savage places of the Highlands. His name was Henderland; he spoke with
the broad south-country tongue, which I was beginning to weary for the
sound of; and, besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more
particular bond of interest. For my good friend, the minister of
Essendean, had translated into the Gaelic in his by-time a number of
hymns and pious books, which Henderland used in his work, and held in
great esteem. Indeed, it was one of these he was carrying and reading
when we met.
We fell in company at once, our ways lying together as far as to
Kingairloch. As we went, he stopped and spoke with all the wayfarers and
workers that we met or passed; and though of course I could not tell
what they discoursed about, yet I judged Mr. Henderland must be well
liked in the country-side, for I observed many of them to bring out
their mulls and share a pinch of snuff with him.
I told him as far in my affairs as I judged wise; as far, that is, as
they were none of Alan's; and gave Balachulish as the place I was
travelling to, to meet a friend; for I thought Aucharn, or even Duror,
would be too particular, and might put him on the scent.
On his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among,
the hiding priests and Jacobites, the Disarming Act, the dress, and
many other curiosities of the time and place. He seemed moderate;
blaming Parliament in several points, and especially because they had
framed the Act more severely against those who wore the dress than
against those who carried weapons.
This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the Red Fox and the
Appin tenants; questions which, I thought, would seem natural enough in
the mouth of one travelling to that country.
He said it was a bad business. "It's wonderful," said he, "where the
tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. (Ye don't
carry such a thing as snuff, do ye, Mr. Balfour? No. Well, I'm better
wanting it.) But these tenants (as I was saying) are doubtless partly
driven to it. James Stewart in Duror (that's him they call James of the
Glens) is half-brother to Ardshiel, the captain of the clan; and he is a
man much looked up to, and drives very hard. And then there's one they
call Alan Breck----"
"Ah!" cried I, "what of him?"
"What of the wind that bloweth where it listeth?" said Henderland. "He's
here and awa'; here to-day and gone to-morrow: a fair heather-cat. He
might be glowering at the two of us out of yon whin-bush, and I wouldna
wonder! Ye'll no' carry such a thing as snuff, will ye?"
I told him no, and that he had asked the same thing more than once.
"It's highly possible," said he, sighing. "But it seems strange ye
shouldna carry it. However, as I was saying, this Alan Breck is a bold,
desperate customer, and well kennt to be James's right hand. His life is
forfeit already; he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a
tenant-body was to hang back he would get a dirk in his wame."
"You make a poor story of it all, Mr. Henderland," said I. "If it is all
fear upon both sides, I care to hear no more of it."
"Na," said Mr. Henderland, "but there's love too, and self-denial that
should put the like of you and me to shame. There's something fine
about it; no' perhaps Christian, but humanly fine. Even Alan Breck, by
all that I hear, is a chield to be respected. There's many a lying
sneck-draw sits close in kirk in our own part of the country, and stands
well in the world's eye, and maybe is a far worse man, Mr. Balfour, than
yon misguided shedder of man's blood. Ay, ay, we might take a lesson by
them.--Ye'll perhaps think I've been too long in the Hielands?" he
added, smiling to me.
I told him not at all; that I had seen much to admire among the
Highlanders; and, if he came to that, Mr. Campbell himself was a
Highlander.
"Ay," said he, "that's true. It's a fine blood."
"And what is the King's agent about?" I asked.
"Colin Campbell?" says Henderland. "Putting his head in a bees' byke!"
"He is to turn the tenants out by force, I hear?" said I.
"Yes," says he, "but the business has gone back and forth, as folks say.
First, James of the Glens rode to Edinburgh, and got some lawyer (a
Stewart, nae doubt--they all hing together like bats in a steeple) and
had the proceedings stayed. And then Colin Campbell cam' in again, and
had the upper hand before the Barons of Exchequer. And now they tell me
the first of the tenants are to flit to-morrow. It's to begin at Duror
under James's very windows, which doesna seem wise, by my humble way of
it."
"Do you think they'll fight?" I asked.
"Well," says Henderland, "they're disarmed--or supposed to be--for
there's still a good deal of cold iron lying by in quiet places. And
then Colin Campbell has the sogers coming. But for all that, if I was
his lady wife, I wouldna be well pleased till I got him home again.
They're queer customers, the Appin Stewarts."
I asked if they were worse than their neighbours.
"No' they," said he. "And that's the worst part of it. For if Colin Roy
can get his business done in Appin, he has it all to begin again in the
next country, which they call Mamore, and which is one of the countries
of the Camerons. He's King's factor upon both, and from both he has to
drive out the tenants; and indeed, Mr. Balfour (to be open with ye),
it's my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he'll get his death by
the other."
So we continued talking and walking the great part of the day; until at
last, Mr. Henderland, after expressing his delight in my company, and
satisfaction at meeting with a friend of Mr. Campbell's ("whom," says
he, "I will make bold to call that sweet singer of our covenanted
Zion"), proposed that I should make a short stage, and lie the night in
his house a little beyond Kingairloch. To say truth, I was overjoyed;
for I had no great desire for John of the Claymore, and since my double
misadventure, first with the guide and next with the gentleman skipper,
I stood in some fear of any Highland stranger. Accordingly we shook
hands upon the bargain, and came in the afternoon to a small house,
standing alone by the shore of the Linnhe Loch. The sun was already gone
from the desert mountains of Ardgour upon the hither side, but shone on
those of Appin on the farther; the loch lay as still as a lake, only the
gulls were crying round the sides of it; and the whole place seemed
solemn and uncouth.
We had no sooner come to the door of Mr. Henderland's dwelling, than to
my great surprise (for I was now used to the politeness of Highlanders)
he burst rudely past me, dashed into the room, caught up a jar and a
small horn spoon, and began ladling snuff into his nose in most
excessive quantities. Then he had a hearty fit of sneezing, and looked
round upon me with a rather silly smile.
"It's a vow I took," says he. "I took a vow upon me that I wouldna carry
it. Doubtless it's a great privation; but when I think upon the martyrs,
not only to the Scottish Covenant but to other points of Christianity, I
think shame to mind it."
As soon as we had eaten (and porridge and whey was the best of the good
man's diet) he took a grave face and said he had a duty to perform by
Mr. Campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God.
I was inclined to smile at him since the business of the snuff; but he
had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. There are
two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get
none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but
Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue. And though I was a
good deal puffed up with my adventures, and with having come off, as the
saying is, with flying colours; yet he soon had me on my knees beside a
simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there.
Before we went to bed he offered me sixpence to help me on my way, out
of a scanty store he kept in the turf wall of his house; at which excess
of goodness I knew not what to do. But at last he was so earnest with
me, that I thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way,
and so left him poorer than myself.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DEATH OF THE RED FOX
The next day Mr. Henderland found for me a man who had a boat of his own
and was to cross the Linnhe Loch that afternoon into Appin, fishing. Him
he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way
I saved a long day's travel and the price of the two public ferries I
must otherwise have passed.
It was near noon before we set out; a dark day with clouds, and the sun
shining upon little patches. The sea was here very deep and still, and
had scarce a wave upon it: so that I must put the water to my lips
before I could believe it to be truly salt. The mountains on either side
were high, rough, and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of the
clouds, but all silver-laced with little water-courses where the sun
shone upon them. It seemed a hard country, this of Appin, for people to
care as much about as Alan did.
There was but one thing to mention. A little after we had started, the
sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the
waterside to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers' coats;
every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as
though the sun had struck upon bright steel.
I asked my boatman what it should be; and he answered he supposed it was
some of the red-soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against
the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and
whether it was because of my thoughts of Alan, or from something
prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time I had seen
King George's troops, I had no good will to them.
At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch
Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest
fellow, and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have
carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my
secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the
wood of Lettermore (or Lettervore, for I have heard it both ways) in
Alan's country of Appin.
This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a
mountain that overhung the loch. It had many openings and ferny howes;
and a road or bridle-track ran north and south through the midst of it,
by the edge of which, where was a spring, I sat down to eat some
oat-bread of Mr. Henderland's, and think upon my situation.
Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more
by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join
myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I
should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south
country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what Mr.
Campbell or even Mr. Henderland would think of me if they should ever
learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to
come in on me stronger than ever.
As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me
through the wood; and presently after, at the turning of the road, I saw
four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and
narrow that they came single, and led their horses by the reins. The
first was a great, red-headed gentleman, of an imperious and flushed
face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in
a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I
correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some
part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a
Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour
with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If
I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan
to be of the Argyle (or Campbell) colours. This servant had a good-sized
portmanteau strapped on his horse, and a net of lemons (to brew punch
with) hanging at the saddle-bow; as was often enough the custom with
luxurious travellers in that part of the country.
As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before,
and knew him at once to be a sheriff's officer.
I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no
reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the
first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the
way to Aucharn.
He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then,
turning to the lawyer, "Mungo," said he, "there's many a man would think
this more of a warning than two pyats. Here am I on my road to Duror on
the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken,
and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn."
"Glenure," said the other, "this is an ill subject for jesting."
These two had now drawn close up and were gazing at me, while the two
followers had halted about a stonecast in the rear.
"And what seek ye in Aucharn?" said Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure; him
they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.
"The man that lives there," said I.
"James of the Glens," says Glenure musingly; and then to the lawyer: "Is
he gathering his people, think ye?"
"Anyway," says the lawyer, "we shall do better to bide where we are, and
let the soldiers rally us."
"If you are concerned for me," said I, "I am neither of his people nor
yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no
man."
"Why, very well said," replies the factor. "But if I may make so bold as
ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he
come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell
you. I am King's factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve
flies of soldiers at my back."
"I have heard a waif word in the country," said I, a little nettled,
"that you were a hard man to drive."
He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.
"Well," said he, at last, "your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to
plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of James Stewart on
any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye
God-speed. But to-day--eh, Mungo?" And he turned again to look at the
lawyer.
But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up
the hill; and with the very sound of it Glenure fell upon the road.
"O, I am dead!" he cried, several times over.
The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant
standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked
from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his
voice that went to the heart.
"Take care of yourselves," says he. "I am dead."
He tried to open his clothes as if to look for the wound, but his
fingers slipped on the buttons. With that he gave a great sigh, his head
rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.
The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as
white as the dead man's; the servant broke out into a great noise of
crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at
them in a kind of horror. The sheriff's officer had run back at the
first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.
At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road,
and got to his own feet with a kind of stagger.
I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had
no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, "The
murderer! the murderer!"
So little a time had elapsed, that when I got to the top of the first
steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer
was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black
coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.
"Here!" I cried. "I see him!"
At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and
began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; then
he came out again on the upper side, where I could see him climbing like
a jackanapes, for that part was again very steep; and then he dipped
behind a shoulder, and I saw him no more.
All this time I had been running on my side, and had got a good way up,
when a voice cried upon me to stand.
I was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now, when I halted and
looked back, I saw all the open part of the hill below me.
The lawyer and the sheriff's officer were standing just above the road,
crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats,
musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.
"Why should I come back?" I cried. "Come you on!"
"Ten pounds if ye take that lad!" cried the lawyer. "He's an accomplice.
He was posted here to hold us in talk."
At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the
soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth
with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the
danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and
character. The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of
a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.
The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up
their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.
"Jouk[18] in here among the trees," said a voice close by.
Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so I
heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.
Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with a
fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed, it was no time for
civilities; only "Come!" says he, and set off running along the side of
the mountain towards Balachulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.
Now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the
mountain side; now crawling on all-fours among the heather. The pace was
deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time
to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder
that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height
and look back; and every time he did so there came a great far-away
cheering and crying of the soldiers.
Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the
heather, and turned to me.
"Now," said he, "it's earnest. Do as I do, for your life."
At the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced
back again across the mountain side by the same way that we had come,
only perhaps higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the upper
wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay, with
his face in the bracken, panting like a dog.
My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my
mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.
FOOTNOTE:
[18] Duck.
CHAPTER XVIII
I TALK WITH ALAN IN THE WOOD OF LETTERMORE
Alan was the first to come round. He rose, went to the border of the
wood, peered out a little, and then returned and sat down.
"Well," said he, "yon was a hot burst, David."
I said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done,
and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the
pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part
of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Alan hated; here was
Alan skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his
was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but
little. By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was
blood-guilty in the first degree; I held him in horror; I could not look
upon his face; I would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold
isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer.
"Are ye still wearied?" he asked again.
"No," said I, still with my face in the bracken; "no, I am not wearied
now, and I can speak. You and me must twine,"[19] I said. "I liked you
very well, Alan, but your ways are not mine, and they're not God's: and
the short and the long of it is just that we must twine."
"I will hardly twine from ye, David, without some kind of reason for the
same," said Alan, mighty gravely. "If ye ken anything against my
reputation, it's the least thing that ye should do, for old
acquaintance' sake, to let me hear the name of it: and if ye have only
taken a distaste to my society, it will be proper for me to judge if
I'm insulted."
"Alan," said I, "what is the sense of this? Ye ken very well yon
Campbell man lies in his blood upon the road."
He was silent for a little; then says he, "Did ever ye hear tell of the
story of the Man and the Good People?"--by which he meant the fairies.
"No," said I, "nor do I want to hear it."
"With your permission, Mr. Balfour, I will tell it you, whatever," says
Alan. "The man, ye should ken, was cast upon a rock in the sea, where it
appears the Good People were in use to come and rest as they went
through to Ireland. The name of this rock is called the Skerryvore, and
it's not far from where we suffered shipwreck. Well, it seems the man
cried so sore, if he could just see his little bairn before he died!
that at last the king of the Good People took peety upon him, and sent
one flying that brought back the bairn in a poke[20] and laid it down
beside the man where he lay sleeping. So when the man woke, there was a
poke beside him, and something into the inside of it that moved. Well,
it seemed he was one of these gentry that think aye the worst of things;
and for greater security he stuck his dirk throughout that poke before
he opened it, and there was his bairn dead. I am thinking to myself, Mr.
Balfour, that you and the man are very much alike."
"Do you mean you had no hand in it?" cried I, sitting up.
"I will tell you first of all, Mr. Balfour of Shaws, as one friend to
another," said Alan, "that if I were going to kill a gentleman, it would
not be in my own country, to bring trouble on my clan; and I would not
go wanting sword and gun, and with a long fishing-rod upon my back."
"Well," said I, "that's true!"
"And now," continued Alan, taking out his dirk and laying his hand upon
it in a certain manner, "I swear upon the Holy Iron I had neither art
nor part, act nor thought in it."
"I thank God for that!" cried I, and offered him my hand.
He did not appear to see it.
"And here is a great deal of work about a Campbell!" said he. "They are
not so scarce, that I ken!"
"At least," said I, "you cannot justly blame me, for you know very well
what you told me in the brig. But the temptation and the act are
different, I thank God again for that. We may all be tempted; but to
take a life in cold blood, Alan!" And I could say no more for the
moment. "And do you know who did it?" I added. "Do you know that man in
the black coat?"
"I have nae clear mind about his coat," said Alan cunningly; "but it
sticks in my head that it was blue."
"Blue or black, did ye know him?" said I.
"I couldna just conscientiously swear to him," says Alan. "He gaed very
close by me, to be sure, but it's a strange thing that I should just
have been tying my brogues."
"Can you swear that you don't know him, Alan?" I cried, half angered,
half in a mind to laugh at his evasions.
"No' yet," says he; "but I've a grand memory for forgetting, David."
"And yet there was one thing I saw clearly," said I, "and that was, that
you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers."
"It's very likely," said Alan; "and so would any gentleman. You and me
were innocent of that transaction."
"The better reason, since we were falsely suspected, that we should get
clear," I cried. "The innocent should surely come before the guilty."
"Why, David," said he, "the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled
in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place
for him will be the heather. Them that havena dipped their hands in any
little difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them that have.
And that is the good Christianity. For if it was the other way round
about, and the lad whom I couldna just clearly see had been in our
shoes, and we in his (as might very well have been), I think we would be
a good deal obliged to him oursel's if he would draw the soldiers."
When it came to this, I gave Alan up. But he looked so innocent all the
time, and was in such clear good faith in what he said, and so ready to
sacrifice himself for what he deemed his duty, that my mouth was closed.
Mr. Henderland's words came back to me: that we ourselves might take a
lesson by these wild Highlanders. Well, here I had taken mine. Alan's
morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them,
such as they were.
"Alan," said I, "I'll not say it's the good Christianity as I understand
it, but it's good enough. And here I offer ye my hand for the second
time."
Whereupon he gave me both of his, saying surely I had cast a spell upon
him, for he could forgive me anything. Then he grew very grave, and said
we had not much time to throw away, but must both flee that country; he,
because he was a deserter, and the whole of Appin would now be searched
like a chamber, and every one obliged to give a good account of himself;
and I, because I was certainly involved in the murder.
"O!" says I, willing to give him a little lesson, "I have no fear of the
justice of my country."
"As if this was your country!" said he. "Or as if ye would be tried
here, in a country of Stewarts!"
"It's all Scotland," said I.
"Man, I whiles wonder at ye," said Alan. "This is a Campbell that's been
killed. Well, it'll be tried in Inverara, the Campbells' head place;
with fifteen Campbells in the jury-box, and the biggest Campbell of all
(and that's the Duke) sitting cocking on the bench. Justice, David? The
same justice, by all the world, as Glenure found a while ago at the
road-side."
This frighted me a little, I confess, and would have frighted me more
if I had known how nearly exact were Alan's predictions; indeed, it was
but in one point that he exaggerated, there being but eleven Campbells
on the jury; though as the other four were equally in the Duke's
dependence, it mattered less than might appear. Still, I cried out that
he was unjust to the Duke of Argyle, who (for all he was a Whig) was yet
a wise and honest nobleman.
"Hoot!" said Alan, "the man's a Whig, nae doubt; but I would never deny
he was a good chieftain to his clan. And what would the clan think if
there was a Campbell shot, and naebody hanged, and their own chief the
Justice-General? But I have often observed," says Alan, "that you
Low-country bodies have no clear idea of what's right and wrong."
At this I did at last laugh out aloud; when to my surprise, Alan joined
in, and laughed as merrily as myself.
"Na, na," said he, "we're in the Hielands, David; and when I tell ye to
run, take my word and run. Nae doubt it's a hard thing to skulk and
starve in the heather, but it's harder yet to lie shackled in a red-coat
prison."
I asked him whither we should flee; and as he told me "to the Lowlands,"
I was a little better inclined to go with him; for, indeed, I was
growing impatient to get back and have the upper hand of my uncle.
Besides, Alan made so sure there would be no question of justice in the
matter, that I began to be afraid he might be right. Of all deaths, I
would truly like least to die by the gallows; and the picture of that
uncanny instrument came into my head with extraordinary clearness (as I
had once seen it engraved at the top of a pedlar's ballad) and took away
my appetite for courts of justice.
"I'll chance it, Alan," said I. "I'll go with you."
"But mind you," said Alan, "it's no small thing. Ye maun lie bare and
hard, and brook many an empty belly. Your bed shall be the muircock's,
and your life shall be like the hunted deer's, and ye shall sleep with
your hand upon your weapons. Ay, man, ye shall taigle many a weary foot,
or we get clear! I tell ye this at the start, for it's a life that I
ken well. But if ye ask what other chance ye have, I answer: Nane.
Either take to the heather with me, or else hang."
"And that's a choice very easily made," said I; and we shook hands upon
it.
"And now let's take another keek at the red-coats," says Alan, and he
led me to the north-eastern fringe of the wood.
Looking out between the trees we could see a great side of mountain,
running down exceeding steep into the waters of the loch. It was a rough
part, all hanging stone, and heather, and bit scrogs of birchwood; and
away at the far end towards Balachulish, little wee red soldiers were
dipping up and down over hill and howe, and growing smaller every
minute. There was no cheering now, for I think they had other uses for
what breath was left them; but they still stuck to the trail, and
doubtless thought that we were close in front of them.
Alan watched them, smiling to himself.
"Ay," said he, "they'll be gey weary before they've got to the end of
that employ! And so you and me, David, can sit down and eat a bite, and
breathe a bit longer, and take a dram from my bottle. Then we'll strike
for Aucharn, the house of my kinsman, James of the Glens, where I must
get my clothes, and my arms, and money to carry us along; and then,
David, we'll cry, 'Forth, Fortune!' and take a cast among the heather."
So we sat again and ate and drank, in a place whence we could see the
sun going down into a field of great, wild, and houseless mountains,
such as I was now condemned to wander in with my companion. Partly as we
so sat, and partly afterwards, on the way to Aucharn, each of us
narrated his adventures; and I shall here set down so much of Alan's as
seems either curious or needful.
It appears he ran to the bulwarks as soon as the wave was passed; saw me
and lost me, and saw me again, as I tumbled in the roost; and at last
had one glimpse of me clinging on the yard. It was this that put him in
some hope I would maybe get to land after all, and made him leave those
clues and messages which had brought me (for my sins) to that unlucky
country of Appin.
In the meantime, those still on the brig had got the skiff launched, and
one or two were on board of her already, when there came a second wave
greater than the first, and heaved the brig out of her place, and would
certainly have sent her to the bottom, had she not struck and caught on
some projection of the reef. When she had struck first, it had been
bows-on, so that the stern had hitherto been lowest. But now her stern
was thrown in the air, and the bows plunged under the sea; and with
that, the water began to pour into the fore-scuttle like the pouring of
a mill-dam.
It took the colour out of Alan's face even to tell what followed. For
there were still two men lying impotent in their bunks; and these,
seeing the water pour in, and thinking the ship had foundered, began to
cry out aloud, and that with such harrowing cries that all who were on
deck tumbled one after another into the skiff and fell to their oars.
They were not two hundred yards away, when there came a third great sea;
and at that the brig lifted clean over the reef; her canvas filled for a
moment, and she seemed to sail in chase of them, but settling all the
while; and presently she drew down and down, as if a hand was drawing
her; and the sea closed over the _Covenant_ of Dysart.
Never a word they spoke as they pulled ashore, being stunned with the
horror of that screaming; but they had scarce set foot upon the beach
when Hoseason woke up, as if out of a muse, and bade them lay hands upon
Alan. They hung back indeed, having little taste for the employment; but
Hoseason was like a fiend, crying that Alan was alone, that he had a
great sum about him, that he had been the means of losing the brig and
drowning all their comrades, and that here was both revenge and wealth
upon a single cast. It was seven against one; in that part of the shore
there was no rock that Alan could set his back to; and the sailors
began to spread out and come behind him.
"And then," said Alan, "the little man with the red head--I havena mind
of the name that he is called."
"Riach," said I.
"Ay," said Alan, "Riach! Well, it was him that took up the clubs for me,
asked the men if they werena feared of a judgment, and, says he, 'Dod,
I'll put my back to the Hielandman's mysel'.' That's none such an
entirely bad little man, yon little man with the red head," said Alan.
"He has some spunks of decency."
"Well," said I, "he was kind to me in his way."
"And so he was to Alan," said he; "and by my troth, I found his way a
very good one! But ye see, David, the loss of the ship and the cries of
these poor lads sat very ill upon the man; and I'm thinking that would
be the cause of it."
"Well, I would think so," says I; "for he was as keen as any of the rest
at the beginning. But how did Hoseason take it?"
"It sticks in my mind that he would take it very ill," says Alan. "But
the little man cried to me to run, and indeed I thought it was a good
observe, and ran. The last that I saw they were all in a knot upon the
beach, like folk that were not agreeing very well together."
"What do you mean by that?" said I.
"Well, the fists were going," said Alan; "and I saw one man go down like
a pair of breeks. But I thought it would be better no' to wait. Ye see
there's a strip of Campbells in that end of Mull, which is no good
company for a gentleman like me. If it hadna been for that I would have
waited and looked for ye mysel', let alone giving a hand to the little
man." (It was droll how Alan dwelt on Mr. Riach's stature for, to say
the truth, the one was not much smaller than the other.) "So," says he,
continuing, "I set my best foot forward, and whenever I met in with
anyone I cried out there was a wreck ashore. Man, they didna stop to
fash with me! Ye should have seen them linking for the beach! And when
they got there they found they had had the pleasure of a run, which is
aye good for a Campbell. I'm thinking it was a judgment on the clan that
the brig went down in the lump and didna break. But it was a very
unlucky thing for you, that same; for if any wreck had come ashore they
would have hunted high and low, and would soon have found ye."
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Part.
[20] Bag.
CHAPTER XIX
THE HOUSE OF FEAR
Night fell as we were walking, and the clouds, which had broken up in
the afternoon, settled in and thickened, so that it fell, for the season
of the year, extremely dark. The way we went was over rough mountain
sides; and though Alan pushed on with an assured manner, I could by no
means see how he directed himself.
At last, about half-past ten of the clock, we came to the top of a brae,
and saw lights below us. It seemed a house-door stood open and let out a
beam of fire and candle-light; and all round the house and steading five
or six persons were moving hurriedly about, each carrying a lighted
brand.
"James must have tint his wits," said Alan. "If this was the soldiers
instead of you and me, he would be in a bonny mess. But I daresay he'll
have a sentry on the road, and he would ken well enough no soldiers
would find the way that we came."
Hereupon he whistled three times in a particular manner. It was strange
to see how, at the first sound of it, all the moving torches came to a
stand, as if the bearers were affrighted; and how, at the third, the
bustle began again as before.
Having thus set folks' minds at rest, we came down the brae, and were
met at the yard gate (for this place was like a well-doing farm) by a
tall, handsome man of more than fifty, who cried out to Alan in Gaelic.
"James Stewart," said Alan, "I will ask ye to speak in Scots, for here
is a young gentleman with me that has nane of the other. This is him,"
he added, putting his arm through mine, "a young gentleman of the
Lowlands, and a laird in his country too, but I am thinking it will be
better for his health if we give his name the go-by."
James of the Glens turned to me for a moment, and greeted me courteously
enough: the next he had turned to Alan.
"This has been a dreadful accident," he cried. "It will bring trouble on
the country." And he wrung his hands.
"Hoots!" said Alan, "ye must take the sour with the sweet, man. Colin
Roy is dead, and be thankful for that!"
"Ay," said James, "and by my troth, I wish he was alive again! It's all
very fine to blow and boast beforehand; but now it's done, Alan; and
who's to bear the wyte[21] of it? The accident fell out in Appin--mind
ye that, Alan; it's Appin that must pay; and I am a man that has a
family."
While this was going on I looked about me at the servants. Some were on
ladders, digging in the thatch of the house or the farm buildings, from
which they brought out guns, swords, and different weapons of war;
others carried them away; and by the sound of mattock blows from
somewhere farther down the brae, I suppose they buried them. Though they
were all so busy, there prevailed no kind of order in their efforts; men
struggled together for the same gun and ran into each other with their
burning torches; and James was continually turning about from his talk
with Alan, to cry out orders, which were apparently never understood.
The faces in the torchlight were like those of people overborne with
hurry and panic; and though none spoke above his breath, their speech
sounded both anxious and angry.
It was about this time that a lassie came out of the house carrying a
pack or bundle; and it has often made me smile to think how Alan's
instinct awoke at the mere sight of it.
"What's that the lassie has?" he asked.
"We're just setting the house in order, Alan," said James, in his
frightened and somewhat fawning way. "They'll search Appin with candles,
and we must have all things straight. We're digging the bit guns and
swords into the moss, ye see; and these, I am thinking, will be your ain
French clothes. We'll be to bury them, I believe."
"Bury my French clothes!" cried Alan. "Troth, no!" And he laid hold upon
the packet and retired into the barn to shift himself, recommending me
in the meanwhile to his kinsman.
James carried me accordingly into the kitchen, and sat down with me at
table, smiling and talking at first in a very hospitable manner. But
presently the gloom returned upon him; he sat frowning and biting his
fingers; only remembered me from time to time; and then gave me but a
word or two and a poor smile, and back into his private terrors. His
wife sat by the fire and wept, with her face in her hands; his eldest
son was crouched upon the floor, running over a great mass of papers,
and now and again setting one alight and burning it to the bitter end;
all the while a servant lass with a red face was rummaging about the
room, in a blind hurry of fear, and whimpering as she went; and every
now and again one of the men would thrust in his face from the yard, and
cry for orders.
At last James could keep his seat no longer, and begged my permission to
be so unmannerly as walk about. "I am but poor company altogether, sir,"
says he, "but I can think of nothing but this dreadful accident, and the
trouble it is like to bring upon quite innocent persons."
A little after he observed his son burning a paper which he thought
should have been kept; and at that his excitement burst out so that it
was painful to witness. He struck the lad repeatedly.
"Are you gone gyte[22]?" he cried. "Do you wish to hang your father?"
and, forgetful of my presence, carried on at him a long time together in
the Gaelic, the young man answering nothing; only the wife, at the name
of hanging, throwing her apron over her face and sobbing out louder
than before.
This was all wretched for a stranger like myself to hear and see; and I
was right glad when Alan returned, looking like himself in his fine
French clothes, though (to be sure) they were now grown almost too
battered and withered to deserve the name of fine. I was then taken out
in my turn by another of the sons, and given that change of clothing of
which I had stood so long in need, and a pair of Highland brogues made
of deer-leather, rather strange at first, but after a little practice
very easy to the feet.
By the time I came back Alan must have told his story; for it seemed
understood that I was to fly with him, and they were all busy upon our
equipment. They gave us each a sword and pistols, though I professed my
inability to use the former; and with these, and some ammunition, a bag
of oatmeal, an iron pan, and a bottle of right French brandy, we were
ready for the heather. Money, indeed, was lacking. I had about two
guineas left; Alan's belt having been despatched by another hand, that
trusty messenger had no more than seventeen-pence to his whole fortune;
and as for James, it appears he had brought himself so low with journeys
to Edinburgh and legal expenses on behalf of the tenants, that he could
only scrape together three-and-five-pence-halfpenny, the most of it in
coppers.
"This'll no' do," said Alan.
"Ye must find a safe bit somewhere near by," said James, "and get word
sent to me. Ye see, ye'll have to get this business prettily off, Alan.
This is no time to be stayed for a guinea or two. They're sure to get
wind of ye, sure to seek ye, and by my way of it, sure to lay on ye the
wyte of this day's accident. If it falls on you, it falls on me that am
your near kinsman and harboured ye while ye were in the country. And if
it comes on me----" he paused, and bit his fingers, with a white face.
"It would be a painful thing for our friends if I was to hang," said he.
"It would be an ill day for Appin," says Alan.
"It's a day that sticks in my throat," said James. "O man, man, man--man
Alan! you and me have spoken like two fools!" he cried, striking his
hand upon the wall so that the house rang again.
"Well, and that's true too," said Alan; "and my friend from the Lowlands
here" (nodding at me) "gave me a good word upon that head, if I would
only have listened to him."
"But see here," said James, returning to his former manner, "if they lay
me by the heels, Alan, it's then that you'll be needing the money. For
with all that I have said and that you have said, it will look very
black against the two of us; do ye mark that? Well, follow me out, and
ye'll see that I'll have to get a paper out against ye mysel'; I'll have
to offer a reward for ye; ay will I! It's a sore thing to do between
such near friends; but if I get the dirdum[23] of this dreadful
accident, I'll have to fend for myself, man. Do ye see that?"
He spoke with a pleading earnestness, taking Alan by the breast of the
coat.
"Ay," said Alan, "I see that."
"And ye'll have to be clear of the country, Alan--ay, and clear of
Scotland--you and your friend from the Lowlands too. For I'll have to
paper your friend from the Lowlands. Ye see that, Alan--say that ye see
that!"
I thought Alan flushed a bit. "This is unco hard on me that brought him
here, James," said he, throwing his head back. "It's like making me a
traitor!"
"Now, Alan man!" cried James. "Look things in the face! He'll be papered
anyway; Mungo Campbell'll be sure to paper him; what matters if I paper
him too? And then, Alan, I am a man that has a family." And then, after
a little pause on both sides: "And, Alan, it'll be a jury of Campbells,"
said he.
"There's one thing," said Alan musingly, "that naebody kens his name."
"Nor yet they shallna, Alan! There's my hand on that," cried James, for
all the world as if he had really known my name and was foregoing some
advantage. "But just the habit he was in, and what he looked like, and
his age, and the like? I couldna well do less."
"I wonder at your father's son," cried Alan sternly. "Would ye sell the
lad with a gift? Would ye change his clothes and then betray him?"
"No, no, Alan," said James. "No, no: the habit he took off--the habit
Mungo saw him in." But I thought he seemed crestfallen; indeed, he was
clutching at every straw, and all the time, I daresay, saw the faces of
his hereditary foes on the bench, and in the jury-box, and the gallows
in the background.
"Well, sir," says Alan, turning to me, "what say ye to that? Ye are here
under the safeguard of my honour; and it's my part to see nothing done
but what shall please you."
"I have but one word to say," said I; "for to all this dispute I am a
perfect stranger. But the plain common-sense is to set the blame where
it belongs, and that is on the man that fired the shot. Paper him, as ye
call it, set the hunt on him; and let honest, innocent folk show their
faces in safety."
But at this both Alan and James cried out in horror; bidding me hold my
tongue, for that was not to be thought of; and asking me what the
Camerons would think? (which confirmed me, it must have been a Cameron
from Mamore that did the act) and if I did not see that the lad might be
caught? "Ye havena surely thought of that?" said they, with such
innocent earnestness that my hands dropped at my side and I despaired of
argument.
"Very well, then," said I, "paper me, if you please, paper Alan, paper
King George! We're all three innocent, and that seems to be what's
wanted. But at least, sir," said I to James, recovering from my little
fit of annoyance, "I am Alan's friend, and if I can be helpful to
friends of his I will not stumble at the risk."
I thought it best to put a fair face on my consent, for I saw Alan
troubled; and, besides (thinks I to myself), as soon as my back is
turned, they will paper me, as they call it, whether I consent or not.
But in this I saw I was wrong; for I had no sooner said the words, than
Mrs. Stewart leaped out of her chair, came running over to us, and wept
first upon my neck and then on Alan's, blessing God for our goodness to
her family.
"As for you, Alan, it was no more than your bounden duty," she said.
"But for this lad that has come here and seen us at our worst, and seen
the good-man fleeching like a suitor, him that by rights should give his
commands like any king--as for you, my lad," she says, "my heart is wae
not to have your name, but I have your face; and as long as my heart
beats under my bosom, I will keep it, and think of it, and bless it."
And with that she kissed me, and burst once more into such sobbing that
I stood abashed.
"Hoot, hoot," said Alan, looking mighty silly. "The day comes unco soon
in this month of July; and to-morrow there'll be a fine to-do in Appin,
a fine riding of dragoons, and crying of 'Cruachan!'[24] and running of
red-coats; and it behoves you and me to the sooner be gone."
Thereupon we said farewell, and set out again, bending somewhat
eastwards, in a fine mild dark night, and over much the same broken
country as before.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Blame.
[22] Mad.
[23] Blame.
[24] The rallylng-word of the Campbells.
CHAPTER XX
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS
Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked
ever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that country
appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people,
of which we must have passed more than twenty, hidden in quiet places of
the hills. When we came to one of these, Alan would leave me in the way,
and go himself and rap upon the side of the house and speak awhile at
the window with some sleeper awakened. This was to pass the news; which,
in that country, was so much of a duty that Alan must pause to attend to
it even while fleeing for his life; and so well attended to by others,
that in more than half of the houses where we called they had heard
already of the murder. In the others, as well as I could make out
(standing back at a distance and hearing a strange tongue), the news was
received with more of consternation than surprise.
For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any
shelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks, and
where ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around it; there grew
there neither grass nor trees; and I have sometimes thought since then
that it may have been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre was
in the time of King William. But for the details of our itinerary I am
all to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great détours; our
pace being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and the
names of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and
the more easily forgotten.
The first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and I
could see Alan knit his brow.
"This is no fit place for you and me," he said. "This is a place they're
bound to watch."
And with that he ran harder than ever down to the water-side, in a part
where the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through with
a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the
lynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked neither to the right nor to the
left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands
and knees to check himself, for that rock was small, and he might have
pitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distance
or to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caught
and stopped me.
So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, a
far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides.
When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear, and
I put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and shook me; I saw he was
speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind
prevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, and
that he stamped upon the rock. The same look showed me the water raging
by, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that I covered my eyes
again and shuddered.
The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced me
to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. Then,
putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted,
"Hang or drown!" and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther
branch of the stream, and landed safe.
I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy
was singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, and
just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never
leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that
kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of
courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length;
these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering back
into the lynn, when Alan seized me, first by the hair, then by the
collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety.
Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I must
stagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now I
was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I kept
stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and
when at last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a
number of others, it was none too soon for David Balfour.
A great rock, I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning
together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight
inaccessible. Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as four
hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the
third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with
such force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured
a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the
aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up
beside him.
Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat
hollow on the top, and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or
saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden.
All this while Alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with
such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortal
fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the rock he said nothing,
nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat
down, and, keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter,
scouted all round the compass. The dawn had come quite clear; we could
see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed
with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and
made white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living
creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff.
Then at last Alan smiled.
"Ay," said he, "now we have a chance"; and then, looking at me with some
amusement, "Ye're no' very gleg[25] at the jumping," said he.
At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once,
"Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is
what makes the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was water there,
and water's a thing that dauntons even me. No, no," said Alan, "it's no'
you that's to blame, it's me."
I asked him why.
"Why," said he, "I have proved myself a gomeril this night. For first of
all I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so that
the day has caught us where we should never have been; and, thanks to
that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next (which is
the worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heather
as myself) I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a
long summer's day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a
small matter; but before it comes night, David, ye'll give me news of
it."
I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out
the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river.
"I wouldna waste the good spirit either," says he. "It's been a good
friend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still be
cocking on yon stone. And what's mair," says he, "ye may have observed
(you that's a man of so much penetration) that Alan Breck Stewart was
perhaps walking quicker than his ordinar'."
"You!" I cried, "you were running fit to burst."
"Was I so?" said he. "Well, then, ye may depend upon it there was nae
time to be lost. And now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep,
lad, and I'll watch."
Accordingly, I lay down to sleep; a little peaty earth had drifted in
between the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a
bed to me; the last thing I heard was still the crying of the eagles.
I daresay it would be nine in the morning when I was roughly awakened,
and found Alan's hand pressed upon my mouth.
"Wheesht!" he whispered. "Ye were snoring."
"Well," said I, surprised at his anxious and dark face, "and why not?"
He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like.
It was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. The valley was as clear as
in a picture. About half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; a
big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and near by,
on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with
the sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-side
were posted other sentries; here near together, there widelier
scattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some on
the ground level, and marching and counter-marching, so as to meet
half-way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chain
of posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the
distance riding to and fro. Lower down, the infantry continued; but as
the stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerable
burn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords and
stepping-stones.
I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. It was
strange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in the
hour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats and
breeches.
"Ye see," said Alan, "this was what I was afraid of, Davie: that they
would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago,
and, man! but ye're a grand hand at the sleeping! We're in a narrow
place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with
a glass; but if they'll only keep in the foot of the valley we'll do
yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we'll try
our hand at getting by them."
"And what are we to do till night?" I asked.
"Lie here," says he, "and birstle."
That one good Scots word, "birstle," was indeed the most of the story of
the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on the
bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us
cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of
it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only
large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked
rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred
on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the
same climate, and at only a few days' distance, I should have suffered
so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this
rock.
All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was
worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying
it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples.
The soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now
changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. These
lay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was like
looking for a needle in a bottle of hay! and, being so hopeless a task,
it was gone about with the less care. Yet we could see the soldiers pike
their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my
vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce
dared to breathe.
It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one
fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of
the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. "I
tell you it's 'ot," says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and
the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick
of dropping out the letter "h". To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he
had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly at
the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise
was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a
grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether
with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and
there spy out even in these memoirs.
The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the
greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the
sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like
rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since,
on the lines in our Scots psalm--
"The moon by night thee shall not smite,
Nor yet the sun by day";
and indeed it was only by God's blessing that we were neither of us
sun-smitten.
At last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was now
temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now
got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side
of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.
"As well one death as another," said Alan, and slipped over the edge and
dropped on the ground on the shadowy side.
I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was I
and so giddy with that long exposure. Here, then, we lay for an hour or
two, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite naked
to the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. None came,
however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued to
be our shield even in this new position.
Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers
were now lying closer along the river-side, Alan proposed that we should
try a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world;
and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome to
me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip
from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies
in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.
The soldiers, having searched this side of the valley after a fashion,
and being perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon,
had now laid by much of their vigilance, and stood dozing at their posts
or only kept a look-out along the banks of the river; so that in this
way, keeping down the valley and at the same time towards the mountains,
we drew steadily away from their neighbourhood. But the business was the
most wearing I had ever taken part in. A man had need of a hundred eyes
in every part of him, to keep concealed in that uneven country and
within cry of so many and scattered sentries. When we must pass an open
place, quickness was not all, but a swift judgment not only of the lie
of the whole country, but of the solidity of every stone on which we
must set foot; for the afternoon was now fallen so breathless that the
rolling of a pebble sounded abroad like a pistol-shot, and would start
the echo calling among the hills and cliffs.
By sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress,
though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view.
But now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and that
was a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glen
river. At the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plunged
head and shoulders in the water; and I cannot tell which was the more
pleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greed
with which we drank of it.
We lay there (for the banks hid us), drank again and again, bathed our
chests, let our wrists trail in the running water till they ached with
the chill; and at last, being wonderfully renewed, we got out the
meal-bag and made drammach in the iron pan. This, though it is but cold
water mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungry
man; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case)
good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those who
have taken to the heather.
As soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, at
first with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standing
our full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking. The way was
very intricate, lying up the steep sides of mountains and along the
brows of cliffs; clouds had come in with the sunset, and the night was
dark and cool; so that I walked without much fatigue, but in continual
fear of falling and rolling down the mountains, and with no guess at our
direction.
The moon rose at last and found us still on the road; it was in its last
quarter, and was long beset with clouds; but after a while shone out and
showed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneath
us on the narrow arm of a sea-loch.
At this sight we both paused: I struck with wonder to find myself so
high, and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds: Alan to make sure of
his direction.
Seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us out
of ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of our
night-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes, warlike,
merry, plaintive; reel tunes that made the foot go faster; tunes of my
own south country that made me fain to be home from my adventures; and
all these, on the great, dark, desert mountains, making company upon the
way.
FOOTNOTE:
[25] Brisk.
CHAPTER XXI
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE HEUGH OF CORRYNAKIEGH
Early as day comes in the beginning of July, it was still dark when we
reached our destination, a cleft in the head of a great mountain, with a
water running through the midst, and upon the one hand a shallow cave in
a rock. Birches grew there in a thin, pretty wood, which a little
farther on was changed into a wood of pines. The burn was full of trout;
the wood of cushat-doves; on the open side of the mountain beyond,
whaups would be always whistling, and cuckoos were plentiful. From the
mouth of the cleft we looked down upon a part of Mamore, and on the
sea-loch that divides that country from Appin; and this from so great a
height as made it my continual wonder and pleasure to sit and behold
them.
The name of the cleft was the Heugh of Corrynakiegh; and although from
its height, and being so near upon the sea, it was often beset with
clouds, yet it was on the whole a pleasant place, and the five days we
lived in it went happily.
We slept in the cave, making our bed of heather bushes which we cut for
that purpose, and covering ourselves with Alan's great-coat. There was a
low concealed place, in a turning of the glen, where we were so bold as
to make fire: so that we could warm ourselves when the clouds set in,
and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trouts that we caught with
our hands under the stones and overhanging banks of the burn. This was
indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal
against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent a
great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and
groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. The largest we
got might have been a quarter of a pound; but they were of good flesh
and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt
to be delicious.
In any by-time Alan must teach me to use my sword, for my ignorance had
much distressed him; and I think besides, as I had sometimes the upper
hand of him in the fishing, he was not sorry to turn to an exercise
where he had so much the upper hand of me. He made it somewhat more of a
pain than need have been, for he stormed at me all through the lessons
in a very violent manner of scolding, and would push me so close that I
made sure he must run me through the body. I was often tempted to turn
tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of my
lessons; if it was but to stand on guard with an assured countenance,
which is often all that is required. So, though I could never in the
least please my master, I was not altogether displeased with myself.
In the meanwhile, you are not to suppose that we neglected our chief
business, which was to get away.
"It will be many a long day," Alan said to me on our first morning,
"before the red-coats think upon seeking Corrynakiegh; so now we must
get word sent to James, and he must find the siller for us."
"And how shall we send that word?" says I. "We are here in a desert
place, which yet we dare not leave; and unless ye get the fowls of the
air to be your messengers, I see not what we shall be able to do."
"Ay?" said Alan. "Ye're a man of small contrivance, David."
Thereupon he fell in a muse, looking in the embers of the fire; and
presently, getting a piece of wood, he fashioned it in a cross, the four
ends of which he blackened on the coals. Then he looked at me a little
shyly.
"Could ye lend me my button?" says he. "It seems a strange thing to ask
a gift again, but I own I am laith to cut another."
I gave him the button; whereupon he strung it on a strip of his
great-coat which he had used to bind the cross; and tying in a little
sprig of birch and another of fir, he looked upon his work with
satisfaction.
"Now," said he, "there is a little clachan" (what is called a hamlet in
the English) "not very far from Corrynakiegh, and it has the name of
Koalisnacoan. There there are living many friends of mine whom I could
trust with my life, and some that I am no' just so sure of. Ye see,
David, there will be money set upon our heads; James himsel' is to set
money on them; and as for the Campbells, they would never spare siller
where there was a Stewart to be hurt. If it was otherwise, I would go
down to Koalisnacoan whatever, and trust my life into these people's
hands as lightly as I would trust another with my glove."
"But being so?" said I.
"Being so," said he, "I would as lief they didna see me. There's bad
folk everywhere, and, what's far worse, weak ones. So, when it comes
dark again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I
have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Breck
Maccoll, a bouman[26] of Appin's."
"With all my heart," says I; "and if he finds it, what is he to think?"
"Well," says Alan, "I wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my
troth I am afraid he will make little enough of it! But this is what I
have in my mind. This cross is something in the nature of the
crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our
clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there
it is standing in his window, and no word with it. So he will say to
himsel', _The clan is not to rise, but there is something._ Then he
will see my button, and that was Duncan Stewart's. And then he will say
to himsel', _The son of Duncan is in the heather, and has need of me_."
"Well," said I, "it may be. But even supposing so, there is a good deal
of heather between here and the Forth."
"And that is a very true word," says Alan. "But then John Breck will see
the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to himsel' (if
he is a man of any penetration at all, which I misdoubt), _Alan will be
lying in a wood which is both of pines and birches_. Then he will think
to himsel', _That is not so very rife hereabout_; and then he will come
and give us a look up in Corrynakiegh. And if he does not, David, the
devil may fly away with him, for what I care; for he will no' be worth
the salt to his porridge."
"Eh, man," said I, drolling with him a little, "you're very ingenious!
But would it not be simpler for you to write him a few words in black
and white?"
"And that is an excellent observe, Mr. Balfour of Shaws," says Alan,
drolling with me; "and it would certainly be much simpler for me to
write to him, but it would be a sore job for John Breck to read it. He
would have to go to the school for two-three years; and it's possible we
might be wearied waiting on him."
So that night Alan carried down his fiery cross and set it in the
bouman's window. He was troubled when he came back; for the dogs had
barked and the folk run out from their houses; and he thought he had
heard a clatter of arms and seen a red-coat come to one of the doors. On
all accounts we lay the next day in the borders of the wood and kept a
close look-out, so that if it was John Breck that came we might be ready
to guide him, and if it was the red-coats we should have time to get
away.
About noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of the
mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from under his
hand. No sooner had Alan seen him than he whistled; the man turned and
came a little towards us: then Alan would give another "peep!" and the
man would come still nearer; and so, by the sound of whistling, he was
guided to the spot where we lay.
He was a ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with
the small-pox, and looked both dull and savage. Although his English was
very bad and broken, yet Alan (according to his very handsome use,
whenever I was by) would suffer him to speak no Gaelic. Perhaps the
strange language made him appear more backward than he really was; but I
thought he had little good-will to serve us, and what he had was the
child of terror.
Alan would have had him carry a message to James; but the bouman would
hear of no message. "She was forget it," he said in his screaming voice;
and would either have a letter or wash his hands of us.
I thought Alan would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of
writing in that desert. But he was a man of more resources than I knew;
searched the wood until he found a quill of a cushat-dove, which he
shaped into a pen; made himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his
horn and water from the running stream; and tearing a corner from his
French military commission (which he carried in his pocket, like a
talisman to keep him from the gallows), he sat down and wrote as
follows:
"DEAR KINSMAN,--Please send money by the bearer to the place he kens
of.
"Your affectionate cousin,
"A. S."
This he intrusted to the bouman, who promised to make what manner of
speed he best could, and carried it off with him down the hill.
He was three full days gone, but about five in the evening of the third,
we heard a whistling in the wood, which Alan answered; and presently the
bouman came up the water-side, looking for us, right and left. He seemed
less sulky than before, and indeed he was no doubt well pleased to have
got to the end of such a dangerous commission.
He gave us the news of the country; that it was alive with red-coats;
that arms were being found, and poor folk brought in trouble daily; and
that James and some of his servants were already clapped in prison at
Fort William, under strong suspicion of complicity. It seemed it was
noised on all sides that Alan Breck had fired the shot; and there was a
bill issued both for him and me, with one hundred pounds reward.
This was all as bad as could be; and the little note the bouman had
carried us from Mrs. Stewart was of a miserable sadness. In it she
besought Alan not to let himself be captured, assuring him, if he fell
in the hands of the troops, both he and James were no better than dead
men. The money she had sent was all that she could beg or borrow, and
she prayed Heaven we could be doing with it. Lastly, she said, she
enclosed us one of the bills in which we were described.
This we looked upon with great curiosity and not a little fear, partly
as a man may look in a mirror, partly as he might look into the barrel
of an enemy's gun to judge if it be truly aimed. Alan was advertised as
"a small, pock-marked, active man of thirty-five or thereby, dressed in
a feathered hat, a French side-coat of blue with silver buttons, and
lace a great deal tarnished, a red waistcoat and breeches of black
shag"; and I as "a tall strong lad of about eighteen, wearing an old
blue coat, very ragged, an old Highland bonnet, a long homespun
waistcoat, blue breeches; his legs bare, low-country shoes, wanting the
toes; speaks like a Lowlander, and has no beard."
Alan was well enough pleased to see his finery so fully remembered and
set down; only when he came to the word "tarnished," he looked upon his
lace like one a little mortified. As for myself, I thought I cut a
miserable figure in the bill; and yet was well enough pleased too, for
since I had changed these rags, the description had ceased to be a
danger and become a source of safety.
"Alan," said I, "you should change your clothes."
"Na, troth!" said Alan, "I have nae others. A fine sight I would be, if
I went back to France in a bonnet!"
This put a second reflection in my mind: that if I were to separate from
Alan and his tell-tale clothes I should be safe against arrest, and
might go openly about my business. Nor was this all; for suppose I was
arrested when I was alone, there was little against me: but suppose I
was taken in company with the reputed murderer, my case would begin to
be grave. For generosity's sake I dared not speak my mind upon this
head; but I thought of it none the less.
I thought of it all the more, too, when the bouman brought out a green
purse with four guineas in gold, and the best part of another in small
change. True, it was more than I had. But then Alan, with less than five
guineas, had to get as far as France; I, with my less than two, not
beyond Queensferry; so that, taking things in their proportion, Alan's
society was not only a peril to my life, but a burden on my purse.
But there was no thought of the sort in the honest head of my companion.
He believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. And what could I
do but hold my peace and chafe and take my chance of it?
"It's little enough," said Alan, putting the purse in his pocket, "but
it'll do my business. And now, John Breck, if ye will hand me over my
button, this gentleman and me will be for taking the road."
But the bouman, after feeling about in a hairy purse that hung in front
of him in the Highland manner (though he wore otherwise the Lowland
habit, with sea-trousers), began to roll his eyes strangely, and at last
said, "Her nainsel' will loss it," meaning he thought he had lost it.
"What!" cried Alan, "you will lose my button, that was my father's
before me? Now I will tell you what is in my mind, John Breck: it is in
my mind this is the worst day's work that ever ye did since ye were
born."
And as Alan spoke, he set his hands on his knees and looked at the
bouman with a smiling mouth, and that dancing light in his eyes that
meant mischief to his enemies.
Perhaps the bouman was honest enough; perhaps he had meant to cheat, and
then, finding himself alone with two of us in a desert place, cast back
to honesty as being safer; at least, and all at once, he seemed to find
that button and handed it to Alan.
"Well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the Maccolls," said
Alan, and then to me, "Here is my button back again, and I thank you for
parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me."
Then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. "For," says he, "ye have
done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and I will always
give you the name of a good man."
Lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and Alan and I (getting
our chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight.
FOOTNOTE:
[26] A bouman is a tenant who takes stock from the landlord and shares
with him the increase.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE MOOR
Some seven hours' incessant hard travelling brought us early in the
morning to the end of a range of mountains. In front of us there lay a
piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. The sun was
not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up
from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as Alan said) there
might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser.
We sat down, therefore, in a howe of the hill-side till the mist should
have risen, and made ourselves a dish of drammach, and held a council of
war.
"David," said Alan, "this is the kittle bit. Shall we lie here till it
comes night, or shall we risk it and stave on ahead?"
"Well," said I, "I am tired indeed, but I could walk as far again, if
that was all."
"Ay, but it isna," said Alan, "nor yet the half. This is how we stand:
Appin's fair death to us. To the south it's all Campbells, and no' to be
thought of. To the north; well, there's no muckle to be gained by going
north; neither for you, that wants to get to Queensferry, nor yet for
me, that wants to get to France. Well then, we'll can strike east."
"East be it!" says I, quite cheerily; but I was thinking, in to myself:
"O, man, if you would only take one point of the compass and let me take
any other, it would be the best for both of us."
"Well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs," said Alan. "Once there,
David, it's mere pitch-and-toss. Out on yon bald, naked, flat place,
where can a body turn to? Let the red-coats come over a hill, they can
spy you miles away; and, the sorrow's in their horses' heels, they would
soon ride you down. It's no good place, David; and I'm free to say, it's
worse by daylight than by dark."
"Alan," said I, "hear my way of it. Appin's death for us; we have none
too much money, nor yet meal; the longer they seek, the nearer they may
guess where we are; it's all a risk; and I give my word to go ahead
until we drop."
Alan was delighted. "There are whiles," said he, "when ye are altogether
too canny and Whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me; but there
come other whiles when ye show yersel' a mettle spark; and it's then,
David, that I love ye like a brother."
The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste
as the sea; only the moorfowl and the peewees crying upon it, and far
over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red
with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty
pools; some had been burnt black in a heath-fire; and in another place
there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. A
wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of
troops, which was our point.
We went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome
and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of
mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied
at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor,
and, when these turned aside from our direction, to move upon its naked
face with infinite care. Sometimes, for half an hour together, we must
crawl from one heather bush to another, as hunters do when they are hard
upon the deer. It was a clear day again, with a blazing sun; the water
in the brandy-bottle was soon gone; and altogether, if I had guessed
what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much
of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, I should certainly have held
back from such a killing enterprise.
Toiling and resting and toiling again, we wore away the morning; and
about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Alan took the
first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I
was shaken up to take the second. We had no clock to go by; and Alan
stuck a sprig of heath in the ground to serve instead; so that as soon
as the shadow of the bush should fall so far to the east, I might know
to rouse him. But I was by this time so weary that I could have slept
twelve hours at a stretch; I had the taste of sleep in my throat; my
joints slept even when my mind was waking; the hot smell of the heather,
and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now
and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing.
The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away, and
thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. I looked at the
sprig of heath, and at that I could have cried aloud: for I saw I had
betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at
what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like
dying in my body. For, sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come
down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east,
spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in
the deep parts of the heather.
When I waked Alan he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the mark and
the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick
look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him.
"What are we to do now?" I asked.
"We'll have to play at being hares," said he. "Do ye see yon mountain?"
pointing to one on the north-eastern sky.
"Ay," said I.
"Well then," says he, "let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder;
it's a wild, desert mountain, full of hills and hollows, and if we can
win to it before the morn we may do yet."
"But, Alan," cried I, "that will take us across the very coming of the
soldiers!"
"I ken that fine," said he; "but if we are driven back on Appin, we are
two dead men. So now, David man, be brisk!"
With that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with incredible
quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. All the time,
too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the moorland where
we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned or at least
scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the
ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. The water was long
out; and this posture of running on the hands and knees brings an
overmastering weakness and weariness, so that the joints ache and the
wrists faint under your weight.
Now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile and
panted, and, putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons. They
had not spied us, for they held straight on; a half-troop, I think,
covering about two miles of ground, and beating it mighty thoroughly as
they went. I had awakened just in time; a little later, and we must have
fled in front of them, instead of escaping on one side. Even as it was,
the least misfortune might betray us; and now and again, when a grouse
rose out of the heather with a clap of wings, we lay as still as the
dead, and were afraid to breathe.
The aching and faintness of my body, the labouring of my heart, the
soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the
continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable
that I would gladly have given up. Nothing but the fear of Alan lent me
enough of a false kind of courage to continue. As for himself (and you
are to bear in mind that he was cumbered with a great-coat) he had first
turned crimson, but as time went on the redness began to be mingled with
patches of white; his breath cried and whistled as it came; and his
voice, when he whispered his observations in my ear during our halts,
sounded like nothing human. Yet he seemed in no way dashed in spirits,
nor did he at all abate in his activity; so that I was driven to marvel
at the man's endurance.
At length, in the first gloaming of the night, we heard a trumpet sound,
and, looking back from among the heather, saw the troop beginning to
collect. A little after, they had built a fire and camped for the night,
about the middle of the waste.
At this I begged and besought that we might lie down and sleep.
"There shall be no sleep the night!" said Alan. "From now on, these
weary dragoons of yours will keep the crown of the muirland, and none
will get out of Appin but winged fowls. We got through in the nick of
time, and shall we jeopard what we've gained? Na, na, when the day
comes, it shall find you and me in a fast place on Ben Alder."
"Alan," I said, "it's not the want of will: it's the strength that I
want. If I could, I would; but as sure as I'm alive, I cannot."
"Very well, then," said Alan, "I'll carry ye."
I looked to see if he were jesting; but no, the little man was in dead
earnest; and the sight of so much resolution shamed me.
"Lead away!" said I. "I'll follow."
He gave me one look as much as to say, "Well done, David!" and off he
set again at his top speed.
It grew cooler, and even a little darker (but not much), with the coming
of the night. The sky was cloudless; it was still early in July, and
pretty far north; in the darkest part of that night you would have
needed pretty good eyes to read, but for all that I have often seen it
darker in a winter mid-day. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like
rain; and this refreshed me for a while. When we stopped to breathe, and
I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the
night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire
dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor,
anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in
agony and eat the dust like a worm.
By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever
really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. I had no care
of my life, neither past nor future, and I scarce remembered there was
such a lad as David Balfour; I did not think of myself, but just of each
fresh step, which I was sure would be my last, with despair--and of
Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred. Alan was in the right trade
as a soldier; this is the officer's part to make men continue to do
things, they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered,
they would lie down where they were and be killed. And I daresay I would
have made a good enough private; for in these last hours it never
occurred to me that I had any choice but just to obey as long as I was
able, and die obeying.
Day began to come in, after years, I thought; and by that time we were
past the greatest danger, and could walk upon our feet like men, instead
of crawling like brutes. But, dear heart have mercy! what a pair we must
have made, going double like old grandfathers, stumbling like babes, and
as white as dead folk. Never a word passed between us; each set his
mouth and kept his eyes in front of him, and lifted up his foot and set
it down again, like people lifting weights at a country play[27]; all
the while, with the moorfowl crying "peep!" in the heather, and the
light coming slowly clearer in the east.
I say Alan did as I did. Not that ever I looked at him, for I had enough
ado to keep my feet; but because it is plain he must have been as stupid
with weariness as myself, and looked as little where we were going, or
we should not have walked into an ambush like blind men.
It fell in this way. We were going down a heathery brae, Alan leading
and I following a pace or two behind, like a fiddler and his wife; when
upon a sudden the heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped
out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at
his throat.
I don't think I cared; the pain of this rough handling was quite
swallowed up by the pains of which I was already full; and I was too
glad to have stopped walking to mind about a dirk. I lay looking up in
the face of the man that held me; and I mind his face was black with the
sun and his eyes very light, but I was not afraid of him. I heard Alan
and another whispering in the Gaelic; and what they said was all one to
me.
Then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken away, and we were set
face to face, sitting in the heather.
"They are Cluny's men," said Alan. "We couldna have fallen better. We're
just to bide here with these, which are his out-sentries, till they can
get word to the chief of my arrival."
Now Cluny Macpherson, the chief of the clan Vourich, had been one of the
leaders of the great rebellion six years before; there was a price on
his life; and I had supposed him long ago in France, with the rest of
the heads of that desperate party. Even tired as I was, the surprise of
what I heard half wakened me.
"What," I cried, "is Cluny still here?"
"Ay is he so!" said Alan. "Still in his own country and kept by his own
clan. King George can do no more."
I think I would have asked further, but Alan gave me the put-off. "I am
rather wearied," he said, "and I would like fine to get a sleep." And
without more words he rolled on his face in a deep heather bush, and
seemed to sleep at once.
There was no such thing possible for me. You have heard grasshoppers
whirring in the grass in the summer-time? Well, I had no sooner closed
my eyes than my body, and above all my head, belly, and wrists, seemed
to be filled with whirring grasshoppers; and I must open my eyes again
at once, and tumble and toss, and sit up and lie down; and look at the
sky which dazzled me, or at Cluny's wild and dirty sentries, peering out
over the top of the brae and chattering to each other in the Gaelic.
That was all the rest I had, until the messenger returned; when, as it
appeared that Cluny would be glad to receive us, we must get once more
upon our feet and set forward. Alan was in excellent good spirits, much
refreshed by his sleep, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a
dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had
brought him word. For my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. I had
been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness,
which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground
seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a
current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. With all
that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that I could have
wept at my own helplessness.
I saw Alan knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger; and
that gave me a pang of light-headed fear, like what a child may have. I
remember, too, that I was smiling, and could not stop smiling, hard as I
tried; for I thought it was out of place at such a time. But my good
companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment two
of the gillies had me by the arms, and I began to be carried forward
with great swiftness (or so it appeared to me, although I daresay it was
slowly enough in truth), through a labyrinth of dreary glens and
hollows, and into the heart of that dismal mountain of Ben Alder.
FOOTNOTE:
[27] Village fair.
CHAPTER XXIII
CLUNY'S CAGE
We came at last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled
up a craggy hill-side, and was crowned by a naked precipice.
"It's here," said one of the guides, and we struck up hill.
The trees clung upon the slope, like sailors on the shrouds of a ship;
and their trunks were like the rounds of a ladder, by which we mounted.
Quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang
above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the
country as "Cluny's Cage." The trunks of several trees had been wattled
across, the intervals strengthened with stakes, and the ground behind
this barricade levelled up with earth to make the floor. A tree, which
grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The
walls were of wattle and covered with moss. The whole house had
something of an egg-shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep,
hill-side thicket, like a wasps' nest in a green hawthorn.
Within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some
comfort. A projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be the
fireplace; and the smoke, rising against the face of the rock, and being
not dissimilar in colour, readily escaped notice from below.
This was but one of Cluny's hiding-places; he had caves, besides, and
underground chambers in several parts of his country; and, following the
reports of his scouts, he moved from one to another as the soldiers drew
near or moved away. By this manner of living, and thanks to the
affection of his clan, he had not only stayed all this time in safety,
while so many others had fled or been taken and slain; but stayed four
or five years longer, and only went to France at last by the express
command of his master. There he soon died; and it is strange to reflect
that he may have regretted his Cage upon Ben Alder.
When we came to the door he was seated by his rock chimney, watching a
gillie about some cookery. He was mighty plainly habited, with a knitted
nightcap drawn over his ears, and smoked a foul cutty pipe. For all that
he had the manners of a king, and it was quite a sight to see him rise
out of his place to welcome us.
"Well, Mr. Stewart, come awa', sir!" said he, "and bring in your friend
that as yet I dinna ken the name of."
"And how is yourself, Cluny?" said Alan. "I hope ye do brawly, sir. And
I am proud to see ye, and to present to ye my friend the Laird of Shaws,
Mr. David Balfour."
Alan never referred to my estate without a touch of a sneer when we were
alone; but with strangers he rang the words out like a herald.
"Step in by, the both of ye, gentlemen," says Cluny. "I make ye welcome
to my house, which is a queer, rude place for certain, but one where I
have entertained a royal personage, Mr. Stewart--ye doubtless ken the
personage I have in my eye. We'll take a dram for luck, and as soon as
this handless man of mine has the collops ready, we'll dine and take a
hand at the cartes as gentlemen should. My life is a bit dreigh," says
he, pouring out the brandy; "I see little company, and sit and twirl my
thumbs, and mind upon a great day that is gone by, and weary for another
great day that we all hope will be upon the road. And so here's a toast
to ye: The Restoration!"
Thereupon we all touched glasses and drank. I am sure I wished no ill to
King George; and if he had been there himself in proper person, it's
like he would have done as I did. No sooner had I taken out the dram
than I felt hugely better, and could look on and listen, still a little
mistily perhaps, but no longer with the same groundless horror and
distress of mind.
It was certainly a strange place, and we had a strange host. In his long
hiding, Cluny had grown to have all manner of precise habits, like those
of an old maid. He had a particular place, where no one else must sit;
the Cage was arranged in a particular way, which none must disturb;
cookery was one of his chief fancies, and even while he was greeting us
in, he kept an eye to the collops.
It appears, he sometimes visited or received visits from his wife and
one or two of his nearest friends, under the cover of night; but for the
more part lived quite alone, and communicated only with his sentinels
and the gillies that waited on him in the Cage. The first thing in the
morning, one of them, who was a barber, came and shaved him, and gave
him the news of the country, of which he was immoderately greedy. There
was no end to his questions; he put them as earnestly as a child; and,
at some of the answers, laughed out of all bounds of reason, and would
break out again laughing at the mere memory, hours after the barber was
gone.
To be sure, there might have been a purpose in his questions; for though
he was thus sequestered, and, like the other landed gentlemen of
Scotland, stripped by the late Act of Parliament of legal powers, he
still exercised a patriarchal justice in his clan. Disputes were brought
to him in his hiding-hole to be decided; and the men of his country, who
would have snapped their fingers at the Court of Session, laid aside
revenge and paid down money at the bare word of this forfeited and
hunted outlaw. When he was angered, which was often enough, he gave his
commands and breathed threats of punishment like any king; and his
gillies trembled and crouched away from him like children before a hasty
father. With each of them, as he entered, he ceremoniously shook hands,
both parties touching their bonnets at the same time in a military
manner. Altogether, I had a fair chance to see some of the inner
workings of a Highland clan; and this with a proscribed, fugitive chief;
his country conquered; the troops riding upon all sides in quest of him,
sometimes within a mile of where he lay; and when the least of the
ragged fellows whom he rated and threatened could have made a fortune by
betraying him.
On that first day, as soon as the collops were ready, Cluny gave them
with his own hand a squeeze of a lemon (for he was well supplied with
luxuries) and bade us draw into our meal.
"They," said he, meaning the collops, "are such as I gave His Royal
Highness in this very house; bating the lemon juice, for at that time we
were glad to get the meat and never fashed for kitchen.[28] Indeed,
there were mair dragoons than lemons in my country in the year
'Forty-six."
I do not know if the collops were truly very good, but my heart rose
against the sight of them, and I could eat but little. All the while
Cluny entertained us with stories of Prince Charlie's stay in the Cage,
giving us the very words of the speakers, and rising from his place to
show us where they stood. By these, I gathered the Prince was a
gracious, spirited boy, like the son of a race of polite kings, but not
so wise as Solomon. I gathered, too, that while he was in the Cage he
was often drunk; so the fault that has since, by all accounts, made such
a wreck of him, had even then begun to show itself.
We were no sooner done eating than Cluny brought out an old, thumbed,
greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean inn; and his eyes
brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing.
Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like
disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor
yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood, and fish for that of
others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. To be sure, I might have
pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but I thought it behoved
that I should bear a testimony. I must have got very red in the face,
but I spoke steadily, and told them I had no call to be a judge of
others, but for my own part, it was a matter in which I had no
clearness.
Cluny stopped mingling the cards. "What in the deil's name is this?"
says he. "What kind of Whiggish, canting talk is this, for the house of
Cluny Macpherson?"
"I will put my hand in the fire for Mr. Balfour," says Alan. "He is an
honest and a mettle gentleman, and I would have ye bear in mind who says
it. I bear a king's name," says he, cocking his hat; "and I and any that
I call friend are company for the best. But the gentleman is tired, and
should sleep; if he has no mind to the cartes, it will never hinder you
and me. And I'm fit and willing, sir, to play ye any game that ye can
name."
"Sir," says Cluny, "in this poor house of mine I would have you to ken
that any gentleman may follow his pleasure. If your friend would like to
stand on his head, he is welcome. And if either he, or you, or any other
man, is not preceesely satisfied, I will be proud to step outside with
him."
I had no will that these two friends should cut their throats for my
sake.
"Sir," said I, "I am very wearied, as Alan says; and what's more, as you
are a man that likely has sons of your own, I may tell you it was a
promise to my father."
"Say nae mair, say nae mair," said Cluny, and pointed me to a bed of
heather in a corner of the Cage. For all that he was displeased enough,
looked at me askance, and grumbled when he looked. And indeed it must be
owned that both my scruples, and the words in which I had declared them,
smacked somewhat of the Covenanter, and were little in their place among
wild Highland Jacobites.
What with the brandy and the venison, a strange heaviness had come over
me; and I had scarce lain down upon the bed before I fell into a kind of
trance, in which I continued almost the whole time of our stay in the
Cage. Sometimes I was broad awake and understood what passed; sometimes
I only heard voices, or men snoring, like the voice of a silly river;
and the plaids upon the wall dwindled down and swelled out again, like
firelight shadows on the roof. I must sometimes have spoken or cried
out, for I remember I was now and then amazed at being answered; yet I
was conscious of no particular nightmare, only of a general, black,
abiding horror--a horror of the place I was in, and the bed I lay on,
and the plaids on the wall, and the voices, and the fire, and myself.
The barber-gillie, who was a doctor too, was called in to prescribe for
me; but as he spoke in the Gaelic, I understood not a word of his
opinion, and was too sick even to ask for a translation. I knew well
enough I was ill, and that was all I cared about.
I paid little heed while I lay in this poor pass. But Alan and Cluny
were most of the time at the cards, and I am clear that Alan must have
begun by winning; for I remember sitting up, and seeing them hard at it,
and a great glittering pile of as much as sixty or a hundred guineas on
the table. It looked strange enough to see all this wealth in a nest
upon a cliff-side, wattled about growing trees. And even then, I thought
it seemed deep water for Alan to be riding, who had no better
battle-horse than a green purse and a matter of five pounds.
The luck, it seems, changed on the second day. About noon I was wakened
as usual for dinner, and as usual refused to eat, and was given a dram
with some bitter infusion which the barber had prescribed. The sun was
shining in at the open door of the Cage, and this dazzled and offended
me. Cluny sat at the table, biting the pack of cards. Alan had stooped
over the bed, and had his face close to my eyes; to which, troubled as
they were with the fever, it seemed of the most shocking bigness.
He asked me for a loan of my money.
"What for?" said I.
"O, just for a loan," said he.
"But why?" I repeated. "I don't see."
"Hut, David!" said Alan, "ye wouldna grudge me a loan?"
I would though, if I had had my senses! But all I thought of then was to
get his face away, and I handed him my money.
On the morning of the third day, when we had been forty-eight hours in
the Cage, I awoke with a great relief of spirits, very weak and weary
indeed, but seeing things of the right size and with their honest,
everyday appearance. I had a mind to eat, moreover, rose from my bed of
my own movement, and as soon as we had breakfasted, stepped to the entry
of the Cage and sat down outside in the top of the wood. It was a grey
day, with a cool, mild air: and I sat in a dream all morning, only
disturbed by the passing by of Cluny's scouts and servants coming with
provisions and reports; for, as the coast was at that time clear, you
might almost say he held court openly.
When I returned, he and Alan had laid the cards aside, and were
questioning a gillie; and the chief turned about and spoke to me in the
Gaelic.
"I have no Gaelic, sir," said I.
Now, since the card question everything I said or did had the power of
annoying Cluny. "Your name has more sense than yourself, then," said he
angrily; "for it's good Gaelic. But the point is this: my scout reports
all clear in the south, and the question is, have ye the strength to
go?"
I saw cards on the table, but no gold; only a heap of little written
papers, and these all on Cluny's side. Alan, besides, had an odd look,
like a man not very well content; and I began to have a strong
misgiving.
"I do not know if I am as well as I should be," said I, looking at Alan;
"but the little money we have has a long way to carry us."
Alan took his under-lip into his mouth, and looked upon the ground.
"David," says he at last, "I've lost it; there's the naked truth."
"My money too?" said I.
"Your money too," says Alan, with a groan. "Ye shouldna have given it
me. I'm daft when I get to the cartes."
"Hoot-toot! hoot-toot!" said Cluny. "It was all daffing; it's all
nonsense. Of course you'll have your money back again, and the double of
it, if ye'll make so free with me. It would be a singular thing for me
to keep it. It's not to be supposed that I would be any hindrance to
gentlemen in your situation; that would be a singular thing!" cries he,
and began to pull gold out of his pocket with a mighty red face.
Alan said nothing, only looked on the ground.
"Will you step to the door with me, sir?" said I.
Cluny said he would be very glad, and followed me readily enough, but he
looked flustered and put out.
"And now, sir," says I, "I must first acknowledge your generosity."
"Nonsensical nonsense!" cries Cluny. "Where's the generosity? This is
just a most unfortunate affair; but what would ye have me do--boxed up
in this bee-skep of a cage of mine--but just set my friends to the
cartes, when I can get them? And if they lose, of course, it's not to be
supposed----" And here he came to a pause.
"Yes," said I, "if they lose, you give them back their money; and if
they win, they carry away yours in their pouches! I have said before
that I grant your generosity; but to me, sir, it's a very painful thing
to be placed in this position."
There was a little silence, in which Cluny seemed always as if he was
about to speak, but said nothing. All the time he grew redder and redder
in the face.
"I am a young man," said I, "and I ask your advice. Advise me as you
would your son. My friend fairly lost this money, after having fairly
gained a far greater sum of yours; can I accept it back again? Would
that be the right part for me to play? Whatever I do, you can see for
yourself it must be hard upon a man of any pride."
"It's rather hard on me too, Mr. Balfour," said Cluny, "and ye give me
very much the look of a man that has entrapped poor people to their
hurt. I wouldna have my friends come to any house of mine to accept
affronts; no," he cried, with a sudden heat of anger, "nor yet to give
them!"
"And so you see, sir," said I, "there is something to be said upon my
side; and this gambling is a very poor employ for gentle-folks. But I am
still waiting your opinion."
I am sure if ever Cluny hated any man it was David Balfour. He looked me
all over with a warlike eye, and I saw the challenge at his lips. But
either my youth disarmed him, or perhaps his own sense of justice.
Certainly it was a mortifying matter for all concerned, and not least
for Cluny; the more credit that he took it as he did.
"Mr. Balfour," said he, "I think you are too nice and covenanting, but
for all that you have the spirit of a very pretty gentleman. Upon my
honest word, ye may take this money--it's what I would tell my son--and
here's my hand along with it!"
FOOTNOTE:
[28] Condiment.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE QUARREL
Alan and I were put across Loch Errocht under cloud of night, and went
down its eastern shore to another hiding-place near the head of Loch
Rannoch, whither we were led by one of the gillies from the Cage. This
fellow carried all our luggage and Alan's great-coat in the bargain,
trotting along under the burthen, far less than the half of which used
to weigh me to the ground, like a stout hill-pony with a feather; yet he
was a man that, in plain contest, I could have broken on my knee.
Doubtless it was a great relief to walk disencumbered; and perhaps
without that relief, and the consequent sense of liberty and lightness,
I could not have walked at all. I was but new risen from a bed of
sickness; and there was nothing in the state of our affairs to hearten
me for much exertion; travelling, as we did, over the most dismal
deserts in Scotland, under a cloudy heaven, and with divided hearts
among the travellers.
For long we said nothing; marching alongside or one behind the other,
each with a set countenance; I, angry and proud, and drawing what
strength I had from these two violent and sinful feelings: Alan angry
and ashamed,--ashamed that he had lost my money, angry that I should
take it so ill.
The thought of a separation ran always the stronger in my mind; and the
more I approved of it, the more ashamed I grew of my approval. It would
be a fine, handsome, generous thing, indeed, for Alan to turn round and
say to me: "Go; I am in the most danger, and my company only increases
yours." But for me to turn to the friend who certainly loved me, and say
to him: "You are in great danger, I am in but little; your friendship is
a burden; go, take your risks and bear your hardships alone----" no,
that was impossible; and even to think of it privily to myself made my
cheeks to burn.
And yet Alan had behaved like a child, and (what is worse) a treacherous
child. Wheedling my money from me while I lay half-conscious was scarce
better than theft; and yet here he was, trudging by my side, without a
penny to his name, and, by what I could see, quite blithe to sponge upon
the money he had driven me to beg. True, I was ready to share it with
him; but it made me rage to see him count upon my readiness.
These were the two things uppermost in my mind; and I could open my
mouth upon neither without black ungenerosity. So I did the next worst,
and said nothing, nor so much as looked once at my companion, save with
the tail of my eye.
At last, upon the other side of Loch Errocht, going over a smooth, rushy
place, where the walking was easy, he could bear it no longer, and came
close to me.
"David," says he, "this is no way for two friends to take a small
accident. I have to say that I'm sorry; and so that's said. And now if
you have anything, ye'd better say it."
"O," says I, "I have nothing."
He seemed disconcerted; at which I was meanly pleased.
"No," said he, with rather a trembling voice, "but when I say I was to
blame?"
"Why, of course, ye were to blame," said I coolly; "and you will bear me
out that I have never reproached you."
"Never," says he; "but ye ken very well that ye've done worse. Are we to
part? Ye said so once before. Are ye to say it again? There's hills and
heather enough between here and the two seas, David; and I will own I'm
no' very keen to stay where I'm no' wanted."
This pierced me like a sword, and seemed to lay bare my private
disloyalty.
"Alan Breck!" I cried; and then: "Do you think I am one to turn my back
on you in your chief need? You durstn't say it to my face. My whole
conduct's there to give the lie to it. It's true, I fell asleep upon the
muir; but that was from weariness, and you do wrong to cast it up to
me----"
"Which is what I never did," said Alan.
"But aside from that," I continued, "what have I done that you should
even me to dogs by such a supposition? I never yet failed a friend, and
it's not likely I'll begin with you. There are things between us that I
can never forget, even if you can."
"I will only say this to ye, David," said Alan, very quietly, "that I
have long been owing ye my life, and now I owe ye money. Ye should try
to make that burden light for me."
This ought to have touched me, and in a manner it did, but the wrong
manner. I felt I was behaving badly; and was now not only angry with
Alan, but angry with myself in the bargain; and it made me the more
cruel.
"You asked me to speak," said I. "Well, then, I will. You own yourself
that you have done me a disservice; I have had to swallow an affront: I
have never reproached you, I never named the thing till you did. And now
you blame me," cried I, "because I canna laugh and sing as if I was glad
to be affronted. The next thing will be that I'm to go down upon my
knees and thank you for it! Ye should think more of others, Alan Breck.
If ye thought more of others, ye would perhaps speak less about
yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has passed over an
offence without a word, you would be blithe to let it lie, instead of
making it a stick to break his back with. By your own way of it, it was
you that was to blame; then it shouldna be you to seek the quarrel."
"Aweel," said Alan, "say nae mair."
And we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey's end,
and supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word.
The gillie put us across Loch Rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and
gave us his opinion as to our best route. This was to get us up at once
into the tops of the mountains: to go round by a circuit, turning the
heads of Glen Lyon, Glen Lochay, and Glen Dochart, and come down upon
the lowlands by Kippen and the upper waters of the Forth. Alan was
little pleased with a route which led us through the country of his
blood-foes, the Glenorchy Campbells. He objected that, by turning to the
east, we should come almost at once among the Athole Stewarts, a race of
his own name and lineage, although following a different chief, and come
besides by a far easier and swifter way to the place whither we were
bound. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Cluny's scouts,
had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in
every district, and alleging finally (as well as I could understand)
that we should nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the
Campbells.
Alan gave way at last, but with only half a heart. "It's one of the
dowiest countries in Scotland," said he. "There's naething there that I
ken, but heath, and crows, and Campbells. But I see that ye're a man of
some penetration; ind be it as ye please!"
We set forth accordingly by this itinerary; and for the best part of
three nights travelled on eerie mountains and among the well-heads of
wild rivers; often buried in mist, almost continually blown and rained
upon, and not once cheered by any glimpse of sunshine. By day, we lay
and slept in the drenching heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon
breakneck hills and among rude crags. We often wandered; we were often
so involved in fog, that we must lie quiet till it lightened. A fire was
never to be thought of. Our only food was drammach and a portion of
cold meat that we had carried from the Cage; and as for drink, Heaven
knows we had no want of water.
This was a dreadful time, rendered the more dreadful by the gloom of the
weather and the country. I was never warm; my teeth chattered in my
head; I was troubled with a very sore throat, such as I had on the isle;
I had a painful stitch in my side, which never left me; and when I slept
in my wet bed, with the rain beating above and the mud oozing below me,
it was to live over again in fancy the worst part of my adventures--to
see the tower of Shaws lit by lightning, Ransome carried below on the
men's backs, Shuan dying on the round-house floor, or Colin Campbell
grasping at the bosom of his coat. From such broken slumbers I would be
aroused in the gloaming, to sit up in the same puddle where I had slept,
and sup cold drammach; the rain driving sharp in my face or running down
my back in icy trickles; the mist enfolding us like as in a gloomy
chamber--or, perhaps, if the wind blew, falling suddenly apart and
showing us the gulf of some dark valley where the streams were crying
aloud.
The sound of an infinite number of rivers came up from all round. In
this steady rain the springs of the mountain were broken up; every glen
gushed water like a cistern; every stream was in high spate, and had
filled and overflowed its channel. During our night tramps, it was
solemn to hear the voice of them below in the valleys, now booming like
thunder, now with an angry cry. I could well understand the story of the
Water Kelpie, that demon of the streams, who is fabled to keep wailing
and roaring at the ford until the coming of the doomed traveller. Alan,
I saw, believed it, or half believed it; and when the cry of the river
rose more than usually sharp, I was little surprised (though, of course,
I would still be shocked) to see him cross himself in the manner of the
Catholics.
During all these horrid wanderings we had no familiarity, scarcely even
that of speech. The truth is that I was sickening for my grave, which is
my best excuse. But besides that, I was of an unforgiving disposition
from my birth, slow to take offence, slower to forget it, and now
incensed both against my companion and myself. For the best part of two
days he was unweariedly kind; silent, indeed, but always ready to help,
and always hoping (as I could very well see) that my displeasure would
blow by. For the same length of time I stayed in myself, nursing my
anger, roughly refusing his services, and passing him over with my eyes
as if he had been a bush or a stone.
The second night, or rather the peep of the third day, found us upon a
very open hill, so that we could not follow our usual plan and lie down
immediately to eat and sleep. Before we had reached a place of shelter,
the grey had come pretty clear, for, though it still rained, the clouds
ran higher; and Alan, looking in my face, showed some marks of concern.
"Ye had better let me take your pack," said he, for perhaps the ninth
time since we had parted from the scout beside Loch Rannoch.
"I do very well, I thank you," said I, as cold as ice.
Alan flushed darkly. "I'll not offer it again," he said. "I'm not a
patient man, David."
"I never said you were," said I, which was exactly the rude, silly
speech of a boy of ten.
Alan made no answer at the time, but his conduct answered for him.
Henceforth, it is to be thought, he quite forgave himself for the affair
at Cluny's; cocked his hat again, walked jauntily, whistled airs, and
looked at me upon one side with a provoking smile.
The third night we were to pass through the western end of the country
of Balquhidder. It came clear and cold, with a touch in the air like
frost, and a northerly wind that blew the clouds away and made the stars
bright. The streams were full, of course, and still made a great noise
among the hills; but I observed that Alan thought no more upon the
Kelpie, and was in high good spirits. As for me, the change of weather
came too late; I had lain in the mire so long that (as the Bible has
it) my very clothes "abhorred me"; I was dead weary, deadly sick and
full of pains and shiverings; the chill of the wind went through me, and
the sound of it confused my ears. In this poor state I had to bear from
my companion something in the nature of a persecution. He spoke a good
deal, and never without a taunt. "Whig" was the best name he had to give
me. "Here," he would say, "here's a dub for ye to jump, my Whiggie! I
ken you're a fine jumper!" And so on; all the time with a gibing voice
and face.
I knew it was my own doing, and no one else's; but I was too miserable
to repent. I felt I could drag myself but little farther; pretty soon, I
must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox, and
my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast. My head was light,
perhaps; but I began to love the prospect, I began to glory in the
thought of such a death, alone in the desert, with the wild eagles
besieging my last moments. Alan would repent then, I thought; he would
remember, when I was dead, how much he owed me, and the remembrance
would be torture. So I went like a sick, silly, and bad-hearted
schoolboy, feeding my anger against a fellow-man, when I would have been
better on my knees, crying on God for mercy. And at each of Alan's
taunts I hugged myself. "Ah!" thinks I to myself, "I have a better taunt
in readiness; when I lie down and die, you will feel it like a buffet in
your face; ah, what a revenge! ah, how you will regret your ingratitude
and cruelty!"
All the while, I was growing worse and worse. Once I had fallen, my legs
simply doubling under me, and this had struck Alan for the moment; but I
was afoot so briskly, and set off again with such a natural manner, that
he soon forgot the incident. Flushes of heat went over me, and then
spasms of shuddering. The stitch in my side was hardly bearable. At last
I began to feel that I could trail myself no farther: and with that,
there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with Alan, let my
anger blaze, and be done with my life in a more sudden manner. He had
just called me "Whig." I stopped.
"Mr. Stewart," said I, in a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string,
"you are older than I am, and should know your manners. Do you think it
either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? I
thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ
civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt
than some of yours."
Alan had stopped opposite to me, his hat cocked, his hands in his
breeches pockets, his head a little on one side. He listened, smiling
evilly, as I could see by the starlight; and when I had done he began to
whistle a Jacobite air. It was the air made in mockery of General Cope's
defeat at Prestonpans:--
"Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet?
And are your drums a-beatin' yet?"
And it came in my mind that Alan, on the day of that battle, had been
engaged upon the royal side.
"Why do ye take that air, Mr. Stewart?" said I. "Is that to remind me
you have been beaten on both sides?"
The air stopped on Alan's lips. "David!" said he.
"But it's time these manners ceased," I continued; "and I mean you shall
henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Campbells."
"I am a Stewart----" began Alan.
"O!" says I, "I ken ye bear a king's name. But you are to remember,
since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those
that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be
none the worse of washing."
"Do you know that you insult me?" said Alan, very low.
"I am sorry for that," said I, "for I am not done; and if you distaste
the sermon, I doubt the pirliecue[29] will please you as little. You
have been chased in the field by the grown men of my party; it seems a
poor kind of pleasure to outface a boy. Both the Campbells and the Whigs
have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. It behoves you to
speak of them as of your betters."
Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him
in the wind.
"This is a pity," he said at last. "There are things said that cannot be
passed over."
"I never asked you to," said I. "I am as ready as yourself."
"Ready?" said he.
"Ready," I repeated. "I am no blower and boaster like some that I could
name. Come on!" And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself
had taught me.
"David!" he cried. "Are ye daft? I canna draw upon ye, David. It's fair
murder."
"That was your look-out when you insulted me," said I.
"It's the truth!" cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his
mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. "It's the bare truth,"
he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with
mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. "Na, na," he
kept saying, "na, na--I canna, I canna."
At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself
only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have
given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken,
who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan's kindness and courage in
the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil
days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever
that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me
seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for
sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.
This it was that gave me a thought. No apology could blot out what I
had said; it was needless to think of one, none could cover the offence;
but where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Alan back
to my side. I put my pride away from me. "Alan!" I said; "if you canna
help me, I must just die here."
He started up sitting, and looked at me.
"It's true," said I. "I'm by with it. O let me get into the bield of a
house--I can die there easier." I had no need to pretend; whether I
chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart
of stone.
"Can ye walk?" asked Alan.
"No," said I, "not without help. This last hour my legs have been
fainting under me; I've a stitch in my side like a red-hot iron; I canna
breathe right. If I die, ye'll can forgive me, Alan? In my heart I liked
ye fine--even when I was the angriest."
"Wheesht, wheesht!" cried Alan. "Dinna say that! David man, ye ken----"
He shut his mouth upon a sob. "Let me get my arm about ye," he
continued; "that's the way! Now lean upon me hard. Gude kens where
there's a house! We're in Balwhidder, too; there should be no want of
houses, no, nor friends' houses here. Do ye gang easier so, Davie?"
"Ay," said I, "I can be doing this way"; and I pressed his arm with my
hand.
Again he came near sobbing. "Davie," said he, "I'm no' a right man at
all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I couldna remember ye were just
a bairn, I couldna see ye were dying on your feet; Davie, ye'll have to
try and forgive me."
"O man, let's say no more about it!" said I. "We're neither one of us to
mend the other--that's the truth! We must just bear and forbear, man
Alan.--O but my stitch is sore! Is there nae house?"
"I'll find a house to ye, David," he said stoutly. "We'll follow down
the burn, where there's bound to be houses. My poor man, will ye no' be
better on my back?"
"O Alan," says I, "and me a good twelve inches taller?"
"Ye're no such a thing," cried Alan, with a start. "There may be a
trifling matter of an inch or two; I'm no' saying I'm just exactly what
ye would call a tall man, whatever; and I daresay," he added, his voice
tailing off in a laughable manner, "now when I come to think of it, I
daresay ye'll be just about right. Ay, it'll be a foot, or near-hand; or
maybe even mair!"
It was sweet and laughable to hear Alan eat his words up in the fear of
some fresh quarrel. I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so
hard; but if I had laughed, I think I must have wept too.
"Alan," cried I, "what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for
such a thankless fellow?"
"'Deed, and I don't know," said Alan. "For just precisely what I thought
I liked about ye was that ye never quarrelled;--and now I like ye
better!"
FOOTNOTE:
[29] A second sermon.
CHAPTER XXV
IN BALQUHIDDER
At the door of the first house we came to Alan knocked, which was no
very safe enterprise in such a part of the Highlands as the Braes of
Balquhidder. No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed
by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call "chiefless
folk," driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith
by the advance of the Campbells. Here were Stewarts and Maclarens, which
came to the same thing, for the Maclarens followed Alan's chief in war,
and made but one clan with Appin. Here, too, were many of that old,
proscribed, nameless, red-handed clan of the Macgregors. They had always
been ill-considered, and now worse than ever, having credit with no side
or party in the whole country of Scotland. Their chief, Macgregor of
Macgregor, was in exile; the more immediate leader of that part of them
about Balquhidder, James More, Rob Roy's eldest son, lay waiting his
trial in Edinburgh Castle; they were in ill-blood with Highlander and
Lowlander, with the Grahames, the Maclarens, and the Stewarts; and Alan,
who took up the quarrel of any friend, however distant, was extremely
wishful to avoid them.
Chance served us very well; for it was a household of Maclarens that we
found, where Alan was not only welcome for his name's sake, but known by
reputation. Here then I was got to bed without delay, and a doctor
fetched, who found me in a sorry plight. But whether because he was a
very good doctor, or I a very young, strong man, I lay bedridden for no
more than a week, and before a month I was able to take the road again
with a good heart.
All this time Alan would not leave me, though I often pressed him, and
indeed his foolhardiness in staying was a common subject of outcry with
the two or three friends that were let into the secret. He hid by day in
a hole of the braes under a little wood; and at night, when the coast
was clear, would come into the house to visit me. I need not say if I
was pleased to see him; Mrs. Maclaren, our hostess, thought nothing good
enough for such a guest; and as Duncan Dhu (which was the name of our
host) had a pair of pipes in his house, and was much of a lover of
music, the time of my recovery was quite a festival, and we commonly
turned night into day.
The soldiers let us be; although once a party of two companies and some
dragoons went by in the bottom of the valley, where I could see them
through the window as I lay in bed. What was much more astonishing, no
magistrate came near me, and there was no question put of whence I came
or whither I was going; and in that time of excitement I was as free of
all inquiry as though I had lain in a desert. Yet my presence was known
before I left to all the people in Balquhidder and the adjacent parts;
many coming about the house on visits, and these (after the custom of
the country) spreading the news among their neighbours. The bills, too,
had now been printed. There was one pinned near the foot of my bed,
where I could read my own not very flattering portrait, and, in larger
characters, the amount of the blood-money that had been set upon my
life. Duncan Dhu and the rest that knew that I had come there in Alan's
company could have entertained no doubt of who I was; and many others
must have had their guess. For though I had changed my clothes, I could
not change my age or person; and Lowland boys of eighteen were not so
rife in these parts of the world, and above all about that time, that
they could fail to put one thing with another, and connect me with the
bill. So it was, at least. Other folk keep a secret among two or three
near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is
told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century.
There was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit
I had of Robin Oig, one of the sons of the notorious Rob Roy. He was
sought upon all sides on the charge of carrying a young woman from
Balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about
Balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy. It was he who had
shot James Maclaren at the plough-stilts, a quarrel never satisfied; yet
he walked into the house of his blood enemies as a rider[30] might into
a public inn.
Duncan had time to pass me word of who it was; and we looked at one
another in concern. You should understand, it was then close upon the
time of Alan's coming; the two were little likely to agree; and yet if
we sent word or sought to make a signal, it was sure to arouse suspicion
in a man under so dark a cloud as the Macgregor.
He came in with a great show of civility, but like a man among
inferiors; took off his bonnet to Mrs. Maclaren, but clapped it on his
head again to speak to Duncan; and having thus set himself (as he would
have thought) in a proper light, came to my bedside and bowed.
"I am given to know, sir," says he, "that your name is Balfour."
"They call me David Balfour," said I, "at your service."
"I would give ye my name in return, sir," he replied, "but it's one
somewhat blown upon of late days; and it'll perhaps suffice if I tell ye
that I am own brother to James More Drummond or Macgregor, of whom ye
will scarce have failed to hear."
"No, sir," said I, a little alarmed; "nor yet of your father,
Macgregor-Campbell." And I sat up and bowed in bed; for I thought best
to compliment him, in case he was proud of having had an outlaw to his
father.
He bowed in return. "But what I am come to say, sir," he went on, "is
this. In the year 'Forty-five my brother raised a part of the 'Gregara,'
and marched six companies to strike a stroke for the good side; and the
surgeon that marched with our clan and cured my brother's leg when it
was broken in the brush at Prestonpans, was a gentleman of the same name
precisely as yourself. He was brother to Balfour of Baith; and if you
are in any reasonable degree of nearness one of that gentleman's kin, I
have come to put myself and my people at your command."
You are to remember that I knew no more of my descent than any cadger's
dog; my uncle, to be sure, had prated of some of our high connections,
but nothing to the present purpose; and there was nothing left me but
that bitter disgrace of owning that I could not tell.
Robin told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his
back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the
door I could hear him telling Duncan that I was "only some kinless loon
that didn't know his own father." Angry as I was at these words, and
ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man
who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three
years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances.
Just in the door he met Alan coming in; and the two drew back and looked
at each other like strange dogs. They were neither of them big men, but
they seemed fairly to swell out with pride. Each wore a sword, and by a
movement of his haunch, thrust clear the hilt of it, so that it might be
the more readily grasped and the blade drawn.
"Mr. Stewart, I am thinking," says Robin.
"Troth, Mr. Macgregor, it's not a name to be ashamed of," answered Alan.
"I did not know ye were in my country, sir," says Robin.
"It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends the
Maclarens," says Alan.
"That's a kittle point," returned the other. "There may be two words to
say to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your
sword?"
"Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal
more than that," says Alan. "I am not the only man that can draw steel
in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk with a
gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never hear that
the Macgregor had the best of it."
"Do ye mean my father, sir?" says Robin.
"Well, I wouldna wonder," said Alan. "The gentleman I have in my mind
had the ill-taste to clap Campbell to his name."
"My father was an old man," returned Robin. "The match was unequal. You
and me would make a better pair, sir."
"I was thinking that," said Alan.
I was half out of bed, and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these
fighting-cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when
that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with
something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.
"Gentlemen," said he, "I will have been thinking of a very different
matter, whateffer. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who
are baith acclaimed pipers. It's an auld dispute which one of ye's the
best. Here will be a braw chance to settle it."
"Why, sir," said Alan, still addressing Robin, from whom, indeed, he had
not so much as shifted his eyes, nor yet Robin from him, "why, sir,"
says Alan, "I think I will have heard some sough[31] of the sort. Have
ye music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?"
"I can pipe like a Macrimmon!" cries Robin.
"And that is a very bold word," quoth Alan.
"I have made bolder words good before now," returned Robin, "and that
against better adversaries."
"It is easy to try that," says Alan.
Duncan Dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his
principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a
bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose, and which is made of
old whisky, strained honey and sweet cream, slowly beaten together in
the right order and proportion. The two enemies were still on the very
breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each side of the peat
fire, with a mighty show of politeness. Maclaren pressed them to taste
his mutton-ham and "the wife's brose," reminding them the wife was out
of Athole and had a name far and wide for her skill in that confection.
But Robin put aside these hospitalities as bad for the breath.
"I would have ye to remark, sir," said Alan, "that I havena broken bread
for near upon ten hours, which will be worse for the breath than any
brose in Scotland."
"I will take no advantages, Mr. Stewart," replied Robin. "Eat and drink;
I'll follow you."
Each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to
Mrs. Maclaren; and then, after a great number of civilities, Robin took
the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner.
"Ay, ye can blow," said Alan; and taking the instrument from his rival,
he first played the same spring in a manner identical with Robin's; and
then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a
perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the
"warblers."
I had been pleased with Robin's playing; Alan's ravished me.
"That's no' very bad, Mr. Stewart," said the rival, "but ye show a poor
device in your warblers."
"Me!" cried Alan, the blood starting to his face. "I give ye the lie."
"Do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then," said Robin, "that ye
seek to change them for the sword?"
"And that's very well said, Mr. Macgregor," returned Alan; "and in the
meantime" (laying a strong accent on the word) "I take back the lie. I
appeal to Duncan."
"Indeed, ye need apply to naebody," said Robin. "Ye're a far better
judge than any Maclaren in Balquhidder: for it's a God's truth that
you're a very creditable piper for a Stewart. Hand me the pipes."
Alan did as he asked; and Robin proceeded to imitate and correct some
part of Alan's variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly.
"Ay, ye have music," said Alan gloomily.
"And now be the judge yourself, Mr. Stewart," said Robin; and taking up
the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a
purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and
so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed to hear him.
As for Alan, his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his
fingers, like a man under some deep affront. "Enough!" he cried. "Ye can
blow the pipes--make the most of that." And he made as if to rise.
But Robin only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck
into the slow measure of a pibroch. It was a fine piece of music in
itself, and nobly played; but it seems, besides, it was a piece peculiar
to the Appin Stewarts and a chief favourite with Alan. The first notes
were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time
quickened he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that
piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he
had no thought but for the music.
"Robin Oig," he said, when it was done, "ye are a great piper. I am not
fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. Body of me! ye have mair music
in your sporran than I have in my head! And though it still sticks in my
mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I
warn ye beforehand--it'll no' be fair! It would go against my heart to
haggle a man that can blow the pipes as you can!"
Thereupon that quarrel was made up; all night long the brose was going
and the pipes changing hands; and the day had come pretty bright, and
the three men were none the better for what they had been taking, before
Robin as much as thought upon the road.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Commercial traveller.
[31] Rumour.
CHAPTER XXVI
END OF THE FLIGHT: WE PASS THE FORTH
The month, as I have said, was not yet out, but it was already far
through August, and beautiful warm weather, with every sign of an early
and great harvest, when I was pronounced able for my journey. Our money
was now run to so low an ebb that we must think first of all on speed;
for if we came not soon to Mr. Rankeillor's, or if when we came there he
should fail to help me, we must surely starve. In Alan's view, besides,
the hunt must have now greatly slackened; and the line of the Forth and
even Stirling Bridge, which is the main pass over that river, would be
watched with little interest.
"It's a chief principle in military affairs," said he, "to go where ye
are least expected. Forth is our trouble; ye ken the saying, 'Forth
bridles the wild Hielandman.' Well, if we seek to creep round about the
head of that river and come down by Kippen or Balfron, it's just
precisely there that they'll be looking to lay hands on us. But if we
stave on straight to the auld Brig of Stirling, I'll lay my sword they
let us pass unchallenged."
The first night, accordingly, we pushed to the house of a Maclaren in
Strathire, a friend of Duncan's, where we slept the twenty-first of the
month, and whence we set forth again about the fall of night to make
another easy stage. The twenty-second we lay in a heather bush on the
hill-side in Uam Var, within view of a herd of deer, the happiest ten
hours of sleep in a fine, breathing sunshine and on bone-dry ground,
that I have ever tasted. That night we struck Allan Water, and followed
it down; and coming to the edge of the hills saw the whole Carse of
Stirling underfoot, as flat as a pancake, with the town and castle on a
hill in the midst of it, and the moon shining on the Links of Forth.
"Now," said Alan, "I kenna if ye care, but ye're in your own land again.
We passed the Hieland Line in the first hour; and now if we could but
pass yon crooked water, we might cast our bonnets in the air."
In Allan Water, near by where it falls into the Forth, we found a little
sandy islet, overgrown with burdock, butterbur, and the like low plants,
that would just cover us if we lay flat. Here it was we made our camp,
within plain view of Stirling Castle, whence we could hear the drums
beat as some part of the garrison paraded. Shearers worked all day in a
field on one side of the river, and we could hear the stones going on
the hooks, and the voices, and even the words, of the men talking. It
behoved to lie close and keep silent. But the sand of the little isle
was sun-warm, the green plants gave us shelter for our heads, we had
food and drink in plenty; and, to crown all, we were within sight of
safety.
As soon as the shearers quit their work and the dusk began to fall, we
waded ashore and struck for the Bridge of Stirling, keeping to the
fields and under the field fences.
The bridge is close under the castle hill, an old, high, narrow bridge
with pinnacles along the parapet; and you may conceive with how much
interest I looked upon it, not only as a place famous in history, but as
the very doors of salvation to Alan and myself. The moon was not yet up
when we came there; a few lights shone along the front of the fortress,
and lower down a few lighted windows in the town; but it was all mighty
still, and there seemed to be no guard upon the passage.
I was for pushing straight across; but Alan was more wary.
"It looks unco quiet," said he; "but for all that we'll lie down here
cannily behind a dyke, and make sure."
So we lay for about a quarter of an hour, whiles whispering, whiles
lying still and hearing nothing earthly but the washing of the water on
the piers. At last there came by an old, hobbling woman with a crutch
stick; who first stopped a little, close to where we lay, and bemoaned
herself and the long way she had travelled; and then set forth again up
the steep spring of the bridge. The woman was so little, and the night
still so dark, that we soon lost sight of her; only heard the sound of
her steps, and her stick, and a cough that she had by fits, draw slowly
farther away.
"She's bound to be across now," I whispered.
"Na," said Alan, "her foot still sounds boss[32] upon the bridge."
And just then--"Who goes?" cried a voice, and we heard the butt of a
musket rattle on the stones. I must suppose the sentry had been
sleeping, so that had we tried, we might have passed unseen; but he was
awake now, and the chance forfeited.
"This'll never do," said Alan. "This'll never, never do for us, David."
And without another word he began to crawl away through the fields; and
a little after, being well out of eye-shot, got to his feet again, and
struck along a road that led to the eastward. I could not conceive what
he was doing; and indeed I was so sharply cut by the disappointment that
I was little likely to be pleased with anything. A moment back and I had
seen myself knocking at Mr. Rankeillor's door to claim my inheritance,
like a hero in a ballad; and here was I back again, a wandering, hunted
blackguard, on the wrong side of Forth.
"Well?" said I.
"Well," said Alan, "what would ye have? They're none such fools as I
took them for. We have still the Forth to pass, Davie--weary fall the
rains that fed and the hillsides that guided it!"
"And why go east?" said I.
"Ou, just upon the chance!" said he. "If we canna pass the river, we'll
have to see what we can do for the firth."
"There are fords upon the river, and none upon the firth," said I.
"To be sure there are fords, and a bridge forbye," quoth Alan; "and of
what service, when they are watched?"
"Well," said I, "but a river can be swum."
"By them that have the skill of it," returned he; "but I have yet to
hear that either you or me is much of a hand at that exercise; and for
my own part, I swim like a stone."
"I'm not up to you in talking back, Alan," I said; "but I can see we're
making bad worse. If it's hard to pass a river, it stands to reason it
must be worse to pass a sea."
"But there's such a thing as a boat," says Alan, "or I'm the more
deceived."
"Ay, and such a thing as money," says I. "But for us that have neither
one nor other, they might just as well not have been invented."
"Ye think so?" said Alan.
"I do that," said I.
"David," says he, "ye're a man of small invention and less faith. But
let me set my wits upon the hone, and if I canna beg, borrow, nor yet
steal a boat, I'll make one!"
"I think I see ye!" said I. "And what's more than all that: if ye pass a
bridge, it can tell no tales; but if we pass the firth, there's the boat
on the wrong side--somebody must have brought it--the countryside will
all be in a bizz----"
"Man!" cried Alan, "if I make a boat, I'll make a body to take it back
again! So deave me with no more of your nonsense, but walk (for that's
what you've got to do)--and let Alan think for ye."
All night, then, we walked through the north side of the Carse, under
the high line of the Ochil mountains; and by Alloa and Clackmannan and
Culross, all of which we avoided: and about ten in the morning, mighty
hungry and tired, came to the little clachan of Limekilns. This is a
place that sits near in by the waterside and looks across the Hope to
the town of the Queen's Ferry. Smoke went up from both of these and from
other villages and farms upon all hands. The fields were being reaped;
two ships lay anchored, and boats were coming and going on the Hope. It
was altogether a right pleasant sight to me; and I could not take my
fill of gazing at these comfortable, green, cultivated hills and the
busy people both of the field and sea.
For all that, there was Mr. Rankeillor's house on the south shore, where
I had no doubt wealth awaited me; and here was I upon the north, clad in
poor enough attire of an outlandish fashion, with three silver shillings
left to me of all my fortune, a price set upon my head, and an outlawed
man for my sole company.
"O Alan!" said I, "to think of it! Over there, there's all that heart
could want waiting me; and the birds go over, and the boats go over--all
that please can go, but just me only! O, man, but it's a heart-break!"
In Limekilns we entered a small change-house, which we only knew to be a
public by the wand over the door, and bought some bread and cheese from
a good-looking lass that was the servant. This we carried with us in a
bundle, meaning to sit and eat it in a bush of wood on the sea-shore,
that we saw some third part of a mile in front. As we went, I kept
looking across the water and sighing to myself; and, though I took no
heed of it, Alan had fallen into a muse. At last he stopped in the way.
"Did ye take heed of the lass we bought this of?" says he, tapping on
the bread and cheese.
"To be sure," said I, "and a bonny lass she was."
"Ye thought that?" cries he. "Man David, that's good news."
"In the name of all that's wonderful, why so?" says I. "What good can
that do?"
"Well," said Alan, with one of his droll looks, "I was rather in hopes
it would maybe get us that boat."
"If it were the other way about, it would be liker it," said I.
"That's all that you ken, ye see," said Alan. "I don't want the lass to
fall in love with ye, I want her to be sorry for ye, David; to which end
there is no manner of need that she should take you for a beauty. Let me
see" (looking me curiously over). "I wish ye were a wee thing paler; but
apart from that ye'll do fine for my purpose--ye have a fine, hang-dog,
rag-and-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen
the coat from a potato-bogle. Come; right about, and back to the
change-house for that boat of ours."
I followed him, laughing.
"David Balfour," said he, "ye're a very funny gentleman by your way of
it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt. For all that, if
ye have any affection for my neck (to say nothing of your own) ye will
perhaps be kind enough to take this matter responsibly. I am going to do
a bit of play-acting, the bottom ground of which is just exactly as
serious as the gallows for the pair of us. So bear it, if ye please, in
mind, and conduct yourself according."
"Well, well," said I, "have it as you will."
As we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and hang upon it
like one almost helpless with weariness; and by the time he pushed open
the change-house door he seemed to be half carrying me. The maid
appeared surprised (as well she might be) at our speedy return; but Alan
had no words to spare for her in explanation, helped me to a chair,
called for a tass of brandy, with which he fed me in little sips, and
then, breaking up the bread and cheese, helped me to eat it like a
nursery-lass; the whole with that grave, concerned, affectionate
countenance, that might have imposed upon a judge. It was small wonder
if the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick,
overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew quite near, and
stood leaning with her back on the next table.
"What's like wrong with him?" said she at last.
Alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of fury. "Wrong?"
cries he. "He's walked more hundreds of miles than he has hairs upon his
chin, and slept oftener in wet heather than dry sheets. Wrong, quo' she!
Wrong enough, I would think! Wrong, indeed!" and he kept grumbling to
himself, as he fed me, like a man ill-pleased.
"He's young for the like of that," said the maid.
"Ower young," said Alan, with his back to her.
"He would be better riding," says she.
"And where could I get a horse to him?" cried Alan, turning on her with
the same appearance of fury. "Would ye have me steal?"
I thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon, as indeed
it closed her mouth for the time. But my companion knew very well what
he was doing; and, for as simple as he was in some things of life, had a
great fund of roguishness in such affairs as these.
"Ye needna tell me," she said at last--"ye're gentry."
"Well," said Alan, softened a little (I believe against his will) by
this artless comment, "and suppose we were? Did ever you hear that
gentrice put money in folk's pockets?"
She sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited great lady.
"No," says she, "that's true indeed."
I was all this while chafing at the part I played, and sitting
tongue-tied between shame and merriment; but somehow at this I could
hold in no longer, and bade Alan let me be, for I was better already. My
voice stuck in my throat, for I ever hated to take part in lies; but my
very embarrassment helped on the plot, for the lass no doubt set down my
husky voice to sickness and fatigue.
"Has he nae friends?" said she, in a tearful voice.
"That has he so!" cried Alan, "if we could but win to them!--friends and
rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to see to him--and
here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the heather like a
beggar-man."
"And why that?" says the lass.
"My dear," said Alan, "I canna very safely say; but I'll tell ye what
I'll do instead," says he, "I'll whistle ye a bit tune." And with that
he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere breath of a whistle,
but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave her a few bars of "Charlie
is my darling."
"Wheesht," says she, and looked over her shoulder to the door.
"That's it," said Alan.
"And him so young!" cries the lass.
"He's old enough to----" and Alan struck his forefinger on the back part
of his neck, meaning that I was old enough to lose my head.
"It would be a black shame," she cried, flushing nigh.
"It's what will be, though," said Alan, "unless we manage the better."
At this the lass turned and ran out of that part of the house, leaving
us alone together.--Alan in high good humour at the furthering of his
schemes, and I in bitter dudgeon at being called a Jacobite and treated
like a child.
"Alan," I cried, "I can stand no more of this."
"Ye'll have to sit it, then, Davie," said he. "For if ye upset the pot
now, ye may scrape your own life out of the fire, but Alan Breck is a
dead man."
This was so true that I could only groan; and even my groan served
Alan's purpose, for it was overheard by the lass as she came flying in
again with a dish of white puddings and a bottle of strong ale.
"Poor lamb!" says she, and had no sooner set the meat before us, than
she touched me on the shoulder with a little friendly touch, as much as
to bid me cheer up. Then she told us to fall-to, and there would be no
more to pay; for the inn was her own, or at least her father's, and he
was gone for the day to Pittencrieff. We waited for no second bidding,
for bread and cheese is but cold comfort, and the puddings smelt
excellently well; and while we sat and ate, she took up that same place
by the next table, looking on, and thinking, and frowning to herself,
and drawing the string of her apron through her hand.
"I'm thinking ye have rather a long tongue," she said at last to Alan.
"Ay," said Alan; "but ye see I ken the folk I speak to."
"I would never betray ye," said she, "if ye mean that."
"No," said he, "ye're not that kind. But I'll tell ye what ye would do,
ye would help."
"I couldna," said she, shaking her head. "Na, I couldna."
"No," said he, "but if ye could?"
She answered him nothing.
"Look here, my lass," said Alan, "there are boats in the kingdom of
Fife, for I saw two (no less) upon the beach, as I came in by your
town's end. Now if we could have the use of a boat to pass under cloud
of night into Lothian, and some secret, decent kind of a man to bring
that boat back again and keep his counsel, there would be two souls
saved--mine to all likelihood--his to a dead surety. If we lack that
boat, we have but three shillings left in this wide world; and where to
go, and how to do, and what other place there is for us except the
chains of a gibbet--I give you my naked word, I kenna! Shall we go
wanting, lassie? Are ye to lie in your warm bed and think upon us, when
the wind gowls in the chimney and the rain tirls on the roof? Are ye to
eat your meat by the cheeks of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick
lad of mine, biting his finger-ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger?
Sick or sound, he must aye be moving; with the death-grapple at his
throat he must aye be trailing in the rain on the lang roads; and when
he gants his last on a rickle of cauld stanes, there will be nae friends
near him but only me and God."
At this appeal I could see the lass was in great trouble of mind, being
tempted to help us, and yet in some fear she might be helping
malefactors; and so now I determined to step in myself and to allay her
scruples with a portion of the truth.
"Did ever you hear," said I, "of Mr. Rankeillor of the Ferry?"
"Rankeillor the writer?" said she. "I daursay that!"
"Well," said I, "it's to his door that I am bound, so you may judge by
that if I am an ill-doer; and I will tell you more, that though I am
indeed, by a dreadful error, in some peril of my life, King George has
no truer friend in all Scotland than myself."
Her face cleared up mightily at this, although Alan's darkened.
"That's more than I would ask," said she. "Mr. Rankeillor is a kennt
man." And she bade us finish our meat, get clear of the clachan as soon
as might be, and lie close in the bit wood on the sea beach. "And ye can
trust me," says she, "I'll find some means to put you over."
At this we waited for no more, but shook hands with her upon the
bargain, made short work of the puddings, and set forth again from
Limekilns as far as to the wood. It was a small piece of perhaps a score
of elders and hawthorns and a few young ashes, not thick enough to veil
us from passers-by upon the road or beach. Here we must lie, however,
making the best of the brave warm weather and the good hopes we now had
of a deliverance, and planning more particularly what remained for us to
do.
We had but one trouble all day; when a strolling piper came and sat in
the same wood with us; a red-nosed, blear-eyed, drunken dog, with a
great bottle of whisky in his pocket, and a long story of wrongs that
had been done him by all sorts of persons, from the Lord President of
the Court of Session who had denied him justice, down to the Bailies of
Inverkeithing, who had given him more of it than he desired. It was
impossible but he should conceive some suspicion of two men lying all
day concealed in a thicket and having no business to allege. As long as
he stayed there, he kept us in hot water with prying questions; and
after he was gone, as he was a man not very likely to hold his tongue,
we were in the greater impatience to be gone ourselves.
The day came to an end with the same brightness; the night fell quiet
and clear; lights came out in houses and hamlets, and then, one after
another, began to be put out; but it was past eleven, and we were long
since strangely tortured with anxieties, before we heard the grinding of
oars upon the rowing-pins. At that we looked out and saw the lass
herself coming rowing to us in a boat. She had trusted no one with our
affairs, not even her sweetheart, if she had one; but, as soon as her
father was asleep, had left the house by a window, stolen a neighbour's
boat, and come to our assistance single-handed.
I was abashed how to find expression for my thanks; but she was no less
abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged us to lose no time and to
hold our peace, saying (very properly) that the heart of our matter was
in haste and silence; and so, what with one thing and another, she had
set us on the Lothian shore not far from Carriden, had shaken hands with
us, and was out again at sea and rowing for Limekilns, before there was
one word said either of her service or our gratitude.
Even after she was gone, we had nothing to say, as indeed nothing was
enough for such a kindness. Only Alan stood a great while upon the shore
shaking his head.
"It is a very fine lass," he said at last. "David, it is a very fine
lass." And a matter of an hour later, as we were lying in a den on the
sea-shore, and I had been already dozing, he broke out again in
commendations of her character. For my part, I could say nothing, she
was so simple a creature that my heart smote me both with remorse and
fear: remorse because we had traded upon her ignorance; and fear lest we
should have any way involved her in the dangers of our situation.
FOOTNOTE:
[32] Hollow.
CHAPTER XXVII
I COME TO MR. RANKEILLOR
The next day it was agreed that Alan should fend for himself till
sunset; but as soon as it began to grow dark, he should lie in the
fields by the roadside near to Newhalls, and stir for naught until he
heard me whistling. At first I proposed I should give him for a signal
the "Bonnie House of Airlie," which was a favourite of mine; but he
objected that as the piece was very commonly known, any ploughman might
whistle it by accident; and taught me instead a little fragment of a
Highland air, which has run in my head from that day to this, and will
likely run in my head when I lie dying. Every time it comes to me, it
takes me off to that last day of my uncertainty, with Alan sitting up in
the bottom of the den, whistling and beating the measure with a finger,
and the grey of the dawn coming on his face.
I was in the long street of Queensferry before the sun was up. It was a
fairly built burgh, the houses of good stone, many slated; the town-hall
not so fine, I thought, as that of Peebles, nor yet the street so noble;
but, take it altogether, it put me to shame for my foul tatters.
As the morning went on, and the fires began to be kindled, and the
windows to open, and the people to appear out of the houses, my concern
and despondency grew ever the blacker. I saw now that I had no grounds
to stand upon; and no clear proof of my rights, nor so much as of my own
identity. If it was all a bubble, I was indeed sorely cheated and left
in a sore pass. Even if things were as I conceived, it would in all
likelihood take time to establish my contentions; and what time had I
to spare with less than three shillings in my pocket, and a condemned,
hunted man upon my hands to ship out of the country? Truly, if my hope
broke with me, it might come to the gallows yet for both of us. And as I
continued to walk up and down, and saw people looking askance at me upon
the street or out of windows, and nudging or speaking to one another
with smiles, I began to take a fresh apprehension: that it might be no
easy matter even to come to speech of the lawyer, far less to convince
him of my story.
For the life of me I could not muster up the courage to address any of
these reputable burghers; I thought shame even to speak with them in
such a pickle of rags and dirt; and if I had asked for the house of such
a man as Mr. Rankeillor, I supposed they would have burst out laughing
in my face. So I went up and down, and through the street, and down to
the harbour-side, like a dog that has lost its master, with a strange
gnawing in my inwards, and every now and then a movement of despair. It
grew to be high day at last, perhaps nine in the forenoon; and I was
worn with these wanderings, and chanced to have stopped in front of a
very good house on the landward side, a house with beautiful, clear
glass windows, flowering knots upon the sills, the walls new-harled,[33]
and a chase-dog sitting yawning on the step like one that was at home.
Well, I was even envying this dumb brute, when the door fell open and
there issued forth a shrewd, ruddy, kindly, consequential man in a
well-powdered wig and spectacles. I was in such a plight that no one set
eyes on me once, but he looked at me again; and this gentleman, as it
proved, was so much struck with my poor appearance that he came straight
up to me and asked me what I did.
I told him I was come to the Queen's Ferry on business, and taking heart
of grace, asked him to direct me to the house of Mr. Rankeillor.
"Why," said he, "that is his house that I have just come out of; and,
for a rather singular chance, I am that very man."
"Then, sir," said I, "I have to beg the favour of an interview."
"I do not know your name," said he, "nor yet your face."
"My name is David Balfour," said I.
"David Balfour?" he repeated, in rather a high tone, like one surprised.
"And where have you come from, Mr. David Balfour?" he asked, looking me
pretty drily in the face.
"I have come from a great many strange places, sir," said I; "but I
think it would be as well to tell you where and how in a more private
manner."
He seemed to muse a while, holding his lip in his hand, and looking now
at me and now upon the causeway of the street.
"Yes," says he, "that will be the best, no doubt." And he led me back
with him into his house, cried out to some one whom I could not see that
he would be engaged all morning, and brought me into a little dusty
chamber, full of books and documents. Here he sat down, and bade me be
seated; though I thought he looked a little ruefully from his clean
chair to my muddy rags. "And now," says he, "if you have any business,
pray be brief and come swiftly to the point. _Nec gemino bellum Trojanum
orditur ab ovo_--do you understand that?" says he, with a keen look.
"I will even do as Horace says, sir," I answered, smiling, "and carry
you in _medias res_." He nodded as if he was well pleased, and indeed
his scrap of Latin had been set to test me. For all that, and though I
was somewhat encouraged, the blood came in my face when I added: "I have
reason to believe myself some rights on the estate of Shaws."
He got a paper book out of a drawer and set it before him open. "Well?"
said he.
But I had shot my bolt and sat speechless.
"Come, come, Mr. Balfour," said he, "you must continue. Where were you
born?"
"In Essendean, sir," said I, "the year 1733, the 12th of March."
He seemed to follow this statement in his paper book; but what that
meant I knew not. "Your father and mother?" said he.
"My father was Alexander Balfour, schoolmaster of that place," said I,
"and my mother Grace Pitarrow; I think her people were from Angus."
"Have you any papers proving your identity?" asked Mr. Rankeillor.
"No, sir," said I, "but they are in the hands of Mr. Campbell, the
minister, and could be readily produced. Mr. Campbell, too, would give
me his word; and, for that matter, I do not think my uncle would deny
me."
"Meaning Mr. Ebenezer Balfour?" says he.
"The same," said I.
"Whom you have seen?" he asked.
"By whom I was received into his own house," I answered.
"Did you ever meet a man of the name of Hoseason?" asked Mr. Rankeillor.
"I did so, sir, for my sins," said I; "for it was by his means and the
procurement of my uncle, that I was kidnapped within sight of this town,
carried to sea, suffered shipwreck and a hundred other hardships, and
stand before you to-day in this poor accoutrement."
"You say you were shipwrecked," said Rankeillor; "where was that?"
"Off the south end of the Isle of Mull," said I. "The name of the isle
on which I was cast up is the Island Earraid."
"Ah!" says he, smiling, "you are deeper than me in the geography. But so
far, I may tell you, this agrees pretty exactly with other informations
that I hold. But you say you were kidnapped; in what sense?"
"In the plain meaning of the word, sir," said I. "I was on my way to
your house, when I was trepanned on board the brig, cruelly struck
down, thrown below, and knew no more of anything till we were far at
sea. I was destined for the plantations; a fate that, in God's
providence, I have escaped."
"The brig was lost on June the 27th," says he, looking in his book, "and
we are now at August the 24th. Here is a considerable hiatus, Mr.
Balfour, of near upon two months. It has already caused a vast amount of
trouble to your friends; and I own I shall not be very well contented
until it is set right."
"Indeed, sir," said I, "these months are very easily filled up; but yet
before I told my story, I would be glad to know that I was talking to a
friend."
"This is to argue in a circle," said the lawyer. "I cannot be convinced
till I have heard you. I cannot be your friend till I am properly
informed. If you were more trustful, it would better befit your time of
life. And you know, Mr. Balfour, we have a proverb in the country that
evil-doers are aye evil-dreaders."
"You are not to forget, sir," said I, "that I have already suffered by
my trustfulness; and was shipped off to be a slave by the very man that
(if I rightly understand) is your employer."
All this while I had been gaining ground with Mr. Rankeillor, and, in
proportion as I gained ground, gaining confidence. But at this sally,
which I made with something of a smile myself, he fairly laughed aloud.
"No, no," said he, "it is not so bad as that. _Fui, non sum_. I _was_
indeed your uncle's man of business; but while you (_imberbis juvenis
custode remoto_) were gallivanting in the west, a good deal of water has
run under the bridges; and, if your ears did not sing, it was not for
lack of being talked about. On the very day of your sea disaster, Mr.
Campbell stalked into my office, demanding you from all the winds. I had
never heard of your existence; but I had known your father; and from
matters in my competence (to be touched upon hereafter) I was disposed
to fear the worst. Mr. Ebenezer admitted having seen you; declared
(what seemed improbable) that he had given you considerable sums; and
that you had started for the continent of Europe, intending to fulfil
your education, which was probable and praiseworthy. Interrogated how
you had come to send no word to Mr. Campbell, he deponed that you had
expressed a great desire to break with your past life. Further
interrogated where you now were, protested ignorance, but believed you
were in Leyden. That is a close sum of his replies. I am not exactly
sure that any one believed him," continued Mr. Rankeillor, with a smile;
"and in particular he so much disrelished some expressions of mine that
(in a word) he showed me to the door. We were then at a full stand; for,
whatever shrewd suspicions we might entertain, we had no shadow of
probation. In the very article, comes Captain Hoseason with the story of
your drowning; whereupon all fell through; with no consequences but
concern to Mr. Campbell, injury to my pocket, and another blot upon your
uncle's character, which could very ill afford it. And now, Mr.
Balfour," said he, "you understand the whole process of these matters,
and can judge for yourself to what extent I may be trusted."
Indeed, he was more pedantic than I can represent him, and placed more
scraps of Latin in his speech; but it was all uttered with a fine
geniality of eye and manner which went far to conquer my distrust.
Moreover, I could see he now treated me as if I was myself beyond a
doubt; so that first point of my identity seemed fully granted.
"Sir," said I, "if I tell you my story, I must commit a friend's life to
your discretion. Pass me your word it shall be sacred; and for what
touches myself I will ask no better guarantee than just your face."
He passed me his word very seriously. "But," said he, "these are rather
alarming prolocutions; and if there are in your story any little jostles
to the law, I would beg you to bear in mind that I am a lawyer, and pass
lightly."
Thereupon I told him my story from the first, he listening with his
spectacles thrust up and his eyes closed, so that I sometimes feared he
was asleep. But no such matter! he heard every word (as I found
afterward) with such quickness of hearing and precision of memory as
often surprised me. Even strange outlandish Gaelic names, heard for that
time only, he remembered, and would remind me of, years after. Yet when
I called Alan Breck in full, we had an odd scene. The name of Alan had
of course rung through Scotland, with the news of the Appin murder and
the offer of the reward; and it had no sooner escaped me than the lawyer
moved in his seat and opened his eyes.
"I would name no unnecessary names, Mr. Balfour," said he; "above all of
Highlanders, many of whom are obnoxious to the law."
"Well, it might have been better not," said I, "but, since I have let it
slip, I may as well continue."
"Not at all," said Mr. Rankeillor. "I am somewhat dull of hearing, as
you may have remarked; and I am far from sure I caught the name exactly.
We will call your friend, if you please, Mr. Thomson--that there may be
no reflections. And in future, I would take some such way with any
Highlander that you may have to mention--dead or alive."
By this I saw he must have heard the name all too clearly, and had
already guessed I might be coming to the murder. If he chose to play
this part of ignorance, it was no matter of mine; so I smiled, said it
was no very Highland-sounding name, and consented. Through all the rest
of my story Alan was Mr. Thomson; which amused me the more, as it was a
piece of policy after his own heart. James Stewart, in like manner, was
mentioned under the style of Mr. Thomson's kinsman; Colin Campbell
passed as a Mr. Glen; and to Cluny, when I came to that part of my tale,
I gave the name of "Mr. Jameson, a Highland chief." It was truly the
most open farce, and I wondered that the lawyer should care to keep it
up; but, after all, it was quite in the taste of that age, when there
were two parties in the State, and quiet persons, with no very high
opinions of their own, sought out every cranny to avoid offence to
either.
"Well, well," said the lawyer, when I had quite done, "this is a great
epic, a great Odyssey of yours. You must tell it, sir, in a sound
Latinity when your scholarship is riper; or in English if you please,
though for my part I prefer the stronger tongue. You have rolled much;
_quæ regio in terris_--what parish in Scotland (to make a homely
translation) has not been filled with your wanderings? You have shown,
besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes,
upon the whole, for behaving well in them. This Mr. Thomson seems to me
a gentleman of some choice qualities, though perhaps a trifle
bloody-minded. It would please me none the worse, if (with all his
merits) he were soused in the North Sea, for the man, Mr. David, is a
sore embarrassment. But you are doubtless quite right to adhere to him;
indubitably he adhered to you. _It comes_--we may say--he was your true
companion; nor less _paribus curis vestigia figit_, for I daresay you
would both take an orra thought upon the gallows. Well, well, these days
are fortunately by; and I think (speaking humanly) that you are near the
end of your troubles."
As he thus moralised on my adventures, he looked upon me with so much
humour and benignity that I could scarce contain my satisfaction. I had
been so long wandering with lawless people, and making my bed upon the
hills and under the bare sky, that to sit once more in a clean, covered
house, and to talk amicably with a gentleman in broadcloth, seemed
mighty elevations. Even as I thought so, my eye fell on my unseemly
tatters, and I was once more plunged in confusion. But the lawyer saw
and understood me. He rose, called over the stair to lay another plate,
for Mr. Balfour would stay to dinner, and led me into a bedroom in the
upper part of the house. Here he set before me water and soap, and a
comb; and laid out some clothes that belonged to his son; and here, with
another apposite tag, he left me to my toilet.
FOOTNOTE:
[33] Newly rough-cast.
CHAPTER XXVIII
I GO IN QUEST OF MY INHERITANCE
I made what change I could in my appearance; and blithe was I to look in
the glass and find the beggar-man a thing of the past, and David Balfour
come to life again. And yet I was ashamed of the change too, and, above
all, of the borrowed clothes. When I had done, Mr. Rankeillor caught me
on the stair, made me his compliments, and had me again into the
cabinet.
"Sit ye down, Mr. David," said he, "and now that you are looking a
little more like yourself, let me see if I can find you any news. You
will be wondering, no doubt, about your father and your uncle? To be
sure it is a singular tale; and the explanation is one that I blush to
have to offer you. For," says he, really with embarrassment, "the matter
hinges on a love-affair."
"Truly," said I, "I cannot very well join that notion with my uncle."
"But your uncle, Mr. David, was not always old," replied the lawyer,
"and what may perhaps surprise you more, not always ugly. He had a fine,
gallant air; people stood in their doors to look after him, as he went
by upon a mettle horse. I have seen it with these eyes, and, I
ingenuously confess, not altogether without envy; for I was a plain lad
myself, and a plain man's son; and in those days it was a case of _Odi
te, qui bellus es, Sabelle_."
"It sounds like a dream," said I.
"Ay, ay," said the lawyer, "that is how it is with youth and age. Nor
was that all, but he had a spirit of his own that seemed to promise
great things in the future. In 1715, what must he do but run away to
join the rebels? It was your father that pursued him, found him in a
ditch, and brought him back _multum gementem_; to the mirth of the whole
country. However, _majora canamus_--the two lads fell in love, and that
with the same lady. Mr. Ebenezer, who was the admired and the beloved,
and the spoiled one, made, no doubt, mighty certain of the victory; and
when he found he had deceived himself, screamed like a peacock. The
whole country heard of it; now he lay sick at home, with his silly
family standing round the bed in tears; now he rode from public-house to
public-house, and shouted his sorrows into the lug of Tom, Dick, and
Harry. Your father, Mr. David, was a kind gentleman; but he was weak,
dolefully weak; took all this folly with a long countenance; and one
day--by your leave!--resigned the lady. She was no such fool, however;
it's from her you must inherit your excellent good sense; and she
refused to be bandied from one to another. Both got upon their knees to
her; and the upshot of the matter for that while was that she showed
both of them the door. That was in August; dear me! the same year I came
from college. The scene must have been highly farcical."
I thought myself it was a silly business, but I could not forget my
father had a hand in it. "Surely, sir, it had some note of tragedy,"
said I.
"Why, no, sir, not at all," returned the lawyer. "For tragedy implies
some ponderable matter in dispute, some _dignus vindice nodus_; and this
piece of work was all about the petulance of a young ass that had been
spoiled, and wanted nothing so much as to be tied up and soundly belted.
However, that was not your father's view; and the end of it was, that
from concession to concession on your father's part, and from one height
to another of squalling, sentimental selfishness upon your uncle's, they
came at last to drive a sort of bargain, from whose ill results you have
recently been smarting. The one man took the lady, the other the estate.
Now, Mr. David, they talk a great deal of charity and generosity; but
in this disputable state of life I often think the happiest consequences
seem to flow when a gentleman consults his lawyer, and takes all the law
allows him. Anyhow, this piece of Quixotry on your father's part, as it
was unjust in itself, has brought forth a monstrous family of
injustices. Your father and mother lived and died poor folk; you were
poorly reared; and in the meanwhile, what a time it has been for the
tenants on the estate of Shaws! And I might add (if it was a matter I
cared much about), what a time for Mr. Ebenezer!"
"And yet that is certainly the strangest part of all," said I, "that a
man's nature should thus change."
"True," said Mr. Rankeillor. "And yet I imagine it was natural enough.
He could not think that he had played a handsome part. Those who knew
the story gave him the cold shoulder; those who knew it not, seeing one
brother disappear, and the other succeed in the estate, raised a cry of
murder; so that upon all sides he found himself evited. Money was all he
got by his bargain; well, he came to think the more of money. He was
selfish when he was young, he is selfish now that he is old; and the
latter end of all these pretty manners and fine feelings you have seen
for yourself."
"Well, sir," said I, "and in all this, what is my position?"
"The estate is yours beyond a doubt," replied the lawyer. "It matters
nothing what your father signed, you are the heir of entail. But your
uncle is a man to fight the indefensible; and it would be likely your
identity that he would call in question. A lawsuit is always expensive,
and a family lawsuit always scandalous; besides which, if any of your
doings with your friend Mr. Thomson were to come out, we might find that
we had burned our fingers. The kidnapping, to be sure, would be a court
card upon our side, if we could only prove it. But it may be difficult
to prove; and my advice (upon the whole) is to make a very easy bargain
with your uncle, perhaps even leaving him at Shaws, where he has taken
root for a quarter of a century, and contenting yourself in the
meanwhile with a fair provision."
I told him I was very willing to be easy, and that to carry family
concerns before the public was a step from which I was naturally much
averse. In the meantime (thinking to myself) I began to see the outlines
of that scheme on which we afterwards acted.
"The great affair," I asked, "is to bring home to him the kidnapping?"
"Surely," said Mr. Rankeillor, "and, if possible, out of court. For mark
you here, Mr. David: we could no doubt find some men of the _Covenant_
who would swear to your reclusion; but once they were in the box, we
could no longer check their testimony, and some word of your friend Mr.
Thomson must certainly crop out--which (from what you have let fall) I
cannot think to be desirable."
"Well, sir," said I, "here is my way of it." And I opened my plot to
him.
"But this would seem to involve my meeting the man Thomson?" says he,
when I had done.
"I think so, indeed, sir," said I.
"Dear doctor!" cries he, rubbing his brow. "Dear doctor! No, Mr. David,
I am afraid your scheme is inadmissible. I say nothing against your
friend Mr. Thomson: I know nothing against him; and if I did--mark this,
Mr. David!--it would be my duty to lay hands on him. Now I put it to
you: is it wise to meet? He may have matters to his charge. He may not
have told you all. His name may not be even Thomson!" cries the lawyer,
twinkling; "for some of these fellows will pick up names by the roadside
as another would gather haws."
"You must be the judge, sir," said I.
But it was clear my plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept
musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of Mrs.
Rankeillor; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a
bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where
was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.'s discretion;
supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would I consent to such
and such a term of an agreement--these and the like questions he kept
asking at long intervals, while he thoughtfully rolled his wine upon his
tongue. When I had answered all of them, seemingly to his contentment,
he fell into a still deeper muse, even the claret being now forgotten.
Then he got a sheet of paper and a pencil, and set to work writing and
weighing every word; and at last touched a bell and had his clerk into
the chamber.
"Torrance," said he, "I must have this written out fair against
to-night; and when it is done, you will be so kind as put on your hat
and be ready to come along with this gentleman and me, for you will
probably be wanted as a witness."
"What, sir," cried I, as soon as the clerk was gone, "are you to venture
it?"
"Why, so it would appear," says he, filling his glass. "But let us speak
no more of business. The very sight of Torrance brings in my head a
little droll matter of some years ago, when I had made a tryst with the
poor oaf at the cross of Edinburgh. Each had gone his proper errand; and
when it came four o'clock, Torrance had been taking a glass and did not
know his master, and I, who had forgot my spectacles, was so blind
without them, that I give you my word I did not know my own clerk." And
thereupon he laughed heartily.
I said it was an odd chance, and smiled out of politeness; but, what
held me all the afternoon in wonder, he kept returning and dwelling on
this story, and telling it again with fresh details and laughter; so
that I began at last to be quite out of countenance and feel ashamed for
my friend's folly.
Towards the time I had appointed with Alan, we set out from the house,
Mr. Rankeillor and I arm in arm, and Torrance following behind with the
deed in his pocket and a covered basket in his hand. All through the
town, the lawyer was bowing right and left, and continually being
button-holed by gentlemen on matters of burgh or private business; and I
could see he was one greatly looked up to in the county. At last we were
clear of the houses, and began to go along the side of the haven and
towards the "Hawes Inn" and the ferry pier, the scene of my misfortune.
I could not look upon the place without emotion, recalling how many that
had been there with me that day were now no more: Ransome taken, I could
hope, from the evil to come; Shuan passed where I dared not follow him;
and the poor souls that had gone down with the brig in her last plunge.
All these, and the brig herself, I had outlived; and come through these
hardships and fearful perils without scathe. My only thought should have
been of gratitude; and yet I could not behold the place without sorrow
for others and a chill of recollected fear.
I was so thinking when, upon a sudden, Mr. Rankeillor cried out, clapped
his hand to his pockets, and began to laugh.
"Why," he cries, "if this be not a farcical adventure! After all that I
said, I have forgot my glasses!"
At that, of course, I understood the purpose of his anecdote, and knew
that if he had left his spectacles at home, it had been done on purpose,
so that he might have the benefit of Alan's help without the awkwardness
of recognising him. And indeed it was well thought upon; for now
(suppose things to go the very worst) how could Rankeillor swear to my
friend's identity, or how be made to bear damaging evidence against
myself? For all that, he had been a long while finding out his want, and
had spoken to and recognised a good few persons as we came through the
town; and I had little doubt myself that he saw reasonably well.
As soon as we were past the "Hawes" (where I recognised the landlord
smoking his pipe in the door, and was amazed to see him look no older)
Mr. Rankeillor changed the order of march, walking behind with Torrance
and sending me forward in the manner of a scout. I went up the hill,
whistling from time to time my Gaelic air; and at length I had the
pleasure to hear it answered and to see Alan rise from behind a bush. He
was somewhat dashed in spirits, having passed a long day alone skulking
in the country, and made but a poor meal in an alehouse near Dundas. But
at the mere sight of my clothes he began to brighten up; and as soon as
I had told him in what a forward state our matters were, and the part I
looked to him to play in what remained, he sprang into a new man.
"And that is a very good notion of yours," says he; "and I dare to say
that you could lay your hands upon no better man to put it through than
Alan Breck. It is not a thing (mark ye) that any one could do, but takes
a gentleman of penetration.--But it sticks in my head your lawyer-man
will be somewhat wearying to see me," says Alan.
Accordingly I cried and waved on Mr. Rankeillor, who came up alone and
was presented to my friend Mr. Thomson.
"Mr. Thomson, I am pleased to meet you," said he. "But I have forgotten
my glasses; and our friend Mr. David here" (clapping me on the shoulder)
"will tell you that I am little better than blind, and that you must not
be surprised if I pass you by to-morrow."
This he said, thinking that Alan would be pleased; but the Highlandman's
vanity was ready to startle at a less matter than that.
"Why, sir," says he stiffly, "I would say it mattered the less as we are
met here for a particular end, to see justice done to Mr. Balfour; and
by what I can see, not very likely to have much else in common. But I
accept your apology, which was a very proper one to make."
"And that is more than I could look for, Mr. Thomson," said Rankeillor
heartily. "And now as you and I are the chief actors in this enterprise,
I think we should come into a nice agreement; to which end, I propose
that you should lend me your arm, for (what with the dusk and the want
of my glasses) I am not very clear as to the path; and as for you, Mr.
David, you will find Torrance a pleasant kind of body to speak with.
Only let me remind you, it's quite needless he should hear more of your
adventures or those of--ahem--Mr. Thomson."
Accordingly these two went on ahead in very close talk, and Torrance and
I brought up the rear.
Night was quite come when we came in view of the house of Shaws. Ten had
been gone some time; it was dark and mild, with a pleasant, rustling
wind in the south-west that covered the sound of our approach; as we
drew near we saw no glimmer of light in any portion of the building. It
seemed my uncle was already in bed, which was indeed the best thing for
our arrangements. We made our last whispered consultation some fifty
yards away; and then the lawyer and Torrance and I crept quietly up and
crouched down beside the corner of the house, and as soon as we were in
our places Alan strode to the door without concealment and began to
knock.
CHAPTER XXIX
I COME INTO MY KINGDOM
For some time Alan volleyed upon the door, and his knocking only roused
the echoes of the house and neighbourhood. At last, however, I could
hear the noise of a window gently thrust up, and knew that my uncle had
come to his observatory. By what light there was he would see Alan
standing, like a dark shadow, on the steps; the three witnesses were
hidden quite out of his view; so that there was nothing to alarm an
honest man in his own house. For all that, he studied his visitor a
while in silence, and when he spoke his voice had a quaver of misgiving.
"What's this?" says he. "This is nae kind of time of night for decent
folk; and I hae nae trokings[34] wi' night-hawks. What brings ye here? I
have a blunderbush."
"Is that yoursel', Mr. Balfour?" returned Alan, stepping back and
looking up into the darkness. "Have a care of that blunderbuss; they're
nasty things to burst."
"What brings ye here? and whae are ye?" says my uncle angrily.
"I have no manner of inclination to rowt out my name to the
countryside," said Alan; "but what brings me here is another story,
being more of your affairs than mine; and if ye're sure it's what ye
would like, I'll set it to a tune and sing it to you."
"And what is't?" asked my uncle.
"David," says Alan.
"What was that?" cried my uncle, in a mighty changed voice.
"Shall I give ye the rest of the name, then?" said Alan.
There was a pause; and then, "I'm thinking I'll better let ye in," says
my uncle doubtfully.
"I daresay that," said Alan; "but the point is, Would I go? Now I will
tell you what I am thinking. I am thinking that it is here, upon this
doorstep, that we must confer upon this business; and it shall be here
or nowhere at all whatever; for I would have you to understand that I am
as stiffnecked as yoursel', and a gentleman of better family."
This change of note disconcerted Ebenezer; he was a little while
digesting it, and then says he, "Weel, weel, what must be must," and
shut the window. But it took him a long time to get downstairs, and a
still longer to undo the fastenings, repenting (I daresay) and taken
with fresh claps of fear at every second step and every bolt and bar. At
last, however, we heard the creak of the hinges, and it seems my uncle
slipped gingerly out and (seeing that Alan had stepped back a pace or
two) sate him down on the top doorstep with the blunderbuss ready in his
hands.
"And now," says he, "mind I have my blunderbush, and if ye take a step
nearer ye're as good as deid."
"And a very civil speech," says Alan, "to be sure."
"Na," says my uncle, "but this is no' a very chancy kind of a
proceeding, and I'm bound to be prepared. And now that we understand
each other, ye'll can name your business."
"Why," says Alan, "you that are a man of so much understanding will
doubtless have perceived that I am a Hieland gentleman. My name has nae
business in my story; but the county of my friends is no' very far from
the Isle of Mull, of which ye will have heard. It seems there was a ship
lost in those parts; and the next day a gentleman of my family was
seeking wreck-wood for his fire along the sands, when he came upon a lad
that was half drowned. Well, he brought him to; and he and some other
gentlemen took and clapped him in an auld, ruined castle, where from
that day to this he has been a great expense to my friends. My friends
are a wee wild-like, and not so particular about the law as some that I
could name; and finding that the lad owned some decent folk, and was
your born nephew, Mr. Balfour, they asked me to give ye a bit call and
to confer upon the matter. And I may tell ye at the off-go, unless we
can agree upon some terms, ye are little likely to set eyes upon him.
For my friends," added Alan simply, "are no' very well off."
My uncle cleared his throat. "I'm no' very caring," says he. "He wasna a
good lad at the best of it, and I've nae call to interfere."
"Ay, ay," said Alan, "I see what ye would be at: pretending ye don't
care, to make the ransom smaller."
"Na," said my uncle, "it's the mere truth. I take nae manner of interest
in the lad, and I'll pay nae ransom, and ye can make a kirk and a mill
of him for what I care."
"Hoot, sir," says Alan. "Blood's thicker than water, in the deil's name!
Ye canna desert your brother's son for the fair shame of it; and if ye
did, and it came to be kennt, ye wouldna be very popular in your
countryside, or I'm the more deceived."
"I'm no' just very popular the way it is," returned Ebenezer; "and I
dinna see how it would come to be kennt. No' by me, onyway; nor yet by
you or your friends. So that's idle talk, my buckie," says he.
"Then it'll have to be David that tells it," said Alan.
"How that?" says my uncle sharply.
"Ou, just this way," says Alan. "My friends would doubtless keep your
nephew as long as there was any likelihood of siller to be made of it,
but if there was nane, I am clearly of opinion they would let him gang
where he pleased, and be damned to him!"
"Ay, but I'm no very caring about that either," said my uncle. "I
wouldna be muckle made up with that."
"I was thinking that," said Alan.
"And what for why?" asked Ebenezer.
"Why, Mr. Balfour," replied Alan, "by all that I could hear, there were
two ways of it: either ye liked David and would pay to get him back; or
else ye had very good reasons for not wanting him, and would pay for us
to keep him. It seems it's not the first; well then, it's the second;
and blithe am I to ken it, for it should be a pretty penny in my pocket
and the pockets of my friends."
"I dinna follow ye there," said my uncle.
"No?" said Alan. "Well, see here: you dinna want the lad back; well,
what do ye want done with him, and how much will ye pay?"
My uncle made no answer, but shifted uneasily on his seat.
"Come, sir," cried Alan. "I would have ye to ken that I am a gentleman;
I bear a king's name; I am nae rider to kick my shanks at your
hall-door. Either give me an answer in civility, and that out of hand;
or, by the top of Glencoe, I will ram three feet of iron through your
vitals."
"Eh, man," cried my uncle, scrambling to his feet, "give me a meenit!
What's like wrong with ye? I'm just a plain man and nae dancing-master;
and I'm trying to be as ceevil as it's morally possible. As for that
wild talk, it's fair disrepitable. Vitals, says you! And where would I
be with my blunderbush?" he snarled.
"Powder and your auld hands are but as the snail to the swallow against
the bright steel in the hands of Alan," said the other. "Before your
jottering finger could find the trigger, the hilt would dirl on your
breast-bane."
"Eh, man, whae's denying it?" said my uncle. "Pit it as ye please, hae't
your ain way; I'll do naething to cross ye. Just tell me what like ye'll
be wanting, and ye'll see that we'll can agree fine."
"Troth, sir," said Alan, "I ask for nothing but plain dealing. In two
words: do ye want the lad killed or kept?"
"O sirs!" cried Ebenezer. "O sirs me! that's no kind of language!"
"Killed or kept?" repeated Alan.
"O, keepit, keepit!" wailed my uncle. "We'll have nae bloodshed, if you
please."
"Well," says Alan, "as ye please; that'll be the dearer."
"The dearer?" cries Ebenezer. "Would ye fyle your hands wi' crime?"
"Hoot!" said Alan, "they're baith crime, whatever! And the killing's
easier, and quicker, and surer. Keeping the lad'll be a fashious[35]
job, a fashious, kittle business."
"I'll have him keepit, though," returned my uncle. "I never had naething
to do with onything morally wrong; and I'm no' gaun to begin to pleasure
a wild Hielandman."
"Ye're unco scrupulous," sneered Alan.
"I'm a man o' principle," said Ebenezer simply; "and if I have to pay
for it, I'll have to pay for it. And besides," says he, "ye forget the
lad's my brother's son."
"Well, well," said Alan, "and now about the price. It's no' very easy
for me to set a name upon it; I would first have to ken some small
matters. I would have to ken, for instance, what ye gave Hoseason at the
first off-go?"
"Hoseason!" cries my uncle, struck aback. "What for?"
"For kidnapping David," says Alan.
"It's a lee, it's a black lee!" cried my uncle. "He was never kidnapped.
He lee'd in his throat that tauld ye that. Kidnapped? He never was!"
"That's no fault of mine, nor yet of yours," said Alan; "nor yet of
Hoseason's, if he's a man that can be trusted."
"What do ye mean?" cried Ebenezer. "Did Hoseason tell ye?"
"Why, ye donnered auld runt, how else would I ken?" cried Alan.
"Hoseason and me are partners; we gang shares; so ye can see for
yoursel' what good ye can do leeing. And I must plainly say ye drove a
fool's bargain when ye let a man like the sailor-man so far forward in
your private matters. But that's past praying for; and ye must lie on
your bed the way ye made it. And the point in hand is just this: what
did ye pay him?"
"Has he tauld ye himsel'?" asked my uncle.
"That's my concern," said Alan.
"Weel," said my uncle, "I dinna care what he said; he lee'd; and the
solemn God's truth is this, that I gave him twenty pound. But I'll be
perfec'ly honest with ye: forbye that, he was to have the selling of the
lad in Caroliny, whilk would be as muckle mair, but no' from my pocket,
ye see."
"Thank you, Mr. Thomson. That will do excellently well," said the
lawyer, stepping forward; and then mighty civilly, "Good-evening, Mr.
Balfour," said he.
And "Good-evening, uncle Ebenezer," said I.
And "It's a braw nicht, Mr. Balfour," added Torrance.
Never a word said my uncle, neither black nor white; but just sat where
he was on the top doorstep, and stared upon us like a man turned to
stone. Alan filched away his blunderbuss; and the lawyer, taking him by
the arm, plucked him up from the doorstep, led him into the kitchen,
whither we all followed, and set him down in a chair beside the hearth,
where the fire was out and only a rushlight burning.
There we all looked upon him for a while, exulting greatly in our
success, but yet with a sort of pity for the man's shame.
"Come, come, Mr. Ebenezer," said the lawyer, "you must not be
down-hearted, for I promise you we shall make easy terms. In the
meanwhile give us the cellar key, and Torrance shall draw us a bottle of
your father's wine in honour of the event." Then, turning to me, and
taking me by the hand, "Mr. David," says he, "I wish you all joy in your
good fortune, which I believe to be deserved." And then to Alan, with a
spice of drollery, "Mr. Thomson, I pay you my compliment; it was most
artfully conducted; but in one point you somewhat outran my
comprehension. Do I understand your name to be James? or Charles? or is
it George, perhaps?"
"And why should it be any of the three, sir?" quoth Alan, drawing
himself up, like one who smelt an offence.
"Only, sir, that you mentioned a king's name," replied Rankeillor; "and
as there has never yet been a King Thomson, or his fame at least has
never come my way, I judged you must refer to that you had in baptism."
This was just the stab that Alan would feel keenest, and I am free to
confess he took it very ill. Not a word would he answer, but stepped off
to the far end of the kitchen and sat down and sulked; and it was not
till I stepped after him, and gave him my hand, and thanked him by title
as the chief spring of my success, that he began to smile a bit, and was
at last prevailed upon to join our party.
By that time we had the fire lighted, and a bottle of wine uncorked; a
good supper came out of the basket, to which Torrance and I and Alan set
ourselves down; while the lawyer and my uncle passed into the next
chamber to consult. They stayed there closeted about an hour; at the end
of which period they had come to a good understanding, and my uncle and
I set our hands to the agreement in a formal manner. By the terms of
this, my uncle bound himself to satisfy Rankeillor as to his
intromissions, and to pay me two clear thirds of the yearly income of
Shaws.
So the beggar in the ballad had come home; and when I lay down that
night on the kitchen chests, I was a man of means and had a name in the
country. Alan and Torrance and Rankeillor slept and snored on their hard
beds; but for me, who had lain out under heaven and upon dirt and
stones, so many days and nights, and often with an empty belly, and in
fear of death, this good change in my case unmanned me more than any of
the former evil ones; and I lay till dawn, looking at the fire on the
roof and planning the future.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Dealings.
[35] Troublesome.
CHAPTER XXX
GOOD-BYE
So far as I was concerned myself, I had come to port; but I had still
Alan, to whom I was so much beholden, on my hands; and I felt besides a
heavy charge in the matter of the murder and James of the Glens. On both
these heads I unbosomed to Rankeillor the next morning, walking to and
fro about six of the clock before the house of Shaws, and with nothing
in view but the fields and woods that had been my ancestors', and were
now mine. Even as I spoke on these grave subjects, my eye would take a
glad bit of a run over the prospect, and my heart jump with pride.
About my clear duty to my friend, the lawyer had no doubt: I must help
him out of the country at whatever risk; but in the case of James he was
of a different mind.
"Mr. Thomson," says he, "is one thing, Mr. Thomson's kinsman quite
another. I know little of the facts, but I gather that a great noble
(whom we will call, if you like, the D. of A.[36]) has some concern, and
is even supposed to feel some animosity in the matter. The D. of A. is
doubtless an excellent nobleman; but, Mr. David, _timeo qui nocuere
deos_. If you interfere to baulk his vengeance, you should remember
there is one way to shut your testimony out; and that is to put you in
the dock. There you would be in the same pickle as Mr. Thomson's
kinsman. You will object that you are innocent; well, but so is he. And
to be tried for your life before a Highland jury, on a Highland quarrel,
and with a Highland judge upon the bench, would be a brief transition to
the gallows."
Now I had made all these reasonings before and found no very good reply
to them; so I put on all the simplicity I could. "In that case, sir,"
said I, "I would just have to be hanged--would I not?"
"My dear boy," cries he, "go in God's name, and do what you think is
right. It is a poor thought that at my time of life I should be advising
you to choose the safe and shameful; and I take it back with an apology.
Go and do your duty; and be hanged, if you must, like a gentleman. There
are worse things in the world than to be hanged."
"Not many, sir," said I, smiling.
"Why, yes, sir," he cried, "very many. And it would be ten times better
for your uncle (to go no farther afield) if he were dangling decently
upon a gibbet."
Thereupon he turned into the house (still in a great fervour of mind, so
that I saw I had pleased him heartily) and there he wrote me two
letters, making his comments on them as he wrote.
"This," says he, "is to my bankers, the British Linen Company, placing a
credit to your name. Consult Mr. Thomson, he will know of ways; and you,
with this credit, can supply the means. I trust you will be a good
husband of your money; but in the affair of a friend like Mr. Thomson, I
would be even prodigal. Then for his kinsman, there is no better way
than that you should seek the Advocate, tell him your tale, and offer
testimony; whether he may take it or not is quite another matter, and
will turn on the D. of A. Now, that you may reach the Lord Advocate well
recommended, I give you here a letter to a namesake of your own, the
learned Mr. Balfour of Pilrig, a man whom I esteem. It will look better
that you should be presented by one of your own name; and the laird of
Pilrig is much looked up to in the Faculty, and stands well with Lord
Advocate Grant. I would not trouble him, if I were you, with any
particulars; and (do you know?) I think it would be needless to refer to
Mr. Thomson. Form yourself upon the laird, he is a good model; when you
deal with the Advocate, be discreet; and in all these matters, may the
Lord guide you, Mr. David!"
Thereupon he took his farewell, and set out with Torrance for the Ferry,
while Alan and I turned our faces for the city of Edinburgh. As we went
by the footpath and beside the gate-posts and the unfinished lodge, we
kept looking back at the house of my fathers. It stood there, bare and
great and smokeless, like a place not lived in; only in one of the top
windows there was the peak of a nightcap bobbing up and down, and back
and forward, like the head of a rabbit from a burrow. I had little
welcome when I came, and less kindness while I stayed; but at least I
was watched as I went away.
Alan and I went slowly forward upon our way, having little heart either
to walk or speak. The same thought was uppermost in both, that we were
near the time of our parting; and remembrance of all the bygone days
sate upon us sorely. We talked indeed of what should be done; and it was
resolved that Alan should keep to the country, biding now here, now
there, but coming once in the day to a particular place where I might be
able to communicate with him, either in my own person or by messenger.
In the meanwhile I was to seek out a lawyer, who was an Appin Stewart,
and a man therefore to be wholly trusted; and it should be his part to
find a ship and to arrange for Alan's safe embarkation. No sooner was
this business done than the words seemed to leave us; and though I would
seek to jest with Alan under the name of Mr. Thomson, and he with me on
my new clothes and my estate, you could feel very well that we were
nearer tears than laughter.
We came the by-way over the hill of Corstorphine; and when we got near
to the place called Rest-and-be-Thankful, and looked down on
Corstorphine bogs and over to the city and the castle on the hill, we
both stopped, for we both knew without a word said that we had come to
where our ways parted. Here he repeated to me once again what had been
agreed upon between us: the address of the lawyer, the daily hour at
which Alan might be found, and the signals that were to be made by any
that came seeking him. Then I gave him what money I had (a guinea or two
of Rankeillor's), so that he should not starve in the meanwhile; and
then we stood a space, and looked over at Edinburgh in silence.
"Well, good-bye," said Alan, and held out his left hand.
"Good-bye," said I, and gave the hand a little grasp, and went off down
the hill.
Neither one of us looked the other in the face, nor so long as he was in
my view did I take one back glance at the friend I was leaving. But as I
went on my way to the city, I felt so lost and lonesome, that I could
have found it in my heart to sit down by the dyke, and cry and weep like
any baby.
It was coming near noon when I passed in by the West Kirk and the
Grassmarket into the streets of the capital. The huge height of the
buildings, running up to ten and fifteen stories, the narrow arched
entries that continually vomited passengers, the wares of the merchants
in their windows, the hubbub and endless stir, the foul smells and the
fine clothes, and a hundred other particulars too small to mention,
struck me into a kind of stupor of surprise, so that I let the crowd
carry me to and fro; and yet all the time what I was thinking of was
Alan at Rest-and-be-Thankful; and all the time (although you would think
I would not choose but be delighted with these braws and novelties)
there was a cold gnawing in my inside like a remorse for something
wrong.
The hand of Providence brought me in my drifting to the very doors of
the British Linen Company's bank.
FOOTNOTE:
[36] The Duke of Argyle.
END OF VOL. X
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