The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale by Robert Louis Stevenson (most popular ebook readers txt) 📖

“The body,” said I. “Why are you not with your husband?”

“Gone!” said she. “You cannot have looked. Come back.”

“There is no light now,” said I. “I dare not.”

“I can see in the dark. I have been standing here so long—so long,” said she. “Come, give me your hand.”

We returned to the shrubbery hand in hand, and to the fatal place.

“Take care of the blood,” said I.

“Blood?” she cried, and started violently back.

“I suppose it will be,” said I. “I am like a blind man.”

“No!” said she, “nothing! Have you not dreamed?”

“Ah, would to God we had!” cried I.

She spied the sword, picked it up, and seeing the blood, let it fall again with her hands thrown wide. “Ah!” she cried. And then, with an instant courage, handled it the second time, and thrust it to the hilt into the frozen ground. “I will take it back and clean it properly,” says she, and again looked about her on all sides. “It cannot be that he was dead?” she added.

“There was no flutter of his heart,” said I, and then remembering: “Why are you not with your husband?”

“It is no use,” said she; “he will not speak to me.”

“Not speak to you?” I repeated. “Oh! you have not tried.”

“You have a right to doubt me,” she replied, with a gentle dignity.

At this, for the first time, I was seized with sorrow for her. “God knows, madam,” I cried, “God knows I am not so hard as I appear; on this dreadful night who can veneer his words? But I am a friend to all who are not Henry Durie’s enemies.”

“It is hard, then, you should hesitate about his wife,” said she.

I saw all at once, like the rending of a veil, how nobly she had borne this unnatural calamity, and how generously my reproaches.

“We must go back and tell this to my lord,” said I.

“Him I cannot face,” she cried.

“You will find him the least moved of all of us,” said I.

“And yet I cannot face him,” said she.

“Well,” said I, “you can return to Mr. Henry; I will see my lord.”

As we walked back, I bearing the candlesticks, she the sword—a strange burthen for that woman—she had another thought. “Should we tell Henry?” she asked.

“Let my lord decide,” said I.

My lord was nearly dressed when I came to his chamber. He heard me with a frown. “The freetraders,” said he. “But whether dead or alive?”

“I thought him—” said I, and paused, ashamed of the word.

“I know; but you may very well have been in error. Why should they remove him if not living?” he asked. “Oh! here is a great door of hope. It must be given out that he departed—as he came—without any note of preparation. We must save all scandal.”

I saw he had fallen, like the rest of us, to think mainly of the house. Now that all the living members of the family were plunged in irremediable sorrow, it was strange how we turned to that conjoint abstraction of the family itself, and sought to bolster up the airy nothing of its reputation: not the Duries only, but the hired steward himself.

“Are we to tell Mr. Henry?” I asked him.

“I will see,” said he. “I am going first to visit him; then I go forth with you to view the shrubbery and consider.”

We went downstairs into the hall. Mr. Henry sat by the table with his head upon his hand, like a man of stone. His wife stood a little back from him, her hand at her mouth; it was plain she could not move him. My old lord walked very steadily to where his son was sitting; he had a steady countenance, too, but methought a little cold. When he was come quite up, he held out both his hands and said, “My son!”

With a broken, strangled cry, Mr. Henry leaped up and fell on his father’s neck, crying and weeping, the most pitiful sight that ever a man witnessed. “Oh! father,” he cried, “you know I loved him; you know I loved him in the beginning; I could have died for him—you know that! I would have given my life for him and you. Oh! say you know that. Oh! say you can forgive me. O father, father, what have I done—what have I done? And we used to be bairns together!” and wept and sobbed, and fondled the old man, and clutched him about the neck, with the passion of a child in terror.

And then he caught sight of his wife (you would have thought for the first time), where she stood weeping to hear him, and in a moment had fallen at her knees. “And O my lass,” he cried, “you must forgive me, too! Not your husband—I have only been the ruin of your life. But you knew me when I was a lad; there was no harm in Henry Durie then; he meant aye to be a friend to you. It’s him—it’s the old bairn that played with you—oh, can ye never, never forgive him?”

Throughout all this my lord was like a cold, kind spectator with his wits about him. At the first cry, which was indeed enough to call the house about us, he had said to me over his shoulder, “Close the door.” And now he nodded to himself.

“We may leave him to his wife now,” says he. “Bring a light, Mr. Mackellar.”

Upon my going forth again with my lord, I was aware of a strange phenomenon; for though it was quite dark, and the night not yet old, methought I smelt the morning. At the same time there went a tossing through the branches of the evergreens, so that they sounded like a quiet sea, and the air pulled at times against our faces, and the flame of the candle shook. We made the more speed, I believe, being surrounded by this bustle; visited the scene of the duel, where my lord looked upon the blood with stoicism; and passing farther on toward the landing-place, came at last upon some evidences of the truth. For, first of all, where there was a pool across the path, the ice had been trodden in, plainly by more than one man’s weight; next, and but a little farther, a young tree was broken, and down by the landing-place, where the traders’ boats were usually beached, another stain of blood marked where the body must have been infallibly set down to rest the bearers.

This stain we set ourselves to wash away with the sea-water, carrying it in my lord’s hat; and as we were thus engaged there came up a sudden moaning gust and left us instantly benighted.

“It will come to snow,” says my lord; “and the best thing that we could hope. Let us go back now; we can do nothing in the dark.”

As we went houseward, the wind being again subsided, we were aware of a strong pattering noise about us in the night; and when we issued from the shelter of the trees, we found it raining smartly.

Throughout the whole of this, my lord’s clearness of mind, no less than his activity of body, had not ceased to minister to my amazement. He set the crown upon it in the council we held on our return. The freetraders had certainly secured the Master, though whether dead or alive we were still left to our conjectures; the rain would, long before day, wipe out all marks of the transaction; by this we must profit. The Master had unexpectedly come after the fall of night; it must now be given out he had as suddenly departed before the break of day; and, to make all this plausible, it now only remained for me to mount into the man’s chamber, and pack and conceal his baggage. True, we still lay at the discretion of the traders; but that was the incurable weakness of our guilt.

I heard him, as I said, with wonder, and hastened to obey. Mr. and Mrs. Henry were gone from the hall; my lord, for warmth’s sake, hurried to his bed; there was still no sign of stir among the servants, and as I went up the tower stair, and entered the dead man’s room, a horror of solitude weighed upon my mind. To my extreme surprise, it was all in the disorder of departure. Of his three portmanteaux, two were already locked; the third lay open and near full. At once there flashed upon me some suspicion of the truth. The man had been going, after all; he had but waited upon Crail, as Crail waited upon the wind; early in the night the seamen had perceived the weather changing; the boat had come to give notice of the change and call the passenger aboard, and the boat’s crew had stumbled on him dying in his blood. Nay, and there was more behind. This pre-arranged departure shed some light upon his inconceivable insult of the night before; it was a parting shot, hatred being no longer checked by policy. And, for another thing, the nature of that insult, and the conduct of Mrs. Henry, pointed to one conclusion, which I have never verified, and can now never verify until the great assize—the conclusion that he had at last forgotten himself, had gone too far in his advances, and had been rebuffed. It can never be verified, as I say; but as I thought of it that morning among his baggage, the thought was sweet to me like honey.

Into the open portmanteau I dipped a little ere I closed it. The most beautiful lace and linen, many suits of those fine plain clothes in which he loved to appear; a book or two, and those of the best, Cæsar’s “Commentaries,” a volume of Mr. Hobbes, the “Henriade” of M. de Voltaire, a book upon the Indies, one on the mathematics, far beyond where I have studied: these were what I observed with very mingled feelings. But in the open portmanteau, no papers of any description. This set me musing. It was possible the man was dead; but, since the traders had carried him away, not likely. It was possible he might still die of his wound; but it was also possible he might not. And in this latter case I was determined to have the means of some defence.

One after another I carried his portmanteaux to a loft in the top of the house which we kept locked; went to my own room for my keys, and, returning to the loft, had the gratification to find two that fitted pretty well. In one of the portmanteaux there was a shagreen letter-case, which I cut open with my knife; and thenceforth (so far as any credit went) the man was at my mercy. Here was a vast deal of gallant correspondence, chiefly of his Paris days; and, what was more to the purpose, here were the copies of his own reports to the English Secretary, and the originals of the Secretary’s answers: a most damning series: such as to publish would be to wreck the Master’s honour and to set a price upon his life. I chuckled to myself as I ran through the documents; I rubbed my hands, I sang aloud in my glee. Day found me at the pleasing task; nor did I then remit my diligence, except in so far as I went to the window—looked out for a moment, to see the frost quite gone, the world turned black again, and the rain and the wind driving in the bay—and to assure myself that the lugger was gone from its anchorage, and the Master (whether dead or alive) now tumbling on the Irish Sea.

It is proper I should add in this place the very little I have subsequently angled out upon the doings of that night. It took me a long while to gather it; for we dared not openly ask, and the freetraders regarded me with enmity, if not with scorn. It was near six months before we even knew for certain that the man survived; and it was years before I learned from one of Crail’s men, turned publican on his ill-gotten gain, some particulars which smack to me of truth. It seems the traders found the Master struggled on one elbow, and now staring round him, and now gazing at the candle or at his hand which was all bloodied, like a man stupid. Upon their coming, he would seem to have found his mind, bade them carry him aboard, and hold their tongues; and on the captain asking how he had come in such a pickle, replied with a burst of passionate swearing, and incontinently fainted. They