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

mind what she went through that night?—or what manner of a wife she has been to you thenceforward?—or in what kind of a position she finds herself to-day? Never. It is your pride to stay and face him out, and she must stay along with you. Oh! my lord’s pride—that’s the great affair! And yet she is the woman, and you are a great hulking man! She is the woman that you swore to protect; and, more betoken, the own mother of that son of yours!”

“You are speaking very bitterly, Mackellar,” said he; “but, the Lord knows, I fear you are speaking very true. I have not proved worthy of my happiness. Bring my lady back.”

My lady was waiting near at hand to learn the issue. When I brought her in, my lord took a hand of each of us, and laid them both upon his bosom. “I have had two friends in my life,” said he. “All the comfort ever I had, it came from one or other. When you two are in a mind, I think I would be an ungrateful dog—” He shut his mouth very hard, and looked on us with swimming eyes. “Do what ye like with me,” says he, “only don’t think—” He stopped again. “Do what ye please with me: God knows I love and honour you.” And dropping our two hands, he turned his back and went and gazed out of the window. But my lady ran after, calling his name, and threw herself upon his neck in a passion of weeping.

I went out and shut the door behind me, and stood and thanked God from the bottom of my heart.

At the breakfast board, according to my lord’s design, we were all met. The Master had by that time plucked off his patched boots and made a toilet suitable to the hour; Secundra Dass was no longer bundled up in wrappers, but wore a decent plain black suit, which misbecame him strangely; and the pair were at the great window, looking forth, when the family entered. They turned; and the black man (as they had already named him in the house) bowed almost to his knees, but the Master was for running forward like one of the family. My lady stopped him, curtseying low from the far end of the hall, and keeping her children at her back. My lord was a little in front: so there were the three cousins of Durrisdeer face to face. The hand of time was very legible on all; I seemed to read in their changed faces a memento mori; and what affected me still more, it was the wicked man that bore his years the handsomest. My lady was quite transfigured into the matron, a becoming woman for the head of a great tableful of children and dependents. My lord was grown slack in his limbs; he stooped; he walked with a running motion, as though he had learned again from Mr. Alexander; his face was drawn; it seemed a trifle longer than of old; and it wore at times a smile very singularly mingled, and which (in my eyes) appeared both bitter and pathetic. But the Master still bore himself erect, although perhaps with effort; his brow barred about the centre with imperious lines, his mouth set as for command. He had all the gravity and something of the splendour of Satan in the “Paradise Lost.” I could not help but see the man with admiration, and was only surprised that I saw him with so little fear.

But indeed (as long as we were at the table) it seemed as if his authority were quite vanished and his teeth all drawn. We had known him a magician that controlled the elements; and here he was, transformed into an ordinary gentleman, chatting like his neighbours at the breakfast-board. For now the father was dead, and my lord and lady reconciled, in what ear was he to pour his calumnies? It came upon me in a kind of vision how hugely I had overrated the man’s subtlety. He had his malice still; he was false as ever; and, the occasion being gone that made his strength, he sat there impotent; he was still the viper, but now spent his venom on a file. Two more thoughts occurred to me while yet we sat at breakfast: the first, that he was abashed—I had almost said, distressed—to find his wickedness quite unavailing; the second, that perhaps my lord was in the right, and we did amiss to fly from our dismasted enemy. But my poor man’s leaping heart came in my mind, and I remembered it was for his life we played the coward.

When the meal was over, the Master followed me to my room, and, taking a chair (which I had never offered him), asked me what was to be done with him.

“Why, Mr. Bally,” said I, “the house will still be open to you for a time.”

“For a time?” says he. “I do not know if I quite take your meaning.”

“It is plain enough,” said I. “We keep you for our reputation; as soon as you shall have publicly disgraced yourself by some of your misconduct, we shall pack you forth again.”

“You are become an impudent rogue,” said the Master, bending his brows at me dangerously.

“I learned in a good school,” I returned. “And you must have perceived yourself that with my old lord’s death your power is quite departed. I do not fear you now, Mr. Bally; I think even—God forgive me—that I take a certain pleasure in your company.”

He broke out in a burst of laughter, which I clearly saw to be assumed.

“I have come with empty pockets,” says he, after a pause.

“I do not think there will be any money going,” I replied. “I would advise you not to build on that.”

“I shall have something to say on the point,” he returned.

“Indeed?” said I. “I have not a guess what it will be, then.”

“Oh! you affect confidence,” said the Master. “I have still one strong position—that you people fear a scandal, and I enjoy it.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Bally,” says I. “We do not in the least fear a scandal against you.”

He laughed again. “You have been studying repartee,” he said. “But speech is very easy, and sometimes very deceptive. I warn you fairly: you will find me vitriol in the house. You would do wiser to pay money down and see my back.” And with that he waved his hand to me and left the room.

A little after, my lord came with the lawyer, Mr. Carlyle; a bottle of old wine was brought, and we all had a glass before we fell to business. The necessary deeds were then prepared and executed, and the Scotch estates made over in trust to Mr. Carlyle and myself.

“There is one point, Mr. Carlyle,” said my lord, when these affairs had been adjusted, “on which I wish that you would do us justice. This sudden departure coinciding with my brother’s return will be certainly commented on. I wish you would discourage any conjunction of the two.”

“I will make a point of it, my lord,” said Mr. Carlyle. “The Mas— Bally does not, then, accompany you?”

“It is a point I must approach,” said my lord. “Mr. Bally remains at Durrisdeer, under the care of Mr. Mackellar; and I do not mean that he shall even know our destination.”

“Common report, however—” began the lawyer.

“Ah! but, Mr. Carlyle, this is to be a secret quite among ourselves,” interrupted my lord. “None but you and Mackellar are to be made acquainted with my movements.”

“And Mr. Bally stays here? Quite so,” said Mr. Carlyle. “The powers you leave—” Then he broke off again. “Mr. Mackellar, we have a rather heavy weight upon us.”

“No doubt,” said I.

“No doubt,” said he. “Mr. Bally will have no voice?”

“He will have no voice,” said my lord; “and, I hope, no influence. Mr. Bally is not a good adviser.”

“I see,” said the lawyer. “By the way, has Mr. Bally means?”

“I understand him to have nothing,” replied my lord. “I give him table, fire, and candle in this house.”

“And in the matter of an allowance? If I am to share the responsibility, you will see how highly desirable it is that I should understand your views,” said the lawyer. “On the question of an allowance?”

“There will be no allowance,” said my lord. “I wish Mr. Bally to live very private. We have not always been gratified with his behaviour.”

“And in the matter of money,” I added, “he has shown himself an infamous bad husband. Glance your eye upon that docket, Mr. Carlyle, where I have brought together the different sums the man has drawn from the estate in the last fifteen or twenty years. The total is pretty.”

Mr. Carlyle made the motion of whistling. “I had no guess of this,” said he. “Excuse me once more, my lord, if I appear to push you; but it is really desirable I should penetrate your intentions. Mr. Mackellar might die, when I should find myself alone upon this trust. Would it not be rather your lordship’s preference that Mr. Bally should—ahem—should leave the country?”

My lord looked at Mr. Carlyle. “Why do you ask that?” said he.

“I gather, my lord, that Mr. Bally is not a comfort to his family,” says the lawyer with a smile.

My lord’s face became suddenly knotted. “I wish he was in hell!” cried he, and filled himself a glass of wine, but with a hand so tottering that he spilled the half into his bosom. This was the second time that, in the midst of the most regular and wise behaviour, his animosity had spirted out. It startled Mr. Carlyle, who observed my lord thenceforth with covert curiosity; and to me it restored the certainty that we were acting for the best in view of my lord’s health and reason.

Except for this explosion the interview was very successfully conducted. No doubt Mr. Carlyle would talk, as lawyers do, little by little. We could thus feel we had laid the foundations of a better feeling in the country, and the man’s own misconduct would certainly complete what we had begun. Indeed, before his departure, the lawyer showed us there had already gone abroad some glimmerings of the truth.

“I should perhaps explain to you, my lord,” said he, pausing, with his hat in his hand, “that I have not been altogether surprised with your lordship’s dispositions in the case of Mr. Bally. Something of this nature oozed out when he was last in Durrisdeer. There was some talk of a woman at St. Bride’s, to whom you had behaved extremely handsome, and Mr. Bally with no small degree of cruelty. There was the entail, again, which was much controverted. In short, there was no want of talk, back and forward; and some of our wise-acres took up a strong opinion. I remained in suspense, as became one of my cloth; but Mr. Mackellar’s docket here has finally opened my eyes. I do not think, Mr. Mackellar, that you and I will give him that much rope.”

The rest of that important day passed prosperously through. It was our policy to keep the enemy in view, and I took my turn to be his watchman with the rest. I think his spirits rose as he perceived us to be so attentive, and I know that mine insensibly declined. What chiefly daunted me was the man’s singular dexterity to worm himself into our troubles. You may have felt (after a horse accident) the hand of a bone-setter artfully divide and interrogate the muscles, and settle strongly on the injured place? It was so with the Master’s tongue, that was so cunning to question; and his eyes, that were so quick to observe. I seemed to have said nothing, and yet to have let all out. Before I knew where I was the man was condoling with me on my lord’s neglect of my lady and myself, and his hurtful indulgence to his son. On this last point I perceived him (with panic fear) to return repeatedly. The boy had displayed a certain shrinking from his uncle; it was strong in my mind his father had been fool enough to indoctrinate the same, which was no wise beginning: and when I looked upon the man before me, still so handsome, so apt a speaker, with so great a variety of fortunes to relate, I saw he was the very personage to captivate a boyish fancy. John Paul had left only that morning; it was not to be supposed he had been altogether dumb upon his favourite subject: so that here would be Mr. Alexander in the part of Dido, with a curiosity inflamed to hear; and there would