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

should say there was a bench against the Master’s house, where customers might sit to parley with the shopman; and here I found my lord seated, nursing his cane and looking pleasantly forth upon the bay. Not three feet from him sate the Master, stitching. Neither spoke; nor (in this new situation) did my lord so much as cut a glance upon his enemy. He tasted his neighbourhood, I must suppose, less indirectly in the bare proximity of person; and, without doubt, drank deep of hateful pleasures.

He had no sooner come away than I openly joined him. “My lord, my lord,” said I, “this is no manner of behaviour.”

“I grow fat upon it,” he replied; and not merely the words, which were strange enough, but the whole character of his expression, shocked me.

“I warn you, my lord, against this indulgency of evil feeling,” said I. “I know not to which it is more perilous, the soul or the reason; but you go the way to murder both.”

“You cannot understand,” said he. “You had never such mountains of bitterness upon your heart.”

“And if it were no more,” I added, “you will surely goad the man to some extremity.”

“To the contrary; I am breaking his spirit,” says my lord.

Every morning for hard upon a week my lord took his same place upon the bench. It was a pleasant place, under the green acacias, with a sight upon the bay and shipping, and a sound (from some way off) of marines singing at their employ. Here the two sate without speech or any external movement, beyond that of the needle or the Master biting off a thread, for he still clung to his pretence of industry; and here I made a point to join them, wondering at myself and my companions. If any of my lord’s friends went by, he would hail them cheerfully, and cry out he was there to give some good advice to his brother, who was now (to his delight) grown quite industrious. And even this the Master accepted with a steady countenance; what was in his mind, God knows, or perhaps Satan only.

All of a sudden, on a still day of what they call the Indian Summer, when the woods were changed into gold and pink and scarlet, the Master laid down his needle and burst into a fit of merriment. I think he must have been preparing it a long while in silence, for the note in itself was pretty naturally pitched; but breaking suddenly from so extreme a silence, and in circumstances so averse from mirth, it sounded ominously on my ear.

“Henry,” said he, “I have for once made a false step, and for once you have had the wit to profit by it. The farce of the cobbler ends to-day; and I confess to you (with my compliments) that you have had the best of it. Blood will out; and you have certainly a choice idea of how to make yourself unpleasant.”

Never a word said my lord; it was just as though the Master had not broken silence.

“Come,” resumed the Master, “do not be sulky; it will spoil your attitude. You can now afford (believe me) to be a little gracious; for I have not merely a defeat to accept. I had meant to continue this performance till I had gathered enough money for a certain purpose; I confess ingenuously, I have not the courage. You naturally desire my absence from this town; I have come round by another way to the same idea. And I have a proposition to make; or, if your lordship prefers, a favour to ask.”

“Ask it,” says my lord.

“You may have heard that I had once in this country a considerable treasure,” returned the Master; “it matters not whether or no—such is the fact; and I was obliged to bury it in a spot of which I have sufficient indications. To the recovery of this, has my ambition now come down; and, as it is my own, you will not grudge it me.”

“Go and get it,” says my lord. “I make no opposition.”

“Yes,” said the Master; “but to do so, I must find men and carriage. The way is long and rough, and the country infested with wild Indians. Advance me only so much as shall be needful: either as a lump sum, in lieu of my allowance; or, if you prefer it, as a loan, which I shall repay on my return. And then, if you so decide, you may have seen the last of me.”

My lord stared him steadily in the eyes; there was a hard smile upon his face, but he uttered nothing.

“Henry,” said the Master, with a formidable quietness, and drawing at the same time somewhat back—“Henry, I had the honour to address you.”

“Let us be stepping homeward,” says my lord to me, who was plucking at his sleeve; and with that he rose, stretched himself, settled his hat, and still without a syllable of response, began to walk steadily along the shore.

I hesitated awhile between the two brothers, so serious a climax did we seem to have reached. But the Master had resumed his occupation, his eyes lowered, his hand seemingly as deft as ever; and I decided to pursue my lord.

“Are you mad?” I cried, so soon as I had overtook him. “Would you cast away so fair an opportunity?”

“Is it possible you should still believe in him?” inquired my lord, almost with a sneer.

“I wish him forth of this town!” I cried. “I wish him anywhere and anyhow but as he is.”

“I have said my say,” returned my lord, “and you have said yours. There let it rest.”

But I was bent on dislodging the Master. That sight of him patiently returning to his needlework was more than my imagination could digest. There was never a man made, and the Master the least of any, that could accept so long a series of insults. The air smelt blood to me. And I vowed there should be no neglect of mine if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be yet turned aside. That same day, therefore, I came to my lord in his business room, where he sat upon some trivial occupation.

“My lord,” said I, “I have found a suitable investment for my small economies. But these are unhappily in Scotland; it will take some time to lift them, and the affair presses. Could your lordship see his way to advance me the amount against my note?”

He read me awhile with keen eyes. “I have never inquired into the state of your affairs, Mackellar,” says he. “Beyond the amount of your caution, you may not be worth a farthing, for what I know.”

“I have been a long while in your service, and never told a lie, nor yet asked a favour for myself,” said I, “until to-day.”

“A favour for the Master,” he returned, quietly. “Do you take me for a fool, Mackellar? Understand it once and for all, I treat this beast in my own way; fear nor favour shall not move me; and before I am hoodwinked, it will require a trickster less transparent than yourself. I ask service, loyal service; not that you should make and mar behind my back, and steal my own money to defeat me.”

“My lord,” said I, “these are very unpardonable expressions.”

“Think once more, Mackellar,” he replied; “and you will see they fit the fact. It is your own subterfuge that is unpardonable. Deny (if you can) that you designed this money to evade my orders with, and I will ask your pardon freely. If you cannot, you must have the resolution to hear your conduct go by its own name.”

“If you think I had any design but to save you—” I began.

“Oh! my old friend,” said he, “you know very well what I think! Here is my hand to you with all my heart; but of money, not one rap.”

Defeated upon this side, I went straight to my room, wrote a letter, ran with it to the harbour, for I knew a ship was on the point of sailing; and came to the Master’s door a little before dusk. Entering without the form of any knock, I found him sitting with his Indian at a simple meal of maize porridge with some milk. The house within was clean and poor; only a few books upon a shelf distinguished it, and (in one corner) Secundra’s little bench.

“Mr. Bally,” said I, “I have near five hundred pounds laid by in Scotland, the economies of a hard life. A letter goes by yon ship to have it lifted. Have so much patience till the return ship comes in, and it is all yours, upon the same condition you offered to my lord this morning.”

He rose from the table, came forward, took me by the shoulders, and looked me in the face, smiling.

“And yet you are very fond of money!” said he. “And yet you love money beyond all things else, except my brother!”

“I fear old age and poverty,” said I, “which is another matter.”

“I will never quarrel for a name. Call it so,” he replied. “Ah! Mackellar, Mackellar, if this were done from any love to me, how gladly would I close upon your offer!”

“And yet,” I eagerly answered—“I say it to my shame, but I cannot see you in this poor place without compunction. It is not my single thought, nor my first; and yet it’s there! I would gladly see you delivered. I do not offer it in love, and far from that; but, as God judges me—and I wonder at it too!—quite without enmity.”

“Ah!” says he, still holding my shoulders, and now gently shaking me, “you think of me more than you suppose. ‘And I wonder at it too,’” he added, repeating my expression and, I suppose, something of my voice. “You are an honest man, and for that cause I spare you.”

“Spare me?” I cried.

“Spare you,” he repeated, letting me go and turning away. And then, fronting me once more. “You little know what I would do with it, Mackellar! Did you think I had swallowed my defeat indeed? Listen: my life has been a series of unmerited cast-backs. That fool, Prince Charlie, mismanaged a most promising affair: there fell my first fortune. In Paris I had my foot once more high upon the ladder: that time it was an accident; a letter came to the wrong hand, and I was bare again. A third time, I found my opportunity; I built up a place for myself in India with an infinite patience; and then Clive came, my rajah was swallowed up, and I escaped out of the convulsion, like another Æneas, with Secundra Dass upon my back. Three times I have had my hand upon the highest station: and I am not yet three-and-forty. I know the world as few men know it when they come to die—Court and camp, the East and the West; I know where to go, I see a thousand openings. I am now at the height of my resources, sound of health, of inordinate ambition. Well, all this I resign; I care not if I die, and the world never hear of me; I care only for one thing, and that I will have. Mind yourself; lest, when the roof falls, you, too, should be crushed under the ruins.”

As I came out of his house, all hope of intervention quite destroyed, I was aware of a stir on the harbour-side, and, raising my eyes, there was a great ship newly come to anchor. It seems strange I could have looked upon her with so much indifference, for she brought death to the brothers of Durrisdeer. After all the desperate episodes of this contention, the insults, the opposing interests, the fraternal duel in the shrubbery, it was reserved for some poor devil in Grub Street, scribbling for his dinner, and not caring what he scribbled, to cast a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea, and send forth both these brothers into savage and wintry deserts, there to die. But such a thought was distant from my mind; and while all the provincials were fluttered about me by the unusual animation of their port, I passed throughout their midst on my return homeward, quite absorbed in the recollection of my visit and the Master’s speech.

The same night there was brought to us from the ship a little packet of pamphlets. The next day my lord was under engagement to go with the Governor upon some party of pleasure; the time was nearly due, and I left him for a moment alone in his room and skimming through the pamphlets. When I returned, his head had fallen upon the table,