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

needful I should go on, but not at all proper I should any longer enjoy the pleasure of your company. We are here still upon the water side; and I think the risk to southward no great matter. Will not yourself and Mr. Mackellar take a single boat’s crew and return to Albany?”

My lord, I should say, had listened to Mountain’s narrative, regarding him throughout with a painful intensity of gaze; and since the tale concluded, had sat as in a dream. There was something very daunting in his look; something to my eyes not rightly human; the face, lean, and dark, and aged, the mouth painful, the teeth disclosed in a perpetual rictus; the eyeball swimming clear of the lids upon a field of blood-shot white. I could not behold him myself without a jarring irritation, such as, I believe, is too frequently the uppermost feeling on the sickness of those dear to us. Others, I could not but remark. were scarce able to support his neighbourhood—Sir William eviting to be near him, Mountain dodging his eye, and, when he met it, blenching and halting in his story. At this appeal, however, my lord appeared to recover his command upon himself.

“To Albany?” said he, with a good voice.

“Not short of it, at least,” replied Sir William. “There is no safety nearer hand.”

“I would be very sweir [11] to return,” says my lord. “I am not afraid—of Indians,” he added, with a jerk.

“I wish that I could say so much,” returned Sir William, smiling; “although, if any man durst say it, it should be myself. But you are to keep in view my responsibility, and that as the voyage has now become highly dangerous, and your business—if you ever had any,” says he, “brought quite to a conclusion by the distressing family intelligence you have received, I should be hardly justified if I even suffered you to proceed, and run the risk of some obloquy if anything regrettable should follow.”

My lord turned to Mountain. “What did he pretend he died of?” he asked.

“I don’t think I understand your honour,” said the trader, pausing like a man very much affected, in the dressing of some cruel frost-bites.

For a moment my lord seemed at a full stop; and then, with some irritation, “I ask you what he died of. Surely that’s a plain question,” said he.

“Oh! I don’t know,” said Mountain. “Hastie even never knew. He seemed to sicken natural, and just pass away.”

“There it is, you see!” concluded my lord, turning to Sir William.

“Your lordship is too deep for me,” replied Sir William.

“Why,” says my lord, “this in a matter of succession; my son’s title may be called in doubt; and the man being supposed to be dead of nobody can tell what, a great deal of suspicion would be naturally roused.”

“But, God damn me, the man’s buried!” cried Sir William.

“I will never believe that,” returned my lord, painfully trembling. “I’ll never believe it!” he cried again, and jumped to his feet. “Did he look dead?” he asked of Mountain.

“Look dead?” repeated the trader. “He looked white. Why, what would he be at? I tell you, I put the sods upon him.”

My lord caught Sir William by the coat with a hooked hand. “This man has the name of my brother,” says he, “but it’s well understood that he was never canny.”

“Canny?” says Sir William. “What is that?”

“He’s not of this world,” whispered my lord, “neither him nor the black deil that serves him. I have struck my sword throughout his vitals,” he cried; “I have felt the hilt dirl [12] on his breastbone, and the hot blood spirt in my very face, time and again, time and again!” he repeated, with a gesture indescribable. “But he was never dead for that,” said he, and I sighed aloud. “Why should I think he was dead now? No, not till I see him rotting,” says he.

Sir William looked across at me with a long face. Mountain forgot his wounds, staring and gaping.

“My lord,” said I, “I wish you would collect your spirits.” But my throat was so dry, and my own wits so scattered, I could add no more.

“No,” says my lord, “it’s not to be supposed that he would understand me. Mackellar does, for he kens all, and has seen him buried before now. This is a very good servant to me, Sir William, this man Mackellar; he buried him with his own hands—he and my father—by the light of two siller candlesticks. The other man is a familiar spirit; he brought him from Coromandel. I would have told ye this long syne, Sir William, only it was in the family.” These last remarks he made with a kind of a melancholy composure, and his time of aberration seemed to pass away. “You can ask yourself what it all means,” he proceeded. “My brother falls sick, and dies, and is buried, as so they say; and all seems very plain. But why did the familiar go back? I think ye must see for yourself it’s a point that wants some clearing.”

“I will be at your service, my lord, in half a minute,” said Sir William, rising. “Mr. Mackellar, two words with you;” and he led me without the camp, the frost crunching in our steps, the trees standing at our elbow, hoar with frost, even as on that night in the Long Shrubbery. “Of course, this is midsummer madness,” said Sir William, as soon as we were gotten out of bearing.

“Why, certainly,” said I. “The man is mad. I think that manifest.”

“Shall I seize and bind him?” asked Sir William. “I will upon your authority. If these are all ravings, that should certainly be done.”

I looked down upon the ground, back at the camp, with its bright fires and the folk watching us, and about me on the woods and mountains; there was just the one way that I could not look, and that was in Sir William’s face.

“Sir William,” said I at last, “I think my lord not sane, and have long thought him so. But there are degrees in madness; and whether he should be brought under restraint—Sir William, I am no fit judge,” I concluded.

“I will be the judge,” said he. “I ask for facts. Was there, in all that jargon, any word of truth or sanity? Do you hesitate?” he asked. “Am I to understand you have buried this gentleman before?”

“Not buried,” said I; and then, taking up courage at last, “Sir William,” said I, “unless I were to tell you a long story, which much concerns a noble family (and myself not in the least), it would be impossible to make this matter clear to you. Say the word, and I will do it, right or wrong. And, at any rate, I will say so much, that my lord is not so crazy as he seems. This is a strange matter, into the tail of which you are unhappily drifted.”

“I desire none of your secrets,” replied Sir William; “but I will be plain, at the risk of incivility, and confess that I take little pleasure in my present company.”

“I would be the last to blame you,” said I, “for that.”

“I have not asked either for your censure or your praise, sir,” returned Sir William. “I desire simply to be quit of you; and to that effect, I put a boat and complement of men at your disposal.”

“This is fairly offered,” said I, after reflection. “But you must suffer me to say a word upon the other side. We have a natural curiosity to learn the truth of this affair; I have some of it myself; my lord (it is very plain) has but too much. The matter of the Indian’s return is enigmatical.”

“I think so myself,” Sir William interrupted, “and I propose (since I go in that direction) to probe it to the bottom. Whether or not the man has gone like a dog to die upon his master’s grave, his life, at least, is in great danger, and I propose, if I can, to save it. There is nothing against his character?”

“Nothing, Sir William,” I replied.

“And the other?” he said. “I have heard my lord, of course; but, from the circumstances of his servant’s loyalty, I must suppose he had some noble qualities.”

“You must not ask me that!” I cried. “Hell may have noble flames. I have known him a score of years, and always hated, and always admired, and always slavishly feared him.”

“I appear to intrude again upon your secrets,” said Sir William, “believe me, inadvertently. Enough that I will see the grave, and (if possible) rescue the Indian. Upon these terms, can you persuade your master to return to Albany?”

“Sir William,” said I, “I will tell you how it is. You do not see my lord to advantage; it will seem even strange to you that I should love him; but I do, and I am not alone. If he goes back to Albany, it must be by force, and it will be the death-warrant of his reason, and perhaps his life. That is my sincere belief; but I am in your hands, and ready to obey, if you will assume so much responsibility as to command.”

“I will have no shred of responsibility; it is my single endeavour to avoid the same,” cried Sir William. “You insist upon following this journey up; and be it so! I wash my hands of the whole matter.”

With which word, he turned upon his heel and gave the order to break camp; and my lord, who had been hovering near by, came instantly to my side.

“Which is it to be?” said he.

“You are to have your way,” I answered. “You shall see the grave.”

The situation of the Master’s grave was, between guides, easily described; it lay, indeed, beside a chief landmark of the wilderness, a certain range of peaks, conspicuous by their design and altitude, and the source of many brawling tributaries to that inland sea, Lake Champlain. It was therefore possible to strike for it direct, instead of following back the blood-stained trail of the fugitives, and to cover, in some sixteen hours of march, a distance which their perturbed wanderings had extended over more than sixty. Our boats we left under a guard upon the river; it was, indeed, probable we should return to find them frozen fast; and the small equipment with which we set forth upon the expedition, included not only an infinity of furs to protect us from the cold, but an arsenal of snow-shoes to render travel possible, when the inevitable snow should fall. Considerable alarm was manifested at our departure; the march was conducted with soldierly precaution, the camp at night sedulously chosen and patrolled; and it was a consideration of this sort that arrested us, the second day, within not many hundred yards of our destination—the night being already imminent, the spot in which we stood well qualified to be a strong camp for a party of our numbers; and Sir William, therefore, on a sudden thought, arresting our advance.

Before us was the high range of mountains toward which we had been all day deviously drawing near. From the first light of the dawn, their silver peaks had been the goal of our advance across a tumbled lowland forest, thrid with rough streams, and strewn with monstrous boulders; the peaks (as I say) silver, for already at the higher altitudes the snow fell nightly; but the woods and the low ground only breathed upon with frost. All day heaven had been charged with ugly vapours, in the which the sun swam and glimmered like a shilling piece; all day the wind blew on our left cheek barbarous cold, but very pure to breathe. With the end of the afternoon, however, the wind fell; the clouds, being no longer reinforced, were scattered or drunk up; the sun set behind us with some wintry splendour, and the white brow of the mountains shared its dying glow.

It was dark ere we had supper; we ate in silence, and the meal was scarce despatched before my lord slunk from the fireside to the margin of the camp; whither I made haste to follow him. The camp was on high ground, overlooking a frozen lake, perhaps a mile in its longest measurement; all about us, the forest lay in heights and hollows; above rose the white mountains; and higher yet, the moon rode in a fair sky. There was no breath of air; nowhere a twig creaked; and the sounds of our own camp were hushed and swallowed up in the surrounding stillness. Now that the sun and the wind were both gone down, it appeared almost warm, like a night of July: a singular illusion of the sense, when