Catriona Robert Louis Stevenson (little readers txt) 📖

to cast a gloom upon my character. I had met many men, some of them leaders in Israel whether by their birth or talents; and who among them all had shown clean hands? As for the Browns and Millers, I had seen their self-seeking, I could never again respect them. Prestongrange was the best yet; he had saved me, had spared me rather, when others had it in their minds to murder me outright; but the blood of James lay at his door; and I thought his present dissimulation with myself a thing below pardon. That he should affect to find pleasure in my discourse almost surprised me out of my patience. I would sit and watch him with a kind of a slow fire of anger in my bowels. “Ah, friend, friend,” I would think to myself, “if you were but through with this affair of the memorial, would you not kick me in the streets?” Here I did him, as events have proved, the most foul injustice; and I think he was at once far more sincere, and a far more artful performer than I supposed.

But I had some warrant for my incredulity in the behaviour of that court of young advocates that hung about him in the hope of patronage. The sudden favour of a lad not previously heard of troubled them at first out of measure; but two days were not gone by before I found myself surrounded with flattery and attention. I was the same young man, and neither better nor bonnier, that they had rejected a month before; and now there was no civility too fine for me! The same, do I say? It was not so; and the byname by which I went behind my back confirmed it. Seeing me so firm with the Advocate, and persuaded that I was to fly high and far, they had taken a word from the golfing green, and called me “the Tee’d Ball.”14 I was told I was now “one of themselves”; I was to taste of their soft lining, who had already made my own experience of the roughness of the outer husk; and the one, to whom I had been presented in Hope Park, was so assured as even to remind me of that meeting. I told him I had not the pleasure of remembering it.

“Why,” says he, “it was Miss Grant herself presented me! My name is so-and-so.”

“It may very well be, sir,” said I, “but I have kept no mind of it.”

At which he desisted; and in the midst of the disgust that commonly overflowed my spirits I had a glisk of pleasure.

But I have not patience to dwell upon that time at length. When I was in company with these young politics I was borne down with shame for myself and my own plain ways, and scorn for them and their duplicity. Of the two evils, I thought Prestongrange to be the least; and while I was always as stiff as buckram to the young bloods, I made rather a dissimulation of my hard feelings towards the Advocate, and was (in old Mr. Campbell’s word) “soople to the laird.” Himself commented on the difference, and bid me be more of my age, and make friends with my young comrades.

I told him I was slow of making friends.

“I will take the word back,” said he. “But there is such a thing as ‘Fair gude e’en and fair gude day,’ Mr. David. These are the same young men with whom you are to pass your days and get through life: your backwardness has a look of arrogance; and unless you can assume a little more lightness of manner, I fear you will meet difficulties in the path.”

“It will be an ill job to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear,” said I.

On the morning of October 1st I was awakened by the clattering in of an express; and getting to my window almost before he had dismounted, I saw the messenger had ridden hard. Somewhile after I was called to Prestongrange, where he was sitting in his bedgown and nightcap, with his letters around him.

“Mr. David,” said he, “I have a piece of news for you. It concerns some friends of yours, of whom I sometimes think you are a little ashamed, for you have never referred to their existence.”

I suppose I blushed.

“I see you understand, since you make the answering signal,” said he. “And I must compliment you on your excellent taste in beauty. But do you know, Mr. David, this seems to me a very enterprising lass? She crops up from every side. The Government of Scotland appears unable to proceed for Mistress Katrine Drummond, which was somewhat the case (no great while back) with a certain Mr. David Balfour. Should not these make a good match? Her first intromission in politics⁠—but I must not tell you that story, the authorities have decided you are to hear it otherwise and from a livelier narrator. This new example is more serious, however; and I am afraid I must alarm you with the intelligence that she is now in prison.”

I cried out.

“Yes,” said he, “the little lady is in prison. But I would not have you to despair. Unless you (with your friends and memorials) shall procure my downfall, she is to suffer nothing.”

“But what has she done? What is her offence?” I cried.

“It might be almost construed a high treason,” he returned, “for she has broke the King’s Castle of Edinburgh.”

“The lady is much my friend,” I said. “I know you would not work me if the thing were serious.”

“And yet it is serious in a sense,” said he; “for this rogue of a Katrine⁠—or Cateran, as we may call her⁠—has set adrift again upon the world that very doubtful character, her papa.”

Here was one of my previsions justified: James More was once again at liberty. He had lent his men to keep me a prisoner; he had volunteered his testimony in the