Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1893 — Page 2

The Master of Ballantrae

By Bobart Lenis Stevenson.

CHAPTER XX I— Continued. From that hour he was never rude with me, but all passed between us in a manner of pleasantry. One of our chief times of chaffing was when he required a horse, another bottle, or some money; he would approach me then after the manner of a school boy and I would carry it on by way of being; his father, on both sides with an infinity of mirth. I could not but perceive that he thought more of me, which tickled that poor part of mankind, the. vanity. He dropped besides (I must suppose unconsciously) into a manner that was not only familiar but even friendly, and this on the part of one who had so long detested me I found the more insidious. He went little abroad, sometimes even refusing invitations. ‘!No," he would say, “what do I care for those thick-headed bonnet lairds? I will stay at home, Mackellar, and we shall share a bottle quietly and have one of our good talks.” And •indeed meal time at Durrisdeer must have been a delight tcrany one, by reason of the brilliancy of the discourse. We would often express wonder at his former indifference to mv society. “But you see," he would add. “we were on opposite sides, I And so we are to-day, but let uj never speak of that. I would think much less of you if you wore not stanch to your employer.” You are to consider he seemed to me quite impotent for any evil; and how it is a most engaging form of flattery (after many veal’s)-tardy justice-is done) to a man’s character and parts. But I have no thought to excuse myself. I Was to blame; I let him cajole me; and, in short, I think the watch dog was going sound asleep when he was suddenly aroused. I should say the Indian was continually traveling to aud fro in the house. Ho never spoke, save in his own dialect and with the master; walked without sound, and was always turning up where you would least expect him, fallen into a deep abstraction, from which he would start (upon your coming) to mock you with one of his groveling obeisances. Ho seemed so quiet, so frail, and so wrapped in his own fancies that I came to pass him over without much regard, or even to pity him for a harmless exile from his coun try. And yet without doubt the. creature was still eavesdropping, and without doubt it was through his •tealth and my security that our secret reached the master. It was one very wild night, after supper, and when we had been making more than usually merry, that the blow fell on me. “This is all very fine,” says the master, “but we should do better to be buckling our valise.” “Why so?” I cried. “Are you leaving?” “We are all leaving to-morrow in the morning,” said he. “For the port of Glasgow first, thence for the province of New York.” T suppose that 1 must have groaned aloud. “Yes,” he continued. “I boasted; I said a week and it has taken me near twenty days. But never mind; I shall make it up; I will go the ■faster." “Have you the money for this voyage?” I asked. “Dear aud ingenuous personage, I have/’ said he. “Blame mo r ~if -you choose, for my duplicity ; but while I have been wringing shillings from my daddy I had a stock of ray own put by against a rainy day. You will pay for your own passage if you choose to accompany us on our flank march; I have enough for Secundra and myself, but not more; enough to be dangerous, not enough to be generous. There is, however, an outside

seat upon the chaise which I will let you have upon a moderate commutation so that the whole menagerie can go together, the house dog, the monkey and the tiger.” “I go with you," said I. “I count upon it,” said the master. “You have seen me foiled, I mean you shall see me victorious. To gain that I would risk wetting you like a sop in this wild weather.” “And at least," I added, “you know very well you could not throw . me off.” “Not easily,” said he. “You put your finger on the point with your usual excellent good sense. I never fight with the inevitable.” “I suppose it is useless to appeal to you," said. “Believe me, perfectly” said he. “And yet if you would give me time I could write —” I began. “And what would be my Lord Durrisdeer’s answers?” asks he. “Ay,” said I, “that is the rub.” ’ “And ai any rate, how much more expeditious that I should go myself 1” says he. “But all this is quite a waste of breath. At seven to-mor-row the chaise will be at the door. For I start from the door, Mackellar; Ido not skulk through woods and take my chaise upon the wayside—shall we say, at Eagles?" My mind was thoroughly made up. “Can you spare me quarter of an hour at St. Bride's?" said L “I have a little necessary business with Carl vie." “Au hour, if you prefer,” said ho. “I do not seek to deny that the money for your seat is an object to me; and you could always get the first to Glasgow with saddlehorses." “Well," said I, “I never thought to lea ve old Scotland." “It will brisken you up," says he. “This will be an ill journey for Some one," I said. “I think, sir, for you. Something Speaks in my bo<om; and so much It says plain; that this Is M Hl-omened journey."

“If you take to prophecy,” says he, “HSWfi to that." There came up a violent squall off the open Solway, and the rain was dashed on the great windows. “Do ye ken what that bodes, warlock?” said he, ,in a broad accent; “that there’ll be a man Mackellar uijco sick at sea.” When I got to my chamber, I sat there under a painful excitation, hearkening to the turmoil of the gale which struck full upon the gable of the house: What with the pressure on my eldritch cries of the wind amofig the turret-tops, and the perpetual trepidation of the masoned house, sleep fled my eyelids utterly. I sat bv my taper, looking on the black panes of the window where the storm appeared continually on the point of bursting in its entrance; and upon that empty field I beheld a perspective, of consequences that made the hair to rise upon my scalp. The child corrupted the home broken up, my master dead or worse than dead, my mistress plunged in desolation —all these I saw before me painted brightly on the darkness; and the outcry of the wind appeared to mock at my inaction.-•

CHAPTER XXII. MX mackellar’s journey with the MASTER. The chaise came to the door in a strong drenching mist. We took our leave in silence; the house of Durrisdeer standing with dropping gutters and windows closed, luce a place dedicate to melancholy I observed the master kept his head out, looking back on these splashed walls and glimmering roofs till they were suddenly swallowed in the mist; and I must suppose some natural sadness fell upon the man at this departure; or was it some prevision of the end? At least, upon our mounting the long brae from Durrisdeer, as we walked side by side in the wet, he began first to whistle and then to sing the saddest of our country tunes, which sets folk weeping in a tavern, “Wandering Willie.” He looked in my face when he had done, and saw that my eyes watered. “Ahf Mackellar,” said he, “do you think I have never a regret?”

“I do not think you could be so bad a man,” said I, “if you had not all the machinery to be a good one.” “No, not all,” says he; “not all. You are in error. The malady of not wanting, my evangelist.’’ But methought he sighed as he mounted again into the chaise. All day long we journeyed in the same miserable weather ;the mists besetting us closely, the heavens incessantly weeping on my head. The road lay over moorish hills, where was no sound but the crying of moor fowl in the wet weather and the pouring of the swollen burns. Sometimes I would doze off in slumber, when I would find mySelf plunged at qnce in some foul and ominous nightmare, from which I was awakened strangling. Sometimes, if the way was steep and the wheels turning slowly, I would overhear the voices from within talking in that tropical tongue which was to me as inarticulate as the piping of the fowls. Sometimes, at a longer ascent, the master would set foot to ground and walk by my side, mostly without speech. And all the time, sleeping or waking, I beheld the same black perspective of approaching ruin, and the.same pictures rose in my view, only they were now painted upon hillside mist. One, I remember, stood before me with the colors of a true illusion. It showed me my lord seated at a table in a small room; his head, which was at first buried in his hand, he slowly raised and turned upon me a countenance from which hope had fled. I saw it first on the black window panes my last night in Durrisdeer; it haunted and returned upon me half the voyage through; and yet it was-no effect of lunacy, for I have come to a ripe old age with no decay of my intelligence; nor yet (as I was then tempted to suppose) a heaven sent warning of the future, for all manner of calamities befell, not that calamity—and I saw many pitiful sights, but never that one.

It was decided wo should travel on all night: it was singlar, once the dusk had fallen,, my spirits somewhat rose. The bright lamps, shining forth into the mists and on the smoking horses and holding postboy, gave me perhaps an outlook more cheerful than what day had shown; or perhaps my mind had become wearied of its melancholy. At least I spent some waking hours not without satisfaction in my thoughts, although wet and weary in my body, and fell at last into a natural slumber without dreams. Yet I must have been at work even in the deepest of my sleep, and at work with at least a measure of intelligence, for I started broad awake in the act of crying out to myself: “Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.” stricken to find in it an appropriateness which I had not yesterday observed to the master’s detestable purpose in the present journey. We were then close upon the city of Glasgow, where we were soon breakfasting together at an inn, and where (as the devil would have it) we found a ship in the very article of sailing. We took places in the cabin, and two days afterward carried our effects on board. Her name was the “Nonesuch," a very ancient ship and very happily named. By all accounts this should be her last voyage: people shook their heads on the quays, and I had several warnings offered m© by strangers ip the street to the effect that she was rotten as a cheese, too deeply loaded,

and must certainly founder if we encountered a gale. From this it fell out we were the only passengers; the captain, McMurtrie, was a silent, absorbed man with the Glasgow, or Gaelic accent; the mates ignorant, rough seafarers, come in through the hawsehole, and the master and I were cast upon each other's company.

The “Nonesuch" carried a fair wind out of the Clyde, and for near upon a week we enjoyed bright weather and a sense of progress. I found myself (to my wonder) a born seaman, in so far at least I was never sick, yet I was far from tasting the usual serenity of my health. Whether it was the motion of the ship on the billows, the confinement, the salted food, or all of these together, I suffered from a blackness of spirit and a painful strain upon my temper. The nature of my errand on that ship perhaps contributed; I think it did no more; the malady (whatever it was) sprung from my environment, and if the ship were not to blame then it was the master. Hatred and fear are ill bedfellows; but (to my shame be it spoken) I have tasted these in other places, lain down and got up with them-and eat and drunk with them, and yet never , before nor after have I been so poisoned through and through, in soul and body, as F was on board the “Nonesuch.” I freely confess my enemy set a fair example of forbearance; in our worst days displayed the most patient geniality, holding me in conversation as long as I would suffer, and when I had rebuffed his civility stretched himself on deck to read. The book he had on board with him was Mr. Richardson’s famous “Clarissa,” and among other small attentions he would read nie passages aloud, nor could any elocutionist have given with greater potency the pathetic portions of that work. I would retort upon him with passages out of the Bible, which was all my library—and very fresh to me, my religious duties (I grieve to say it) being always and even to this day extremely neglected. He tasted the merits of the work like the connoisseur he was, and would take it from my hand, turn the leaves over like the man that knew his way, and give me, with his fine declamation, a Roland for my Oliver. But it was singular he applied his reading .to himself; it passed high above his head like summer thunder; Lovelace and Clarissa, the tales of David’s generosity, the psalms of his penitence, the solemn questions of the Book of Job, the touching poetry of Isaiah —they were to him a source of entertainment only, like the scraping of a fiddle in a changehouse. This outer sensibility and inner toughness set me against him; it seemed of a piece with that impudent grossness which I knew to underlie the veneer of his fine manners; and sometimes my gorge rose against him as though he were deformed and sometimes I would draw away as though from something partly spectral. I had moments when I thought of him as a man of pasteboad—as though, if one should strike smartly through the buckram of his countenance, there would be found a mere vacuity within. This horror (not merely fanciful, I think) vastly increased my detestation of his neighborhood; I began to feel something shiver within me on his drawing near; I had at times a longing tb cry out; there were days when I thought I could have struck him. This frame was doubtless helped by shame, because I had dropped during our last days at Durrisdeer into a certain toleration of the man; and if any one had then told me I should drop into it again, I must have laughed in his face. It is possible he remained unconscious of this extreme fever of my resentment; yet I think he was too quick, and rather that he had fallen, in a long life of idleness, into a positive need of company, which obliged him to confront and tolerate my unconcealed aversion. Certain at least that he loved the note of his own tongue, as indeed he entirely loved all the parts and properties of himself; a sort of imbecility which almost necessarily attends on wickedness. I have seen him driven, when I proved recalcitrant, to long discourses with the skipper; and this, although the man plainly testified his weariness, fiddling miserably with both hand and foot, and replying only with a grunt.

CHAPTER XXIII.

After the first week out we fell in with foul winds and heavy weather. The sea was high. The “Nonesuch,” being an old-fashioned ship and badly leaden, rolled beyond belief, so that the skipper trembled for his masts and I for my life. We made no progress on our course. An unbearable ill-humor settled on the ship; men, mates and master, girding at one another all day long. A saucy word on the one hand and a blow on the other made a daily incident. There were times when the whole crew refused their duty; and we of the afterguard were twice got under arms (being the first time that ever I bore weapons) in the fear of mutiny. In the midst of our evil season sprung up a hurricane of wind, so that all supposed|she niust go down. I was shut in the cabin from noon of one day till sundown of the next; the master was somewhere lashed on deck. Secundra had eaten of some drug and lay insensible; so you may say I passed these hours in an unbroken solitude. At first I was terrified beyond motion and almost beyond thought, my mind appearing to be frozen. Presently there stole in on me a ray of comfort. If the “Nonesuch” foundered she would carry down with her into the depths

I I of that unsounded sea the creature whom we all so feared and hated; there would be no more Master of Ballantrae; the fish would sport among his ribs; his, schemes all brought to nothing, his harmless enemies at peace. At first, as I, have said, it was but a ray of comfort; but it had soon grown to be broad sunshine. The thought of the man's death, of his deletion from this earth, which he embittered for so many, took possession of my mind. I hugged it; I found it sweet in my belly. I conceived the ship’s last plunge, the sea bursting upon all sides into the cabin, the brief mortal conflict there, all by myself,-in-that closed place; I numbered the horrors, I had almost saidrwith satisfaction; I fdlt I could bear all and more, if the “Nonesuch" carried down with her, overtook by the same ruin, the enemy of my poor master’s house. Toward noon of the second day the screaming of the wind abated; the ship lay not so perilously over, and it began to be clear to me that we were past the height of the tempest. As I hope for mercy, I was singly disappointed. In the selfishness of that vde, absorbing passion of hatred, I forgot the case of our innocent shipmates, thinking only of myself and my enemy. For myself, I was already old, I had never been young. I was not formed, for the world’s pleasures;,! had few affections, it. mattered not the toss of a silver tester whether I was drowned there, and then jn the Atlantic, or dribbled out a few years more, to die, perhaps no less terribly, in a deserted sick bed. Down I went upon my knees—holding on by the locker, or else I had been instantly dashed across the tossing cabin—and. lifting up my voice in the midst of that clamor of the abating hurricane, impiously prayed for my own death. “O God,” I cried, ‘‘l would be liker a man if I rose and struck this creature down; but thou madest me a coward from my mother’s womb. O Lord, thou madest me so, in thy wisdom; thou knowest my weakness, thou knowest that any face of death will set me shaking in my shoes. But thy servant is-ready, his mortal Weak* ness laid aside. Let me give my life for this creature’s; take the two of them, Lord! take the two and have mercy on the innocent!” In some such words as these, only yet more irreverent and with more sacred adjurations, I continued to pour forth my spirit; God heard me not, I must suppose in mercy; aud I was still absorbed in my agony of supplication, when some one, removing the tarpaulin cover, let the light of the sunset pour into the cabin. I stumbled to my feet in shame, and was seized with surprise to find myself totter and ache like one thac had been stretched upon the rack, Secundra Dass, who had slept off the effect of his drug, stood in a corner not far off, gazing at me with wild eyes; and from the open skylight the captain thanked me for my supplications. “It’s you that saved the ship, Mr. Mackellar,” says he. “There is no craft of seamanship that could have kept her floating: well may we say: “Except the Lord the city, keep, the watchmen watch in vain!*’ (to be continued.)

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

Fully 25 per cent, of the champagne made is lost by the breaking of bottles. A gentleman in 'Pans fia§ invented a sun dial said to be more acurate than a watch. A Baltimore man is suing a young lady of that town for possession of his love-letters. The United States produced 10,000,000 galllons more wine last year than Germany did. A man at Maple Grove, Mich., tried to sell a horse for ten cents the other day and failed. There are between seventy-five and eighty thousand negroes living at the national capital in Washington, and their wealth is now very large. An old orange peddler in Amsterdam has died and left his heirs SBO,000. He was a miser and orange skins were good enough for him to eat. One morning Willie was reading a book, when his two smaller brothers began to spat. It annoyed Willie, and he said: “I’m trying to read,and if you kids want to scrap in here, why, go out in the yard." A butcher of Manasquan, N. J., has utilized his spare time this winter, when not carving steers, in carv’ng out guitars. He has manufactured seven guitars so far, and musicians pronounce them excellent instruments.

A Milwaukee brewing company, which has obtained the contract for selling beer at the World’s Fair in Chicago, will fix up beer bars in every building and in various booths, making eighty-seven places where beer can be had on the grounds. Amethysts and several other socalled precious stones have become so cheap that they are no longer sold by the karat, but by the ounce. Even the great amethyst that ordinarily graces an episcopal ring is no longer an expensive stone, and amethysts of poorer quality are ordinarily of trifling value. When Mauritius was ceded to Great Britain in 1810 there was a gigantic turtle in a court of the artillery barracks at Port Louis which is still there, although almost blind, It weighs 330 pounds and stands two feet high when walking. Its shell is bight and one-half feet long and H -can carry two men on its back with ease. It is believed to be at least two hundred years old.

OUR PLEASURE CLUB.

Manager—What the mischief is all the racket about in the next room? “The fire-eater has burned his mouth dreadfully with a bite of hot pie.”

SUFFERING KANSAS. There is anarchy in Kansas, So they say: There was riot in Topeka Yesterday. They’re discossi ng polities -With ehillalahs, clubs and sticks. While the.sheriff deputizes Every jay. The Governor and the Colonel Can't agree, Law makers and law breakers. Sad to see, Are so mixed their sev’ral mothers Cjmltgiatingulsh those frpm.l’others. And the commonwealth is on a Jamboree. Everything appears disjointed Up to date. With no fool killer appointed For the State. While the world. a?Ha=t with wonder, Faintly questions, "Why in thunder Do the idiots a>l in Kansas Congregate?”. —Minneapolis Tribuna.

WHEN CRINOLINE COMES IN.

Result of a fond embrace.

We’ll all be high jumpers. Mrs. Shortsight—What is this picture, Herbert? It looks a perfect blot and blur to me. Herbert —It is; it’s a prize fighter. Pitcher—lt’s funny about Fulton, Yesterday he was a pauper, and bv his uncle’s death he is to-day millionaire. “Oh, just another case of will power." A man may stop his drinking. Stop hU btnoKlng and his chews. Stop his broc-.'.ing and his thinking About all his debts and duos. He may stop his plan of credit A nd insist on having cash. If nno way he’s not misled, it - Win hot finish in a crash. <■ If to stop his regulation Advertising he is led. Then he stops his “circulation’* And he might as well be dead'. Little Dick —Seems to me the older folks grow the more awkward they get. Mamma—Why so? Little Dick—J can fix on sister’s skates in two minutes, but it takes Mr. Nicefello ’bout half an hour. Why is the gay pianist whose music thrills with bliss, Unhappy Lt his hiir does not •o 5 a a r (0 p X w —Washington News. Now Ccok —In making chicken salad, what is the first you do? Old Cook —Cook the veal. - rkittle Mabel —Mamma, don’t you think I can teach Fido to talk? Mamma —No. dear; what made you think you could? Little Mabie—Well, when I gave him his dinner he growled just like you say papa does when his meal doesn’t please him. How long, O Winter’ how long’ Can't you give us a sign or it token? We lire tired nt the blizzard’s wild song; When will your bncktxme be broken? •-Kansas City Journal. in, ■ English as It Is Spoken.

“he cams down hands omelt."

The Spare Room.

Punch,

“Good morning, Uncle Charles. Did you sleep well? I’m afraid your bed was rather hard and uneven; but—” “Oh! it was all right, thanks. J got up now and then during the night and rested a bit, you know."

Definite.

From Troth. She —Am older than you think I “tab, or younger? • He—Well, you look older than I think you are, but you are older than you look.

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