Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1893 — The Master of Ballantrae [ARTICLE]

The Master of Ballantrae

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

CH APTER XXlri—Continued. “Are you mad?” I cried, so soon as I bad overtook him. “ Would you cast away so fair an opportunity?” “Is it possible you should still hetieve in him?” inquired my lord, almost with a sneer. “I wish him forth of this town,” I cried. “I wish him anyw here and anyhow but as he is.” - : “Tliayexaid-naysay,” 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 neediewook 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 smelled blood to me. Audi vowed there should be no neglect of mine if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be vet 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 Scatland; it will take some time to lift them, and the affair presses. Could your lordship see ms 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,” says he. “Beyond the amount of your caution, you- may hot 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 favor for mvself,” said I, ' “until to-day.” “A favor for the master,” he re-turned-quietly. “Do you take me fora fool, Mackellar? Understand at once and for all; I treat this beast in my own’ may; fear nor favor shall move me; and before I am hoodwinked, it will re’quire a trickster less transparent than yousslf. I ask service, loyal service; not that you should make and mar behind my back, and steal my own mony to defeat me.” it “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. ”

‘‘lf 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 harbor, for I knew a ship was on the point' of sailing, and came to the master's door a little before duslv. Entering without the form of any knock, I found him sitting with his Indian at a simple mear 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 ati 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 vet 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, Maekellar, Mackel'ar, if this were done from any Ipve of me, how gladly would I close upon your offer!” “And vet,” 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 !&od 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 suppqse somethingof my voice, “\ou are an honest man, and for that cause I spare you.” “Spare me!” I cried. “Spare you,” he replied, letting me go and turning away. And then, fronting me once more: “You little know what I would do with it, MacJcellar! Did you think I had swallowed my defeat,, indeed? Listen; my life has been a season of unmerited east-backs. That fool, Prince Charlie, mismanaged a most promising affair: there fell my first fortune. In Paris I had my foot once more high tqioii tin; ladder; this 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 for myself a’place in India ■with an infinite patience; and then Clive-came, my rajah was swallowed up, and I escaped out of the convulsion, like another .Eneas, with Secundra Das 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 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 should be crushed under the ruins.”

CHAPTER XXVI. As I came out of this house, all hope of intervention quite destroyed, I was aware of a stir on the waterside. and raising my eyes, there was a great ship newly come to anchor. It -seemed 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 oposing 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 east a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea, and send forth both these brothers 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 through their midst, on my return homeward, auite 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 Gfovernor upon some party of pleasure; the time was nearly due, and T left him for a moment alone in his room and skimming through the pamphlets. When I returned’ his head had fallen upon the table, his, arms lying abroad among the crumpled papers. “My lord, my lord!” I cried as I ran forward, for I supposed he was in some fit. He sprang up like a figure upon wires, his countenance deformed with fury, so that in a strange place I should scarce have known him. His hand at the same time flew above his head as though to strike me down. “Leave me alone!” he screeched, and I fled, as fast as my shaking legs would bear me, for my lady. She too lost no time; but when we returned he had the door locked within, and he cried to us from the other side to leave him be. We looked in each other’s faces, very white; each supposing the blowhad come at last; “1 will write to the governor to excuse him," says she. “We must keep our strong friends.” But when she took up the pen, it flew out, of her fingers. “I can. not write,” said she.' “Can you?” “I will make a shift, my lady,” said I. She looked over me as I wrote. “That will do.” she said, when I had done. “Thank Clod, 'Mackellar, I have you to lean upon! But what can it be now? what, what can it Am?” In my own mind, I believed there was no explanation possible and none required; it was my fear that the man’s madness had now simply burst forth its way, like the longsmothered flames of a volcano; but to this (in mere mercy to my lady) I durst not give expression. “It is more to the purpose to con- | sider our own behavior,” said I. “Must we leave him there alone?” “I do not dare disturb him,” she replied. “Nature may know best; it may be nature that cries to be alone; and we grope in the dark. Oh, yes, I would leave him as he is.” “T will then dispatch this letter, my lady, and return here, if you ; please, to sit with you,” I said. ■ ‘Pray do,” cries my lady. All afternoon we sat together, | mostly in silence, watching my lord’s door. My own mind was busy with the scene that had just passed, and its singular resemblance to my vision. I must say a word upon this for the story has gone abroad with great exaggeration, and I have seen it printed and my own name referred to for particulars. So much was the same; here was my lord in a room, with his head upon the table, and when he raised his face it wore such an expression as distressed me to the soul. But the room was different, my lord’s attitude at the table not at all the same, and his face, when he disclosed it, expressed a painful degree of fury instead of haunting despair which had always (except once, already referred to) characterized it in the vision. There is the whole truth at last before xhe public; and if the differences \be great, the coincidence was set enough to fill me with All afternoon, as I say, I sat and pondered upon this quite to myself; for my lady had trouble of her own, and it was my last thought to vex he with fancies. About the midst of our time of waiting, she conceived an ingenious scheme, had Mr. Alexander fetched and bade him knock at his father’s door. My lord sent the boy about his business but without the legist violence whether of manner or expression; so that I began to entertain a hope the fit was over. At last, as the- night fell and I was lighting a lamp that stood there trimmed, the door opened and my lord stood within upon the threshold. light was not strong that we could read his counternance; when he spoke, methought his voice a little altered but yet perfectly steady. “Mackellar,” said he, “carry this note to its destination with your

own hand. It is highly private. Find the person alone when you deliver it.” “Henry.” says mv lady, _ “you are not. ill?” ... - : ‘ “No. no." says he querulously, “I am occupied. Not at all; I am only occupied. It is a singular thing a man must be supposed to be ill when he has any business! Send me supper To thisA^^ wine; I expect the visit of a friend. Otherwise am not to be disturbed.” And with that he once more shut himself in. The note was addressed to Captain Harris, at a tavern on the port-side. I knew Harris (by reputation) for a dangerous adventurer, highly suspected of piracy ’ in the past, and mawilol]awing ..the rude business of an Indian trader. What my lord should have to say to him, or he to my lord, it passed ray imagination to conceive; or yet how my lord had heard of him, unless by a disgraceful trial from which the man was recently escaped. Altogether I went Upon the errand with reluctance, and from the little I saw of the captain, returned from it with sorrow. I found him in a foul-smelling chamber. sitting by a guttering candle -and an empty bottle; he had the remuins of a military-carriage, or rather perhaps it was an affectation, for his manners were low! “Tell mv lord, with my service, that I. will wait, upon his lordship in the inside of half an hour,” savs he when he had read the note; and then had the servility, pointing to his empty bottle.to propose that I should buy him liquor. Although I returned with my best speed, the captain followed close upon my lnv!s and he stayed late into the night. The cock was crowing a second time, when T saw him (from my chamber window) my lord lighting him to the gate, "both men very much affected with their potations and "sometimes leaning one upon the other to confabulate, Yet the next morning my lord was abroad again early with a hundred pounds of money in his pocket. I never supposed that he returned with it, and yet I was quite sure it did not find its way to the master, for I lingered all the morning within view of the booth. That was the last time my Lord Durrisdeer passed his own inclosure till we left New York. He walked in his barn or sat and talked with his family as much as usual, but the town saw nothing of him and his daily visits to the master seemed forgotten. Nor yet did Harris reappear, or not, until the end.

I was now much oqipressed with a sense of the mysteries in which we •had begun torarove. It was plain, if only from his change of habitude, my lord had something on his mind of a grave nature; but what it was, whence it sprung, or why he should now keep the house and garden, I could make no guess at. It was clear, even to probation , the pamphlets had some share in this revolution; I read all I could find, and they were all extremely insignificant aud of the usual kind of party scurrility, even to a high politician. 1 could spy out no particular matter of offense, and ray lord was a man. rather indifferent on. public questions. The truth is the pamphlet which was the spring of this affair lav all the time on my lord’s bosom. There it was that I found it at last, after he was dead, in the midst of the north wilderness; in tsuch a place, in such dismal circumstances, I was to read for the first time these idle, lying words of a whig ’pamphleteer declaiming against indulgency to Jacobites: “Another notorious rebel the M —r of B —e, is to have his title restored,” the passage ran. “This business has been long in hand, since h(j rendered some very disagreeable, services in Scotland and France. His brother, L —d D—r, is known to be

no better than himself in inclination, and the supposed heir, who is now to be set aside, was bred up in the most detestable principles. In the old phrase, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other, -but the favor of such a reposition is too extreme to be passed over.” A man in his right wits could not have cared two straws for a tale so manifestly false; that the government should even entertain the notiqn was inconceivable to any reasoning creature, unless possibly the fool than penned it: and my lord, though never brilliant, was ever remarkable for sense. That he should credit such a rodomontade, and carry the pamphlet on his bosom and the words in his heart, is clear proof of the man's lunacy. Doubtless the mere mention of Mr. Alexander,. and the threat directly holdout against the child’s succession, precipitated that which had so long impended. Or else my master had been truly mad for a long time and we were too dull or too much used to him and did not - perceive the extent of his infirmity. _aAbout a week after the day of the pamphlets I was late upon the harbor side and took a turn toward the master’s, as I often did. The door opened, a flood of light came forth upon the road, and 1 beheld a man taking his departure with friendly salutations. I can not say how sitfgularly I was shaken to recognize the adventurer Harris. I could not but conclude it was the hand of my lord that had brought him there, and prolonged my walk in very serious and apprehensive thought. It was late when I came home, and there was my lord making -up his portmanteau for a voyage. “Why do you come so late?” he cried. “We- leave to-morrow for Albany, you and. I together, and it is high time you were about your preparations.” “For Albany, my lord?” I cried. “And for what earthly purpose?"

“Change of scene,” said he. And ‘my lady, who appeared to have been weeping, gave me the signal without parleys She told me a little later (when we found —occasion to exchange some words) that he had suddenly announced his intention after a visit from Captain Harris, and her best endeavors, whether to dissuade him from the journey or to elicit some explanation of its purpose, had alike proved unavailing. CHAPTER XXVII. THE JOURNEY IN TIIE Vv'l LBERNESS. We made a prosperous voyage up the fine river of the Hudson, the weather grateful, the hills singularly beautiful with the colors of the autumn. At Albany we had our residence at an inn, where I was not so blind and my lord not so cunning but what I could see he had some design tp hold me prisoner. The work he found : for me to do was- not so pressing that weshotdd' transact it apart from necessary papers in a chamber of an inn; nor was it of sattCfa importance that I should be set upon as many as four or live scrolls of the same document. I submitted in appearance: but I took private measures ou my own side, and had the news of the town communicated to me daily by th|" politeness of our host. In this way I received at last a piece of intelligence for which, I may sav. I had been waiting. Captain Harris (I was told) with “Mr. Mountain the trader” had gone by up the river in a boat: I would have feared the landlord’s eye, so strong the sense of some complicity upon my master's part oppressed me. But I made out to say I had some knowledge of the .captain, although none of Mr;: Mountain, and to inquire who else* was of the party. My informant knew not;_■ Mr. Mountain had come-ashore upon some needful purchases; had gone round the town buying, drinking and prating; and it seemed the party went upon some likely venture, for he had spoken much of great things he would do when he returned. No. more was known, for none of the rest had come ashore, and it seemed they were pressed for time to reach a certain spot 1 before the snow should fall, - .: 1 -

And sure enough the next day there fell a sprinkle even in Albany; but it passed as it came, and was but a reminder of what lay before us. I thought of it lightly then, knowing so little as I did of that inclement province; the retrospect is different; and I wonder at times if -some of the horror of these events which I must now rehearse flowed not from the foul skies and savage winds to which we were exposed, and the agony of cold that we must suffer. The boat having passed by, I thought at first we should have left the town. But no such matter. My lord continued his stay in Albany where he had no ostensible affairs, and kept me by him, far from my due-employment, and making a pretense of occupation. It is upon this passage I expect and perhaps: deserve censure. I was not so dull but what I had my own thoughts. I could not see the master intrust himself into the hands of Harris, and not suspect some underhand contrivance. Harris bore a villainous reputation, and he had been tampered with in private by my lord; Mountain, the trader, proved, upon inquiry, to be another of the samq kidney; the errand they were all gone upon being the recovery of ill-"" gotten treasures, ; offered in itself a very strong incentive to foul play; and the character of the country where they journeyed promised impunity to deeds of blood. Wei!, it is true, I had all these thoughts and fears, and guesses of the master’s fate. But you are to consider I was the same man that sought to dash him from the bulwarks of a ship in the mid-sea; the same that, a little before, very impiously but sincerely offered God, a bargain, seeking to hire God to be my,bravo. It is true again that I had a good deal melted toward our enemy. But this I always thought of as a weakness of the flesh and even culpable; my mind re-' maining steady and quite bent against him. True yet again that it was one thing to assume on my .own shoulders the guilt aud danger of a criminal attempt, and another to stand by and see my lord imperil and besmirch himself. But this was the very ground of my inaction. For (should I any way stir in the business) I might fail indeed to save the master, but I could not miss to make a by-word of my lord. Thus it was that I did nothing: and upon the same reasons, I am still strong to justify my course. We lived meanwhile in Albany, but though alone together in a strange place, had little traffic beyond formal salutations. My lord had carried with him several introductions chief people of the town and neighborhood; others he had before encounteredTn New York; with this consequence, that he went much abroad, and I am sorry to say was altogether too convivial in his habits. I was often in bed, but never asleep, when he returned; and there was scarce a night when lie did not betray the influence of liquor. By day he would still lay .upon me endless tasks, which he showed considerable ingenuity to fish up and to renew, in the manner of Penelope’s web. I never refused, as I say, for I was hired to do his bidding; but I took no pains to keep my penetration under a bushel, and wbhld sometimes smile in his fatiff. . (*TO TIE CONTINUED ) Queen Isabella’s- original will is to be exhibited at the World’s Fair.