Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1893 — The Master of Ballantrae [ARTICLE]

The Master of Ballantrae

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

CHAPTER XXVll— Continued: “I think I must be the devil, and you Michael Scott," I said to him one iay. “I have bridged Tweed and split the Eildons; and now you set me to the rope of sand." He looked at me with shining eyes and looked away again, his jaw chewing; but without words. “Well, well, my lord,” said I, ‘‘your wish israypleasure. I will do this thing for the fourth time; but t would beg of you to invent another task against to-morrow, for by my troth, I am weary of this one." “You do not know what you are saying,” returned my lord, putting on his hat and turning his back to me. “It is a strange thing you should take a pleasure to annoy me. A friend —but that is a different affair. It is a strange thing. I am a man that has had ill-fortune all life through. lam still surrounded by contrivances. I am always treading in plots" he burst out. “The whole world is banded against _ A »» ° me. “I would not talk wicked nonsense if were you," said I; “but I will tell you what I would do —I would put my head in cold water, for you had more last night than you could carry.” “Do ye think that?" said he, with a manner of interest highly awak-. ened. “Would that be good for me? It’s a thing I never tried” “I mind the days when yon had no call to try, and I wish, my lord, they were back again,” said I. “But the plain truth is, if you continue to exceed, you will do yourself a mischief.” “I don’t appear to carry drink the way I used to,” said my lord. “I get overtaken, Mackellar. But I will be more upon my guard.” “That is what I used to ask of vou,” I replied. “You are to bear In mind that you are Mr. Alexander’s father; give the bairn a chance to carry his name with some responsibility." " <f Ay, ay.” said he. “You’re a very sensible man, Mackellar, and have been long in my employ. But I think, if you have nothing more to say to me, I will be stepping. If you have nothing more to say?" he added, with that burning, childish eagerness that was now so common with the man. “No. my lord, I have nothing more,” said I, dryly enough. “Than I think I will be stepping,” says my lord, and stood and looked at me, fidgeting with his hat, which he had taken off again. “I suppose you will have no errands? No? I am to meet Sir William Johnson, but I will be more upon my guard.” He was silent for a time, and then, smiling: “Do you call to mind a place, Mackellar—it’s a little below Engles—where the burn runs very deep under a wood of rowans? ! mind being there when I was a lad—dear, it comes over me like an old songl—l was after the fishing, and I made a bonny cast. Eh, but I was happy', I wonder, Mackellar, why I am never happy now?” “My lord,” said I, “if you would drink .with more moderation you would have the better chance. It is an old by-word that the bottle is a false consoler. ” “No doubt," said he, “no doubt. Well, I think I will be going.” “Good-morning, my lord," said I. “Good-morning, good-morning, " said he, and so got himself, at last, from the apartment. 1 give that for a fair specimen of my lord in the morning; and T must have described my patron very ill if the reader does not perceive a notable falling off. To behold the man thus fallen; to know him accepted among his companions for a poor, muddled toper, welcome (if he were welcome at all) for the bare consideration of his title; and to recall the virtues he had once displayed against such odds of fortune; was not this a thing at once to rage and to be humbled at? In his cups he was more excessive. I will give but the one scene, close upon the end, which is strongly marked upon my memory to this day, and at the time affected me almost with horror. I was in bed, lying there awake, when I heard him stumbling on the stair and singing. My lord had no gift of music, his brother had all the graces of the family, so that when I sav singing, you are to understand a manner of high, caroling utterance which was truly neither speech nor song. not unlike is to be heaf'd upon the lips of children, ere they learn shame; from those of a man grown elderly, it had a strange effect. He opened the door with nqisy precaution; peered in, shading his candle; conceived me to slumber; entered, set his light upon the table, and took off his hat. I saw him very plain; a high, feverish exultation appeared to boil in his veins, and he stood and smiled and smirked upon the candle. Presently he lifted up his arm, snapped his fingers, and fell to undress. As he did so, having once more forgot my presence, he took back to his singing; and now I could hear the words, which were those from the old song of the “Two Corbies,” endlessly repeated “And over hti banes when they are bare The wind shall blaw (or evermair!" I have said there was no music in the m&n. His strains had no logical succession except in so far as they inclined a little to the minor made’ but they exercised a rude potency Upon the feelings, and followed the words, and signified the feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took It first in the time and manner

of a rant; presently this ill-favored fleefhlness abated, he began to well upon the nates more feelingly, and sunk at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fall to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back impatiently on this popr sight. But he had started himself (I am to suppose) on tbatslippery descent of self pity; on the which, to a man unstrung by, old sorrows and recent potations there is no arrest except exhaustion. His tears continued to flow, and the man to sit there, three parts naked, in the cold air chamber. I twitted myself alternately with inhumanity and sentimental weakness, now half rising in my bed to interfere, now reading myself lessons o& indifference and courting slumber, until, upon a sudden, the quantum mutatus ab illo shot into my mind; and calling into remembrance his old wisdom, constancy and patience, I was overborne with a pity almost approaching the passionate, not for my master alone but for the sons of man. At this I leaped from my place, went over to his side and laid a band on his bare shoulder, which was cold as stone. He uncovered his face and Showed it me all swollen and tear-marked like a child’s; and at the sight my impatience partially revived.

“Think shame to yoiifself,” said I. “This is bairnly conduct. I might have been sniveling myself, if I cared to swell my belly with wine. But I went to my bed sober like a man. Come; get into yours, and have done with this pitiable exhibition.” “Oh, Mackellar.” said he, “my heart is wael” “Wae?” cried I. “For a go“od cause, I think. What words were these you sung as you came in? Show pity to others, we then can talk of pity to yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but I will be no party to half-way houses. If you’re a striker, strike, and if you’re a bleater, bleat!” “Cry!” cries he, with a burst, “that’s it —strike! that’s talking! Man, I’ve stood it all too long. But wheu they laid a hand upon the child, when the child’s threatened” — his momentary vigor whimpering off —“My child, my Alexander!” — and he was at his tears again. I took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Alexander!” said I. “Do you ever thinjf of him? Not you! Look yourself in the face like a brave man, and you’ll find you’re' but a self-deceiver. The wife, the friend, the child, they’re all equally forgot, and you sunk in a mere log of sefishness.” “Mackellar,” said he, with a wonderful return to his old manner and appearance, “you may say what you will of me, but one thing I never was —I never was selfish.” “I will open your eyes in your despite,” said I. “How long have we been here? and how often have you written to your family? I think this is the first time "you were ever separate; have you written at all? Do they know if you are dead or living?” I had caught him here too openly; it braced his better nature; there was no more weeping, he thanked me very penitently, got to bed and was soon, fast asleep; and the first thing he did the next morning was to sit down and begin a letter to my lady; a very, tender letter it was too, though it was never finished. Indeed all communication with New York was transacted by myself; and it will be judged if I had a thankless task of it. What to tell my lady and in what words, and how far to be false and how far cruel, was a thing that kept me often from my slumber.

All this while, no doubt, my lord waited with growing impatience for news of his accomplices. Harris, it is to be thought, had promised a high degree of expedition; the time was already overpast when word was to be looked for; and suspense was a very easy counselor to a man of an impaired intelligence. My lord’s mind throughout this interval dwelled almost wholly in the wilderness, following that party with whose deeds be had so much concern. Pe continually conjured up their camm and progresses, the fashion of the country, the perpetration in a thousand different manners of the same horrid fact, and that consequent spectacle of the master’s bones lying scattered in the wind. These private, guilty considerations I would continually observe to peep forth in the man’s talk, like rabbits from a hill. And it is the less wonder if the scene of his meditations began to draw him bodily).

CHAPTER XXVIII. □lt is well known what pretext he took. Sir William Johnson had a diplomatic errand in these parts; and my lord and I (fromcuriosity, as was given out) went in his company. Sir William was well attended and liberally supplied. Hunters brought us venison, fish was for us daily in the streams, and brandy ran like neater. We proceeded by day and encamped by night in the military style; sentinels were set and changed; every man had his named duty; and Sir William was the spring of all. There was much in this that might at times have entertained’me; but for our misfortune, the weather was extremely harsh, the days were in the beginning open, but the nights frosty from the first. A painful keen wind blew most of the time, so

that we sat in the boat with blue fingers, and at night, as we scorched our faces at the fire, the clothes lipon our back appeared to be of paper. A dreadful solitude surrounded our steps; the land was quite dispeopled, there was no smoke of fires, aqd save for a single boat of merchants on the second day, we met no travelers. The season Was indeed late, but this— desertion of the waterways impressed Sir William himself; and I have heard him more than once express a sense of intimidation. “I have come too late, I fear; they must have dug up the hatchet,” lie said, and the future proved how justly he had reasoned. I could never depict the blackness of my soul upon this journey. I have none of those minds that are in love with the unusual,"to see the winter coming and to lie in the field so far from any house, oppressed me like a nightmare; it seemed, indeed, a kind of awful braving of God's power; and this thought, which I dare say only writes me down a coward, was greatly exaggerated by my private knowledge of the errand we were come upon. I was besides encumbered by my duties to Sir William, whom it fell upon me to entertain; for my lord was quite sunk into a state bordering on pervigilium, scanning the woods with a rapt eye, sleeping scarce at all, and speaking sometimes not twenty words in a whole day. That which he said was still coherent, but it turned almost invariably upon the party for whom he kept his crazy lookout. He would tell Sir William often, and always as if it were a new communication, that he had “a brother somewhere in the woods,” and beg that the sentinels should be directed “to inquire for him.” “I am anxious for news of my brother,” he would say. And sometimes, when we were under way, he would fancy he spied a canoe far off upon the water or a camp upon the shore, and exhibit painful agitation. It was impossible but Sir William should be struck with these peculiarities, and at last he led me and hinted his uneasiness. I %uched my head and shook it, quite rejoiced to prepare a little testimony against possible disclosures.

“But in that case,” cries Sir William, “is it wise to let him go at lar»e?” “Those that know him best,” said I, ‘ ‘are persuaded that he should be humored.” “Well, well,” replied Sir William, “it is none of my affairs. But if I had understood, you would never have been here.” Our advance into this savage country had thus uneventfully proceeded for about a week when we encamped for a night at a place where the river ran among considerable mountains clothed in wood. The fires were lighted on a level space at the edge of the water, and we supped and lay down to sleep in the customary fashion. It chanced the night turned murderously cold; the stringency of the frost seized and bit me through my coverings, so that pain kept me wakeful, and I was afoot again before the peep of day, crouching by the fires or trotting to and fro at the stream’s edge to combat the aching of my limbs. At last dawn began to break upon hoar woods and mountains, the sleepers rolled in their robes, and the boisterous river dashing among spears of ice. I stood looking about me, swaddled in my stiff coat of a bull’s fur, and the breath smoking from my scorched nostrils, when, upon a suddem, a singular, eager cry rang from the borders of the wood. The sentries answered it, the sleepers sprang to their feet; one pointed, the rest followed his direction with their eyes, and there, upon the edge of the forest and betwixt two trees, we beheld the figure of a man reaching out his hands like one in ecstacy. The next moment he ran forward, fell on his knees at the side of the camp, and burst into tears.

This was John Mountain, the trader, escaped from the utmost horrid perils; and his first word, when he got speech, was to ask if we had seen Secundra Dass. “Seen what?” cries Sir William. “No,” said I, “we have seen nothing of him. Why?” “Nothing?” says Mountain. “Then I was right, after all.” With that he struck his palm upon his brow. “But what takes him back?” he cried. “What takes the man back among dead bodies? There is some damned mystery here.” This was a word which highly aroused our curiosity, but I shall be more perspicacious if I narrate these incidents in their true order. Here follows a narrative which I have compiled out of three sources, not very consistent in all points: “First, a written statement by Mountain, in which everything criminal is cleverly smuggled out of view;

Second, two conversations with Secundra Dass; and Third, many conversations with Mountain himself, in which he was pleased to be entirely plain; for the truth is he was pleased to regard me as an accomplice. \ NARRATIVE OF THE TRADER, MOUNT- " AIN. b ; The crew that went up the river under the joint command of Captain Harris and the master numbered in all nine persons, of whom (if I except Secundra Dass) there was not one that had not merited the gallows. From Harris downward the voyagers were notorious in that colony for desperate, bloody-minded miscreants; somß~wef& reputed pirates; the most hawkers of rum; all ranters and drinkers; all fit associates, embarking together without remorse upon this murderous design. I could not hear there was a

much discipline or any set captain in the gang; but Harris and four others, Mountain himself, two Scotchmen —Pinkerton and Hastie — and a man of the namp rtf Hicl™, drunken shoemaker, put their heads together and agreed upon the course. In a material sense, they were well enough provided; and the master in particular brought with him a tent where he might enjoy some privacy and shelter. Even this small indulgence told against him in the minds of his companions. But indeed he was in a position so entirely false (and even ridiculouslthat all hia habit of command and arts of pleasing were here thrown away. In the eyes of all, except Secundra Dass, he figured as a common gull and designated victim; going unconsciously to death; yet he could not but suppose himself the contriver and the leader of the expedition; he could scarce but so conduct himself; and at the least hint of authority or condescension, his deceivers would be laughing in their sleeves. I was so used to see and to conceive him in a high, authoritative attitude, that when I had conceived his position on this journey, I was pained and could have blushed. How soon he have entertained a first surmise, we can not know: but it was long, and the party had advanced into the wilderness beyond the reach of any help ere he was fully awakened to the truth. It feil thus. -Harris and some others had drawn apart into the woods for consultation, when they were startled by a rustling in the brush. They were all accustomed to the arts of Indian warfare," and Mountain hadyuot only lived and hunted, but fought and earned some reputation with the savages. He could move in the woods without noise, and follow a trail like a hound; and upon the emergence of this alert, he was deputed by the rest to plunge into the thicket for intelligence. He was soon convinced there was a man in his close neighborhood, moving with precaution but without art among the leaves and branches; and coming shortly to a place of advantage, he was able to observe Secunda Dass crawling briskly off with many backward glances. At this he knew not whether to laugh or cry; and his accomplices, wlien he had returned and reported, were in much the same dubiety. There was now no danger of an Indian onslaught; but on the other hand, sinee Secundra Dass was at the pains to spy upon them, it was highly probable he knew English, and if he knew English it was certain the whole of their design was in the master’s knowledge. There was one singularity in the position. If Secundr Dass knew and concealed his knowl' edge of English, Ha*rris was a. pro ficient in several of the tongues f India, and as his career in that part of the world had been a great deal worse than profigate, he had not thought proper to remark upon the circumstance. Each side had thus a spyhole on the counsels of each other. The plotters, so soon as this advantage was explained, returned to camp; Harris, hearing the Hindoostanee was once more closeted with his master, crept to the side of the tent; and the rest, sitting about the fire with their, tobacco, awaited his report with impatience. When he came at last his face was very black. He had overheard enough to confirpi the worst of his suspicions. Secundra Dass was a good English scholar; he had been some days creeping and listening, the master was now fully informed of the conspiracy, and the pair proposed on the morrow to fall out of line at a carrying place and plunge at a venture in the woods; preferring the full risk of famine, savage beasts, and savage meffHo their position in the midst of traitors. What, then, was to be done? Some were for killing the master on the spot; but Harris assured them that would be a crime without profit, since the secret of the treasure must die along with him that buried it. Others were for desisting at once from the whole enterprise and making for New York; but the appetizing nature of treasure, and the thought of the long way they had already traveled, dissuaded the majority. I imagine they were dull fellows for the most part. Harris, indeed, had some acquirements, Mountain was no fool, Hastie was an educated man; but even these had manifestly failed in life, and the rest were the dregs of colonial rascality. The conclusion they reached at least, was more the offspring of greed and hope than reason. It was to. temporize, to be wary and watch the master, to be silent and supply no further ailment to his,suspicions, and to depend entirely (as well as I make out) on the chance that their victim was a greedy, hopeful, and irrational as themselves, and might after all, betray his life and treasure. Twice, in the course of the next day, Secundra and the master must have appeared to themselves to have escaped; and twice they were circumvented. The master, save that the second time he grew a little pale, displayed no sign of disappointment, apologized for the stupidity with which he had fallen aside, thanked his recapturers as for a service, and rejoined the caravan with all his usual gallantry and cheerfulness of mien and bearing. But it is certain he had smelled a rat; for from thenceforth he and SecundVa spoke only in each other’s ear, and Harris listened and shivered by the tent in vain. -The same night it was announced they were to leave “the boat and proceed by foot, a circumstance which (as it put an end to the confusion of the portages) greatly lessened the chances to escape. (to bi continued.)