The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 21
by Robert Louis Stevenson · English · Gutenberg #30650 · 546,371 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 21
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release date: December 11, 2009 [eBook #30650]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON - SWANSTON EDITION, VOL. 21 ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marius Borror and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
SWANSTON EDITION
VOLUME XXI
_Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale._
_This is No._ ...........
[Illustration: R.L.S. ON THE FORWARD DECK OF THE SCHOONER "EQUATOR"]
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
VOLUME TWENTY-ONE
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXII
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
THE STORY OF A LIE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL 3
II. A LETTER TO THE PAPERS 8
III. IN THE ADMIRAL'S NAME 14
IV. ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION 21
V. THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DÉBUT AT HOME 24
VI. THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO
STRENGTH 31
VII. THE ELOPEMENT 41
VIII. BATTLE ROYAL 50
IX. IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS
"DEUS EX MACHINÂ" 60
THE MERRY MEN
I. EILEAN AROS 69
II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS 76
III. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY 89
IV. THE GALE 100
V. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA 112
OLALLA 127
HEATHERCAT
PART I.--THE KILLING-TIME
I. TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT 177
II. FRANCIE 182
III. THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE 195
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
I. NANCE AT THE "GREEN DRAGON" 203
II. IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED 210
III. JONATHAN HOLDAWAY 218
IV. MINGLING THREADS 223
V. LIFE IN THE CASTLE 229
VI. THE BAD HALF-CROWN 233
VII. THE BLEACHING-GREEN 238
VIII. THE MAIL GUARD 244
THE YOUNG CHEVALIER
PROLOGUE--THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE 253
I. THE PRINCE 263
FABLES
I. THE PERSONS OF THE TALE 269
II. THE SINKING SHIP 272
III. THE TWO MATCHES 274
IV. THE SICK MAN AND THE FIREMAN 275
V. THE DEVIL AND THE INNKEEPER 276
VI. THE PENITENT 277
VII. THE YELLOW PAINT 277
VIII. THE HOUSE OF ELD 280
IX. THE FOUR REFORMERS 286
X. THE MAN AND HIS FRIEND 287
XI. THE READER 287
XII. THE CITIZEN AND THE TRAVELLER 288
XIII. THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER 289
XIV. THE CART-HORSES AND THE SADDLE-HORSE 290
XV. THE TADPOLE AND THE FROG 291
XVI. SOMETHING IN IT 291
XVII. FAITH, HALF-FAITH, AND NO FAITH AT ALL 295
XVIII. THE TOUCHSTONE 297
XIX. THE POOR THING 304
XX. THE SONG OF THE MORROW 310
THE STORY OF A LIE
THE STORY OF A LIE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL
When Dick Naseby was in Paris he made some odd acquaintances, for he was
one of those who have ears to hear, and can use their eyes no less than
their intelligence. He made as many thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his
philosophy concerned flesh and blood, and was experimental as to its
method. He was a type-hunter among mankind. He despised small game and
insignificant personalities, whether in the shape of dukes or bagmen,
letting them go by like sea-weed; but show him a refined or powerful
face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice, fish for him with
a living look in some one's eye, a passionate gesture, a meaning or
ambiguous smile, and his mind was instantaneously awakened. "There was a
man, there was a woman," he seemed to say, and he stood up to the task
of comprehension with the delight of an artist in his art.
And indeed, rightly considered, this interest of his was an artistic
interest. There is no science in the personal study of human nature. All
comprehension is creation; the woman I love is somewhat of my handiwork;
and the great lover, like the great painter, is he that can so embellish
his subject as to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art
he has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that the woman
can go on being a true woman, and give her character free play, and show
littleness, or cherish spite, or be greedy of common pleasures, and he
continue to worship without a thought of incongruity. To love a
character is only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or nature in the
other, we apprehend the loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. When
we are merely studying an eccentricity, the method of our study is but a
series of allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to sympathise;
for comprehension comes only when we have stated another's faults and
virtues in terms of our own. Hence the proverbial toleration of artists
for their own evil creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick
Naseby, a high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the various human
creeping things whom he had met and studied.
One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking, two-legged
animal of the international genus, and by profession of general and more
than equivocal utility. Years before he had been a painter of some
standing in a colony, and portraits signed "Van Tromp" had celebrated
the greatness of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had
been married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony trap.
What were the steps of his declension? No one exactly knew. Here he was
at least, and had been, any time these past ten years, a sort of dismal
parasite upon the foreigner in Paris.
It would be hazardous to specify his exact industry. Coarsely followed,
it would have merited a name grown somewhat unfamiliar to our ears.
Followed as he followed it, with a skilful reticence, in a kind of
social chiaroscuro, it was still possible for the polite to call him a
professional painter. His lair was in the Grand Hotel and the gaudiest
cafés. There he might be seen jotting off a sketch with an air of some
inspiration; and he was always affable, and one of the easiest of men to
fall in talk withal. A conversation usually ripened into a peculiar sort
of intimacy, and it was extraordinary how many little services Van Tromp
contrived to render in the course of six-and-thirty hours. He occupied
a position between a friend and a courier, which made him worse than
embarrassing to repay. But those whom he obliged could always buy one of
his villainous little pictures, or, where the favours had been prolonged
and more than usually delicate, might order and pay for a large canvas,
with perfect certainty that they would hear no more of the transaction.
Among resident artists he enjoyed the celebrity of a non-professional
sort. He had spent more money--no less than three individual fortunes,
it was whispered--than any of his associates could ever hope to gain.
Apart from his colonial career, he had been to Greece in a brigantine
with four brass carronades; he had travelled Europe in a chaise and
four, drawing bridle at the palace-doors of German princes; queens of
song and dance had followed him like sheep, and paid his tailor's bills.
And to behold him now, seeking small loans with plaintive condescension,
sponging for breakfast on an art-student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan
who had neglected to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance
for young imaginations. His name and his bright past, seen through the
prism of whispered gossip, had gained him the nickname of "The Admiral."
Dick found him one day at the receipt of custom, rapidly painting a pair
of hens and a cock in a little water-colour sketching-box, and now and
then glancing at the ceiling like a man who should seek inspiration from
the muse. Dick thought it remarkable that a painter should choose to
work over an absinthe in a public café, and looked the man over. The
aged rakishness of his appearance was set off by a youthful costume; he
had disreputable grey hair and a disreputable sore, red nose; but the
coat and the gesture, the outworks of the man, were still designed for
show. Dick came up to his table and inquired if he might look at what
the gentleman was doing. No one was so delighted as the Admiral.
"A bit of a thing," said he. "I just dash them off like that. I--I dash
them off," he added, with a gesture.
"Quite so," said Dick, who was appalled by the feebleness of the
production.
"Understand me," continued Van Tromp; "I am a man of the world. And
yet--once an artist always an artist. All of a sudden a thought takes me
in the street; I become its prey; it's like a pretty woman; no use to
struggle; I must--dash it off."
"I see," said Dick.
"Yes," pursued the painter; "it all comes easily, easily to me; it is
not my business; it's a pleasure. Life is my business--life--this great
city, Paris--Paris after dark--its lights, its gardens, its odd corners.
Aha!" he cried, "to be young again! The heart is young, but the heels
are leaden. A poor, mean business, to grow old! Nothing remains but the
_coup d'oeil_, the contemplative man's enjoyment, Mr. ----," and he
paused for the name.
"Naseby," returned Dick.
The other treated him at once to an exciting beverage, and expatiated on
the pleasure of meeting a compatriot in a foreign land; to hear him, you
would have thought they had encountered in Central Africa. Dick had
never found any one take a fancy to him so readily, nor show it in an
easier or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled with him as an
elderly fellow about town might be tickled by a pleasant and witty lad;
he indicated that he was no precisian, but in his wildest times had
never been such a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, but in vain.
This manner of carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van
Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with
youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his
victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this
old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a character
for vice?
As last, as it grew towards dinner-time, "Do you know Paris?" asked Van
Tromp.
"Not so well as you, I am convinced," said Dick.
"And so am I," returned Van Tromp gaily. "Paris! My young friend--you
will allow me?--when you know Paris as I do, you will have seen Strange
Things. I say no more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are men of the
world, you and I, and in Paris, in the heart of civilised existence.
This is an opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let us dine. Let me show you where
to dine."
Dick consented. On the way to dinner the Admiral showed him where to buy
gloves, and made him buy them; where to buy cigars, and made him buy a
vast store, some of which he obligingly accepted. At the restaurant he
showed him what to order, with surprising consequences in the bill. What
he made that night by his percentages it would be hard to estimate. And
all the while Dick smilingly consented, understanding well that he was
being done, but taking his losses in the pursuit of character as a
hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for the Strange Things, the reader will
be relieved to hear that they were no stranger than might have been
expected, and he may find things quite as strange without the expense of
a Van Tromp for guide. Yet he was a guide of no mean order, who made up
for the poverty of what he had to show by a copious, imaginative
commentary.
"And such," said he, with an hiccup, "such is Paris."
"Pooh!" said Dick, who was tired of the performance.
The Admiral hung an ear, and looked up sidelong with a glimmer of
suspicion.
"Good-night," said Dick; "I'm tired."
"So English!" cried Van Tromp, clutching him by the hand. "So English!
So _blasé!_ Such a charming companion! Let me see you home."
"Look here," returned Dick, "I have said good-night, and now I'm going.
You're an amusing old boy; I like you, in a sense; but here's an end of
it for to-night. Not another cigar, not another grog, not another
percentage out of me."
"I beg your pardon!" cried the Admiral with dignity.
"Tut, man!" said Dick; "you're not offended; you're a man of the world,
I thought. I've been studying you, and it's over. Have I not paid for
the lesson? _Au revoir._"
Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands up to the elbows, hoped cordially
they would meet again and that often, but looked after Dick as he
departed with a tremor of indignation. After that they two not
unfrequently fell in each other's way, and Dick would often treat the
old boy to breakfast on a moderate scale and in a restaurant of his own
selection. Often, too, he would lend Van Tromp the matter of a pound, in
view of that gentleman's contemplated departure for Australia; there
would be a scene of farewell almost touching in character, and a week or
a month later they would meet on the same boulevard without surprise or
embarrassment. And in the meantime Dick learned more about his
acquaintance on all sides: heard of his yacht, his chaise and four, his
brief season of celebrity amid a more confiding population, his
daughter, of whom he loved to whimper in his cups, his sponging,
parasitical, nameless way of life; and with each new detail something
that was not merely interest nor yet altogether affection grew up in his
mind towards this disreputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left Paris
Van Tromp was one of those whom he entertained to a farewell supper; and
the old gentleman made the speech of the evening, and then fell below
the table, weeping, smiling, paralysed.
CHAPTER II
A LETTER TO THE PAPERS
Old Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, untutored nature of the upper middle
class. The universe seemed plain to him. "The thing's right," he would
say, or "the thing's wrong"; and there was an end of it. There was a
contained, prophetic energy in his utterances, even on the slightest
affairs; he _saw_ the damned thing; if you did not, it must be from
perversity of will, and this sent the blood to his head. Apart from
this, which made him an exacting companion, he was one of the most
upright, hot-tempered old gentlemen in England. Florid, with white hair,
the face of an old Jupiter, and the figure of an old fox-hunter, he
enlivened the vale of Thyme from end to end on his big, cantering
chestnut.
He had a hearty respect for Dick as a lad of parts. Dick had a respect
for his father as the best of men, tempered by the politic revolt of a
youth who has to see to his own independence. Whenever the pair argued,
they came to an open rupture; and arguments were frequent, for they were
both positive, and both loved the work of the intelligence. It was a
treat to hear Mr. Naseby defending the Church of England in a volley of
oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with an enthusiasm not entirely
innocent of port wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none the less so
because, as his father was a skilful disputant, he found himself not
seldom in the wrong. On these occasions, he would redouble in energy,
and declare that black was white, and blue yellow, with much conviction
and heat of manner; but in the morning such a licence of debate weighed
upon him like a crime, and he would seek out his father, where he walked
before breakfast on a terrace overlooking all the vale of Thyme.
"I have to apologise, sir, for last night----" he would begin.
"Of course you have," the old gentleman would cut in cheerfully. "You
spoke like a fool. Say no more about it."
"You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular point. I confess
there is much force in your argument from the doctrine of
possibilities."
"Of course there is," returned his father. "Come down and look at the
stables. Only," he would add, "bear this in mind, and do remember that a
man of my age and experience knows more about what he is saying than a
raw boy."
He would utter the word "boy" even more offensively than the average of
fathers, and the light way in which he accepted these apologies cut Dick
to the heart. The latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered that
he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him a high station in
his own esteem, and thus contributed indirectly to his better behaviour;
for he was scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on
nothing more than on a just submission.
So things went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming
engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to
Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about
every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the
energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half
unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what
was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his
prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched it on the public with the
sanction of his name.
"The Liberal candidate," he concluded, "is thus a public turncoat. Is
that the sort of man we want? He has been given the lie, and has
swallowed the insult. Is that the sort of man we want? I answer, No!
With all the force of my conviction, I answer, _No_!"
And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's pride, and
looked to be famous by the morrow.
Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up first on that
inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He
found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading
article. "No one that we are aware of," ran the article, "had consulted
Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to by the whole
body of electors, his letter would be none the less ungenerous and
unjust to Mr. Dalton. We do not choose to give the lie to Mr. Naseby,
for we are too well aware of the consequences; but we shall venture
instead to print the facts of both cases referred to by this red-hot
partisan in another portion of our issue. Mr. Naseby is of course a
large proprietor in our neighbourhood; but fidelity to facts, decent
feeling, and English grammar, are all of them qualities more important
than the possession of land. Mr. N---- is doubtless a great man; in his
large gardens and that half-mile of greenhouses, where he has probably
ripened his intellect and temper, he may say what he will to his hired
vassals, but (as the Scots say)--
here
He maunna think to domineer.
Liberalism," continued the anonymous journalist, "is of too free and
sound a growth," etc.
Richard Naseby read the whole thing from beginning to end; and a
crushing shame fell upon his spirit. His father had played the fool; he
had gone out noisily to war, and come back with confusion. The moment
that his trumpets sounded, he had been disgracefully unhorsed. There was
no question as to the facts; they were one and all against the Squire.
Richard would have given his ears to have suppressed the issue; but as
that could not be done, he had his horse saddled, and, furnishing
himself with a convenient staff, rode off at once to Thymebury.
The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad apartment. The absence of
furniture, the extreme meanness of the meal, and the haggard,
bright-eyed, consumptive look of the culprit, unmanned our hero; but he
clung to his stick, and was stout and warlike.
"You wrote the article in this morning's paper?" he demanded.
"You are young Mr. Naseby? I _published_ it," replied the editor,
rising.
"My father is an old man," said Richard; and then with an outburst, "And
a damned sight finer fellow than either you or Dalton!" He stopped and
swallowed; he was determined that all should go with regularity. "I have
but one question to put to you, sir," he resumed. "Granted that my
father was misinformed, would it not have been more decent to withhold
the letter and communicate with him in private?"
"Believe me," returned the editor, "that alternative was not open to me.
Mr. Naseby told me in a note that he had sent his letter to three other
journals, and in fact threatened me with what he called exposure if I
kept it back from mine. I am really concerned at what has happened; I
sympathise and approve of your emotion, young gentleman; but the attack
on Mr. Dalton was gross, very gross, and I had no choice but to offer
him my columns to reply. Party has its duties, sir," added the scribe,
kindling, as one who should propose a sentiment; "and the attack was
gross."
Richard stood for half a minute digesting the answer; and then the god
of fair play came uppermost in his heart, and, murmuring "Good morning,"
he made his escape into the street.
His horse was not hurried on the way home, and he was late for
breakfast. The Squire was standing with his back to the fire in a state
bordering on apoplexy, his fingers violently knitted under his
coat-tails. As Richard came in, he opened and shut his mouth like a
cod-fish, and his eyes protruded.
"Have you seen that, sir?" he cried, nodding towards the paper.
"Yes, sir," said Richard.
"Oh, you've read it, have you?"
"Yes; I have read it," replied Richard, looking at his foot.
"Well," demanded the old gentleman, "and what have you to say to it,
sir?"
"You seem to have been misinformed," said Dick.
"Well? What then? Is your mind so sterile, sir? Have you not a word of
comment? no proposal?"
"I fear, sir, you must apologise to Mr. Dalton. It would be more
handsome, indeed it would be only just, and a free acknowledgment would
go far--" Richard paused, no language appearing delicate enough to suit
the case.
"That is a suggestion which should have come from me, sir," roared the
father. "It is out of place upon your lips. It is not the thought of a
loyal son. Why, sir, if my father had been plunged in such deplorable
circumstances, I should have thrashed the editor of that vile sheet
within an inch of his life. I should have thrashed the man, sir. It
would have been the action of an ass; but it would have shown that I had
the blood and the natural affections of a man. Son? You are no son, no
son of mine, sir!"
"Sir!" said Dick.
"I'll tell you what you are, sir," pursued the Squire. "You're a
Benthamite. I disown you. Your mother would have died for shame;
there was no modern cant about your mother; she thought--she said to me,
sir--I'm glad she's in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed,
sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural affections? Are you
clockwork, hey? Away! This is no place for you. Away!" (Waving his hands
in the air.) "Go away! Leave me!"
At this moment Dick beat a retreat in a disarray of nerves, a whistling
and clamour of his own arteries, and in short in such a final bodily
disorder as made him alike incapable of speech or hearing. And in the
midst of all this turmoil, a sense of unpardonable injustice remained
graven in his memory.
CHAPTER III
IN THE ADMIRAL'S NAME
There was no return to the subject. Dick and his father were henceforth
on terms of coldness. The upright old gentleman grew more upright when
he met his son, buckrammed with immortal anger; he asked after Dick's
health, and discussed the weather and the crops with an appalling
courtesy; his pronunciation was _point-de-vice_, his voice was distant,
distinct, and sometimes almost trembling with suppressed indignation.
As for Dick, it seemed to him as if his life had come abruptly to an
end. He came out of his theories and clevernesses; his premature
man-of-the-worldness, on which he had prided himself on his travels,
"shrank like a thing ashamed" before this real sorrow. Pride, wounded
honour, pity and respect tussled together daily in his heart; and now he
was within an ace of throwing himself upon his father's mercy, and now
of slipping forth at night and coming back no more to Naseby House. He
suffered from the sight of his father, nay, even from the neighbourhood
of this familiar valley, where every corner had its legend, and he was
besieged with memories of childhood. If he fled into a new land, and
among none but strangers, he might escape his destiny, who knew? and
begin again light-heartedly. From that chief peak of the hills, that now
and then, like an uplifted finger, shone in an arrow of sunlight through
the broken clouds, the shepherd in clear weather might perceive the
shining of the sea. There, he thought, was hope. But his heart failed
him when he saw the Squire; and he remained. His fate was not that of
the voyager by sea and land; he was to travel in the spirit, and begin
his journey sooner than he supposed.
For it chanced one day that his walk led him into a portion of the
uplands which was almost unknown to him. Scrambling through some rough
woods, he came out upon a moorland reaching towards the hills. A few
lofty Scots firs grew hard by upon a knoll; a clear fountain near the
foot of the knoll sent up a miniature streamlet which meandered in the
heather. A shower had just skimmed by, but now the sun shone brightly,
and the air smelt of the pines and the grass. On a stone under the trees
sat a young lady sketching. We have learned to think of women in a sort
of symbolic transfiguration, based on clothes; and one of the readiest
ways in which we conceive our mistress is as a composite thing,
principally petticoats. But humanity has triumphed over clothes; the
look, the touch of a dress has become alive; and the woman who stitched
herself into these material integuments has now permeated right through
and gone out to the tip of her skirt. It was only a black dress that
caught Dick Naseby's eye; but it took possession of his mind, and all
other thoughts departed. He drew near, and the girl turned round. Her
face startled him; it was a face he wanted; and he took it in at once
like breathing air.
"I beg your pardon," he said, taking off his hat, "you are sketching."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "for my own amusement. I despise the thing."
"Ten to one you do yourself injustice," returned Dick. "Besides, it's a
freemasonry. I sketch myself, and you know what that implies."
"No. What?" she asked.
"Two things," he answered. "First, that I am no very difficult critic;
and second, that I have a right to see your picture."
She covered the block with both her hands. "Oh, no," she said; "I am
ashamed."
"Indeed, I might give you a hint," said Dick. "Although no artist
myself, I have known many; in Paris I had many for friends, and used to
prowl among studios."
"In Paris?" she cried, with a leap of light into her eyes. "Did you ever
meet Mr. Van Tromp?"
"I? Yes. Why, you're not the Admiral's daughter, are you?"
"The Admiral? Do they call him that?" she cried. "Oh, how nice, how nice
of them! It is the younger men who call him so, is it not?"
"Yes," said Dick, somewhat heavily.
"You can understand now," she said, with an unspeakable accent of
contented and noble-minded pride, "why it is I do not choose to show my
sketch. Van Tromp's daughter! The Admiral's daughter! I delight in that
name. The Admiral! And so you know my father?"
"Well," said Dick, "I met him often; we were even intimate. He may have
mentioned my name--Naseby."
"He writes so little. He is so busy, so devoted to his art! I have had a
half wish," she added, laughing, "that my father was a plainer man whom
I could help--to whom I could be a credit; but only sometimes, you know,
and with only half my heart. For a great painter! You have seen his
works?"
"I have seen some of them," returned Dick; "they--they are very nice."
She laughed aloud. "Nice?" she repeated. "I see you don't care much for
art."
"Not much," he admitted; "but I know that many people are glad to buy
Mr. Van Tromp's pictures."
"Call him the Admiral!" she cried. "It sounds kindly and familiar; and I
like to think that he is appreciated and looked up to by young painters.
He has not always been appreciated; he had a cruel life for many years;
and when I think"--there were tears in her eyes--"when I think of that,
I feel inclined to be a fool," she broke off. "And now I shall go home.
You have filled me full of happiness; for think, Mr. Naseby, I have not
seen my father since I was six years old; and yet he is in my thoughts
all day! You must come and call on me; my aunt will be delighted, I am
sure; and then you will tell me all--all about my father, will you not?"
Dick helped her to get her sketching traps together; and when all was
ready, she gave Dick her hand and a frank return of pressure.
"You are my father's friend," she said; "we shall be great friends too.
You must come and see me soon."
Then she was gone down the hillside at a run; and Dick stood by himself
in a state of some bewilderment and even distress. There were elements
of laughter in the business; but the black dress, and the face that
belonged to it, and the hand that he had held in his, inclined him to a
serious view. What was he, under the circumstances, called upon to do?
Perhaps to avoid the girl? Well, he would think about that. Perhaps to
break the truth to her? Why, ten to one, such was her infatuation, he
would fail. Perhaps to keep up the illusion, to colour the raw facts; to
help her to false ideas, while yet not plainly stating falsehoods? Well,
he would see about that; he would also see about avoiding the girl. He
saw about this last so well, that the next afternoon beheld him on his
way to visit her.
In the meantime the girl had gone straight home, light as a bird,
tremulous with joy, to the little cottage where she lived alone with a
maiden aunt; and to that lady, a grim, sixty years old Scotswoman, with
a nodding head, communicated news of her encounter and invitation.
"A friend of his?" cried the aunt. "What like is he? What did ye say was
his name?"
She was dead silent, and stared at the old woman darkling. Then very
slowly, "I said he was my father's friend; I have invited him to my
house, and come he shall," she said; and with that she walked off to her
room, where she sat staring at the wall all the evening. Miss
M'Glashan, for that was the aunt's name, read a large bible in the
kitchen with some of the joys of martyrdom.
It was perhaps half-past three when Dick presented himself, rather
scrupulously dressed, before the cottage door; he knocked, and a voice
bade him enter. The kitchen, which opened directly off the garden, was
somewhat darkened by foliage; but he could see her as she approached
from the far end to meet him. This second sight of her surprised him.
Her strong black brows spoke of temper easily aroused and hard to quiet;
her mouth was small, nervous, and weak; there was something dangerous
and sulky underlying, in her nature, much that was honest,
compassionate, and even noble.
"My father's name," she said, "has made you very welcome."
And she gave him her hand with a sort of curtsey. It was a pretty
greeting, although somewhat mannered; and Dick felt himself among the
gods. She led him through the kitchen to a parlour, and presented him to
Miss M'Glashan.
"Esther," said the aunt, "see and make Mr. Naseby his tea."
As soon as the girl was gone upon this hospitable intent, the old woman
crossed the room and came quite near to Dick as if in menace.
"Ye know that man?" she asked, in an imperious whisper.
"Mr. Van Tromp?" said Dick. "Yes; I know him."
"Well, and what brings ye here?" she said. "I couldn't save the
mother--her that's dead--but the bairn!" She had a note in her voice
that filled poor Dick with consternation. "Man," she went on, "what is
it now? Is it money?"
"My dear lady," said Dick, "I think you misinterpret my position. I am
young Mr. Naseby of Naseby House. My acquaintance with Mr. Van Tromp is
really very slender; I am only afraid that Miss Van Tromp has
exaggerated our intimacy in her own imagination. I know positively
nothing of his private affairs, and do not care to know. I met him
casually in Paris--that is all."
Miss M'Glashan drew a long breath. "In Paris?" she said. "Well, and what
do you think of him?--what do ye think of him?" she repeated, with a
different scansion, as Richard, who had not much taste for such a
question, kept her waiting for an answer.
"I found him a very agreeable companion," he said.
"Ay," said she, "did ye! And how does he win his bread?"
"I fancy," he gasped, "that Mr. Van Tromp has many generous friends."
"I'll warrant!" she sneered; and before Dick could find more to say, she
was gone from the room.
Esther returned with the tea-things, and sat down.
"Now," she said cosily, "tell me all about my father."
"He"--stammered Dick, "he is a very agreeable companion."
"I shall begin to think it is more than you are, Mr. Naseby," she said,
with a laugh. "I am his daughter, you forget. Begin at the beginning,
and tell me all you have seen of him, all he said and all you answered.
You must have met somewhere; begin with that."
So with that he began: how he had found the Admiral painting in a café;
how his art so possessed him that he could not wait till he got home
to--well, to dash off his idea; how (this in reply to a question) his
idea consisted of a cock crowing and two hens eating corn; how he was
fond of cocks and hens; how this did not lead him to neglect more
ambitious forms of art; how he had a picture in his studio of a Greek
subject which was said to be remarkable from several points of view; how
no one had seen it nor knew the precise site of the studio in which it
was being vigorously though secretly confected; how (in answer to a
suggestion) this shyness was common to the Admiral, Michelangelo, and
others; how they (Dick and Van Tromp) had struck up an acquaintance at
once, and dined together that same night; how he (the Admiral) had once
given money to a beggar; how he spoke with effusion of his little
daughter; how he had once borrowed money to send her a doll--a trait
worthy of Newton, she being then in her nineteenth year at least; how,
if the doll never arrived (which it appeared it never did), the trait
was only more characteristic of the highest order of creative intellect;
how he was--no, not beautiful--striking, yes, Dick would go so far,
decidedly striking in appearance; how his boots were made to lace and
his coat was black, not cut-away, a frock; and so on, and so on by the
yard. It was astonishing how few lies were necessary. After all, people
exaggerated the difficulty of life. A little steering, just a touch of
the rudder now and then, and with a willing listener there is no limit
to the domain of equivocal speech. Sometimes Miss M'Glashan made a
freezing sojourn in the parlour; and then the task seemed unaccountably
more difficult; but to Esther, who was all eyes and ears, her face
alight with interest, his stream of language flowed without break or
stumble, and his mind was ever fertile in ingenious evasions and--
What an afternoon it was for Esther!
"Ah!" she said at last, "it's good to hear all this! My aunt, you should
know, is narrow and too religious; she cannot understand an artist's
life. It does not frighten me," she added grandly; "I am an artist's
daughter."
With that speech, Dick consoled himself for his imposture; she was not
deceived so grossly after all; and then if a fraud, was not the fraud
piety itself?--and what could be more obligatory than to keep alive in
the heart of a daughter that filial trust and honour which, even
although misplaced, became her like a jewel of the mind? There might be
another thought, a shade of cowardice, a selfish desire to please; poor
Dick was merely human; and what would you have had him do?
CHAPTER IV
ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION
A month later Dick and Esther met at the stile beside the cross roads;
had there been any one to see them but the birds and summer insects, it
would have been remarked that they met after a different fashion from
the day before. Dick took her in his arms, and their lips were set
together for a long while. Then he held her at arm's length, and they
looked straight into each other's eyes.
"Esther!" he said,--you should have heard his voice!
"Dick!" said she.
"My darling!"
It was some time before they started for their walk; he kept an arm
about her, and their sides were close together as they walked; the sun,
the birds, the west wind running among the trees, a pressure, a look,
the grasp tightening round a single finger, these things stood them in
lieu of thought and filled their hearts with joy. The path they were
following led them through a wood of pine trees carpeted with heather
and blueberry, and upon this pleasant carpet, Dick, not without some
seriousness, made her sit down.
"Esther!" he began, "there is something you ought to know. You know my
father is a rich man, and you would think, now that we love each other,
we might marry when we pleased. But I fear, darling, we may have long to
wait, and shall want all our courage."
"I have courage for anything," she said, "I have all I want; with you
and my father, I am so well off, and waiting is made so happy, that I
could wait a lifetime and not weary."
He had a sharp pang at the mention of the Admiral. "Hear me out," he
continued. "I ought to have told you this before; but it is a thought I
shrink from; if it were possible, I should not tell you even now. My
poor father and I are scarce on speaking terms."
"Your father," she repeated, turning pale.
"It must sound strange to you; but yet I cannot think I am to blame," he
said. "I will tell you how it happened."
"O Dick!" she said, when she had heard him to an end, "how brave you
are, and how proud! Yet I would not be proud with a father. I would tell
him all."
"What!" cried Dick, "go in months after, and brag that I meant to thrash
the man, and then didn't? And why? Because my father had made a bigger
ass of himself than I supposed. My dear, that's nonsense."
She winced at his words and drew away. "But then that is all he asks,"
she pleaded. "If he only knew that you had felt that impulse, it would
make him so proud and happy. He would see you were his own son after
all, and had the same thoughts and the same chivalry of spirit. And then
you did yourself injustice when you spoke just now. It was because the
editor was weak and poor and excused himself, that you repented your
first determination. Had he been a big red man, with whiskers, you would
have beaten him--you know you would--if Mr. Naseby had been ten times
more committed. Do you think, if you can tell it to me, and I understand
at once, that it would be more difficult to tell it to your own father,
or that he would not be more ready to sympathise with you than I am? And
I love you, Dick; but then he is your father."
"My dear," said Dick desperately, "you do not understand; you do not
know what it is to be treated with daily want of comprehension and daily
small injustices, through childhood and boyhood and manhood, until you
despair of a hearing, until the thing rides you like a nightmare, until
you almost hate the sight of the man you love, and who's your father
after all. In short, Esther, you don't know what it is to have a
father, and that's what blinds you."
"I see," she said musingly, "you mean that I am fortunate in my father.
But I am not so fortunate, after all; you forget, I do not know him; it
is you who know him; he is already more your father than mine." And here
she took his hand. Dick's heart had grown as cold as ice. "But I am
sorry for you, too," she continued, "it must be very sad and lonely."
"You misunderstand me," said Dick chokingly. "My father is the best man
I know in all this world; he is worth a hundred of me, only he doesn't
understand me, and he can't be made to."
There was a silence for a while. "Dick," she began again, "I am going to
ask a favour, it's the first since you said you loved me. May I see your
father--see him pass, I mean, where he will not observe me?"
"Why?" asked Dick.
"It is a fancy; you forget, I am romantic about fathers."
The hint was enough for Dick; he consented with haste, and full of
hang-dog penitence and disgust, took her down by a back way and planted
her in the shrubbery, whence she might see the Squire ride by to dinner.
There they both sat silent, but holding hands, for nearly half an hour.
At last the trotting of a horse sounded in the distance, the park gates
opened with a clang, and then Mr. Naseby appeared, with stooping
shoulders and a heavy, bilious countenance, languidly rising to the
trot. Esther recognised him at once; she had often seen him before,
though with her huge indifference for all that lay outside the circle of
her love, she had never so much as wondered who he was; but now she
recognised him, and found him ten years older, leaden and springless,
and stamped by an abiding sorrow.
"O Dick, Dick!" she said, and the tears began to shine upon her face as
she hid it in his bosom; his own fell thickly too. They had a sad walk
home, and that night, full of love and good counsel, Dick exerted every
art to please his father, to convince him of his respect and affection,
to heal up this breach of kindness, and reunite two hearts. But alas!
the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day glooming over
Dick's estrangement--for so he put it to himself, and now with growls,
cold words, and the cold shoulder, he beat off all advances, and
entrenched himself in a just resentment.
CHAPTER V
THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DÉBUT AT HOME
That took place upon a Thursday. On the Thursday following, as Dick was
walking by appointment, earlier than usual, in the direction of the
cottage, he was appalled to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury,
containing the human form of Miss M'Glashan. The lady did not deign to
remark him in her passage; her face was suffused with tears, and
expressed much concern for the packages by which she was surrounded. He
stood still, and asked himself what this circumstance might portend. It
was so beautiful a day that he was loth to forecast evil, yet something
must perforce have happened at the cottage, and that of a decisive
nature; for here was Miss M'Glashan on her travels, with a small
patrimony in brown paper parcels, and the old lady's bearing implied hot
battle and unqualified defeat. Was the house to be closed against him?
Was Esther left alone, or had some new protector made his appearance
from among the millions of Europe? It is the character of love to loathe
the near relatives of the loved one; chapters in the history of the
human race have justified this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, in
particular, has frequently met with censure from the independent
novelist. Miss M'Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours of regret;
whoever succeeded her, Dick felt the change would be for the worse. He
hurried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew upon him with every
step; as he entered the garden a voice fell upon his ear, and he was
once more arrested, not this time by doubt, but by an indubitable
certainty of ill.
The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral was here.
Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the moment; but Esther
kept a bright look-out when her lover was expected. In a twinkling she
was by his side, brimful of news and pleasure, too glad to notice his
embarrassment, and in one of those golden transports of exultation which
transcend not only words but caresses. She took him by the end of the
fingers (reaching forward to take them, for her great preoccupation was
to save time), she drew him towards her, pushed him past her in the
door, and planted him face to face with Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of
French country velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle on his nose.
Then, as though this was the end of what she could endure in the way of
joy, Esther turned and ran out of the room.
The two men remained looking at each other with some confusion on both
sides. Van Tromp was naturally the first to recover; he put out his hand
with a fine gesture.
"And you know my little lass, my Esther?" he said. "This is pleasant,
this is what I have conceived of home. A strange word for the old rover;
but we all have a taste for home and the homelike, disguise it how we
may. It has brought me here, Mr. Naseby," he concluded, with an
intonation that would have made his fortune on the stage, so just, so
sad, so dignified, so like a man of the world and a philosopher, "and
you see a man who is content."
"I see," said Dick.
"Sit down," continued the parasite, setting the example. "Fortune has
gone against me. (I am just sirrupping a little brandy--after my
journey.) I was going down, Mr. Naseby; between you and me, I was
_décavé_; I borrowed fifty francs, smuggled my valise past the
concierge--a work of considerable tact--and here I am!"
"Yes," said Dick, "and here you are." He was quite idiotic.
Esther, at this moment, re-entered the room.
"Are you glad to see him?" she whispered in his ear, the pleasure in her
voice almost bursting through the whisper into song.
"Oh yes," said Dick; "very."
"I knew you would be," she replied; "I told him how you loved him."
"Help yourself," said the Admiral, "help yourself; and let us drink to a
new existence."
"To a new existence," repeated Dick; and he raised the tumbler to his
lips, but set it down untasted. He had had enough of novelties for one
day.
Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father's feet, holding her
knees in her arms, and looking with pride from one to the other of her
two visitors. Her eyes were so bright that you were never sure if there
were tears in them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her body;
sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat, sometimes threw back her
head, with ecstasy; in a word, she was in that state when it is said of
people that they cannot contain themselves for happiness. It would be
hard to exaggerate the agony of Richard.
And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on interminably.
"I never forget a friend," said he, "nor yet an enemy: of the latter, I
never had but two--myself and the public; and I fancy I have had my
vengeance pretty freely out of both." He chuckled. "But those days are
done. Van Tromp is no more. He was a man who had successes; I believe
you knew I had successes--to which we shall refer no further," pulling
down his neckcloth with a smile. "That man exists no more: by an
exercise of will I have destroyed him. There is something like it in the
poets. First, a brilliant and conspicuous career--the observed, I may
say, of all observers including the bum-baily: and then, presto! a
quiet, sly, old, rustic _bonhomme_, cultivating roses. In Paris, Mr.
Naseby----"
"Call him Richard, father," said Esther.
"Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we are old friends, and now near
neighbours; and, _à propos_, how are we off for neighbours, Richard? The
cottage stands, I think, upon your father's land, a family which I
respect--and the wood, I understand, is Lord Trevanion's. Not that I
care; I am an old Bohemian. I have cut society with a cut direct; I cut
it when I was prosperous, and now I reap my reward, and can cut it with
dignity in my declension. These are our little _amours propres_, my
daughter: your father must respect himself. Thank you, yes; just a
leetle, leetle tiny--thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But, as I was saying,
Richard, or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust; her
aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of
me; my nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder--poles! But, now
that I am here, now that I have given up the fight, and live henceforth
for one only of my works--I have the modesty to say it is my best--my
daughter--well, we shall put all that to rights. The neighbours,
Richard?"
Dick was understood to say that there were many good families in the
Vale of Thyme.
"You shall introduce us," said the Admiral.
Dick's shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to go; which Esther
explained to herself by a fear of intrusion, and so set down to the
merit side of Dick's account, while she proceeded to detain him.
"Before our walk?" she cried. "Never! I must have my walk."
"Let us all go," said the Admiral, rising.
"You do not know that you are wanted," she cried, leaning on his
shoulder with a caress. "I might wish to speak to my old friend about
my new father. But you shall come to-day, you shall do all you want; I
have set my heart on spoiling you."
"I will take just _one_ drop more," said the Admiral, stooping to help
himself to brandy. "It is surprising how this journey has fatigued me.
But I am growing old, I am growing old, I am growing old, and--I regret
to add--bald."
He cocked a white wide-awake coquettishly upon his head--the habit of
the lady-killer clung to him; and Esther had already thrown on her hat,
and was ready, while he was still studying the result in a mirror: the
carbuncle had somewhat painfully arrested his attention.
"We are papa now; we must be respectable," he said to Dick, in
explanation of his dandyism: and then he went to a bundle and chose
himself a staff. Where were the elegant canes of his Parisian epoch?
This was a support for age, and designed for rustic scenes. Dick began
to see and appreciate the man's enjoyment in a new part, when he saw how
carefully he had "made it up." He had invented a gait for this first
country stroll with his daughter, which was admirably in key. He walked
with fatigue; he leaned upon the staff; he looked round him with a sad,
smiling sympathy on all that he beheld; he even asked the name of a
plant, and rallied himself gently for an old town-bird, ignorant of
nature. "This country life will make me young again," he sighed. They
reached the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun
was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west; the hills
were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and
the wide moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north
in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter awakened in Van Tromp.
"Gad, Dick," he cried, "what value!"
An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so touching to
Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears: yes, here was the father of
whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic,
unworldly, kind, a painter at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.
And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside, and
something depending over the house door which might be construed as a
sign by the hopeful and thirsty.
"Is that," he asked, pointing with his stick, "an inn?"
There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached some
importance to the inquiry: Esther listened, hoping she should hear wit
or wisdom.
Dick said it was.
"You know it?" inquired the Admiral.
"I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all," replied Dick.
"Ah," said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head; "you are not
an old campaigner; you have the world to learn. Now I, you see, find an
inn so very near my own home, and my first thought is--my neighbours. I
shall go forward and make my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't
come; I shall not be a moment."
And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone with
Esther on the road.
"Dick," she exclaimed, "I am so glad to get a word with you; I am so
happy, I have such a thousand things to say; and I want you to do me a
favour. Imagine, he has come without a paint-box, without an easel; and
I want him to have all. I want you to get them for me in Thymebury. You
saw, this moment, how his heart turned to painting. They can't live
without it," she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michelangelo.
Up to that moment she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's behaviour.
She was too happy to be curious; and his silence, in presence of the
great and good being whom she called her father, had seemed both natural
and praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became conscious of
a barrier between her lover and herself, and alarm sprang up in her
heart.
"Dick," she cried, "you don't love me."
"I do that," he said heartily.
"But you are unhappy; you are strange; you--you are not glad to see my
father," she concluded, with a break in her voice.
"Esther," he said, "I tell you that I love you; if you love me, you know
what that means, and that all I wish is to see you happy. Do you think I
cannot enjoy your pleasure? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I am
alarmed, if----. Oh, believe me, try and believe in me," he cried, giving
up argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.
But the girl's suspicions were aroused; and though she pressed the
matter no further (indeed, her father was already seen returning), it by
no means left her thoughts. At one moment she simply resented the
selfishness of a man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate
language on her joy; for there is nothing that a woman can less easily
forgive than the language of a passion which, even if only for the
moment, she does not share. At another, she suspected him of jealousy
against her father; and for that, although she could see excuses for it,
she yet despised him. And at least, in one way or the other, here was
the dangerous beginning of a separation between two hearts. Esther found
herself at variance with her sweetest friend; she could no longer look
into his heart and find it written in the same language as her own; she
could no longer think of him as the sun which radiated happiness upon
her life, for she had turned to him once, and he had breathed upon her
black and chilly, radiated blackness and frost. To put the whole matter
in a word, she was beginning, although ever so slightly, to fall out of
love.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
We will not follow all the steps of the Admiral's return and
installation, but hurry forward towards the catastrophe, merely
chronicling by the way a few salient incidents, wherein we must rely
entirely upon the evidence of Richard, for Esther to this day has never
opened her mouth upon this trying passage of her life, and as for the
Admiral--well, that naval officer, although still alive, and now more
suitably installed in a seaport town where he has a telescope and a flag
in his front garden, is incapable of throwing the slightest gleam of
light upon the affair. Often and often has he remarked to the present
writer: "If I know what it was all about, sir, I'll be----" in short, be
what I hope he will not. And then he will look across at his daughter's
portrait, a photograph, shake his head with an amused appearance, and
mix himself another grog by way of consolation. Once I have heard him go
further, and express his feelings with regard to Esther in a single but
eloquent word. "A minx, sir," he said, not in anger, rather in
amusement: and he cordially drank her health upon the back of it. His
worst enemy must admit him to be a man without malice; he never bore a
grudge in his life, lacking the necessary taste and industry of
attention.
Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama was really
performed; and its scene was in the heart of Esther, shut away from all
eyes. Had this warm, upright, sullen girl been differently used by
destiny, had events come upon her even in a different succession, for
some things lead easily to others, the whole course of this tale would
have been changed, and Esther never would have run away. As it was,
through a series of acts and words of which we know but few, and a
series of thoughts which any one may imagine for himself, she was
awakened in four days from the dream of a life.
The first tangible cause of disenchantment was when Dick brought home a
painter's arsenal on Friday evening. The Admiral was in the
chimney-corner, once more "sirrupping" some brandy-and-water, and Esther
sat at the table at work. They both came forward to greet the new
arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous burthen, proceeded
to display her offerings to her father. Van Tromp's countenance fell
several degrees; he became quite querulous.
"God bless me," he said; and then, "I must really ask you not to
interfere, child," in a tone of undisguised hostility.
"Father," she said, "forgive me; I knew you had given up your art----"
"Oh yes!" cried the Admiral; "I've done with it to the judgment-day!"
"Pardon me again," she said firmly, "but I do not, I cannot think that
you are right in this. Suppose the world is unjust, suppose that no one
understands you, you have still a duty to yourself. And, oh, don't spoil
the pleasure of your coming home to me; show me that you can be my
father and yet not neglect your destiny. I am not like some daughters; I
will not be jealous of your art, and I will try to understand it."
The situation was odiously farcical. Richard groaned under it; he longed
to leap forward and denounce the humbug. And the humbug himself? Do you
fancy he was easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other hand, that he
was actually miserable; and he betrayed his sufferings by a perfectly
silly and undignified access of temper, during which he broke his pipe
in several places, threw his brandy-and-water into the fire, and
employed words which were very plain although the drift of them was
somewhat vague. It was of very brief duration. Van Tromp was himself
again, and in a most delightful humour within three minutes of the first
explosion.
"I am an old fool," he said frankly. "I was spoiled when a child. As for
you, Esther, you take after your mother; you have a morbid sense of
duty, particularly for others; strive against it, my dear--strive
against it. And as for the pigments, well, I'll use them some of these
days; and to show that I'm in earnest, I'll get Dick here to prepare a
canvas."
Dick was put to this menial task forthwith, the Admiral not even
watching how he did, but quite occupied with another grog and a pleasant
vein of talk.
A little after Esther arose, and making some pretext, good or bad, went
off to bed. Dick was left hobbled by the canvas, and was subjected to
Van Tromp for about an hour.
The next day, Saturday, it is believed that little intercourse took
place between Esther and her father; but towards the afternoon Dick met
the latter returning from the direction of the inn, where he had struck
up quite a friendship with the landlord. Dick wondered who paid for
these excursions, and at the thought that the reprobate must get his
pocket-money where he got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's
generosity, he had it almost in his heart to knock the old gentleman
down. He, on his part, was full of airs and graces and geniality.
"Dear Dick," he said, taking his arm, "this is neighbourly of you; it
shows your tact to meet me when I had a wish for you. I am in pleasant
spirits; and it is then that I desire a friend."
"I am glad to hear you are so happy," retorted Dick bitterly. "There's
certainly not much to trouble _you_."
"No," assented the Admiral, "not much. I got out of it in time; and
here--well, here everything pleases me. I am plain in my tastes. _A
propos_, you have never asked me how I liked my daughter?"
"No," said Dick roundly; "I certainly have not."
"Meaning you will not. And why, Dick? She is my daughter, of course; but
then I am a man of the world and a man of taste, and perfectly qualified
to give an opinion with impartiality--yes, Dick, with impartiality.
Frankly, I am not disappointed in her. She has good looks; she has them
from her mother. She is devoted, quite devoted to me----"
"She is the best woman in the world!" broke out Dick.
"Dick," cried the Admiral, stopping short; "I have been expecting this.
Let us--let us go back to the 'Trevanion Arms,' and talk this matter out
over a bottle."
"Certainly not," said Dick. "You have had far too much already."
The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but a look at Dick's
face, and some recollections of the terms on which they had stood in
Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom and restrained him.
"As you please," he said; "although I don't know what you mean--nor
care. But let us walk, if you prefer it. You are still a young man; when
you are my age----. But, however, to continue. You please me, Dick; you
have pleased me from the first; and to say truth, Esther is a trifle
fantastic, and will be better when she is married. She has means of her
own, as of course you are aware. They come, like the looks, from her
poor, dear, good creature of a mother. She was blessed in her mother. I
mean she shall be blessed in her husband, and you are the man, Dick, you
and not another. This very night I will sound her affections."
Dick stood aghast.
"Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you," he said; "do what you please with
yourself, but, for God's sake, let your daughter alone."
"It is my duty," replied the Admiral, "and between ourselves, you rogue,
my inclination too. I am as match-making as a dowager. It will be more
discreet for you to stay away to-night. Farewell. You leave your case in
good hands; I have the tact of these little matters by heart; it is not
my first attempt."
All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to his point; nor did
Richard conceal from himself how seriously this might injure his
prospects, and he fought hard. Once there came a glimmer of hope. The
Admiral again proposed an adjournment to the "Trevanion Arms," and when
Dick had once more refused, it hung for a moment in the balance whether
or not the old toper would return there by himself. Had he done so, of
course Dick could have taken to his heels, and warned Esther of what was
coming, and of how it had begun. But the Admiral, after a pause, decided
for the brandy at home, and made off in that direction.
We have no details of the sounding.
Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish church, very properly
dressed. He found the places, and joined in response and hymn, as to the
manner born; and his appearance, as he intended it should, attracted
some attention among the worshippers. Old Naseby, for instance, had
observed him.
"There was a drunken-looking blackguard opposite us in church," he said
to his son as they drove home; "do you know who he was?"
"Some fellow--Van Tromp, I believe," said Dick.
"A foreigner too!" observed the Squire.
Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the escape he had
effected. Had the Admiral met him with his father, what would have been
the result? And could such a catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed to
him as if the storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more nearly than he
thought.
He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld by fear and
shame; but when dinner was over at Naseby House, and the Squire had gone
off into a comfortable doze, Dick slipped out of the room, and ran
across country, in part to save time, in part to save his own courage
from growing cold; for he now hated the notion of the cottage or the
Admiral, and if he did not hate, at least feared to think of Esther. He
had no clue to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his own
heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the spectacle of her
infatuation galled him like an insult.
He knocked and was admitted. The room looked very much as on his last
visit, with Esther at the table and Van Tromp beside the fire; but the
expression of the two faces told a very different story. The girl was
paler than usual; her eyes were dark, the colour seemed to have faded
from round about them, and her swiftest glance was as intent as a stare.
The appearance of the Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and flabby,
and moist; his jowl hung over his shirt-collar, his smile was loose and
wandering, and he had so far relaxed the natural control of his eyes,
that one of them was aimed inward, as if to catch the growth of the
carbuncle. We are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was
certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered,
but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome.
Esther took as little notice of him as might be.
"Aha! Dick!" cried the painter. "I've been to church; I have, upon my
word. And I saw you there, though you didn't see me. And I saw a
devilish pretty woman, by Gad. If it were not for this baldness, and a
kind of crapulous air I can't disguise from myself--if it weren't for
this and that and t'other thing--I--I've forgot what I was saying. Not
that that matters, I've heaps of things to say. I'm in a communicative
vein to-night. I'll let out all my cats, even unto seventy times seven.
I'm in what I call _the_ stage, and all I desire is a listener, although
he were deaf, to be as happy as Nebuchadnezzar."
Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary to give more
than a sketch. The Admiral was extremely silly, now and then amusing,
and never really offensive. It was plain that he kept in view the
presence of his daughter, and chose subjects and a character of language
that should not offend a lady. On almost any other occasion Dick would
have enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink, struck a
pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and explanatory; sought to
take his auditors entirely into his confidence, and tell them his inmost
conviction about himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was
considerable, and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a
strange hybrid animal, and called it by his own name. How he would plume
his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened the heart of Cæsar
or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own portrait with one of those
touches of pitiless realism which the satirist so often seeks in vain.
"Now, there's Dick," he said, "he's shrewd; he saw through me the first
time we met, and told me so--told me so to my face, which I had the
virtue to keep. I bear you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; I am
a humbug."
You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the meeting
between her two idols.
And then, again, in a parenthesis:
"That," said Van Tromp, "was when I had to paint those dirty daubs of
mine."
And a little further on, laughingly said, perhaps, but yet with an air
of truth:
"I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any human
creature."
Thereupon Dick got up.
"I think, perhaps," he said, "we had better all be thinking of going to
bed." And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory smile.
"Not at all," cried the Admiral, "I know a trick worth two of that.
Puss here," indicating his daughter, "shall go to bed; and you and I
will keep it up till all's blue."
Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and listened for two
mortal hours while her idol defiled himself and sneered away his
godhead. One by one, her illusions had departed. And now he wished to
order her to bed in her own house! now he called her Puss! now, even as
he uttered the words, toppling on his chair, he broke the stem of his
tobacco-pipe in three! Never did the sheep turn upon her shearer with a
more commanding front. Her voice was calm, her enunciation a little
slow, but perfectly distinct, and she stood before him, as she spoke, in
the simplest and most maidenly attitude.
"No," she said, "Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home at once,
and you will go to bed."
The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers; he seemed
by his countenance to have lived too long in a world unworthy of him;
but it is an odd circumstance, he attempted no reply, and sat
thunder-struck, with open mouth.
Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only obey her.
In the porch, finding she was close behind him, he ventured to pause and
whisper, "You have done right."
"I have done as I pleased," she said. "Can he paint?"
"Many people like his paintings," returned Dick, in stifled tones; "I
never did; I never said I did," he added, fiercely defending himself
before he was attacked.
"I ask you if he can paint. I will not be put off. _Can_ he paint?" she
repeated.
"No," said Dick.
"Does he even like it?"
"Not now, I believe."
"And he is drunk?"--she leaned upon the word with hatred.
"He has been drinking."
"Go," she said, and was turning to re-enter the house when another
thought arrested her. "Meet me to-morrow morning at the stile," she
said.
"I will," replied Dick.
And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in the darkness.
There was still a chink of light above the sill, a warm, mild glow
behind the window; the roof of the cottage and some of the banks and
hazels were defined in denser darkness against the sky; but all else was
formless, breathless, and noiseless like the pit. Dick remained as she
had left him, standing squarely on one foot and resting only on the toe
of the other, and as he stood he listened with his soul. The sound of a
chair pushed sharply over the floor startled his heart into his mouth;
but the silence which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once
upon the cottage and its vicinity. What took place during this interval
is a secret from the world of men; but when it was over the voice of
Esther spoke evenly and without interruption for perhaps half a minute,
and as soon as that ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the
parlour and mounted lurching up the stairs. The girl had tamed her
father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was obvious to the
watcher in the road. And yet he still waited, straining his ears, and
with terror and sickness at his heart; for if Esther had followed her
father, if she had even made one movement in this great conspiracy of
men and nature to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it
from his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must she not
have fainted? or might she not be dead?
He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the seconds;
time stood still with him; an almost superstitious terror took command
of his faculties; at last, he could bear no more, and, springing through
the little garden in two bounds, he put his face against the window. The
blind, which had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an
inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour was
thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat upright at the table,
her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed upon the candle. Her brows
were slightly bent, her mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still
and settled that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not
stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon after, making a
considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night, the clock
lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a partridge, and then
eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still Esther continued immovable and
gazed upon the candle. Midnight followed, and then one of the morning;
and still she had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
window. And then about half-past one, the candle she had been thus
intently watching flared up into a last blaze of paper, and she leaped
to her feet with an ejaculation, looked about her once, blew out the
light, turned round, and was heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the
dark.
Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled and dogged
state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must have done her worst,
and is almost glad to think so. He turned and walked slowly towards the
stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined, whenever she
came, that she should find him waiting. As he got there the day began to
dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee away. Up
went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that were already
disbanding in the east; a herald wind had already sprung up to sweep the
leafy earth and scatter the congregated dewdrops. "Alas!" thought Dick
Naseby, "how can any other day come so distastefully to me?" He still
wanted his experience of the morrow.
CHAPTER VII
THE ELOPEMENT
It was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for
some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a
bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls,
recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of
his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It
took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a
certain blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had
received a legacy overnight but this feeling gradually died away, and
was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth.
The whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every
detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of sight, and
he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.
She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still pale, but to
all appearance perfectly composed; and she showed neither surprise,
relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer
him her hand.
"Here I am," said he.
"Yes," she replied; and then, without a pause or any change of voice, "I
want you to take me away," she added.
"Away?" he repeated. "How? Where?"
"To-day," she said. "I do not care where it is, but I want you to take
me away."
"For how long? I do not understand," gasped Dick.
"I shall never come back here any more," was all she answered.
Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner,
exercise a double influence on the hearer's mind. Dick was confounded;
he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He
looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold,
and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.
"To me?" he asked. "Are you coming to me, Esther?"
"I want you to take me away," she repeated, with weary impatience. "Take
me away--take me away from here."
The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with
concern whether she were altogether in her right wits. To take her away,
to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to
do all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not
one of those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry their
love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry her at all. He
desired that a woman should come to his arms with an attractive
willingness, if not with ardour. And Esther's bearing was more that of
despair than that of love. It chilled him and taught him wisdom.
"Dearest," he urged, "tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell
me your thoughts, and then I can advise you. But to go from here without
a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than
madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak
the truth; and I tell you again, the thing's absurd, and wrong, and
hurtful."
She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of wrath.
"So you will not take me?" she said. "Well, I will go alone."
And she began to step forward on her way. But he threw himself before
her.
"Esther, Esther!" he cried.
"Let me go--don't touch me--what right have you to interfere? Who are
you, to touch me?" she flashed out, shrill with anger.
Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her firmly, almost
roughly, by the arm, and held her while he spoke.
"You know well who I am, and what I am, and that I love you. You say I
will not help you; but your heart knows the contrary. It is you who will
not help me; for you will not tell me what you want. You see--or you
could see, if you took the pains to look--how I have waited here all
night to be ready at your service. I only asked information; I only
urged you to consider; and I still urge you to think better of your
fancies. But if your mind is made up, so be it; I will beg no longer; I
will give you my orders; and I will not allow--not allow you to go hence
alone."
She looked at him for a while with cold, unkind scrutiny, like one who
tries the temper of a tool.
"Well, take me away then," she said, with a sigh.
"Good," said Dick. "Come with me to the stables; there we shall get the
pony-trap and drive to the junction. To-night you shall be in London. I
am yours so wholly that no words can make me more so; and, besides, you
know it, and the words are needless. May God help me to be good to you,
Esther--may God help me! for I see that you will not."
So, without more speech, they set out together, and were already got
some distance from the spot, ere he observed that she was still carrying
the hand-bag. She gave it up to him, passively, but when he offered her
his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone
clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces,
and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley
of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a
perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and shadow raced
along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air, and water,
each seemed in better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in
them than upon ordinary mornings; and from east to west, from the
lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every look and touch and
scent, a human creature could gather the most encouraging intelligence
as to the durability and spirit of the universe.
Through all this walked Esther, picking her small steps like a bird, but
silent and with a cloud under her thick eyebrows. She seemed insensible,
not only of nature, but of the presence of her companion. She was
altogether engrossed in herself, and looked neither to right nor to
left, but straight before her on the road. When they came to the bridge,
however, she halted, leaned on the parapet, and stared for a moment at
the clear, brown pool, and swift, transient snowdrift of the rapids.
"I am going to drink," she said; and descended the winding footpath to
the margin.
There she drank greedily in her hands, and washed her temples with
water. The coolness seemed to break, for an instant, the spell that lay
upon her; for, instead of hastening forward again in her dull,
indefatigable tramp, she stood still where she was, for near a minute,
looking straight before her. And Dick, from above on the bridge where he
stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal smile dawn slowly on her
face and pass away again at once and suddenly, leaving her as grave as
ever; and the sense of distance, which it is so cruel for a lover to
endure, pressed with every moment more heavily on her companion. Her
thoughts were all secret; her heart was locked and bolted; and he stood
without, vainly wooing her with his eyes.
"Do you feel better?" asked Dick, as she at last rejoined him; and after
the constraint of so long a silence, his voice sounded foreign to his
own ears.
She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere she
answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable--"Yes."
Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted. His words died away on his
tongue. Even his eyes, despairing of encouragement, ceased to attend on
hers. And they went on in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old
man followed them with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and
love; and across the Ivy beck where the mill was splashing and grumbling
low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of the dell, and the
miller before the door was beating flour from his hands as he whistled a
modulation; and up by the high spinney, whence they saw the mountains
upon either hand; and down the hill again to the back courts and offices
of Naseby House. Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick plodded
obediently in her wake; but as they neared the stables, he pushed on and
took the lead. He would have preferred her to await him in the road
while he went on and brought the carriage back, but after so many
repulses and rebuffs he lacked courage to offer the suggestion. Perhaps,
too, he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight. So they entered
the yard in Indian file, like a tramp and his wife.
The groom's eyebrows rose as he received the order for the pony-phaeton,
and kept rising during all his preparations. Esther stood bolt upright
and looked steadily at some chickens in the corner of the yard. Master
Richard himself, thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for in
truth, he carried the hand-bag like a talisman, and either stood
listless, or set off suddenly walking in one direction after another
with brisk, decisive footsteps. Moreover, he had apparently neglected to
wash his hands, and bore the air of one returning from a prolonged
nutting ramble. Upon the groom's countenance there began to grow up an
expression as of one about to whistle. And hardly had the carriage
turned the corner and rattled into the high road with this inexplicable
pair, than the whistle broke forth--prolonged, and low, and tremulous;
and the groom, already so far relieved, vented the rest of his surprise
in one simple English word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar and the
sooty pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants' hall of
Naseby House. Luncheon would be on the table in little beyond an hour;
and the Squire, on sitting down, would hardly fail to ask for Master
Richard. Hence, as the intelligent reader can foresee, this groom has a
part to play in the imbroglio.
Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly. It seemed to him
as if his love had gone from him indeed, yet gone but a little way; as
if he needed but to find the right touch or intonation, and her heart
would recognise him and be melted. Yet he durst not open his mouth, and
drove in silence till they had passed the main park-gates and turned
into the cross-cut lane along the wall. Then it seemed to him as if it
must be now, or never.
"Can't you see you are killing me?" he cried. "Speak to me, look at me,
treat me like a human man."
She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes that seemed
kinder. He dropped the reins and caught her hand, and she made no
resistance, although her touch was unresponsive. But when, throwing one
arm round her waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover
indeed, not because he wanted to do so, but as a desperate man who puts
his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from him, with a knot in her
forehead, backed and shied about fiercely with her head, and pushed him
from her with her hand. Then there was no room left for doubt, and Dick
saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a distaste or nourished a grudge
against him.
"Then you don't love me?" he said, drawing back from her, he also, as
though her touch had burnt him; and then, as she made no answer, he
repeated with another intonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, "You
don't love me, _do_ you, _do_ you?"
"I don't know," she replied. "Why do you ask me? Oh, how should I know?
It has all been lies together--lies, and lies, and lies!"
He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken a physical hurt, and
that was the last word that either of them spoke until they reached
Thymebury Junction.
This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands, yet lying on the
great up-line to London. The nearest town, Thymebury itself, was seven
miles distant along the branch they call the Vale of Thyme Railway. It
was now nearly half an hour past noon, the down train had just gone by,
and there would be no more traffic at the junction until half-past
three, when the local train comes in to meet the up express at a quarter
before four. The stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which
was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; a porter, who was just
leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and promised to return it before
night to Naseby House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained
to play propriety for Dick and Esther.
Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the station and
seated herself upon a bench. The endless, empty moorlands stretched
before her, entirely unenclosed, and with no boundary but the horizon.
Two lines of rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone
diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by
the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the
waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it
was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the sunshine.
Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform. Then, in
two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost with a sob.
"Esther," he said, "have pity on me. What have I done? Can you not
forgive me? Esther, you loved me once--can you not love me still?"
"How can I tell you? How am I to know?" she answered. "You are all a lie
to me--all a lie from first to last. You were laughing at my folly,
playing with me like a child, at the very time when you declared you
loved me. Which was true? was any of it true? or was it all, all a
mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And you say I loved you; I loved
my father's friend. I never loved, I never heard of, you, until that man
came home and I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my father,
be what you were before, and you may talk of love indeed!"
"Then you cannot forgive me--cannot?" he asked.
"I have nothing to forgive," she answered. "You do not understand."
"Is that your last word, Esther?" said he, very white, and biting his
lip to keep it still.
"Yes; that is my last word," replied she.
"Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer," he
said. "Had you still loved me, right or wrong, I should have taken you
away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is--I must
speak plainly--what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to
me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your father may be this or
that, but you should use him like a fellow-creature."
"What do you mean?" she flashed. "I leave him my house and all my money;
it is more than he deserves. I wonder you dare speak to me about that
man. And besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me
never hear from him again."
"I thought you romantic about fathers," he said.
"Is that a taunt?" she demanded.
"No," he replied, "it is an argument. No one can make you like him, but
don't disgrace him in his own eyes. He is old, Esther, old and broken
down. Even I am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared
for. Write to your aunt; when I see her answer you can leave quietly and
naturally, and I will take you to your aunt's door. But in the meantime
you must go home. You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must
do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your good, and
your good only, so God help me."
She had put her hand into her pocket and withdrawn it empty.
"I counted upon you," she wailed.
"You counted rightly, then," he retorted. "I will not, to please you for
a moment, make both of us unhappy for our lives; and since I cannot
marry you, we have only been too long away, and must go home at once."
"Dick," she cried suddenly, "perhaps I might--perhaps in
time--perhaps--"
"There is no perhaps about the matter," interrupted Dick. "I must go and
bring the phaeton."
And with that he strode from the station, all in a glow of passion and
virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks flushed during
these last words, relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She
remained without motion during his absence, and when he returned
suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton, and driven off on the
return journey like an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she
was now, her condition of the morning seemed positively natural. She sat
cold and white and silent, and there was no speculation in her eyes.
Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and once tried to whistle,
but his courage was going down; huge clouds of despair gathered together
in his soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided by a
piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his love--he had lost
his love for good.
The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and the air
sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to fail entirely. It seemed
as if this miserable drive would never be done, as if poor Dick would
never be able to go away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all
his desire was to escape from her presence and the reproach of her
averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought--he had lost his love
for good.
They were already not far from the cottage, when his heart again
faltered and he appealed to her once more, speaking low and eagerly in
broken phrases.
"I cannot live without your love," he concluded.
"I do not understand what you mean," she replied, and I believe with
perfect truth.
"Then," said he, wounded to the quick, "your aunt might come and fetch
you herself. Of course you can command me as you please. But I think it
would be better so."
"Oh yes," she said wearily, "better so."
This was the only exchange of words between them till about four
o'clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane, "opened out" the cottage
between the leafy banks. Thin smoke went straight up from the chimney;
the flowers in the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their
heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by the sound of hoofs.
For right before the gate a livery servant rode slowly up and down,
leading a saddle horse. And in this last Dick shuddered to identify his
father's chestnut.
Alas! poor Richard, what should this portend?
The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his
keeping; yet Dick thought he touched his hat to him with something of a
grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden
with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her,
heard from within the cottage his father's voice upraised in an
anathema, and the shriller tones of the Admiral responding in the key of
war.
CHAPTER VIII
BATTLE ROYAL
Squire Naseby, on sitting down to lunch, had inquired for Dick, whom he
had not seen since the day before at dinner; and the servant answering
awkwardly that Master Richard had come back, but had gone out again with
the pony-phaeton, his suspicions became aroused, and he cross-questioned
the man until the whole was out. It appeared from this report that Dick
had been going about for nearly a month with a girl in the Vale--a Miss
Van Tromp; that she lived near Lord Trevanion's upper wood; that
recently Miss Van Tromp's papa had returned home from foreign parts
after a prolonged absence; that this papa was an old gentleman, very
chatty and free with his money in the public-house--whereupon Mr.
Naseby's face became encrimsoned; that the papa, furthermore, was said
to be an admiral--whereupon Mr. Naseby spat out a whistle brief and
fierce as an oath; that Master Dick seemed very friendly with the
papa--"God help him!" said Mr. Naseby; that last night Master Dick had
not come in, and to-day he had driven away in the phaeton with the young
lady.
"Young woman," corrected Mr. Naseby.
"Yes, sir," said the man, who had been unwilling enough to gossip from
the first, and was now cowed by the effect of his communications on the
master. "Young woman, sir!"
"Had they luggage?" demanded the Squire.
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, struggling to keep down his emotion,
and he mastered it so far as to mount into the sarcastic vein, when he
was in the nearest danger of melting into the sorrowful.
"And was this--this Van Dunk with them?" he asked, dwelling scornfully
on the name.
The servant believed not, and being eager to shift the responsibility to
other shoulders, suggested that perhaps the master had better inquire
further from George the stableman in person.
"Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come with me. And then you can
take away this trash," added Mr. Naseby, pointing to the luncheon; and
he arose, lordly in his anger, and marched forth upon the terrace to
await his horse.
There Dick's old nurse shrunk up to him, for the news went like wildfire
over Naseby House, and timidly expressed a hope that there was nothing
much amiss with the young master.
"I'll pull him through," the Squire said grimly, as though he meant to
pull him through a threshing-mill; "I'll save him from this gang; God
help him with the next! He has a taste for low company, and no natural
affections to steady him. His father was no society for him; he must go
fuddling with a Dutchman, Nance, and now he's caught. Let us pray he'll
take the lesson," he added, more gravely, "but youth is here to make
troubles, and age to pull them out again."
Nance whimpered and recalled several episodes of Dick's childhood, which
moved Mr. Naseby to blow his nose and shake her hard by the hand; and
then, the horse having arrived opportunely, to get himself without delay
into the saddle and canter off.
He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, where, as was to be expected,
he could glean no tidings of the runaways. They had not been seen at the
George; they had not been seen at the station. The shadow darkened on
Mr. Naseby's face; the junction did not occur to him; his last hope was
for Van Tromp's cottage; thither he bade George guide him, and thither
he followed, nursing grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart.
"Here it is, sir," said George, stopping.
"What! on my own land!" he cried. "How's this? I let this place to
somebody--M'Whirter or M'Glashan."
"Miss M'Glashan was the young lady's aunt, sir, I believe," returned
George.
"Ay--dummies," said the Squire. "I shall whistle for my rent too. Here,
take my horse."
The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was sitting by the window with a long
glass. He already knew the Squire by sight, and now, seeing him dismount
before the cottage and come striding through the garden, concluded
without doubt he was there to ask for Esther's hand.
"This is why the girl is not yet home," he thought; "a very suitable
delicacy on young Naseby's part."
And he composed himself with some pomp, answered the loud rattle of the
riding-whip upon the door with a dulcet invitation to enter, and coming
forward with a bow and a smile, "Mr. Naseby, I believe," said he.
The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man from top to toe in one
rapid and scornful glance, and decided on a course at once. He must let
the fellow see that he understood him.
"You are Mr. Van Tromp?" he returned roughly, and without taking any
notice of the proffered hand.
"The same, sir," replied the Admiral. "Pray be seated."
"No, sir," said the Squire, point-blank, "I will not be seated. I am
told that you are an admiral," he added.
"No, sir, I am not an admiral," returned Van Tromp, who now began to
grow nettled and enter into the spirit of the interview.
"Then why do you call yourself one, sir?"
"I have to ask your pardon, I do not," says Van Tromp, as grand as the
Pope.
But nothing was of avail against the Squire.
"You sail under false colours from beginning to end," he said. "Your
very house was taken under a sham name."
"It is not my house. I am my daughter's guest," replied the Admiral. "If
it _were_ my house----"
"Well?" said the Squire, "what then? hey?"
The Admiral looked at him nobly, but was silent.
"Look here," said Mr. Naseby, "this intimidation is a waste of time; it
is thrown away on me, sir; it will not succeed with me. I will not
permit you even to gain time by your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you
understand what brings me here."
"I am entirely at a loss to account for your intrusion," bows and waves
Van Tromp.
"I will try to tell you, then. I come here as a father"--down came the
riding-whip upon the table--"I have right and justice upon my side. I
understand your calculations, but you calculated without me. I am a man
of the world, and I see through you and your manoeuvres. I am dealing
now with a conspiracy--I stigmatise it as such, and I will expose it and
crush it. And now I order you to tell me how far things have gone, and
whither you have smuggled my unhappy son."
"My God, sir!" Van Tromp broke out, "I have had about enough of this.
Your son? God knows where he is for me! What the devil have I to do with
your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you
where she is, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer
madness. Name your business distinctly, and be off."
"How often am I to tell you?" cried the Squire. "Where did your daughter
take my son to-day in that cursed pony carriage?"
"In a pony carriage?" repeated Van Tromp.
"Yes, sir--with luggage."
"Luggage?"--Van Tromp had turned a little pale.
"Luggage, I said--luggage!" shouted Naseby. "You may spare me this
dissimulation. Where's my son? You are speaking to a father, sir, a
father."
"But, sir, if this be true," out came Van Tromp in a new key, "it is I
who have an explanation to demand."
"Precisely. There is the conspiracy," retorted Naseby. "Oh!" he added,
"I am a man of the world. I can see through and through you."
Van Tromp began to understand.
"You speak a great deal about being a father, Mr. Naseby," said he; "I
believe you forget that the appellation is common to both of us. I am at
a loss to figure to myself, however dimly, how any man--I have not said
any gentleman--could so brazenly insult another as you have been
insulting me since you entered this house. For the first time I
appreciate your base insinuations, and I despise them and you. You were,
I am told, a manufacturer; I am an artist; I have seen better days; I
have moved in societies where you would not be received, and dined where
you would be glad to pay a pound to see me dining. The so-called
aristocracy of wealth, sir, I despise. I refuse to help you; I refuse to
be helped by you. There lies the door."
And the Admiral stood forth in a halo.
It was then that Dick entered. He had been waiting in the porch for some
time back, and Esther had been listlessly standing by his side. He had
put out his hand to bar her entrance, and she had submitted without
surprise; and though she seemed to listen, she scarcely appeared to
comprehend. Dick, on his part, was as white as a sheet; his eyes burned
and his lips trembled with anger as he thrust the door suddenly open,
introduced Esther with ceremonious gallantry, and stood forward and
knocked his hat firmer on his head like a man about to leap.
"What is all this?" he demanded.
"Is this your father, Mr. Naseby?" inquired the Admiral.
"It is," said the young man.
"I make you my compliments," returned Van Tromp.
"Dick!" cried his father, suddenly breaking forth, "It is not too late,
is it? I have come here in time to save you. Come, come away with
me--come away from this place."
And he fawned upon Dick with his hands.
"Keep your hands off me," cried Dick, not meaning unkindness, but
because his nerves were shattered by so many successive miseries.
"No, no," said the old man. "Don't repulse your father, Dick, when he
has come here to save you. Don't repulse me, my boy. Perhaps I have not
been kind to you, not quite considerate, too harsh; my boy, it was not
for want of love. Think of old times. I was kind to you then, was I not?
When you were a child, and your mother was with us." Mr. Naseby was
interrupted by a sort of sob. Dick stood looking at him in a maze. "Come
away," pursued the father in a whisper; "you need not be afraid of any
consequences. I am a man of the world, Dick; and she can have no claim
on you--no claim, I tell you; and we'll be handsome too, Dick--we'll
give them a good round figure, father and daughter, and there's an end."
He had been trying to get Dick towards the door, but the latter stood
off.
"You had better take care, sir, how you insult that lady," said the son,
as black as night.
"You would not choose between your father and your mistress?" said the
father.
"What do you call her, sir?" cried Dick, high and clear.
Forbearance and patience were not among Mr. Naseby's qualities.
"I called her your mistress," he shouted, "and I might have called her a
----"
"That is an unmanly lie," replied Dick slowly.
"Dick!" cried the father, "Dick!"
"I do not care," said the son, strengthening himself against his own
heart; "I--I have said it, and it's the truth."
There was a pause.
"Dick," said the old man at last, in a voice that was shaken as by a
gale of wind, "I am going. I leave you with your friends, sir--with your
friends. I came to serve you, and now I go away a broken man. For years
I have seen this coming, and now it has come. You never loved me. Now
you have been the death of me. You may boast of that. Now I leave you.
God pardon you."
With that he was gone; and the three who remained together heard his
horse's hoofs descend the lane. Esther had not made a sign throughout
the interview, and still kept silence now that it was over; but the
Admiral, who had once or twice moved forward and drawn back again, now
advanced for good.
"You are a man of spirit, sir," said he to Dick; "but though I am no
friend to parental interference, I will say that you were heavy on the
governor." Then he added with a chuckle: "You began, Richard, with a
silver spoon, and here you are in the water, like the rest. Work, work,
nothing like work. You have parts, you have manners; why, with
application, you may die a millionaire!"
Dick shook himself. He took Esther by the hand, looking at her
mournfully.
"Then this is farewell?" he said.
"Yes," she answered. There was no tone in her voice, and she did not
return his gaze.
"For ever," added Dick.
"For ever," she repeated mechanically.
"I have had hard measure," he continued. "In time, I believe I could
have shown you I was worthy, and there was no time long enough to show
how much I loved you. But it was not to be. I have lost all."
He relinquished her hand, still looking at her, and she turned to leave
the room.
"Why, what in fortune's name is the meaning of all this?" cried Van
Tromp. "Esther, come back!"
"Let her go," said Dick, and he watched her disappear with strangely
mingled feelings. For he had fallen into that stage when men have the
vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards
anything decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the
cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms of suicide.
"She did not love me," he said, turning to her father.
"I feared as much," said he, "when I sounded her. Poor Dick, poor Dick!
And yet I believe I am as much cut up as you are. I was born to see
others happy."
"You forget," returned Dick, with something like a sneer, "that I am now
a pauper."
Van Tromp snapped his fingers.
"Tut!" said he; "Esther has plenty for us all."
Dick looked at him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that
this shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging parasite was yet, after
all and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet
so it was.
"Now," said Dick, "I must go."
"Go?" cried Van Tromp. "Where? Not one foot, Mr. Richard Naseby. Here
you shall stay in the meantime! and--well, and do something
practical--advertise for a situation as private secretary--and when you
have it, go and welcome. But in the meantime, sir, no false pride; we
must stay with our friends; we must sponge a while on Papa Van Tromp,
who has sponged so often upon us."
"By God," cried Dick, "I believe you are the best of the lot."
"Dick, my boy," replied the Admiral, winking, "you mark me, I am not the
worst."
"Then why," began Dick, and then paused. "But Esther," he began again,
once more to interrupt himself. "The fact is, Admiral," he came out with
it roundly now, "your daughter wished to run away from you to-day, and I
only brought her back with difficulty."
"In the pony carriage?" asked the Admiral, with the silliness of extreme
surprise.
"Yes," Dick answered.
"Why, what the devil was she running away from?"
Dick found the question unusually hard to answer.
"Why," said he, "you know you're a bit of a rip."
"I behave to that girl, sir, like an archdeacon," replied Van Tromp
warmly.
"Well--excuse me--but you know you drink," insisted Dick.
"I know that I was a sheet in the wind's eye, sir, once--once only,
since I reached this place," retorted the Admiral. "And even then I was
fit for any drawing-room. I should like you to tell me how many fathers,
lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and
cod's eyes--and are dull, upon the back of it--not even mirth for the
money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I say is, let her run."
"You see," Dick tried it again, "she has fancies--"
"Confound her fancies!" cried Van Tromp. "I used her kindly; she had her
own way; I was her father. Besides, I had taken quite a liking to the
girl, and meant to stay with her for good. But I tell you what it is,
Dick, since she has trifled with you--Oh yes, she did though!--and since
her old papa's not good enough for her--the devil take her, say I."
"You will be kind to her at least?" said Dick.
"I never was unkind to a living soul," replied the Admiral. "Firm I can
be, but not unkind."
"Well," said Dick, offering his hand, "God bless you, and farewell."
The Admiral swore by all his gods he should not go. "Dick," he said,
"you are a selfish dog; you forget your old Admiral. You wouldn't leave
him alone, would you?"
It was useless to remind him that the house was not his to dispose of,
that being a class of considerations to which his intelligence was
closed; so Dick tore himself off by force, and shouting a good-bye, made
off along the lane to Thymebury.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR APPEARS AS "DEUS EX MACHINÂ"
It was perhaps a week later, as old Mr. Naseby sat brooding in his
study, that there was shown in upon him, on urgent business, a little
hectic gentleman shabbily attired.
"I have to ask pardon for this intrusion, Mr. Naseby," he said; "but I
come here to perform a duty. My card has been sent in, but perhaps you
may not know, what it does not tell you, that I am the editor of the
_Thymebury Star_."
Mr. Naseby looked up, indignant.
"I cannot fancy," he said, "that we have much in common to discuss."
"I have only a word to say--one piece of information to communicate.
Some months ago, we had--you will pardon my referring to it, it is
absolutely necessary--but we had an unfortunate difference as to facts."
"Have you come to apologise?" asked the Squire sternly.
"No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On the morning in question, your
son, Mr. Richard Naseby----"
"I do not permit his name to be mentioned."
"You will, however, permit me," replied the Editor.
"You are cruel," said the Squire. He was right, he was a broken man.
Then the Editor described Dick's warning visit; and how he had seen in
the lad's eye that there was a thrashing in the wind, and had escaped
through pity only--so the Editor put it--"through pity only, sir. And
oh, sir," he went on, "if you had seen him speaking up for you, I am
sure you would have been proud of your son. I know I admired the lad
myself, and indeed that's what brings me here."
"I have misjudged him," said the Squire. "Do you know where he is?"
"Yes, sir, he lies sick at Thymebury."
"You can take me to him?"
"I can."
"I pray God he may forgive me," said the father.
And he and the Editor made post-haste for the country town.
Next day the report went abroad that Mr. Richard was reconciled to his
father and had been taken home to Naseby House. He was still ailing, it
was said, and the Squire nursed him like the proverbial woman. Rumour,
in this instance, did no more than justice to the truth; and over the
sick-bed many confidences were exchanged, and clouds that had been
growing for years passed away in a few hours, and, as fond mankind loves
to hope, for ever. Many long talks had been fruitless in external
action, though fruitful for the understanding of the pair; but at last,
one showery Tuesday, the Squire might have been observed upon his way to
the cottage in the lane.
The old gentleman had arranged his features with a view to self-command,
rather than external cheerfulness; and he entered the cottage on his
visit of conciliation with the bearing of a clergyman come to announce a
death.
The Admiral and his daughter were both within, and both looked upon
their visitor with more surprise than favour.
"Sir," said he to Van Tromp, "I am told I have done you much injustice."
There came a little sound in Esther's throat, and she put her hand
suddenly to her heart.
"You have, sir; and the acknowledgment suffices," replied the Admiral.
"I am prepared, sir, to be easy with you, since I hear you have made it
up with my friend Dick. But let me remind you that you owe some
apologies to this young lady also."
"I shall have the temerity to ask for more than her forgiveness," said
the Squire. "Miss Van Tromp," he continued, "once I was in great
distress, and knew nothing of you or your character; but I believe you
will pardon a few rough words to an old man who asks forgiveness from
his heart. I have heard much of you since then; for you have a fervent
advocate in my house. I believe you will understand that I speak of my
son. He is, I regret to say, very far from well; he does not pick up as
the doctors had expected; he has a great deal upon his mind, and, to
tell you the truth, my girl, if you won't help us, I am afraid I shall
lose him. Come now, forgive him! I was angry with him once myself, and I
found I was in the wrong. This is only a misunderstanding, like the
other, believe me; and, with one kind movement, you may give happiness
to him, and to me, and to yourself."
Esther made a movement towards the door, but long before she reached it
she had broken forth sobbing.
"It is all right," said the Admiral; "I understand the sex. Let me make
you my compliments, Mr. Naseby."
The Squire was too much relieved to be angry.
"My dear," said he to Esther, "you must not agitate yourself."
"She had better go up and see him right away," suggested Van Tromp.
"I had not ventured to propose it," replied the Squire. "_Les
convenances_, I believe----"
"_Je m'en fiche_," cried the Admiral, snapping his fingers. "She shall
go and see my friend Dick. Run and get ready, Esther."
Esther obeyed.
"She has not--has not run away again?" inquired Mr. Naseby, as soon as
she was gone.
"No," said Van Tromp, "not again. She is a devilish odd girl, though,
mind you that."
"But I cannot stomach the man with the carbuncles," thought the Squire.
And this is why there is a new household and a brand-new baby in Naseby
Dower House; and why the great Van Tromp lives in pleasant style upon
the shores of England; and why twenty-six individual copies of the
_Thymebury Star_ are received daily at the door of Naseby House.
THE MERRY MEN
_My dear Lady Taylor_,
_To your name, if I wrote on brass, I could add nothing; it has been
already written higher than I could dream to reach, by a strong and a
dear hand; and if I now dedicate to you these tales,[1] it is not as
the writer who brings you his work, but as the friend who would
remind you of his affection._
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
_Skerryvore, Bournemouth._
THE MERRY MEN
CHAPTER I
EILEAN AROS
It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot for
the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before at
Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving
all my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea,
struck right across the promontory with a cheerful heart.
I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from
an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a
poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in
the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and
when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm,
had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means
of life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had
pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a
fresh adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at
destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought
neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the
lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my
father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to
die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I
was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own
charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to
Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held
blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence,
and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend
my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society and
comfort, between the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was that
now, when I had done with my classes, I was returning thither with so
light a heart that July day.
The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but as
rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it,
full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen--all overlooked
from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peak of Ben
Kyaw. _The Mountain of the Mist_, they say the words signify in the
Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more
than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come
blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea
level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water,
too, and was mossy[2] to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting
in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape
upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more
beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hillsides there
were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far
as Aros, fifteen miles away.
The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to
double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a
man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the
moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and
not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course
there were--three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the
other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large
part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger
than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather
in between them where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was
always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl
over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would
kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land,
on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like
a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the
breakers that we call the Merry Men.
Aros itself--Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it
means _the House of God_--Aros itself was not properly a piece of the
Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of the
land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the
coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest.
When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a land
river; only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the
water itself was green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in
the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you
could pass dryshod from Aros to the mainland. There was some good
pasture, where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was
better because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level
of the Ross, but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a
good one for that country, two stories high. It looked westward over a
bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could watch
the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.
On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these great
granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the
sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the world
like their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them
instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their
sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger to wreathe about the
base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days
you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following
you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man
that hears that caldron boiling.
Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much
greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to sea,
for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick as
a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the tides,
some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on a clear, westerly
blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, the great rollers
breaking white and heavy over as many as six-and-forty buried reefs. But
it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the tide, here
running like a mill-race, makes a long belt of broken water--a _Roost_
we call it--at the tail of the land. I have often been out there in a
dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the
sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the caldrons of a linn, and
now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the _Roost_
were talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above
all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a
mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a
place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles away. At the seaward end
there comes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big
breakers dance together--the dance of death, it may be called--that have
got the name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said
that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only,
for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name
from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting
they make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it,
is more than I can tell.
The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our
archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the reefs,
and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south
coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our
family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the
place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the works now going
forward to set lights upon the headlands and buoys along the channels of
our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.
The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from
my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had
transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the
marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that
dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the
boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag
beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that
in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till
the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in the
original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were thus translated: "Ah, the
sweet singing out of the sea." Seals that haunted on that coast have
been known to speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters.
It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of
Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some
claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make
so rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not
far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his monkish
underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy and
beautiful name, the House of God.
Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined to
hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which scattered
the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and west of
Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the eyes of
some solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a moment with all
hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There was some likelihood in
this tale; for another of that fleet lay sunk on the north side, twenty
miles from Grisapol. It was told, I thought, with more detail and
gravity than its companion stories, and there was one particularity
which went far to convince me of its truth: the name, that is, of the
ship was still remembered, and sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The
_Espirito Santo_ they called it, a great ship of many decks of guns,
laden with treasure and grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that
now lay fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in
Sandag Bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that
tall ship, the "Holy Spirit," no more fair winds or happy ventures; only
to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the Merry
Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a strange thought to
me first and last, and only grew stranger as I learned the more of
Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a company, and King
Philip, the wealthy king, that sent her on that voyage.
And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the
_Espirito Santo_ was very much in my reflections. I had been favourably
remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous writer,
Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some papers of an
ancient date to rearrange and sift of what was worthless; and in one of
these, to my great wonder, I found a note of this very ship, the
_Espirito Santo_, with her captain's name, and how she carried a great
part of the Spaniards' treasure, and had been lost upon the Ross of
Grisapol; but in what particular spot the wild tribes of that place and
period would give no information to the king's inquiries. Putting one
thing with another, and taking our island tradition together with this
note of old King Jamie's perquisitions after wealth, it had come
strongly on my mind that the spot for which he sought in vain could be
no other than the small bay of Sandag on my uncle's land; and being a
fellow of a mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh
that good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces, and doubloons, and
bring back our house of Darnaway to its long-forgotten dignity and
wealth.
This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent. My mind was
sharply turned on different reflections; and since I became the witness
of a strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead men's treasures has
been intolerable to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquit
myself of sordid greed; for if I desired riches, it was not for their
own sake, but for the sake of a person who was dear to my heart--my
uncle's daughter, Mary Ellen. She had been educated well, and had been a
time to school upon the mainland; which, poor girl, she would have been
happier without. For Aros was no place for her, with old Rorie the
servant, and her father, who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland,
plainly bred up in a country place among Cameronians, long a skipper
sailing out of the Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite
discontent, managing his sheep and a little 'long shore fishing for the
necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful to me, who was there but a
month or two, you may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same
desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying sea-gulls, and the
Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost!
CHAPTER II
WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS
It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothing
for it but to stand on the far shore and whistle for Rorie with the
boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was
at the door flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old
long-legged serving-man was shambling down the gravel to the pier. For
all his hurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I
observed him several times to pause, go into the stern, and look over
curiously into the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and
haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired,
with two new thwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful
foreign wood, the name of it unknown to me.
"Why, Rorie," said I, as we began the return voyage, "this is fine wood.
How came you by that?"
"It will be hard to cheesel," Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then,
dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the stern which I
had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on my
shoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of the bay.
"What is wrong?" I asked, a good deal startled.
"It will be a great feesh," said the old man, returning to his oars; and
nothing more could I get out of him but strange glances and an ominous
nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measure
of uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was still
and transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay, exceeding deep.
For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as if
something dark--a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow--followed
studiously in the track of the moving coble. And then I remembered one
of Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,
exterminating feud among the clans, a fish, the like of it unknown in
all our waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferryboat,
until no man dared to make the crossing.
"He will be waiting for the right man," said Rorie.
Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house of
Aros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fenced
with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in
the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from
the window; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was
swinging from the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of
linen and silver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain
old kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the
stools, and the closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun
shone into, and the clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the
mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells
instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare
wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole
adornment--poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven
with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of
rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that
country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by
these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of
anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was
baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at the first moment, in my
heart.
"Mary, girl," said I, "this is the place I had learned to call my home,
and I do not know it."
"It is my home by nature, not by the learning," she replied; "the place
I was born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither like these
changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I would
have liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the
sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them now."
Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she shared
with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was
even graver than of custom.
"Ay," said I, "I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet when
my father died I took his goods without remorse."
"Your father died a clean-strae death, as the folk say," said Mary.
"True," I returned; "and a wreck is like a judgment. What was she
called?"
"They ca'd her the _Christ-Anna_," said a voice behind me; and, turning
round, I saw my uncle standing in the doorway.
He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;
fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhat
between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He never
laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like the
Cameronians he had been brought up among; and, indeed, in many ways,
used to remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times
before the Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I
used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when
he was afraid of hell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would
look back with envy, and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.
As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on his
head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, to
have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his
face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, or
the bones of the dead.
"Ay," he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, "the
_Christ-Anna_. It's an awfu' name."
I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health;
for I feared he had perhaps been ill.
"I'm in the body," he replied, ungraciously enough; "aye in the body and
the sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner," he said abruptly to Mary,
and then ran on, to me: "They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten,
are they no'? Yon's a bonny knock,[3] but it'll no gang; and the
napery's by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for the like o' them folk
sells the peace of God that passeth understanding; it's for the like o'
them, an' maybe no' even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face
and burn in muckle hell; and it's for that reason the Scripture ca's
them, as I read the passage, the accursed thing.--Mary, ye girzie," he
interrupted himself to cry with some asperity, "what for hae ye no' put
out the twa candlesticks?"
"Why should we need them at high noon?" she asked.
But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. "We'll bruik[4] them
while we may," he said; and so two massive candlesticks of wrought
silver were added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that
rough seaside farm.
"She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht," he went on to me.
"There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea; and she was in the sook o'
the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me, beating
to the wind. She wasna a handy craft, I'm thinking, that _Christ-Anna_;
for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them. A sair day they had of
it; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it perishin' cauld--ower
cauld to snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again,
to pit the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man! but they had a sair day for
the last o't! He would have had a prood, prood heart that won ashore
upon the back o' that."
"And were all lost?" I cried. "God help them!"
"Wheesht!" he said sternly. "Nane shall pray for the deid on my
hearth-stane."
I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to accept
my disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what had
evidently become a favourite subject.
"We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the
inside of her. There's a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles the
sook rins strong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the tide's
makin' hard an' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the far-end of Aros,
there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel,
there's the thing that got the grip on the _Christ-Anna_. She büt to
have come in ram-stam an' stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften
under, and the back-side of her is clear at hie-water o' neaps. But,
man! the dunt that she cam doon wi' when she struck! Lord save us a'l
but it's an unco life to be a sailor--a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's
the gliff I got mysel' in the great deep; and why the Lord should hae
made yon unco water is mair than ever I could win to understand. He made
the vales and the pastures, the bonny green yaird, the halesome, canty
land--
And now they shout and sing to Thee,
For Thou hast made them glad,
as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No' that I would preen my
faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. 'Who
go to sea in ships,' they hae't again--
and in
Great waters trading be,
Within the deep these men God's works
And His great wonders see.
Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasna very weel acquaint wi'
the sea. But, troth, if it wasna prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles be
temp'it to think it wasna the Lord, but the muckle black deil that made
the sea. There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish; an' the
spentacle o' God riding on the tempest, to be shüre, whilk would be what
Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that God
showed to the _Christ-Anna_--wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather:
judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And their
souls--to think o' that--their souls, man, maybe no' prepared! The
sea--a muckle yett to hell!"
I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved and
his manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at these last
words, for example, and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers,
looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that his
eyes shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines about his mouth
were drawn and tremulous.
Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not
detach him from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended,
indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I
thought it was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace,
which was, as usual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his
preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would "remember in mercy
fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane
beside the great and dowie waters."
Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.
"Was it there?" asked my uncle.
"Ou, ay!" said Rorie.
I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some show
of embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour, and looked
down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the party
from an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I pursued the
subject.
"You mean the fish?" I asked.
"Whatten fish?" cried my uncle. "Fish, quo' he! Fish! Your een are fu'
o' fatness, man; your heid dozened wi' carnal leir. Fish! it's a bogle!"
He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was not
very willing to be put down so shortly, for young men are disputatious.
At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childish
superstitions.
"And ye come frae the College!" sneered Uncle Gordon. "Gude kens what
they learn folk there; it's no' muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man,
that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a world oot wast
there, wi' the sea-grasses growin', an' the sea-beasts fechtin', an' the
sun glintin' down into it, day by day? Na; the sea's like the land, but
fearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in the sea--deid they
may be, but they're folk whatever; and as for deils, there's nane that's
like the sea-deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land-deils, when
a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country,
I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewic Moss. I got a glisk
o' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as grey's a tombstane.
An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Nae
doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by
there wi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would
hae lowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea
would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir
lads in the _Christ-Anna_, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If
ye had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I
do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned the
wickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a'
that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters an' partans, an'
sic-like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an'
fish--the hale clan o' them--cauld-wamed, blind-ee'd uncanny ferlies.
Oh, sirs," he cried, "the horror--the horror o' the sea!"
We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker
himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily
into his own thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore,
recalled him to the subject by a question.
"You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?" he asked.
"No' clearly," replied the other. "I misdoobt if a mere man could see
ane clearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi' a lad--they ca'd
him Sandy Gabart; he saw ane, shüre eneuch, an' shüre eneuch it was the
end of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde--a sair wark we had
had--gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We had
got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by Soa,
an' were off on a long tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far's
Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine-gaun
breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'--what nane o' us likit to
hear--anither wund gurlin' owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane
craigs o' the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi' the jib sheet; we
couldna see him for the mains'l, that had just begude to draw, when a'
at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were over
near Soa; but na, it wasna that, it was puir Sandy Gabart's deid
skreigh, or near-hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he could
tell was that a sea-deil, or sea-bogle, or sea-spenster, or sic-like,
had clum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An',
or the life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing
betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns; for
doon it cam'--a wund do I ca' it! It was the wund o' the Lord's
anger--an' a' that nicht we focht like men dementit, and the neist that
we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks were crawin' in
Benbecula."
"It will have been a merman," Rorie said.
"A merman!" screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. "Auld wives'
clavers! There's nae sic things as mermen."
"But what was the creature like?" I asked.
"What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It had
a kind of a heid upon it--man could say nae mair."
Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen,
mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands and
attacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his
incredulity, listened with uneasy interest.
"Aweel, aweel," he said, "it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find nae
word o' mermen in the Scriptures."
"And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe," objected Rorie, and
his argument appeared to carry weight.
When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank
behind the house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a ripple
anywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep and
gulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsman
showed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenly
and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a reference
to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, I
listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on that
remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of
peats that had been lit by Mary.
Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while been
covertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet and
bade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tide
at the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round all
the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certain
points of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay--Aros
Bay, as it is called--where the house stands and on which my uncle was
now gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb,
and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is any
swell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is,
there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks--sea-runes, as we may
name them--on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in a
thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself as
I did, seeking to read in them some reference to himself or those he
loved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention,
struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance.
"Do you see yon scart upo' the water?" he inquired; "yon ane wast the
grey stane? Ay? Weel, it'll no' be like a letter, wull it?"
"Certainly it is," I replied. "I have often remarked it. It is like a
C."
He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and then
added below his breath: "Ay, for the _Christ-Anna_."
"I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself," said I; "for my name is
Charles."
"And so ye saw't afore?" he ran on, not heeding my remark. "Weel, weel,
but that's unco strange. Maybe, it's been there waitin', as a man wad
say, through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'." And then,
breaking off: "Ye'll no' see anither, will ye?" he asked.
"Yes," said I. "I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, where
the road comes down--an M."
"An M," he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: "An'
what wad ye make o' that?" he inquired.
"I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir," I answered, growing
somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the
threshold of a decisive explanation.
But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of
the other's. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hung
his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that he
had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echo
from my own.
"I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary," he observed, and began
to walk forward.
There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay where walking is
easy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman.
I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an
opportunity to declare my love; but I was at the same time far more
deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never
an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was
nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me
for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes
against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his
mind; and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be
represented by the letter M--misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the
like--I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was
still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the
direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be
had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on
the ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the southward
blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood
staring for awhile on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand
on my arm.
"Ye think there's naething there?" he said, pointing with his pipe; and
then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: "I'll tell ye, man! The
deid are down there--thick like rattons!"
He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to
the house of Aros.
I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and
then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost no
time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.
"Mary," I said, "I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should
prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of
daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,
which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hope
that lies nearer to my heart than money." And at that I paused. "You can
guess fine what that is, Mary," I said. She looked away from me in
silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.
"All my days I have thought the world of you," I continued; "the time
goes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be
happy or hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye."
Still she looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that
her hands shook. "Mary," I cried in fear, "do ye no' like me?"
"Oh, Charlie man," she said, "is this a time to speak of it? Let me be a
while; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by the
waiting!"
I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me out
of any thought but to compose her. "Mary Ellen," I said, "say no more; I
did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;
and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: what
ails you?"
She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only
shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it
was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. "I havena been near
it," said she. "What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls
are gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they
had ta'en their gear with them--poor souls!"
This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the
_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried out
in surprise. "There was a man at Grisapol," she said, "in the month of
May--a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold rings
upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for that
same ship."
It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to
sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind that
they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling
himself such, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal,
on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada.
Putting one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor "with the
gold rings upon his fingers" might be the same with Dr. Robertson's
historian from Madrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after
treasure for himself than information for a learned society. I made up
my mind, I should lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay
sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be
for the advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself,
and for the good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.
CHAPTER III
LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY
I was early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had a bite to eat, set
forth upon a tour of exploration. Something in my heart distinctly told
me that I should find the ship of the Armada; and although I did not
give way entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light in
spirits and walked upon air. Aros is a very rough islet, its surface
strewn with great rocks and shaggy with fern and heather; and my way lay
almost north and south across the highest knoll; and though the whole
distance was inside of two miles, it took more time and exertion than
four upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused. Although not very
high--not three hundred feet, as I think--it yet outtops all the
neighbouring lowlands of the Ross, and commands a great view of sea and
islands. The sun, which had been up some time, was already hot upon my
neck; the air was listless and thundery, although purely clear; away
over the north-west, where the isles lie thickliest congregated, some
half a dozen small and ragged clouds hung together in a covey; and the
head of Ben Kyaw wore, not merely a few streamers, but a solid hood of
vapour. There was a threat in the weather. The sea, it is true, was
smooth like glass: even the Roost was but a seam on that wide mirror,
and the Merry Men no more than caps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so
long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to lie uneasily; a
sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me where I stood; and, quiet
as it was, the Roost itself appeared to be revolving mischief. For I
ought to say that all we dwellers in these parts attributed, if not
prescience, at least a quality of warning, to that strange and dangerous
creature of the tides.
I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the
slope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large
piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from
all but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low
sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deep
along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time
each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the
bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow
runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action
of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothing
is to be seen out of Sandag Bay but one small segment of the horizon
and, in heavy weather, the breakers flying high over a deep-sea reef.
From half-way down the hill I had perceived the wreck of February last,
a brig of considerable tonnage, lying, with her back broken, high and
dry on the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly towards
it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes were
suddenly arrested by a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and marked by
one of those long, low, and almost human-looking mounds that we see so
commonly in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said
to me of any dead man or interment on the island; Rorie, Mary, and my
uncle had all equally held their peace; of her at least, I was certain
that she must be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof
indubitable of the fact. Here was a grave; and I had to ask myself, with
a chill, what manner of man lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the
signal of the Lord in that solitary, sea-beat resting-place? My mind
supplied no answer but what I feared to entertain. Shipwrecked, at
least, he must have been; perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from
some far and rich land over-sea; or perhaps one of my own race,
perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home. I stood awhile uncovered
by his side, and I could have desired that it had lain in our religion
to put up some prayer for that unhappy stranger, or, in the old classic
way, outwardly to honour his misfortune. I knew, although his bones lay
there, a part of Aros, till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul
was forth and far away, among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or
the pangs of hell; and yet my mind misgave me even with a fear, that
perhaps he was near me where I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and
lingering on the scene of his unhappy fate.
Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat overshadowed that I turned away
from the grave to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her
stem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a
little abaft the foremast--though indeed she had none, both masts having
broken short in her disaster; and as the pitch of the beach was very
sharp and sudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the
fracture gaped widely open, and you could see right through her poor
hull upon the farther side. Her name was much defaced, and I could not
make out clearly whether she was called _Christiania_, after the
Norwegian city, or _Christiana_, after the good woman, Christian's wife,
in that old book the "Pilgrim's Progress." By her build she was a
foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had been
painted green, but the colour was faded and weathered, and the paint
peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside,
half-buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed, and I could not
look without emotion at the bits of rope that still hung about her, so
often handled of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where
they had passed up and down to their affairs; or that poor noseless
angel of a figure-head that had dipped into so many running billows.
I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave, but
I fell into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning with one
hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men, and even of
inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in upon
my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed an
unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as of
something sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary I took
heart again. My uncle would never consent to an imprudent marriage, nor
would she, as I was persuaded, wed without his full approval. It behoved
me, then, to be up and doing for my wife; and I thought with a laugh how
long it was since that great sea-castle, the _Espirito Santo_, had left
her bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it would be to consider rights so
long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten in the process of
time.
I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the current
and the soundings both pointed to the east side of the bay under the
ledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after these
centuries, any portion of her held together, it was there that I should
find it. The water deepens, as I have said, with great rapidity, and
even close alongside the rocks several fathoms may be found. As I walked
upon the edge I could see far and wide over the sandy bottom of the bay;
the sun shone clear and green and steady in the deeps; the bay seemed
rather like a great transparent crystal, as one sees them in a
lapidary's shop; there was naught to show that it was water but an
internal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows,
and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble round the edge. The
shadows of the rocks lay out for some distance at their feet, so that my
own shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top of that, reached
sometimes half across the bay. It was above all in this belt of shadows
that I hunted for the _Espirito Santo_; since it was there the undertow
ran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the whole water seemed this
broiling day, it looked, in that part, yet cooler, and had a mysterious
invitation for the eyes. Peer as I pleased, however, I could see nothing
but a few fishes or a bush of sea-tangle, and here and there a lump of
rock that had fallen from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor.
Twice did I pass from one end to the other of the rocks, and in the
whole distance I could see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one
where it was possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in five
fathoms of water, raised off the surface of the sand to a considerable
height, and looking from above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on
which I walked. It was one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove, which
prevented me judging of its nature, but in shape and size it bore some
likeness to a vessel's hull. At least it was my best chance. If the
_Espirito Santo_ lay not there under the tangles, it lay nowhere at all
in Sandag Bay; and I prepared to put the question to the proof, once and
for all, and either go back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my
dreams of wealth.
I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin with my hands
clasped, irresolute. The bay at that time was utterly quiet; there was
no sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind
the point; yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my
venture. Sad sea-feelings, scraps of my uncle's superstitions, thoughts
of the dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted through my
mind. But the strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I
stooped forward and plunged into the sea.
It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grew
so thickly on the terrace; but once so far anchored I secured myself by
grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting
my feet against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear
sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot of the rocks,
scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the
tides; and before me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible but
the same many-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the
terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong sea-growths
as a tuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged hung draped
below the water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of forms, all
swaying together in the current, things were hard to be distinguished;
and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed upon the natural
rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship, when the whole
tuft of tangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the
surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright water swam before my
eyes in a glory of crimson.
I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my
feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I
stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an
iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to the
heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy. I
held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me like
the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's
hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very foot
that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving
decks--the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair
and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not
like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the
great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and
treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for the
seaweed, her cabin a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the
dredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon her
battlements--that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now a reef in Sandag
Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster of
the foreign brig--was this shoe-buckle bought but the other day and worn
by a man of my own period in the world's history, hearing the same news
from day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying, perhaps, in the
same temple with myself? However it was, I was assailed with dreary
thoughts; my uncle's words, "the dead are down there," echoed in my
ears; and though I determined to dive once more, it was with a strong
repugnance that I stepped forward to the margin of the rocks.
A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay. It
was no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with
glass, where the green submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I
suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness
filled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed
confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and
quivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of ambushes;
and when I leaped into the sea a second time it was with a quaking in my
soul.
I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. All
that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey. The thicket was alive
with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to
harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. On
all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone;
no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the _Espirito Santo_ was
not there. I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my
disappointment, and I was about ready to leave go, when something
happened that sent me to the surface with my heart in my mouth. I had
already stayed somewhat late over my explorations; the current was
freshening with the change of the tide, and Sandag Bay was no longer a
safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there
came a sudden flush of current, dredging through the tangles like a
wave. I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side, and,
instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my fingers closed on
something hard and cold. I think I knew at that moment what it was. At
least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and
clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks with the bone of a man's
leg in my grasp.
Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceive
connections. The grave, the wreck of the brig, and the rusty shoe-buckle
were surely plain advertisements. A child might have read their dismal
story, and yet it was not until I touched that actual piece of mankind
that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit. I laid
the bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and ran as I was along
the rocks towards the human shore. I could not be far enough from the
spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back again. The bones of
the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed by me, whether on
tangle or minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and
had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down over against the
ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and
passionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is never
presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is
always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, at
least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that
great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the
rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep
determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or
the treasures of the dead.
I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look
behind me. The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.
For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost
tropical rapidity. The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from its
conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in
the distance the white waves, the "skipper's daughters," had begun to
flee before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already
along the curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I
could hear from where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more
remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and
solid continent of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its
contexture, the sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and
there, from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet
unclouded sky. The menace was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the
sun was blotted out. At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in
its might.
The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that
it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my
feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had just
surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping
towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole
extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had but just
turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be fancied
when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The boat was
lying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their sleeves
rolled up, and one with a boat-hook, kept her with difficulty to her
moorings, for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little way
off upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be
superior in rank, laid their heads together over some task which at
first I did not understand, but a second after I had made it out--they
were taking bearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them
unroll a sheet of paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying
features in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, poking
among the rocks and peering over the edge into the water. While I was
still watching them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly
yet able to work on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly
stooped and summoned his companions with a cry so loud that it reached
my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even dropping the compass
in their hurry, and I could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from
hand to hand, causing the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and
interest. Just then I could hear the seamen crying from the boat, and
saw them point westward to that cloud continent which was ever the more
rapidly unfurling its blackness over heaven. The others seemed to
consult; but the danger was too pressing to be braved, and they bundled
into the boat, carrying my relics with them, and set forth out of the
bay with all speed of oars.
I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house.
Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly
informed. It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent
of the Jacobites; and maybe Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to
detest, was one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock.
Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely
in my mind, this theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my
reason. The compass, the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and
the conduct of that one among the strangers who had looked so often
below him in the water, all seemed to point to a different explanation
of their presence on that outlying, obscure islet of the western sea.
The Madrid historian, the search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the
bearded stranger with the rings, my own fruitless search that very
morning in the deep water of Sandag Bay, ran together, piece by piece,
in my memory, and I made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in
quest of ancient treasure and the lost ship of the Armada. But the
people living in outlying islands, such as Aros, are answerable for
their own security; there is none near by to protect or even to help
them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew of foreign
adventurers--poor, greedy, and most likely lawless--filled me with
apprehensions for my uncle's money, and even for the safety of his
daughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I
came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowed
over; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last
gleam of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not
heavily, but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and
already a band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of
Grisapol. The boat was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of
what had been hidden from me lower down--a large, heavily sparred,
handsome schooner lying-to at the south end of Aros. Since I had not
seen her in the morning when I had looked around so closely at the signs
of the weather, and upon these lone waters where a sail was rarely
visible, it was clear she must have lain last night behind the
uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she was
manned by strangers to our coast, for that anchorage, though good enough
to look at, is little better than a trap for ships. With such ignorant
sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming gale was not unlikely to bring
death upon its wings.
CHAPTER IV
THE GALE
I found my uncle at the gable-end, watching the signs of the weather,
with a pipe in his fingers.
"Uncle," said I, "there were men ashore at Sandag Bay----"
I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but
even my weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped
his pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his jaw fallen,
his eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We must have
looked at one another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he made
answer in this extraordinary fashion: "Had he a hair kep on?"
I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried at
Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come shore alive. For the
first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my benefactor
and the father of the woman I hoped to call my wife.
"These were living men," said I, "perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the French,
perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers come here to seek the Spanish
treasure-ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to your
daughter and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the dead
sleeps well where you have laid him. I stood this morning by his grave;
he will not wake before the trump of doom."
My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed his
eyes for a little on the ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly; but
it was plain that he was past the power of speech.
"Come," said I. "You must think for others. You must come up the hill
with me and see this ship."
He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatient
strides. The spring seemed to have gone out of his body, and he
scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was
wont, from one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to
make better haste. Only once he replied to me complainingly, and like
one in bodily pain: "Ay, ay, man, I'm coming." Long before we had
reached the top I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crime
had been monstrous, the punishment was in proportion.
At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and could see around
us. All was black and stormy to the eye; the last gleam of sun had
vanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to
the point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short as was the
interval, the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood there
last; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, and
already it moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at first, in
vain for the schooner.
"There she is," I said at last. But her new position, and the course she
was now lying, puzzled me. "They cannot mean to beat to sea," I cried.
"That's what they mean," said my uncle, with something like joy; and
just then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which put
the question beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a gale
on hand, had thought first of sea-room. With the wind that threatened,
in these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent a stream of
tide, their course was certain death.
"Good God!" said I, "they are all lost."
"Ay," returned my uncle, "a'--a' lost. They hadna a chance but to rin
for Kyle Dona. The gate they're gaun the noo, they couldna win through
an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man," he continued,
touching me on the sleeve, "it's a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in ae
twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men'll dance bonny!"
I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in
his right mind. He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy
in his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten in the
prospect of this fresh disaster.
"If it were not too late," I cried with indignation, "I would take the
coble and go out to warn them."
"Na, na," he protested, "ye maunna interfere; ye maunna meddle wi' the
like o' that. It's His"--doffing his bonnet--"His wull. And, eh, man!
but it's a braw nicht for't!"
Something like fear began to creep into my soul; and, reminding him that
I had not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house. But no;
nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.
"I maun see the hail thing, man Charlie," he explained; and then as the
schooner went about a second time, "Eh, but they han'le her bonny!" he
cried. "The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this."
Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some
part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their
doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen
how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as
they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to
boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker
would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown
reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you,
they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle man aboard that
ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any
human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a
connoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly
on the summit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the
heather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.
When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still more
sadly downcast at the sight of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up over
her strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock from the
dresser and sat down to eat it in silence.
"Are ye wearied, lad?" she asked after a while.
"I am not so much wearied, Mary," I replied, getting on my feet, "as I
am weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too. You know me well enough to
judge me fairly, say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:
you had better be anywhere but here."
"I'll be sure of one thing," she returned: "I'll be where my duty is."
"You forget, you have a duty to yourself," I said.
"Ay, man," she replied, pounding at the dough; "will you have found that
in the Bible, now?"
"Mary," I said solemnly, "you must not laugh at me just now. God knows I
am in no heart for laughing. If we could get your father with us, it
would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from
here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your
father's too, I want you far--far away from here. I came with other
thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I
have no desire nor hope but to flee--for that's the word--flee, like a
bird out of the fowler's snare, from this accursed island."
She had stopped her work by this time.
"And do you think, now," said she, "do you think, now, I have neither
eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havena broken my heart to have these braws
(as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye think I
have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw in an
hour or two? No," she said, "I know there's wrong in it; what wrong, I
neither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing made better
by meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me to
leave my father. While the breath is in his body, I'll be with him. And
he's not long for here, either: that I can tell you, Charlie--he's not
long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better so--maybe better so."
I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my head
at last to speak, she got before me.
"Charlie," she said, "what's right for me needna be right for you.
There's sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take your
things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better
folk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty
years syne, you would find me aye waiting."
"Mary Ellen," I said, "I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good
as yes. That's done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer
to my God."
As I said the words the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then seemed
to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was the first
squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and looked
about us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening, had
settled round the house.
"God pity all poor folks at sea!" she said. "We'll see no more of my
father till the morrow's morning."
And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the rising
gusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle. All last winter he
had been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or,
as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out for
hours together on the Head, if it were night, or on the top of Aros by
day, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a
sail. After February the 10th, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast
ashore at Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his
excitement had never fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from
dark to darker. He neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two
would speak together by the hour at the gable-end, in guarded tones and
with an air of secrecy, and almost of guilt; and if she questioned
either, as at first she sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside with
confusion. Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung about the
ferry, his master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of the
Ross. That once--it was in the height of the springs--he had passed
dry-shod while the tide was out; but, having lingered overlong on the
far side, found himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It
was with a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut, and he had
reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A fear of the sea, a
constant haunting thought of the sea, appeared in his talk and
devotions, and even in his looks when he was silent.
Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared,
took a bottle under his arm, put some bread in his pocket, and set forth
again to his outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that the
schooner was losing ground, but the crew was still fighting every inch
with hopeless ingenuity and courage; and the news filled my mind with
blackness.
A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a
gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had
come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking
overhead, the tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering
with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the
schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and
yet ever and again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind
would rise and strike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly fall and
draw away, so that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in
our sides. Now the storm in its might would seize and shake the four
corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon, in a lull,
cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting the hair
upon our heads and passing between us as we sat. And again the wind
would break forth in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in the
chimney, wailing with flutelike softness round the house.
It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in and pulled me
mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared, had frightened even his
constant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me to
come out and share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the more
readily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension of the
night, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I told Mary to be
under no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father; and wrapping
myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open air.
The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as
January. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utter
blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in
the flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man's
nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; and
when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts
dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross the
wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows
the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of
mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of
Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs
and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the
combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly
varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear
the changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the
Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the
name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost
mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not
mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed
even human. As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and,
discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my
ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night.
Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard
of ground with conscious effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we fell
together sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and
breathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the
house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was
my uncle's favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the
cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes
a place of shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet
and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might
look down from the window of a house upon some street disturbance, so,
from this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men. On
such a night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the
waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of
an explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an
eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury,
height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not
recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in
the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone.
Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust
took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet
the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its
force. Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar; a gleeful
vacancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness; and I
found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a
tune upon a jigging instrument.
I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in
one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch darkness
of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head thrown
back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw and
recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.
"Has he been drinking?" shouted I to Rorie.
"He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws," returned Rorie in the same
high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.
"Then--was he so--in February?" I inquired.
Rorie's "Ay" was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprung
in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be
condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you
will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene
for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had
chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful
pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in the
roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of waters, the
man's head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of
death, his ear watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that, if it
were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man like my uncle,
whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest
superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight of shelter
and could breathe again, I saw the man's eyes shining in the night with
an unholy glimmer.
"Eh, Charlie man, it's grand!" he cried. "See to them!" he continued,
dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening
clamour and those clouds of spray; "see to them dancin', man! Is that no
wicked?"
He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the
scene.
"They're yowlin' for thon schooner," he went on, his thin, insane voice
clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, "an' she's comin' aye
nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer; an' they ken't,
the folk kens it, they ken weel it's by wi' them. Charlie lad, they're
a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi' drink. They were a' drunk in
the _Christ-Anna_, at the hinder end. There's nane could droon at sea
wantin' the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?" with a sudden blast of
anger. "I tell ye, it canna be; they daurna droon without it. Hae,"
holding out the bottle, "tak' a sowp."
I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and indeed
I had already thought better of the movement. I took the bottle,
therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill even
more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled me to
swallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more throwing
back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with a loud
laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap
up, shouting to receive it.
"Hae, bairns!" he cried, "there's your hansel. Ye'll get bonnier nor
that or morning."
Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards
away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of
a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and
the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we had
heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship
now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her
master issuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we
waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long,
however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly
appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering
foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell
heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and
still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the
tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than lightning;
the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever; the mingled
cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was quenched in the
roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was at an end. The
strong ship, with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in
the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely to others, dear, at
least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that one moment, gone down
into the surging waters. They were gone like a dream. And the wind still
ran and shouted, and the senseless waters in the Roost still leaped and
tumbled as before.
How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is
more than I can tell, but it must have been for long. At length, one by
one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the
bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely
master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an
altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin
iteration, "Sic a fecht as they had--sic a sair fecht as they had, puir
lads, puir lads!" and anon he would bewail that "a' the gear was as
gude's tint," because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead
of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name--the
_Christ-Anna_--would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with
shuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an
hour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or
caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have fallen
asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed, day
had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in
faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its
lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros
remained to witness of the furies of the night.
CHAPTER V
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my
uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part
of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but
tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a
child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the
rocks; on the beaches he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest
broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured
at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps,
expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of
the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to
support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him to draw his
pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave; a nurse
accompanying a child of seven would have had no different experience.
Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night
before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a
strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment,
was still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he
could not have shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his
foot slipped and he plunged to the mid-leg into a pool of water, the
shriek that came up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat
still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for
the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more
he tottered among the curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks
among the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set
on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire.
Pleased as he was with what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at
his ill-fortune.
"Aros," he said, "is no' a place for wrecks ava'--no' ava'. A' the years
I've dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o' the gear
clean tint!"
"Uncle," said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there
was nothing to divert his mind, "I saw you last night, as I never
thought to see you--you were drunk."
"Na, na," he said, "no' as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. And
to tell ye the God's truth, it's a thing I canna mend. There's nae
soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my
lug, it's my belief that I gang gyte."
"You are a religious man," I replied, "and this is sin."
"Ou," he returned, "if it wasna sin, I dinna ken that I would care
for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance. There's a sair spang o' the auld sin
o' the world in yon sea; it's an unchristian business at the best o't;
an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreighs--the wind an' her are
a kind of sib, I'm thinkin'--an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants,
blawin' and lauchin', and puir souls in the deid-thraws warstlin' the
leelang nicht wi' their bit ships--weel, it comes ower me like a
glamour. I'm a deil, I ken't. But I think naething o' the puir sailor
lads; I'm wi' the sea, I'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men."
I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned me
towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with their
manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach,
towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand.
Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the
sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the
assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands, that,
with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.
"Thus far shalt thou go," said I, "and no farther." And then I quoted as
solemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted to the
chorus of the breakers:--
But yet the Lord, that is on high,
Is more of might by far
Than noise of many waters is,
Or great sea-billows are.
"Ay," said my kinsman, "at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; I
dinna misdoobt that. But here on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him to
His face. It is no' wise; I am no sayin' that it's wise; but it's the
pride of the eye, and it's the lust o' life, an' it's the wale o'
pleesures."
I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that lay
between us and Sandag; and I withheld my last appeal to the man's better
reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime. Nor
did he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step.
The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant, and I
could see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in a
profound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought. In three or four
minutes we had topped the brae and began to go down upon Sandag. The
wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun round
and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced a
little higher, for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach.
When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick
rain, and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him.
"A man," said I, "was in God's providence suffered to escape from mortal
dangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a
stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may
be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may be
he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the beginning of
torment. I ask you in the sight of Heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the
man for whom Christ died?"
He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his
face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.
"You were my father's brother," I continued; "you have taught me to
count your house as if it were my father's house; and we are both sinful
men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life. It
is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by
His temptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the
brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by
this crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and
if there shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no return to Him,
what can we look for but the following of some memorable judgment?"
Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face. A
change fell upon his looks that cannot be described; his features seemed
to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand rose
waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the
oft-repeated name fell once more from his lips: "The _Christ-Anna_!"
I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I return
thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was still startled by the
sight that met my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the
cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared to
be scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to
its full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and sky.
I have said a thousand times that
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