Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (234 page)

“Doubtless a proud position for your father’s son,” says I.

He wagged his bald eyebrows at me.  “You are pleased to make experiments in the ironical, I think,” said he.  “But I am here upon duty, I am here to discharge my errand in good faith, it is in vain you think to divert me.  And let me tell you, for a young fellow of spirit and ambition like yourself, a good shove in the beginning will do more than ten years’ drudgery.  The shove is now at your command; choose what you will to be advanced in, the Duke will watch upon you with the affectionate disposition of a father.”

“I am thinking that I lack the docility of the son,” says I.

“And do you really suppose, sir, that the whole policy of this country is to be suffered to trip up and tumble down for an ill-mannered colt of a boy?” he cried.  “This has been made a test case, all who would prosper in the future must put a shoulder to the wheel.  Look at me!  Do you suppose it is for my pleasure that I put myself in the highly invidious position of persecuting a man that I have drawn the sword alongside of?  The choice is not left me.”

“But I think, sir, that you forfeited your choice when you mixed in with that unnatural rebellion,” I remarked.  “My case is happily otherwise; I am a true man, and can look either the Duke or King George in the face without concern.”

“Is it so the wind sits?” says he.  “I protest you are fallen in the worst sort of error.  Prestongrange has been hitherto so civil (he tells me) as not to combat your allegations; but you must not think they are not looked upon with strong suspicion.  You say you are innocent.  My dear sir, the facts declare you guilty.”

“I was waiting for you there,” said I.

“The evidence of Mungo Campbell; your flight after the completion of the murder; your long course of secresy - my good young man!” said Mr. Simon, “here is enough evidence to hang a bullock, let be a David Balfour!  I shall be upon that trial; my voice shall be raised; I shall then speak much otherwise from what I do to-day, and far less to your gratification, little as you like it now!  Ah, you look white!” cries he.  “I have found the key of your impudent heart.  You look pale, your eyes waver, Mr. David!  You see the grave and the gallows nearer by than you had fancied.”

“I own to a natural weakness,” said I.  “I think no shame for that.  Shame. . .”  I was going on.

“Shame waits for you on the gibbet,” he broke in.

“Where I shall but be even’d with my lord your father,” said I.

“Aha, but not so!” he cried, “and you do not yet see to the bottom of this business.  My father suffered in a great cause, and for dealing in the affairs of kings.  You are to hang for a dirty murder about boddle-pieces.  Your personal part in it, the treacherous one of holding the poor wretch in talk, your accomplices a pack of ragged Highland gillies.  And it can be shown, my great Mr. Balfour - it can be shown, and it will be shown, trust me that has a finger in the pie - it can be shown, and shall be shown, that you were paid to do it.  I think I can see the looks go round the court when I adduce my evidence, and it shall appear that you, a young man of education, let yourself be corrupted to this shocking act for a suit of cast clothes, a bottle of Highland spirits, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in copper money.”

There was a touch of the truth in these words that knocked me like a blow: clothes, a bottle of usquebaugh, and three-and-fivepence-halfpenny in change made up, indeed, the most of what Alan and I had carried from Auchurn; and I saw that some of James’s people had been blabbing in their dungeons.

“You see I know more than you fancied,” he resumed in triumph.  “And as for giving it this turn, great Mr. David, you must not suppose the Government of Great Britain and Ireland will ever be stuck for want of evidence.  We have men here in prison who will swear out their lives as we direct them; as I direct, if you prefer the phrase.  So now you are to guess your part of glory if you choose to die.  On the one hand, life, wine, women, and a duke to be your handgun: on the other, a rope to your craig, and a gibbet to clatter your bones on, and the lousiest, lowest story to hand down to your namesakes in the future that was ever told about a hired assassin.  And see here!” he cried, with a formidable shrill voice, “see this paper that I pull out of my pocket.  Look at the name there: it is the name of the great David, I believe, the ink scarce dry yet.  Can you guess its nature?  It is the warrant for your arrest, which I have but to touch this bell beside me to have executed on the spot.  Once in the Tolbooth upon this paper, may God help you, for the die is cast!”

I must never deny that I was greatly horrified by so much baseness, and much unmanned by the immediacy and ugliness of my danger.  Mr. Simon had already gloried in the changes of my hue; I make no doubt I was now no ruddier than my shirt; my speech besides trembled.

“There is a gentleman in this room,” cried I.  “I appeal to him.  I put my life and credit in his hands.”

Prestongrange shut his book with a snap.  “I told you so, Simon,” said he; “you have played your hand for all it was worth, and you have lost.  Mr. David,” he went on, “I wish you to believe it was by no choice of mine you were subjected to this proof.  I wish you could understand how glad I am you should come forth from it with so much credit.  You may not quite see how, but it is a little of a service to myself.  For had our friend here been more successful than I was last night, it might have appeared that he was a better judge of men than I; it might have appeared we were altogether in the wrong situations, Mr. Simon and myself.  And I know our friend Simon to be ambitious,” says he, striking lightly on Fraser’s shoulder.  “As for this stage play, it is over; my sentiments are very much engaged in your behalf; and whatever issue we can find to this unfortunate affair, I shall make it my business to see it is adopted with tenderness to you.”

These were very good words, and I could see besides that there was little love, and perhaps a spice of genuine ill-will, between these two who were opposed to me.  For all that, it was unmistakable this interview had been designed, perhaps rehearsed, with the consent of both; it was plain my adversaries were in earnest to try me by all methods; and now (persuasion, flattery, and menaces having been tried in vain) I could not but wonder what would be their next expedient.  My eyes besides were still troubled, and my knees loose under me, with the distress of the late ordeal; and I could do no more than stammer the same form of words: “I put my life and credit in your hands.”

“Well, well,” said he, “we must try to save them.  And in the meanwhile let us return to gentler methods.  You must not bear any grudge upon my friend, Mr. Simon, who did but speak by his brief.  And even if you did conceive some malice against myself, who stood by and seemed rather to hold a candle, I must not let that extend to innocent members of my family.  These are greatly engaged to see more of you, and I cannot consent to have my young womenfolk disappointed.  To-morrow they will be going to Hope Park, where I think it very proper you should make your bow.  Call for me first, when I may possibly have something for your private hearing; then you shall be turned abroad again under the conduct of my misses; and until that time repeat to me your promise of secrecy.”

I had done better to have instantly refused, but in truth I was beside the power of reasoning; did as I was bid; took my leave I know not how; and when I was forth again in the close, and the door had shut behind me, was glad to lean on a house wall and wipe my face.  That horrid apparition (as I may call it) of Mr. Simon rang in my memory, as a sudden noise rings after it is over in the ear.  Tales of the man’s father, of his falseness, of his manifold perpetual treacheries, rose before me from all that I had heard and read, and joined on with what I had just experienced of himself.  Each time it occurred to me, the ingenious foulness of that calumny he had proposed to nail upon my character startled me afresh.  The case of the man upon the gibbet by Leith Walk appeared scarce distinguishable from that I was now to consider as my own.  To rob a child of so little more than nothing was certainly a paltry enterprise for two grown men; but my own tale, as it was to be represented in a court by Simon Fraser, appeared a fair second in every possible point of view of sordidness and cowardice.

The voices of two of Prestongrange’s liveried men upon his doorstep recalled me to myself.

“Ha’e,” said the one, “this billet as fast as ye can link to the captain.”

“Is that for the cateran back again?” asked the other.

“It would seem sae,” returned the first.  “Him and Simon are seeking him.”

“I think Prestongrange is gane gyte,” says the second.  “He’ll have James More in bed with him next.”

“Weel, it’s neither your affair nor mine’s,” said the first.

And they parted, the one upon his errand, and the other back into the house.

This looked as ill as possible.  I was scarce gone and they were sending already for James More, to whom I thought Mr. Simon must have pointed when he spoke of men in prison and ready to redeem their lives by all extremities.  My scalp curdled among my hair, and the next moment the blood leaped in me to remember Catriona.  Poor lass! her father stood to be hanged for pretty indefensible misconduct.  What was yet more unpalatable, it now seemed he was prepared to save his four quarters by the worst of shame and the most foul of cowardly murders - murder by the false oath; and to complete our misfortunes, it seemed myself was picked out to be the victim.

I began to walk swiftly and at random, conscious only of a desire for movement, air, and the open country.

CHAPTER VII - I MAKE A FAULT IN HONOUR

I came forth, I vow I know not how, on the Lang Dykes .  This is a rural road which runs on the north side over against the city.  Thence I could see the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle stands upon its crags above the loch in a long line of spires and gable ends, and smoking chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my bosom.  My youth, as I have told, was already inured to dangers; but such danger as I had seen the face of but that morning, in the midst of what they call the safety of a town, shook me beyond experience.  Peril of slavery, peril of shipwreck, peril of sword and shot, I had stood all of these without discredit; but the peril there was in the sharp voice and the fat face of Simon, property Lord Lovat, daunted me wholly.

I sat by the lake side in a place where the rushes went down into the water, and there steeped my wrists and laved my temples.  If I could have done so with any remains of self-esteem, I would now have fled from my foolhardy enterprise.  But (call it courage or cowardice, and I believe it was both the one and the other) I decided I was ventured out beyond the possibility of a retreat.  I had out-faced these men, I would continue to out-face them; come what might, I would stand by the word spoken.

The sense of my own constancy somewhat uplifted my spirits, but not much.  At the best of it there was an icy place about my heart, and life seemed a black business to be at all engaged in.  For two souls in particular my pity flowed.  The one was myself, to be so friendless and lost among dangers.  The other was the girl, the daughter of James More.  I had seen but little of her; yet my view was taken and my judgment made.  I thought her a lass of a clean honour, like a man’s; I thought her one to die of a disgrace; and now I believed her father to be at that moment bargaining his vile life for mine.  It made a bond in my thoughts betwixt the girl and me.  I had seen her before only as a wayside appearance, though one that pleased me strangely; I saw her now in a sudden nearness of relation, as the daughter of my blood foe, and I might say, my murderer.  I reflected it was hard I should be so plagued and persecuted all my days for other folks’ affairs, and have no manner of pleasure myself.  I got meals and a bed to sleep in when my concerns would suffer it; beyond that my wealth was of no help to me.  If I was to hang, my days were like to be short; if I was not to hang but to escape out of this trouble, they might yet seem long to me ere I was done with them.  Of a sudden her face appeared in my memory, the way I had first seen it, with the parted lips; at that, weakness came in my bosom and strength into my legs; and I set resolutely forward on the way to Dean.  If I was to hang to-morrow, and it was sure enough I might very likely sleep that night in a dungeon, I determined I should hear and speak once more with Catriona.

The exercise of walking and the thought of my destination braced me yet more, so that I began to pluck up a kind of spirit.  In the village of Dean, where it sits in the bottom of a glen beside the river, I inquired my way of a miller’s man, who sent me up the hill upon the farther side by a plain path, and so to a decent-like small house in a garden of lawns and apple-trees.  My heart beat high as I stepped inside the garden hedge, but it fell low indeed when I came face to face with a grim and fierce old lady, walking there in a white mutch with a man’s hat strapped upon the top of it.

“What do ye come seeking here?” she asked.

I told her I was after Miss Drummond.

“And what may be your business with Miss Drummond?” says she.

I told her I had met her on Saturday last, had been so fortunate as to render her a trifling service, and was come now on the young lady’s invitation.

“O, so you’re Saxpence!” she cried, with a very sneering manner.  “A braw gift, a bonny gentleman.  And hae ye ony ither name and designation, or were ye bapteesed Saxpence?” she asked.

I told my name.

“Preserve me!” she cried.  “Has Ebenezer gotten a son?”

“No, ma’am,” said I.  “I am a son of Alexander’s.  It’s I that am the Laird of Shaws.”

“Ye’ll find your work cut out for ye to establish that,” quoth she.

“I perceive you know my uncle,” said I; “and I daresay you may be the better pleased to hear that business is arranged.”

“And what brings ye here after Miss Drummond?” she pursued.

“I’m come after my saxpence, mem,” said I.  “It’s to be thought, being my uncle’s nephew, I would be found a careful lad.”