Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (294 page)

“Damn the Courts!” says Frank.  “What are the Courts to friendship and a little fishing?”

And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the visit but the term which he had privily set to it himself — the day, namely, when his father should have come down with the dust, and he should be able to pacify the bookseller.  On such vague conditions there began for these two young men (who were not even friends) a life of great familiarity and, as the days drew on, less and less intimacy.  They were together at meal times, together o’ nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy; but it might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together by day.  Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank’s escort.  He would be off sometimes in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact; and sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not return for dinner until the hour was long past.  Innes groaned under these desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a solitary breakfast with composure, and all his unaffected good-nature to be able to greet Archie with friendliness on the more rare occasions when he came home late for dinner.

“I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs. Elliott?” said he one morning, after he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table.

“I suppose it will be business, sir,” replied the housekeeper drily, measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsy.

“But I can’t imagine what business!” he reiterated.

“I suppose it will be
his
business,” retorted the austere Kirstie.

He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and natural laughter.

“Well played, Mrs. Elliott!” he cried; and the housekeeper’s face relaxed into the shadow of an iron smile.  “Well played indeed!” said he.  “But you must not be making a stranger of me like that.  Why, Archie and I were at the High School together, and we’ve been to college together, and we were going to the Bar together, when — you know!  Dear, dear me! what a pity that was!  A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as good as buried here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what?  A frolic, silly, if you like, but no more.  God, how good your scones are, Mrs. Elliott!”

“They’re no mines, it was the lassie made them,” said Kirstie; “and, saving your presence, there’s little sense in taking the Lord’s name in vain about idle vivers that you fill your kyte wi’.”

“I daresay you’re perfectly right, ma’am,” quoth the imperturbable Frank.  “But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, like a couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end.  Let me tell you, ma’am, that Archie is really quite a promising young man, and in my opinion he would do well at the Bar.  As for his father, no one can deny his ability, and I don’t fancy any one would care to deny that he has the deil’s own temper — ”

“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me,” said Kirstie, and flounced from the room.

“The damned, cross-grained, old broomstick!” ejaculated Innes.

In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and before her vassal gave vent to her feelings.

“Here, ettercap!  Ye’ll have to wait on yon Innes!  I canna haud myself in.  ‘Puir Erchie!’  I’d ‘puir Erchie’ him, if I had my way!  And Hermiston with the deil’s ain temper!  God, let him take Hermiston’s scones out of his mouth first.  There’s no a hair on ayther o’ the Weirs that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has in his hale dwaibly body!  Settin’ up his snash to me!  Let him gang to the black toon where he’s mebbe wantit — birling in a curricle — wi’ pimatum on his heid — making a mess o’ himsel’ wi’ nesty hizzies — a fair disgrace!”  It was impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie’s graduated disgust, as she brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless charges.  Then she remembered her immediate purpose, and turned again on her fascinated auditor.  “Do ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I’m tellin’ ye?  Will I have to shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress!” And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes’ wants in the front parlour.

Tantaene irae
?  Has the reader perceived the reason?  Since Frank’s coming there were no more hours of gossip over the supper tray!  All his blandishments were in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for Mrs. Elliott’s favour.

But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to be genial.  I must guard the reader against accepting Kirstie’s epithets as evidence; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their accuracy.  Dwaibly, for instance; nothing could be more calumnious.  Frank was the very picture of good looks, good humour, and manly youth.  He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first sight and to improve the impression.  And with all these advantages, he failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with the gardener and the gardener’s sister — a pious, down-hearted woman with a shawl over her ears — he failed equally and flatly.  They did not like him, and they showed it.  The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie’s tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie’s buffets, and she had learned not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides.  Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational.  For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond endurance.  Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians.  But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man.  It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some one else.  He offered you an alliance against the some one else; he flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue against him before you knew how.  Wonderful are the virtues of this process generally; but Frank’s mistake was in the choice of the some one else.  He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of irritation.  Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences.  He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank’s eye; and it was to his immediate dependants that Frank could offer the snare of his sympathy.  Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists.  Of my lord they were vastly proud.  It was a distinction in itself to be one of the vassals of the “Hanging Judge,” and his gross, formidable joviality was far from unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home.  For Archie they had, one and all, a sensitive affection and respect which recoiled from a word of belittlement.

Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield.  To the Four Black Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in the highest degree.  Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane.  Clem, who saw him but for a day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule’s business was, and whether he meant to stay here all session time! “Yon’s a drone,” he pronounced.  As for Dand, it will be enough to describe their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path.

“I’m told you’re quite a poet,” Frank had said.

“Wha tell’t ye that, mannie?” had been the unconciliating answer.

“O, everybody!” says Frank.

“God!  Here’s fame!” said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his way.

Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank’s failures.  Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making.  Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter.  Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is!  He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an empty basket by evening.

In proof of this theory Frank made a great success of it at the Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on his arrival; his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety.  Frank was made welcome there at once, continued to go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as the members ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death.  Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again.  There was another supper at Windiclaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being taken to the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he had been repudiated by the country folk.  He occupied Hermiston after the manner of an invader in a conquered capital.  He was perpetually issuing from it, as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie would not go.  It was now that the name of The Recluse became general for the young man.  Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least, spread it abroad.

“How’s all with your Recluse to-day?” people would ask.

“O, reclusing away!” Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air than his words, “Mind you, it’s all very well laughing, but I’m not very well pleased.  Poor Archie is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked.  I think it small of him to take his little disgrace so hard, and shut himself up.  ‘Grant that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,’ I keep telling him.  ‘Be a man!  Live it down, man!’  But not he.  Of course, it’s just solitude, and shame, and all that.  But I confess I’m beginning to fear the result.  It would be all the pities in the world if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill.  I’m seriously tempted to write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him.”

“I would if I were you,” some of his auditors would say, shaking the head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so deftly indicated by a single word.  “A capital idea!” they would add, and wonder at the
aplomb
and position of this young man, who talked as a matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his private affairs.

And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential: “I’ll give you an idea, now.  He’s actually sore about the way that I’m received and he’s left out in the county — actually jealous and sore.  I’ve rallied him and I’ve reasoned with him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined towards him, told him even that I was received merely because I was his guest.  But it’s no use.  He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he’s left out.  What I’m afraid of is that the wound’s ulcerating.  He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures — a little underhand and plenty of bile — you know the sort.  He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what’s the cant phrase? — sedentary occupation.  It’s precisely the kind of character to go wrong in a false position like what his father’s made for him, or he’s making for himself, whichever you like to call it.  And for my part, I think it a disgrace,” Frank would say generously.

Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disinterested friend took shape.  He began in private, in conversations of two, to talk vaguely of bad habits and low habits.  “I must say I’m afraid he’s going wrong altogether,” he would say.  “I’ll tell you plainly, and between ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer; only, man, I’m positively afraid to leave him alone.  You’ll see, I shall be blamed for it later on.  I’m staying at a great sacrifice.  I’m hindering my chances at the Bar, and I can’t blind my eyes to it.  And what I’m afraid of is that I’m going to get kicked for it all round before all’s done.  You see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays.”

“Well, Innes,” his interlocutor would reply, “it’s very good of you, I must say that.  If there’s any blame going, you’ll always be sure of
my
good word, for one thing.”

“Well,” Frank would continue, “candidly, I don’t say it’s pleasant.  He has a very rough way with him; his father’s son, you know.  I don’t say he’s rude — of course, I couldn’t be expected to stand that — but he steers very near the wind.  No, it’s not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, in conscience I don’t think it would be fair to leave him.  Mind you, I don’t say there’s anything actually wrong.  What I say is that I don’t like the looks of it, man!” and he would press the arm of his momentary confidant.

In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice.  He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself.  He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random.  There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend.  And by thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of the county.  Wherever there was a residential house and a walled garden, wherever there was a dwarfish castle and a park, wherever a quadruple cottage by the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old family going down, and wherever a handsome villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery marked the coming up of a new one — probably on the wheels of machinery — Archie began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery, and the future developments of his career to be looked for with uneasiness and confidential whispering.  He had done something disgraceful, my dear.  What, was not precisely known, and that good kind young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it.  But there it was.  And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he dared not leave him alone.  How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose!  And if a man but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way, and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his evidence is accepted in the court of public opinion!