The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 12

“The light is something in my eyes,” said the Master.

“I will give you every advantage,” replied Mr. Henry, shifting his ground, “for I think you are about to die.” He spoke rather sadly than otherwise, yet there was a ring in his voice.

“Henry Durie,” said the Master, “two words before I begin. You are a fencer, you can hold a foil; you little know what a change it makes to hold a sword! And by that I know you are to fall. But see how strong is my situation! If you fall, I shift out of this country to where my money is before me. If I fall, where are you? My father, your wife – who is in love with me, as you very well know – your child even, who prefers me to yourself: – how will these avenge me! Had you thought of that, dear Henry?” He looked at his brother with a smile; then made a fencing-room salute.

Never a word said Mr. Henry, but saluted too, and the swords rang together.

I am no judge of the play; my head, besides, was gone with cold and fear and horror; but it seems that Mr. Henry took and kept the upper hand from the engagement, crowding in upon his foe with a contained and glowing fury. Nearer and nearer he crept upon the man, till of a sudden the Master leaped back with a little sobbing oath; and I believe the movement brought the light once more against his eyes. To it they went again, on the fresh ground; but now methought closer, Mr. Henry pressing more outrageously, the Master beyond doubt with shaken confidence. For it is beyond doubt he now recognised himself for lost, and had some taste of the cold agony of fear; or he had never attempted the foul stroke. I cannot say I followed it, my untrained eye was never quick enough to seize details, but it appears he caught his brother’s blade with his left hand, a practice not permitted. Certainly Mr. Henry only saved himself by leaping on one side; as certainly the Master, lungeing in the air, stumbled on his knee, and before he could move, the sword was through his body.

I cried out with a stifled scream, and ran in; but the body was already fallen to the ground, where it writhed a moment like a trodden worm, and then lay motionless.

“Look at his left hand,” said Mr. Henry.

“It is all bloody,” said I.

“On the inside?” said he.

“It is cut on the inside,” said I.

“I thought so,” said he, and turned his back.

I opened the man’s clothes; the heart was quite still, it gave not a flutter.

“God forgive us, Mr. Henry!” said I. “He is dead.”

“Dead?” he repeated, a little stupidly; and then, with a rising tone, “Dead? dead?” says he, and suddenly cast his bloody sword upon the ground.

“What must we do?” said I. “Be yourself, sir. It is too late now: you must be yourself.”

He turned and stared at me. “O, Mackellar!” says he, and put his face in his hands.

I plucked him by the coat. “For God’s sake, for all our sakes, be more courageous!” said I. “What must we do?”

He showed me his face with the same stupid stare. “Do?” says he. And with that his eye fell on the body, and “O!” he cries out, with his hand to his brow, as if he had never remembered; and, turning from me, made off towards the house of Durrisdeer at a strange stumbling run.

I stood a moment mused; then it seemed to me my duty lay most plain on the side of the living; and I ran after him, leaving the candles on the frosty ground and the body lying in their light under the trees. But run as I pleased, he had the start of me, and was got into the house, and up to the hall, where I found him standing before the fire with his face once more in his hands, and as he so stood he visibly shuddered.

“Mr. Henry, Mr. Henry,” I said, “this will be the ruin of us all.”

“What is this that I have done?” cries he, and then looking upon me with a countenance that I shall never forget, “Who is to tell the old man?” he said.

The word knocked at my heart; but it was no time for weakness. I went and poured him out a glass of brandy. “Drink that,” said I, “drink it down.” I forced him to swallow it like a child; and, being still perished with the cold of the night, I followed his example.

“It has to be told, Mackellar,” said he. “It must be told.” And he fell suddenly in a seat – my old lord’s seat by the chimney-side – and was shaken with dry sobs.

Dismay came upon my soul; it was plain there was no help in Mr. Henry. “Well,” said I, “sit there, and leave all to me.” And taking a candle in my hand, I set forth out of the room in the dark house. There was no movement; I must suppose that all had gone unobserved; and I was now to consider how to smuggle through the rest with the like secrecy. It was no hour for scruples; and I opened my lady’s door without so much as a knock, and passed boldly in.

“There is some calamity happened,” she cried, sitting up in bed.

“Madam,” said I, “I will go forth again into the passage; and do you get as quickly as you can into your clothes. There is much to be done.”

She troubled me with no questions, nor did she keep me waiting. Ere I had time to prepare a word of that which I must say to her, she was on the threshold signing me to enter.

“Madam,” said I, “if you cannot be very brave, I must go elsewhere; for if no one helps me to-night, there is an end of the house of Durrisdeer.”

“I am very courageous,” said she; and she looked at me with a sort of smile, very painful to see, but very brave too.

“It has come to a duel,” said I.

“A duel?” she repeated. “A duel! Henry and – ”

“And the Master,” said I. “Things have been borne so long, things of which you know nothing, which you would not believe if I should tell. But to-night it went too far, and when he insulted you – ”

“Stop,” said she. “He? Who?”

“O! madam,” cried I, my bitterness breaking forth, “do you ask me such a question? Indeed, then, I may go elsewhere for help; there is none here!”

“I do not know in what I have offended you,” said she. “Forgive me; put me out of this suspense.”

But I dared not tell her yet; I felt not sure of her; and at the doubt, and under the sense of impotence it brought with it, I turned on the poor woman with something near to anger.

“Madam,” said I, “we are speaking of two men: one of them insulted you, and you ask me which. I will help you to the answer. With one of these men you have spent all your hours: has the other reproached you? To one you have been always kind; to the other, as God sees me and judges between us two, I think not always: has his love ever failed you? To-night one of these two men told the other, in my hearing – the hearing of a hired stranger, – that you were in love with him. Before I say one word, you shall answer your own question: Which was it? Nay, madam, you shall answer me another: If it has come to this dreadful end, whose fault is it?”

She stared at me like one dazzled. “Good God!” she said once, in a kind of bursting exclamation; and then a second time in a whisper to herself: “Great God! – In the name of mercy, Mackellar, what is wrong?” she cried. “I am made up; I can hear all.”

“You are not fit to hear,” said I. “Whatever it was, you shall say first it was your fault.”

“O!” she cried, with a gesture of wringing her hands, “this man will drive me mad! Can you not put me out of your thoughts?”

“I think not once of you,” I cried. “I think of none but my dear unhappy master.”

“Ah!” she cried, with her hand to her heart, “is Henry dead?”

“Lower your voice,” said I. “The other.”

I saw her sway like something stricken by the wind; and I know not whether in cowardice or misery, turned aside and looked upon the floor. “These are dreadful tidings,” said I at length, when her silence began to put me in some fear; “and you and I behove to be the more bold if the house is to be saved.” Still she answered nothing. “There is Miss Katharine, besides,” I added: “unless we bring this matter through, her inheritance is like to be of shame.”

I do not know if it was the thought of her child or the naked word shame that gave her deliverance; at least I had no sooner spoken than a sound passed her lips, the like of it I never heard; it was as though she had lain buried under a hill and sought to move that burthen. And the next moment she had found a sort of voice.

“It was a fight,” she whispered. “It was not – ?” and she paused upon the word.

“It was a fair fight on my dear master’s part,” said I. “As for the other, he was slain in the very act of a foul stroke.”

“Not now!” she cried.

“Madam,” said I, “hatred of that man glows in my bosom like a burning fire; ay, even now he is dead. God knows, I would have stopped the fighting, had I dared. It is my shame I did not. But when I saw him fall, if I could have spared one thought from pitying of my master, it had been to exult in that deliverance.”

I do not know if she marked; but her next words were, “My lord?”

“That shall be my part,” said I.

“You will not speak to him as you have to me?” she asked.

“Madam,” said I, “have you not some one else to think of? Leave my lord to me.”

“Some one else?” she repeated.

“Your husband,” said I. She looked at me with a countenance illegible. “Are you going to turn your back on him?” I asked.

Still she looked at me; then her hand went to her heart again. “No,” said she.

“God bless you for that word!” I said. “Go to him now, where he sits in the hall; speak to him – it matters not what you say; give him your hand; say, ‘I know all’; – if God gives you grace enough, say, ‘Forgive me.’”

“God strengthen you, and make you merciful,” said she. “I will go to my husband.”

“Let me light you there,” said I, taking up the candle.

“I will find my way in the dark,” she said, with a shudder, and I think the shudder was at me.

So we separated – she downstairs to where a little light glimmered in the hall-door, I along the passage to my lord’s room. It seems hard to say why, but I could not burst in on the old man as I could on the young woman; with whatever reluctance, I must knock. But his old slumbers were light, or perhaps he slept not; and at the first summons I was bidden enter.

He, too, sat up in bed; very aged and bloodless he looked; and whereas he had a certain largeness of appearance when dressed for daylight, he now seemed frail and little, and his face (the wig being laid aside) not bigger than a child’s. This daunted me; nor less, the haggard surmise of misfortune in his eye. Yet his voice was even peaceful as he inquired my errand. I set my candle down upon a chair, leaned on the bed-foot, and looked at him.

“Lord Durrisdeer,” said I, “it is very well known to you that I am a partisan in your family.”

“I hope we are none of us partisans,” said he. “That you love my son sincerely, I have always been glad to recognise.”

“O! my lord, we are past the hour of these civilities,” I replied. “If we are to save anything out of the fire, we must look the fact in its bare countenance. A partisan I am; partisans we have all been; it is as a partisan that I am here in the middle of the night to plead before you. Hear me; before I go, I will tell you why.”

“I would always hear you, Mr. Mackellar,” said he, “and that at any hour, whether of the day or night, for I would be always sure you had a reason. You spoke once before to very proper purpose; I have not forgotten that.”

“I am here to plead the cause of my master,” I said. “I need not tell you how he acts. You know how he is placed. You know with what generosity he has always met your other – met your wishes,” I corrected myself, stumbling at that name of son. “You know – you must know – what he has suffered – what he has suffered about his wife.”

“Mr. Mackellar!” cried my lord, rising in bed like a bearded lion.

“You said you would hear me,” I continued. “What you do not know, what you should know, one of the things I am here to speak of, is the persecution he must bear in private. Your back is not turned before one whom I dare not name to you falls upon him with the most unfeeling taunts; twits him – pardon me, my lord – twits him with your partiality, calls him Jacob, calls him clown, pursues him with ungenerous raillery, not to be borne by man. And let but one of you appear, instantly he changes; and my master must smile and courtesy to the man who has been feeding him with insults; I know, for I have shared in some of it, and I tell you the life is insupportable. All these months it has endured; it began with the man’s landing; it was by the name of Jacob that my master was greeted the first night.”

My lord made a movement as if to throw aside the clothes and rise. “If there be any truth in this – ” said he.

“Do I look like a man lying?” I interrupted, checking him with my hand.

“You should have told me at first,” he said.

“Ah, my lord! indeed I should, and you may well hate the face of this unfaithful servant!” I cried.

“I will take order,” said he, “at once,” and again made the movement to rise.

Again I checked him. “I have not done,” said I. “Would God I had! All this my dear, unfortunate patron has endured without help or countenance. Your own best word, my lord, was only gratitude. O, but he was your son too! He had no other father. He was hated in the country, God knows how unjustly. He had a loveless marriage. He stood on all hands without affection or support – dear, generous, ill-fated, noble heart!”

“Your tears do you much honour and me much shame,” says my lord, with a palsied trembling. “But you do me some injustice. Henry has been ever dear to me, very dear. James (I do not deny it, Mr. Mackellar), James is perhaps dearer; you have not seen my James in quite a favourable light; he has suffered under his misfortunes; and we can only remember how great and how unmerited these were. And even now his is the more affectionate nature. But I will not speak of him. All that you say of Henry is most true; I do not wonder, I know him to be very magnanimous; you will say I trade upon the knowledge? It is possible; there are dangerous virtues: virtues that tempt the encroacher. Mr. Mackellar, I will make it up to him; I will take order with all this. I have been weak; and, what is worse, I have been dull.”

“I must not hear you blame yourself, my lord, with that which I have yet to tell upon my conscience,” I replied. “You have not been weak; you have been abused by a devilish dissembler. You saw yourself how he had deceived you in the matter of his danger; he has deceived you throughout in every step of his career. I wish to pluck him from your heart; I wish to force your eyes upon your other son; ah, you have a son there!”

“No, no,” said he, “two sons – I have two sons.”

I made some gesture of despair that struck him; he looked at me with a changed face. “There is much worse behind?” he asked, his voice dying as it rose upon the question.

“Much worse,” I answered. “This night he said these words to Mr. Henry: ‘I have never known a woman who did not prefer me to you, and I think who did not continue to prefer me.’”

“I will hear nothing against my daughter,” he cried; and from his readiness to stop me in this direction, I conclude his eyes were not so dull as I had fancied, and he had looked not without anxiety upon the siege of Mrs. Henry.

“I think not of blaming her,” cried I. “It is not that. These words were said in my hearing to Mr. Henry; and if you find them not yet plain enough, these others but a little after: ‘Your wife, who is in love with me.’”

“They have quarrelled?” he said.

I nodded.

“I must fly to them,” he said, beginning once again to leave his bed.

“No, no!” I cried, holding forth my hands.

“You do not know,” said he. “These are dangerous words.”

“Will nothing make you understand, my lord?” said I.

His eyes besought me for the truth.

I flung myself on my knees by the bedside. “O, my lord,” cried I, “think on him you have left; think of this poor sinner whom you begot, whom your wife bore to you, whom we have none of us strengthened as we could; think of him, not of yourself; he is the other sufferer – think of him! That is the door for sorrow – Christ’s door, God’s door: O! it stands open. Think of him, even as he thought of you. ‘Who is to tell the old man?’ – these were his words. It was for that I came; that is why I am here pleading at your feet.”

“Let me get up,” he cried, thrusting me aside, and was on his feet before myself. His voice shook like a sail in the wind, yet he spoke with a good loudness; his face was like the snow, but his eyes were steady and dry. “Here is too much speech,” said he. “Where was it?”

“In the shrubbery,” said I.

“And Mr. Henry?” he asked. And when I had told him he knotted his old face in thought.

“And Mr. James?” says he.

“I have left him lying,” said I, “beside the candles.”

“Candles?” he cried. And with that he ran to the window, opened it, and looked abroad. “It might be spied from the road.”

“Where none goes by at such an hour,” I objected.

“It makes no matter,” he said. “One might. Hark!” cries he. “What is that?”

It was the sound of men very guardedly rowing in the bay; and I told him so.

“The free-traders,” said my lord. “Run at once, Mackellar; put these candles out. I will dress in the meanwhile; and when you return we can debate on what is wisest.”

I groped my way downstairs, and out at the door. From quite a far way off a sheen was visible, making points of brightness in the shrubbery; in so black a night it might have been remarked for miles; and I blamed myself bitterly for my incaution. How much more sharply when I reached the place! One of the candlesticks was overthrown, and that taper quenched. The other burned steadily by itself, and made a broad space of light upon the frosted ground. All within that circle seemed, by the force of contrast and the overhanging blackness, brighter than by day. And there was the blood-stain in the midst; and a little farther off Mr. Henry’s sword, the pommel of which was of silver; but of the body, not a trace. My heart thumped upon my ribs, the hair stirred upon my scalp, as I stood there staring – so strange was the sight, so dire the fears it wakened. I looked right and left; the ground was so hard, it told no story. I stood and listened till my ears ached, but the night was hollow about me like an empty church; not even a ripple stirred upon the shore; it seemed you might have heard a pin drop in the county.

I put the candle out, and the blackness fell about me groping dark; it was like a crowd surrounding me; and I went back to the house of Durrisdeer, with my chin upon my shoulder, startling, as I went, with craven suppositions. In the door a figure moved to meet me, and I had near screamed with terror ere I recognised Mrs. Henry.

“Have you told him?” says she.

“It was he who sent me,” said I. “It is gone. – But why are you here?”

“It is gone!” she repeated. “What is gone?”

“The body,” said I. “Why are you not with your husband?”

“Gone?” said she. “You cannot have looked. Come back.”

“There is no light now,” said I. “I dare not.”

“I can see in the dark. I have been standing here so long – so long,” said she. “Come, give me your hand.”

We returned to the shrubbery hand in hand, and to the fatal place.

“Take care of the blood,” said I.

“Blood?” she cried, and started violently back.

“I suppose it will be,” said I. “I am like a blind man.”

“No,” said she, “nothing! Have you not dreamed?”

“Ah, would to God we had!” cried I.

She spied the sword, picked it up, and seeing the blood, let it fall again with her hands thrown wide. “Ah!” she cried, and then, with an instant courage, handled it the second time, and thrust it to the hilt into the frozen ground. “I will take it back and clean it properly,” says she, and again looked about her on all sides. “It cannot be that he was dead?” she added.

“There was no flutter of his heart,” said I, and then remembering: “Why are you not with your husband?”

“It is no use,” said she; “he will not speak to me.”

“Not speak to you?” I repeated. “Oh! you have not tried.”

“You have a right to doubt me,” she replied, with a gentle dignity.

At this, for the first time, I was seized with sorrow for her. “God knows, madam,” I cried, “God knows I am not so hard as I appear; on this dreadful night who can veneer his words? But I am a friend to all who are not Henry Durie’s enemies.”

“It is hard, then, you should hesitate about his wife,” said she.

I saw all at once, like the rending of a veil, how nobly she had borne this unnatural calamity, and how generously my reproaches.

“We must go back and tell this to my lord,” said I.

“Him I cannot face,” she cried.

“You will find him the least moved of all of us,” said I.

“And yet I cannot face him,” said she.

“Well,” said I, “you can return to Mr. Henry; I will see my lord.”

As we walked back, I bearing the candlesticks, she the sword – a strange burthen for that woman – she had another thought. “Should we tell Henry?” she asked.

“Let my lord decide,” said I.

My lord was nearly dressed when I came to his chamber. He heard me with a frown. “The free-traders,” said he. “But whether dead or alive?”

“I thought him – ” said I, and paused, ashamed of the word.

“I know; but you may very well have been in error. Why should they remove him if not living?” he asked. “O! here is a great door of hope. It must be given out that he departed – as he came – without any note of preparation. We must save all scandal.”

I saw he had fallen, like the rest of us, to think mainly of the house. Now that all the living members of the family were plunged in irremediable sorrow, it was strange how we turned to that conjoint abstraction of the family itself, and sought to bolster up the airy nothing of its reputation: not the Duries only, but the hired steward himself.

“Are we to tell Mr. Henry?” I asked him.

“I will see,” said he. “I am going first to visit him; then I go forth with you to view the shrubbery and consider.”

We went downstairs into the hall. Mr. Henry sat by the table with his head upon his hand, like a man of stone. His wife stood a little back from him, her hand at her mouth; it was plain she could not move him. My old lord walked very steadily to where his son was sitting; he had a steady countenance, too, but methought a little cold. When he was come quite up, he held out both his hands and said, “My son!”

With a broken, strangled cry, Mr. Henry leaped up and fell on his father’s neck, crying and weeping, the most pitiful sight that ever a man witnessed. “O! father,” he cried, “you know I loved him; you know I loved him in the beginning; I could have died for him – you know that! I would have given my life for him and you. O! say you know that. O! say you can forgive me. O, father, father, what have I done – what have I done? And we used to be bairns together!” and wept and sobbed, and fondled the old man, and clutched him about the neck, with a passion of a child in terror.

And then he caught sight of his wife (you would have thought for the first time), where she stood weeping to hear him, and in a moment had fallen at her knees. “And O my lass,” he cried, “you must forgive me, too! Not your husband – I have only been the ruin of your life. But you knew me when I was a lad; there was no harm in Henry Durie then; he meant aye to be a friend to you. It’s him – it’s the old bairn that played with you – O, can ye never, never forgive him?”

Throughout all this my lord was like a cold, kind spectator with his wits about him. At the first cry, which was indeed enough to call the house about us, he had said to me over his shoulder, “Close the door.” And now he nodded to himself.

“We may leave him to his wife now,” says he. “Bring a light, Mr. Mackellar.”

Upon my going forth again with my lord, I was aware of a strange phenomenon; for though it was quite dark, and the night not yet old, methought I smelt the morning. At the same time there went a tossing through the branches of the evergreens, so that they sounded like a quiet sea, and the air puffed at times against our faces, and the flame of the candle shook. We made the more speed, I believe, being surrounded by this bustle; visited the scene of the duel, where my lord looked upon the blood with stoicism; and passing farther on toward the landing-place, came at last upon some evidences of the truth. For, first of all, where was a pool across the path, the ice had been trodden in, plainly by more than one man’s weight; next, and but a little farther, a young tree was broken, and down by the landing-place, where the traders’ boats were usually beached, another stain of blood marked where the body must have been infallibly set down to rest the bearers.