Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (295 page)

All this while, however, there was a more poisonous ferment at work between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface, but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the first.  To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was attractive.  It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to a child; and it took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar, and before they had been tried and found wanting, he flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration.  They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand.  And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord.  It was on the occasion of Archie’s first absence that this interest took root.  It was vastly deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast, and that same afternoon there occurred another scene which clinched the business.  He was fishing Swingleburn, Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked at his watch.

“Well, good-bye,” said he.  “I have something to do.  See you at dinner.”

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” cries Frank.  “Hold on till I get my rod up.  I’ll go with you; I’m sick of flogging this ditch.”

And he began to reel up his line.

Archie stood speechless.  He took a long while to recover his wits under this direct attack; but by the time he was ready with his answer, and the angle was almost packed up, he had become completely Weir, and the hanging face gloomed on his young shoulders.  He spoke with a laboured composure, a laboured kindness even; but a child could see that his mind was made up.

“I beg your pardon, Innes; I don’t want to be disagreeable, but let us understand one another from the beginning.  When I want your company, I’ll let you know.”

“O!” cries Frank, “you don’t want my company, don’t you?”

“Apparently not just now,” replied Archie.  “I even indicated to you when I did, if you’ll remember — and that was at dinner.  If we two fellows are to live together pleasantly — and I see no reason why we should not — it can only be by respecting each other’s privacy.  If we begin intruding — ”

“O, come!  I’ll take this at no man’s hands.  Is this the way you treat a guest and an old friend?” cried Innes.

“Just go home and think over what I said by yourself,” continued Archie, “whether it’s reasonable, or whether it’s really offensive or not; and let’s meet at dinner as though nothing had happened, I’ll put it this way, if you like — that I know my own character, that I’m looking forward (with great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit from you, and that I’m taking precautions at the first.  I see the thing that we — that I, if you like — might fall out upon, and I step in and
obsto principiis
.  I wager you five pounds you’ll end by seeing that I mean friendliness, and I assure you, Francie, I do,” he added, relenting.

Bursting with anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side.  Archie watched him go without moving.  He was sorry, but quite unashamed.  He hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father’s son.  He had a strong sense that his house was his own and no man else’s; and to lie at a guest’s mercy was what he refused.  He hated to seem harsh.  But that was Frank’s lookout.  If Frank had been commonly discreet, he would have been decently courteous.  And there was another consideration.  The secret he was protecting was not his own merely; it was hers: it belonged to that inexpressible she who was fast taking possession of his soul, and whom he would soon have defended at the cost of burning cities.  By the time he had watched Frank as far as the Swingleburn-foot, appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the distance into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to smile at the occurrence.  Either Frank would go, and that would be a relief — or he would continue to stay, and his host must continue to endure him.  And Archie was now free — by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns — to make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for his coming by the Covenanter’s stone.

Innes went off down-hill in a passion of resentment, easy to be understood, but which yielded progressively to the needs of his situation.  He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted, unfriendly, rude, rude dog; and himself still more passionately for a fool in having come to Hermiston when he might have sought refuge in almost any other house in Scotland.  But the step once taken, was practically irretrievable.  He had no more ready money to go anywhere else; he would have to borrow from Archie the next club-night; and ill as he thought of his host’s manners, he was sure of his practical generosity.  Frank’s resemblance to Talleyrand strikes me as imaginary; but at least not Talleyrand himself could have more obediently taken his lesson from the facts.  He met Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with cordiality.  You must take your friends as you find them, he would have said.  Archie couldn’t help being his father’s son, or his grandfather’s, the hypothetical weaver’s, grandson.  The son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart, incapable of true generosity and consideration; but he had other qualities with which Frank could divert himself in the meanwhile, and to enjoy which it was necessary that Frank should keep his temper.

So excellently was it controlled that he awoke next morning with his head full of a different, though a cognate subject.  What was Archie’s little game?  Why did he shun Frank’s company?  What was he keeping secret?  Was he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a woman?  It would be a good joke and a fair revenge to discover.  To that task he set himself with a great deal of patience, which might have surprised his friends, for he had been always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to another, he at last succeeded in piecing out the situation.  First he remarked that, although Archie set out in all the directions of the compass, he always came home again from some point between the south and west.  From the study of a map, and in consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf.  But it was difficult to advance farther.  With his rod for a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements.  He would have tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land precluded the idea.  He did the next best, ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and pursued his movements with a telescope.  It was equally in vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance, left the telescope at home, and had almost given the matter up in despair, when, on the twenty-seventh day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the person whom he sought.  The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid for that public place.  On the two following, Frank had himself been absent on some of his excursions among the neighbouring families.  It was not until the fourth, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on the enchantress.  With the first look, all hesitation was over.  She came with the Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap.  Here was Archie’s secret, here was the woman, and more than that — though I have need here of every manageable attenuation of language — with the first look, he had already entered himself as rival.  It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration: the devil may decide the proportions!  I cannot, and it is very likely that Frank could not.

“Mighty attractive milkmaid,” he observed, on the way home.

“Who?” said Archie.

“O, the girl you’re looking at — aren’t you?  Forward there on the road.  She came attended by the rustic bard; presumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted family.  The single objection! for the four black brothers are awkward customers.  If anything were to go wrong, Gib would gibber, and Clem would prove inclement; and Dand fly in danders, and Hob blow up in gobbets.  It would be a Helliott of a business!”

“Very humorous, I am sure,” said Archie.

“Well, I am trying to be so,” said Frank.  “It’s none too easy in this place, and with your solemn society, my dear fellow.  But confess that the milkmaid has found favour in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a man of taste.”

“It is no matter,” returned Archie.

But the other continued to look at him, steadily and quizzically, and his colour slowly rose and deepened under the glance, until not impudence itself could have denied that he was blushing.  And at this Archie lost some of his control.  He changed his stick from one hand to the other, and — ”O, for God’s sake, don’t be an ass!” he cried.

“Ass?  That’s the retort delicate without doubt,” says Frank.  “Beware of the homespun brothers, dear.  If they come into the dance, you’ll see who’s an ass.  Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty when the subject’s touched on — ”

“You are touching on it now,” interrupted Archie with a wince.

“Thank you.  That was all I wanted, an articulate confession,” said Frank.

“I beg to remind you — ” began Archie.

But he was interrupted in turn.  “My dear fellow, don’t.  It’s quite needless.  The subject’s dead and buried.”

And Frank began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing.  But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject.  When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking “Cauldstaneslap ways.”  Frank took his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast of Kirstie, and later in the evening he returned to the charge again.

“I say, Weir, you’ll excuse me for returning again to this affair.  I’ve been thinking it over, and I wish to beg you very seriously to be more careful.  It’s not a safe business.  Not safe, my boy,” said he.

“What?” said Archie.

“Well, it’s your own fault if I must put a name on the thing; but really, as a friend, I cannot stand by and see you rushing head down into these dangers.  My dear boy,” said he, holding up a warning cigar, “consider!  What is to be the end of it?”

“The end of what?” — Archie, helpless with irritation, persisted in this dangerous and ungracious guard.

“Well, the end of the milkmaid; or, to speak more by the card, the end of Miss Christina Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap.”

“I assure you,” Archie broke out, “this is all a figment of your imagination.  There is nothing to be said against that young lady; you have no right to introduce her name into the conversation.”

“I’ll make a note of it,” said Frank.  “She shall henceforth be nameless, nameless, nameless, Grigalach!  I make a note besides of your valuable testimony to her character.  I only want to look at this thing as a man of the world.  Admitted she’s an angel — but, my good fellow, is she a lady?”

This was torture to Archie.  “I beg your pardon,” he said, struggling to be composed, “but because you have wormed yourself into my confidence — ”

“O, come!” cried Frank.  “Your confidence?  It was rosy but unconsenting.  Your confidence, indeed?  Now, look!  This is what I must say, Weir, for it concerns your safety and good character, and therefore my honour as your friend.  You say I wormed myself into your confidence.  Wormed is good.  But what have I done?  I have put two and two together, just as the parish will be doing tomorrow, and the whole of Tweeddale in two weeks, and the black brothers — well, I won’t put a date on that; it will be a dark and stormy morning!  Your secret, in other words, is poor Poll’s.  And I want to ask of you as a friend whether you like the prospect?  There are two horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself I should look mighty ruefully on either.  Do you see yourself explaining to the four Black Brothers? or do you see yourself presenting the milkmaid to papa as the future lady of Hermiston?  Do you?  I tell you plainly, I don’t!”

Archie rose.  “I will hear no more of this,” he said, in a trembling voice.

But Frank again held up his cigar.  “Tell me one thing first.  Tell me if this is not a friend’s part that I am playing?”

“I believe you think it so,” replied Archle.  “I can go as far as that.  I can do so much justice to your motives.  But I will hear no more of it.  I am going to bed.”

“That’s right, Weir,” said Frank heartily.  “Go to bed and think over it; and I say, man, don’t forget your prayers!  I don’t often do the moral — don’t go in for that sort of thing — but when I do there’s one thing sure, that I mean it.”

So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank sat alone by the table for another hour or so, smiling to himself richly.  There was nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if revenge came in his way, it might as well be good, and the thought of Archie’s pillow reflections that night was indescribably sweet to him.  He felt a pleasant sense of power.  He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled — as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure.  Which was it to be?  He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was too idle to pursue.  Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer waned.

CHAPTER VIII — A NOCTURNAL VISIT

Kirstie had many causes of distress.  More and more as we grow old — and yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of age — we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul.  Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the straitened cry of the passion within us; only thus, in the bitter and sensitive shyness of advancing years, can we maintain relations with those vivacious figures of the young that still show before us and tend daily to become no more than the moving wall-paper of life.  Talk is the last link, the last relation.  But with the end of the conversation, when the voice stops and the bright face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls again on the bruised heart.  Kirstie had lost her “cannie hour at e’en”; she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you will, but a happy ghost, in fields Elysian.  And to her it was as if the whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of amusements.  And she raged to know it.  The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within her at times to bursting point.