The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 19

And he continued to hold out his hand.

“I don’t see the good of any such tomfoolery,” said the other.

“I do, though,” returned Huish. “Gimme your ’and and say the words; then you’ll ’ear my view of it. Don’t, and you don’t.”

The captain went through the required form, breathing short, and gazing on the clerk with anguish. What to fear he knew not, yet he feared slavishly what was to fall from the pale lips.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me ’alf a second,” said Huish, “I’ll go and fetch the byby.”

“The baby?” said Davis. “What’s that?”

“Fragile. With care. This side up,” replied the clerk with a wink, as he disappeared.

He returned, smiling to himself, and carrying in his hand a silk handkerchief. The long stupid wrinkles ran up Davis’s brow as he saw it. What should it contain? He could think of nothing more recondite than a revolver.

Huish resumed his seat.

“Now,” said he, “are you man enough to take charge of ’Errick and the niggers? Because I’ll take care of Hattwater.”

“How?” cried Davis. “You can’t!”

“Tut, tut!” said the clerk. “You gimme time. Wot’s the first point? The first point is that we can’t get ashore, and I’ll make you a present of that for a ’ard one. But ’ow about a flag of truce? Would that do the trick, d’ye think? or would Attwater simply blyze aw’y at us in the bloomin’ boat like dawgs?”

“No,” said Davis, “I don’t believe he would.”

“No more do I,” said Huish; “I don’t believe he would either; and I’m sure I ’ope he won’t! So then you can call us ashore. Next point is to get near the managin’ direction. And for that I’m going to ’ave you write a letter, in w’ich you s’y you’re ashymed to meet his eye, and that the bearer, Mr. J. L. ’Uish, is empowered to represent you. Armed with w’ich seemin’ly simple expedient, Mr. J. L. ’Uish will proceed to business.”

He paused, like one who had finished, but still held Davis with his eye.

“How?” said Davis. “Why?”

“Well, you see, you’re big,” returned Huish; “’e knows you ’ave a gun in your pocket, and anybody can see with ’alf an eye that you ain’t the man to ‘esitate about usin’ it. So it’s no go with you, and never was; you’re out of the runnin’, Dyvis. But he won’t be afryde of me, I’m such a little ’un! I’m unarmed—no kid about that—and I’ll hold my ’ands up right enough.” He paused. “If I can manage to sneak up nearer to him as we talk,” he resumed, “you look out and back me up smart. If I don’t, we go aw’y again, and nothink to ’urt. See?”

The captain’s face was contorted by the frenzied effort to comprehend.

“No, I don’t see,” he cried; “I can’t see. What do you mean?”

“I mean to do for the beast!” cried Huish, in a burst of venomous triumph. “I’ll bring the ‘ulkin’ bully to grass. He’s ’ad his larks out of me; I’m goin’ to ’ave my lark out of ’im, and a good lark too!”

“What is it?” said the captain, almost in a whisper.

“Sure you want to know?” asked Huish.

Davis rose and took a turn in the house.

“Yes, I want to know,” he said at last with an effort.

“W’en your back’s at the wall, you do the best you can, don’t you?” began the clerk. “I s’y that, because I ’appen to know there’s a prejudice against it; it’s considered vulgar, awf’ly vulgar.” He unrolled the handkerchief and showed a four-ounce jar. “This ’ere’s vitriol, this is,” said he.

The captain stared upon him with a whitening face.

“This is the stuff!” he pursued, holding it up. “This’ll burn to the bone; you’ll see it smoke upon ’im like ’ell-fire! One drop upon ’is bloomin’ heyesight, and I’ll trouble you for Attwater!”

“No, no, by God!” exclaimed the captain.

“Now, see ’ere, ducky,” said Huish, “this is my bean-feast, I believe? I’m goin’ up to that man single-’anded, I am. ’E’s about seven foot high, and I’m five foot one. ’E’s a rifle in his ’and, ’e’s on the look-out, ’e wasn’t born yesterday. This is Dyvid and Goliar, I tell you! If I’d ast you to walk up and face the music I could understand. But I don’t. I on’y ast you to stand by and spifflicate the niggers. It’ll all come in quite natural; you’ll see, else! Fust thing, you know, you’ll see him running round and ’owling like a good ’un....”

“Don’t!” said Davis. “Don’t talk of it!”

“Well, you are a juggins!” exclaimed Huish. “What did you want? You wanted to kill him, and tried to last night. You wanted to kill the ’ole lot of them, and tried to, and ’ere I show you ’ow; and because there’s some medicine in a bottle you kick up this fuss!”

“I suppose that’s so,” said Davis. “It don’t seem someways reasonable, only there it is.”

“It’s the happlication of science, I suppose?” sneered Huish.

“I don’t know what it is,” cried Davis, pacing the floor; “it’s there! I draw the line at it. I can’t put a finger to no such piggishness. It’s too damned hateful!”

“And I suppose it’s all your fancy pynted it,” said Huish, “w’en you take a pistol and a bit o’ lead, and copse a man’s brains all over him? No accountin’ for tystes.”

“I’m not denying it,” said Davis; “it’s something here, inside of me. It’s foolishness; I daresay it’s dam foolishness. I don’t argue; I just draw the line. Isn’t there no other way?”

“Look for yourself,” said Huish. “I ain’t wedded to this, if you think I am; I ain’t ambitious; I don’t make a point of playin’ the lead; I offer to, that’s all, and if you can’t show me better, by Gawd, I’m goin’ to!”

“Then the risk!” cried Davis.

“If you ast me straight, I should say it was a case of seven to one, and no takers,” said Huish. “But that’s my look-out, ducky, and I’m gyme. Look at me, Dyvis, there ain’t any shilly-shally about me. I’m gyme, that’s wot I am: gyme all through.”

The captain looked at him. Huish sat there preening his sinister vanity, glorying in his precedency in evil; and the villainous courage and readiness of the creature shone out of him like a candle from a lantern. Dismay and a kind of respect seized hold on Davis in his own despite. Until that moment he had seen the clerk always hanging back, always listless, uninterested, and openly grumbling at a word of anything to do; and now, by the touch of an enchanter’s wand, he beheld him sitting girt and resolved, and his face radiant. He had raised the devil, he thought; and asked who was to control him, and his spirits quailed.

“Look as long as you like,” Huish was going on. “You don’t see any green in my eye! I ain’t afryde of Attwater, I ain’t afryde of you, and I ain’t afryde of words. You want to kill people, that’s wot you want; but you want to do it in kid gloves, and it can’t be done that w’y. Murder ain’t genteel, it ain’t easy, it ain’t safe, and it tykes a man to do it. ’Ere’s the man.”

“Huish!” began the captain with energy; and then stopped, and remained staring at him with corrugated brows.

“Well, hout with it!” said Huish. “’Ave you anythink else to put up? Is there any other chanst to try?”

The captain held his peace.

“There you are then!” said Huish, with a shrug.

Davis fell again to his pacing.

“O, you may do sentry-go till you’re blue in the mug, you won’t find anythink else,” said Huish.

There was a little silence; the captain, like a man launched on a swing, flying dizzily among extremes of conjecture and refusal.

“But see,” he said, suddenly pausing. “Can you? Can the thing be done? It—it can’t be easy.”

“If I get within twenty foot of ’im it’ll be done; so you look out,” said Huish, and his tone of certainty was absolute.

“How can you know that?” broke from the captain in a choked cry. “You beast, I believe you’ve done it before!”

“O, that’s private affyres,” returned Huish; “I ain’t a talking man.”

A shock of repulsion struck and shook the captain; a scream rose almost to his lips; had he uttered it, he might have cast himself at the same moment on the body of Huish, might have picked him up, and flung him down, and wiped the cabin with him, in a frenzy of cruelty that seemed half moral. But the moment passed; and the abortive crisis left the man weaker. The stakes were so high—the pearls on the one hand—starvation and shame on the other. Ten years of pearls! the imagination of Davis translated them into a new, glorified existence for himself and his family. The seat of this new life must be in London; there were deadly reasons against Portland, Maine; and the pictures that came to him were of English manners. He saw his boys marching in the procession of a school, with gowns on, an usher marshalling them and reading as he walked in a great book. He was installed in a villa, semi-detached; the name, “Rosemore,” on the gateposts. In a chair on the gravel walk he seemed to sit smoking a cigar, a blue ribbon in his buttonhole, victor over himself and circumstances and the malignity of bankers. He saw the parlour, with red curtains, and shells on the mantelpiece—and, with the fine inconsistency of visions, mixed a grog at the mahogany table ere he turned in. With that the Farallone gave one of the aimless and nameless movements which (even in an anchored ship, and even in the most profound calm) remind one of the mobility of fluids; and he was back again under the cover of the house, the fierce daylight besieging it all round and glaring in the chinks, and the clerk in a rather airy attitude, awaiting his decision.

He began to walk again. He aspired after the realisation of these dreams, like a horse nickering for water; the lust of them burned in his inside. And the only obstacle was Attwater, who had insulted him from the first. He gave Herrick a full share of the pearls, he insisted on it; Huish opposed him, and he trod the opposition down; and praised himself exceedingly. He was not going to use vitriol himself; was he Huish’s keeper? It was a pity he had asked, but after all! ... he saw the boys again in the school procession, with the gowns he had thought to be so “tony” long since.... And at the same time the incomparable shame of the last evening blazed up in his mind.

“Have it your own way!” he said hoarsely.

“O, I knew you would walk up,” said Huish. “Now for the letter. There’s paper, pens, and ink. Sit down and I’ll dictyte.”

The captain took a seat and the pen, looked a while helplessly at the paper, then at Huish. The swing had gone the other way; there was a blur upon his eyes. “It’s a dreadful business,” he said, with a strong twitch of his shoulders.

“It’s rather a start, no doubt,” said Huish. “Tyke a dip of ink. That’s it. William John Hattwater, Esq. Sir:” he dictated.

“How do you know his name is William John?” asked Davis.

“Saw it on a packing-case,” said Huish. “Got that?”

“No,” said Davis. “But there’s another thing. What are we to write?”

“O my golly!” cried the exasperated Huish. “Wot kind of man do you call yourself? I’m goin’ to tell you wot to write; that’s my pitch; if you’ll just be so bloomin’ condescendin’ as to write it down! William John Attwater, Esq., Sir:” he reiterated. And, the captain at last beginning half mechanically to move his pen, the dictation proceeded: “It is with feelings of shyme and ’artfelt contrition that I approach you after the yumiliatin’ events of last night. Our Mr. ’Errick has left the ship, and will have doubtless communicated to you the nature of our ’opes. Needless to s’y, these are no longer possible: Fate ’as declyred against us, and we bow the ’ead. Well awyre as I am of the just suspicions with w’ich I am regarded, I do not venture to solicit the fyvour of an interview for myself, but in order to put an end to a situytion w’ich must be equally pyneful to all, I ’ave deputed my friend and partner, Mr. J. L. Huish, to l’y before you my proposals, and w’ich by their moderytion, will, I trust, be found to merit your attention. Mr. J. L. Huish is entirely unarmed, I swear to Gawd! and will ’old ’is ’ands over ’is ’ead from the moment he begins to approach you. I am your fytheful servant, John Dyvis.”

Huish read the letter with the innocent joy of amateurs, chuckled gustfully to himself, and reopened it more than once after it was folded, to repeat the pleasure, Davis meanwhile sitting inert and heavily frowning.

Of a sudden he rose; he seemed all abroad. “No!” he cried. “No! it can’t be! It’s too much; it’s damnation. God would never forgive it.”

“Well, and ’oo wants Him to?” returned Huish, shrill with fury. “You were damned years ago for the Sea Rynger, and said so yourself. Well then, be damned for something else, and ’old your tongue.”

The captain looked at him mistily. “No,” he pleaded, “no, old man! don’t do it.”

“’Ere now,” said Huish, “I’ll give you my ultimytum. Go or st’y w’ere you are; I don’t mind; I’m goin’ to see that man and chuck this vitriol in his eyes. If you st’y I’ll go alone; the niggers will likely knock me on the ’ead, and a fat lot you’ll be the better! But there’s one thing sure: I’ll ’ear no more of your moonin’ mullygrubbin’ rot, and tyke it stryte.”

The captain took it with a blink and a gulp. Memory, with phantom voices, repeated in his ears something similar, something he had once said to Herrick—years ago it seemed.

“Now, gimme over your pistol,” said Huish. “I ’ave to see all clear. Six shots, and mind you don’t wyste them.”

The captain, like a man in a nightmare, laid down his revolver on the table, and Huish wiped the cartridges and oiled the works.

It was close on noon, there was no breath of wind, and the heat was scarce bearable, when the two men came on deck, had the boat manned, and passed down, one after another, into the stern-sheets. A white shirt at the end of an oar served as flag of truce; and the men, by direction, and to give it the better chance to be observed, pulled with extreme slowness. The isle shook before them like a place incandescent; on the face of the lagoon blinding copper suns, no bigger than sixpences, danced and stabbed them in the eyeballs: there went up from sand and sea, and even from the boat, a glare of scathing brightness; and as they could only peer abroad from between closed lashes, the excess of light seemed to be changed into a sinister darkness, comparable to that of a thundercloud before it bursts.

The captain had come upon this errand for any one of a dozen reasons, the last of which was desire for its success. Superstition rules all men; semi-ignorant and gross natures, like that of Davis, it rules utterly. For murder he had been prepared; but this horror of the medicine in the bottle went beyond him, and he seemed to himself to be parting the last strands that united him to God. The boat carried him on to reprobation, to damnation; and he suffered himself to be carried passively consenting, silently bidding farewell to his better self and his hopes.

Huish sat by his side in towering spirits that were not wholly genuine. Perhaps as brave a man as ever lived, brave as a weasel, he must still reassure himself with the tones of his own voice; he must play his part to exaggeration, he must out-Herod Herod, insult all that was respectable, and brave all that was formidable, in a kind of desperate wager with himself.

“Golly, but it’s ’ot!” said he. “Cruel ’ot, I call it. Nice d’y to get your gruel in! I s’y, you know, it must feel awf’ly peculiar to get bowled over on a d’y like this. I’d rather ’ave it on a cowld and frosty morning, wouldn’t you? (Singing) ‘’Ere we go round the mulberry bush on a cowld and frosty mornin’.’ (Spoken) Give you my word, I ’aven’t thought o’ that in ten year; used to sing it at a hinfant school in ’Ackney, ’Ackney Wick it was. (Singing) ‘This is the way the tyler does, the tyler does.’ (Spoken) Bloomin’ ’umbug.—’Ow are you off now, for the notion of a future styte? Do you cotton to the tea-fight views, or the old red-’ot bogey business?”

“O, dry up!” said the captain.

“No, but I want to know,” said Huish. “It’s within the sp’ere of practical politics for you and me, my boy; we may both be bowled over, one up, t’other down, within the next ten minutes. It would be rather a lark, now, if you only skipped across, came up smilin’ t’other side, and a hangel met you with a B. and S. under his wing. ’Ullo, you’d s’y: come, I tyke this kind.”

The captain groaned. While Huish was thus airing and exercising his bravado, the man at his side was actually engaged in prayer. Prayer, what for? God knows. But out of his inconsistent, illogical, and agitated spirit, a stream of supplication was poured forth, inarticulate as himself, earnest as death and judgment.

“Thou Gawd seest me!” continued Huish. “I remember I had that written in my Bible. I remember the Bible too, all about Abinadab and parties.—Well, Gawd!” apostrophising the meridian, “you’re goin’ to see a rum start presently, I promise you that!”

The captain bounded.

“I’ll have no blasphemy!” he cried, “no blasphemy in my boat.”

“All right, cap’,” said Huish. “Anythink to oblige. Any other topic you would like to sudgest, the ryne-gyge, the lightnin’-rod, Shykespeare, or the musical glasses? ’Ere’s conversation on tap. Put a penny in the slot, and ... ’ullo! ’ere they are!” he cried. “Now or never! is ’e goin’ to shoot?”

And the little man straightened himself into an alert and dashing attitude, and looked steadily at the enemy.

But the captain rose half up in the boat with eyes protruding.

“What’s that?” he cried.

“Wot’s wot?” said Huish.

“Those—blamed things,” said the captain.

And indeed it was something strange. Herrick and Attwater, both armed with Winchesters, had appeared out of the grove behind the figure-head; and to either hand of them, the sun glistened upon two metallic objects, locomotory like men, and occupying in the economy of these creatures the places of heads—only the heads were faceless. To Davis, between wind and water, his mythology appeared to have come alive and Tophet to be vomiting demons. But Huish was not mystified a moment.

“Divers’ ’elmets, you ninny. Can’t you see?” he said.

“So they are,” said Davis, with a gasp. “And why? O, I see, it’s for armour.”

“Wot did I tell you?” said Huish. “Dyvid and Goliar all the w’y and back.”

The two natives (for they it was that were equipped in this unusual panoply of war) spread out to right and left, and at last lay down in the shade, on the extreme flank of the position. Even now that the mystery was explained, Davis was hatefully preoccupied, stared at the flame on their crests, and forgot, and then remembered with a smile, the explanation.

Attwater withdrew again into the grove, and Herrick, with his gun under his arm, came down the pier alone.

About halfway down he halted and hailed the boat.

“What do you want?” he cried.

“I’ll tell that to Mr. Attwater,” replied Huish, stepping briskly on the ladder. “I don’t tell it to you, because you played the trucklin’ sneak. Here’s a letter for him: tyke it, and give it, and be ’anged to you!”

“Davis, is this all right?” said Herrick.

Davis raised his chin, glanced swiftly at Herrick and away again, and held his peace. The glance was charged with some deep emotion, but whether of hatred or of fear, it was beyond Herrick to divine.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll give the letter.” He drew a score with his foot on the boards of the gangway. “Till I bring the answer, don’t move a step past this.”

And he returned to where Attwater leaned against a tree, and gave him the letter. Attwater glanced it through.

“What does that mean?” he asked, passing it to Herrick. “Treachery?”

“O, I suppose so!” said Herrick.

“Well, tell him to come on,” said Attwater. “One isn’t a fatalist for nothing. Tell him to come on and to look out.”

Herrick returned to the figure-head. Half-way down the pier the clerk was waiting, with Davis by his side.

“You are to come along, Huish,” said Herrick. “He bids you to look out—no tricks.”

Huish walked briskly up the pier, and paused face to face with the young man.

“W’ere is ’e?” said he, and to Herrick’s surprise, the low-bred, insignificant face before him flushed suddenly crimson and went white again.

“Right forward,” said Herrick, pointing. “Now, your hands above your head.”

The clerk turned away from him and towards the figure-head, as though he were about to address to it his devotions; he was seen to heave a deep breath; and raised his arms. In common with many men of his unhappy physical endowments, Huish’s hands were disproportionately long and broad, and the palms in particular enormous; a four-ounce jar was nothing in that capacious fist. The next moment he was plodding steadily forward on his mission.

Herrick at first followed. Then a noise in his rear startled him, and he turned about to find Davis already advanced as far as the figure-head. He came, crouching and open-mouthed, as the mesmerised may follow the mesmeriser; all human considerations, and even the care of his own life, swallowed up in one abominable and burning curiosity.

“Halt!” cried Herrick, covering him with his rifle. “Davis, what are you doing, man? You are not to come.”

Davis instinctively paused, and regarded him with a dreadful vacancy of eye.

“Put your back to that figure-head—do you hear me?—and stand fast!” said Herrick.

The captain fetched a breath, stepped back against the figure-head, and instantly redirected his glances after Huish.

There was a hollow place of the sand in that part, and, as it were, a glade among the coco-palms in which the direct noonday sun blazed intolerably. At the far end, in the shadow, the tall figure of Attwater was to be seen leaning on a tree; towards him, with his hands over his head, and his steps smothered in the sand, the clerk painfully waded. The surrounding glare threw out and exaggerated the man’s smallness; it seemed no less perilous an enterprise, this that he was gone upon, than for a whelp to besiege a citadel.

“There, Mr. Whish. That will do,” cried Attwater. “From that distance, and keeping your hands up, like a good boy, you can very well put me in possession of the skipper’s views.”

The interval betwixt them was perhaps forty feet; and Huish measured it with his eye, and breathed a curse. He was already distressed with labouring in the loose sand, and his arms ached bitterly from their unnatural position. In the palm of his right hand the jar was ready; and his heart thrilled, and his voice choked, as he began to speak.

“Mr. Hattwater,” said he, “I don’t know if ever you ’ad a mother....”

“I can set your mind at rest: I had,” returned Attwater; “and henceforth, if I may venture to suggest it, her name need not recur in our communications. I should perhaps tell you that I am not amenable to the pathetic.”

“I am sorry, sir, if I ’ave seemed to tresparse on your private feelin’s,” said the clerk, cringing and stealing a step. “At least, sir, you will never pe’suade me that you are not a perfec’ gentleman; I know a gentleman when I see him; and as such, I ’ave no ’esitation in throwin’ myself on your merciful consideration. It is ’ard lines, no doubt; it’s ’ard lines to have to hown yourself beat; it’s ’ard lines to ’ave to come and beg to you for charity.”

“When, if things had only gone right, the whole place was as good as your own?” suggested Attwater. “I can understand the feeling.”

“You are judging me, Mr. Attwater,” said the clerk, “and God knows how unjustly! Thou Gawd seest me, was the tex’ I ’ad in my Bible, w’ich my father wrote it in with ’is own ’and upon the fly-leaft.”

“I am sorry I have to beg your pardon once more,” said Attwater; “but, do you know, you seem to me to be a trifle nearer, which is entirely outside of our bargain. And I would venture to suggest that you take one—two—three—steps back; and stay there.”

The devil, at this staggering disappointment, looked out of Huish’s face, and Attwater was swift to suspect. He frowned, he stared on the little man, and considered. Why should he be creeping nearer? The next moment his gun was at his shoulder.

“Kindly oblige me by opening your hands. Open your hands wide—let me see the fingers spread, you dog—throw down that thing you’re holding!” he roared, his rage and certitude increasing together.

And then, at almost the same moment, the indomitable Huish decided to throw, and Attwater pulled a trigger. There was scarce the difference of a second between the two resolves, but it was in favour of the man with the rifle; and the jar had not yet left the clerk’s hand, before the ball shattered both. For the twinkling of an eye the wretch was in hell’s agonies, bathed in liquid flames, a screaming bedlamite; and then a second and more merciful bullet stretched him dead.

The whole thing was come and gone in a breath. Before Herrick could turn about, before Davis could complete his cry of horror, the clerk lay in the sand, sprawling and convulsed.

Attwater ran to the body; he stooped and viewed it; he put his finger in the vitriol, and his face whitened and hardened with anger.

Davis had not yet moved; he stood astonished, with his back to the figure-head, his hands clutching it behind him, his body inclined forward from the waist.

Attwater turned deliberately and covered him with his rifle.

“Davis,” he cried, in a voice like a trumpet, “I give you sixty seconds to make your peace with God!”

Davis looked, and his mind awoke. He did not dream of self-defence, he did not reach for his pistol. He drew himself up instead to face death, with a quivering nostril.

“I guess I’ll not trouble the Old Man,” he said; “considering the job I was on, I guess it’s better business to just shut my face.”

Attwater fired; there came a spasmodic movement of the victim, and immediately above the middle of his forehead a black hole marred the whiteness of the figure-head. A dreadful pause; then again the report, and the solid sound and jar of the bullet in the wood; and this time the captain had felt the wind of it along his cheek. A third shot, and he was bleeding from one ear; and along the levelled rifle Attwater smiled like a red Indian.

The cruel game of which he was the puppet was now clear to Davis; three times he had drunk of death, and he must look to drink of it seven times more before he was despatched. He held up his hand.

“Steady!” he cried; “I’ll take your sixty seconds.”

“Good!” said Attwater.

The captain shut his eyes tight like a child: he held his hands up at last with a tragic and ridiculous gesture.

“My God, for Christ’s sake, look after my two kids,” he said; and then, after a pause and a falter, “for Christ’s sake. Amen.”

And he opened his eyes and looked down the rifle with a quivering mouth.

“But don’t keep fooling me long!” he pleaded.

“That’s all your prayer?” asked Attwater, with a singular ring in his voice.

“Guess so,” said Davis.

“So?” said Attwater, resting the butt of his rifle on the ground, “is that done? Is your peace made with Heaven? Because it is with me. Go, and sin no more, sinful father. And remember that whatever you do to others, God shall visit it again a thousandfold upon your innocents.”

The wretched Davis came staggering forward from his place against the figure-head, fell upon his knees, and waved his hands, and fainted.

When he came to himself again, his head was on Attwater’s arm, and close by stood one of the men in diver’s helmets, holding a bucket of water, from which his late executioner now laved his face. The memory of that dreadful passage returned upon him in a clap; again he saw Huish lying dead, again he seemed to himself to totter on the brink of an unplumbed eternity. With trembling hands he seized hold of the man whom he had come to slay; and his voice broke from him like that of a child among the nightmares of fever: “O! isn’t there no mercy? O! what must I do to be saved?”

“Ah!” thought Attwater, “here is the true penitent.”

CHAPTER XII

A TAIL-PIECE

On a very bright, hot, lusty, strongly-blowing noon, a fortnight after the events recorded, and a month since the curtain rose upon this episode, a man might have been spied praying on the sand by the lagoon beach. A point of palm-trees isolated him from the settlement; and from the place where he knelt, the only work of man’s hand that interrupted the expanse was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon. The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island; the nearer palm-trees crashed and whistled in the gusts, those farther off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities; and yet, to any man less absorbed, there must have risen at times over this turmoil of the winds the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement. There all was activity. Attwater, stripped to his trousers, and lending a strong hand of help, was directing and encouraging five Kanakas; from his lively voice, and their more lively efforts, it was to be gathered that some sudden and joyful emergency had set them in this bustle; and the Union Jack floated once more on its staff. But the suppliant on the beach, unconscious of their voices, prayed on with instancy and fervour, and the sound of his voice rose and fell again, and his countenance brightened and was deformed with changing moods of piety and terror.

Before his closed eyes the skiff had been for some time tacking towards the distant and deserted Farallone; and presently the figure of Herrick might have been observed to board her, to pass for a while into the house, thence forward to the forecastle, and at last to plunge into the main hatch. In all these quarters his visit was followed by a coil of smoke; and he had scarce entered his boat again and shoved off, before flames broke forth upon the schooner. They burned gaily; kerosene had not been spared, and the bellows of the Trade incited the conflagration. About half-way on the return voyage, when Herrick looked back, he beheld the Farallone wrapped to the topmasts in leaping arms of fire, and the voluminous smoke pursuing him along the face of the lagoon. In one hour’s time, he computed, the waters would have closed over the stolen ship.

It so chanced that, as his boat flew before the wind with much vivacity, and his eyes were continually busy in the wake, measuring the progress of the flames, he found himself embayed to the northward of the point of palms, and here became aware at the same time of the figure of Davis immersed in his devotion. An exclamation, part of annoyance, part of amusement, broke from him: and he touched the helm and ran the prow upon the beach not twenty feet from the unconscious devotee. Taking the painter in his hand, he landed, and drew near, and stood over him. And still the voluble and incoherent stream of prayer continued unabated. It was not possible for him to overhear the suppliant’s petitions, which he listened to some while in a very mingled mood of humour and pity: and it was only when his own name began to occur and to be conjoined with epithets, that he at last laid his hand on the captain’s shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt the exercise,” said he; “but I want you to look at the Farallone.”

The captain scrambled to his feet, and stood gasping and staring. “Mr. Herrick, don’t startle a man like that!” he said. “I don’t seem someways rightly myself since....” He broke off. “What did you say anyway? O, the Farallone,” and he looked languidly out.

“Yes,” said Herrick. “There she burns! and you may guess from that what the news is.”

“The Trinity Hall, I guess,” said the captain.

“The same,” said Herrick; “sighted half an hour ago, and coming up hand over fist.”

“Well, it don’t amount to a hill of beans,” said the captain, with a sigh.

“O, come, that’s rank ingratitude!” cries Herrick.

“Well,” replied the captain meditatively, “you mayn’t just see the way that I view it in, but I’d ’most rather stay here upon this island. I found peace here, peace in believing. Yes, I guess this island is about good enough for John Davis.”

“I never heard such nonsense!” cried Herrick. “What! with all turning out in your favour the way it does, the Farallone wiped out, the crew disposed of, a sure thing for your wife and family, and you, yourself, Attwater’s spoiled darling and pet penitent!”

“Now, Mr. Herrick, don’t say that,” said the captain gently; “when you know he don’t make no difference between us. But, O! why not be one of us? why not come to Jesus right away, and let’s meet in yon beautiful land? That’s just the one thing wanted; just say, ‘Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!’ and He’ll fold you in His arms. You see, I know! I been a sinner myself!”

WEIR OF HERMISTON

A FRAGMENT

TO MY WIFE

WEIR OF HERMISTON

INTRODUCTORY

In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the heather, and a little by east of it, in the going down of the braeside, a monument with some verses half defaced. It was here that Claverhouse shot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken once again by the report of firearms and the cry of the dying.

The Deil’s Hags was the old name. But the place is now called Francie’s Cairn. For a while it was told that Francie walked. Aggie Hogg met him in the gloaming by the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chattering teeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any one could have believed Robbie) for the space of half a mile with pitiful entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitious decorations speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there and half dug up, survived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of the scattered neighbours. To this day, of winter nights, when the sleet is on the window and the cattle are quiet in the byre, there will be told again, amid the silence of the young and the additions and corrections of the old, the tale of the Justice-Clerk and of his son, young Hermiston, that vanished from men’s knowledge; of the two Kirsties and the four Black Brothers of the Cauldstaneslap; and of Frank Innes, “the young fool advocate,” that came into these moorland parts to find his destiny.

CHAPTER I

LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR

The Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in that part of the country; but his lady wife was known there from a child, as her race had been before her. The old “riding Rutherfords of Hermiston,” of whom she was the last descendant, had been famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill subjects, and ill husbands to their wives, though not their properties. Tales of them were rife for twenty miles about; and their name was even printed in the page of our Scots histories, not always to their credit. One bit the dust at Flodden; one was hanged at his peel door by James the Fifth; another fell dead in a carouse with Tom Dalyell; while a fourth (and that was Jean’s own father) died presiding at a Hell-Fire Club, of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken in Crossmichael at that judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise he had ten going pleas before the Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag on the Kye-skairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long, and dying on a sudden in a bloody flux.

In all these generations, while a male Rutherford was in the saddle with his lads, or brawling in a change-house, there would be always a white-faced wife immured at home in the old peel or the later mansion-house. It seemed this succession of martyrs bided long, but took their vengeance in the end, and that was in the person of the last descendant, Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter of their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly without charm. Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers) came to her maturity depressed, and, as it were, defaced; no blood of life in her, no grasp or gaiety; pious, anxious, tender, tearful, and incompetent.

It was a wonder to many that she had married—seeming so wholly of the stuff that makes old maids. But chance cast her in the path of Adam Weir, then the new Lord Advocate, a recognised, risen man, the conqueror of many obstacles, and thus late in the day beginning to think upon a wife. He was one who looked rather to obedience than beauty, yet it would seem he was struck with her at the first look. “Wha’s she?” he said, turning to his host; and, when he had been told, “Ay,” says he, “she looks menseful. She minds me——”; and then, after a pause (which some have been daring enough to set down to sentimental recollections), “Is she releegious?” he asked, and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir’s accustomed industry, and was long a legend, or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into the drawing-room, walking direct up to the lady, and assailing her with pleasantries to which the embarrassed fair one responded, in what seemed a kind of agony, “Eh, Mr. Weir!” or “O, Mr. Weir!” or “Keep me, Mr. Weir!” On the very eve of their engagement, it was related that one had drawn near to the tender couple, and had overheard the lady cry out, with the tones of one who talked for the sake of talking, “Keep me, Mr. Weir, and what became of him?” and the profound accents of the suitor reply, “Haangit, mem, haangit.” The motives upon either side were much debated. Mr. Weir must have supposed his bride to be somewhat suitable; perhaps he belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women—an opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring ancestors and her litigious father had done well by Jean. There was ready money and there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called upon the Bench. On the side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination of curiosity as to this unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a ploughman and the aplomb of an advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely the ideal, of his sex. And besides, he was an ill man to refuse. A little over forty at the period of his marriage, he looked already older, and to the force of manhood added the senatorial dignity of years; it was, perhaps, with an unreverend awe, but he was awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most experienced and reluctant witness, bowed to his authority—and why not Jeannie Rutherford?

The heresy about foolish women is always punished, I have said, and Lord Hermiston began to pay the penalty at once. His house in George Square was wretchedly ill-guided; nothing answerable to the expense of maintenance but the cellar, which was his own private care. When things went wrong at dinner, as they continually did, my lord would look up the table at his wife: “I think these broth would be better to sweem in than to sup.” Or else to the butler: “Here, M’Killop, awa’ wi’ this Raadical gigot—tak’ it to the French, man, and bring me some puddocks! It seems rather a sore kind of business that I should be all day in Court haanging Radicals, and get nawthing to my denner.” Of course this was but a manner of speaking, and he had never hanged a man for being a Radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful minister, directing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the nature of pleasantry, but it was of a recondite sort; and uttered as they were in his resounding voice, and commented on by that expression which they called in the Parliament House “Hermiston’s hanging face”—they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord’s countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence, unspeakable relief was her portion; if there were complaint, the world was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her sister in the Lord. “O, my dear, this is the most dreidful thing that my lord can never be contented in his own house!” she would begin; and weep and pray with the cook; and then the cook would pray with Mrs. Weir; and the next day’s meal would never be a penny the better—and the next cook (when she came) would be worse, if anything, but just as pious. It was often wondered that Lord Hermiston bore it as he did; indeed, he was a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life—“Here! tak’ it awa’, and bring me a piece of bread and kebbuck!” he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering without disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious disregard. Once only Mrs. Weir had ventured to appeal. He was passing her chair on his way into the study.

“O, Edom!” she wailed, in a voice tragic with tears, and reaching out to him both hands, in one of which she held a sopping pocket-handkerchief.

He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there stole, as he looked, a twinkle of humour.

“Noansense!” he said. “You and your noansense! What do I want with a Christian faim’ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain-boil a potato, if she was a whüre off the streets.” And with these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and shut the door behind him.

Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston, where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird, and an eighteenth cousin of the lady’s, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and colour, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle, not without buffets. Scarce more pious than decency in those days required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking conscience, Mary reposed on Martha’s strength as on a rock. Even Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in a particular regard. There were few with whom he unbent so gladly, few whom he favoured with so many pleasantries. “Kirstie and me maun have our joke,” he would declare, in high good-humour, as he buttered Kirstie’s scones, and she waited at table. A man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, handy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch for my lord’s ears.

Thus, at least, when the family were at Hermiston, not only my lord, but Mrs. Weir too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from the dreadful looking-for of the miscarried dinner, she would mind her seam, read her piety books, and take her walk (which was my lord’s orders), sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child of that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment bloomed again, she breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of power, and froze her with the consciousness of her responsibility. She looked forward, and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play his diverse part on the world’s theatre, caught in her breath and lifted up her courage with a lively effort. It was only with the child that she forgot herself and was at moments natural; yet it was only with the child that she had conceived and managed to pursue a scheme of conduct. Archie was to be a great man and a good; a minister if possible, a saint for certain. She tried to engage his mind upon her favourite books, Rutherford’s “Letters,” Scougal’s “Grace Abounding,” and the like. It was a common practice of hers (and strange to remember now) that she would carry the child to the Deil’s Hags, sit with him on the Praying Weaver’s Stone, and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody-minded, flushed with wine: a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. Persecutor was a word that knocked upon the woman’s heart; it was her highest thought of wickedness, and the mark of it was on her house. Her great-great-grandfather had drawn the sword against the Lord’s anointed on the field of Rullion Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalyell. Nor could she blind herself to this, that had they lived in those old days, Hermiston himself would have been numbered alongside of Bloody Mackenzie and the politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God’s immediate enemies. The sense of this moved her to the more fervour; she had a voice for that name of persecutor that thrilled in the child’s marrow; and when one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord’s travelling carriage, and cried, “Down with the persecutor! down with Hanging Hermiston!” and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation: why had they called papa a persecutor?

“Keep me, my precious!” she exclaimed. “Keep me, my dear! this is poleetical. Ye must never ask me anything poleetical, Erchie. Your faither is a great man, my dear, and it’s no for me or you to be judging him. It would be telling us all, if we behaved ourselves in our several stations the way your faither does in his high office; and let me hear no more of any such disrespectful and undutiful questions! No that you meant to be undutiful, my lamb; your mother kens that—she kens it well, dearie!” And so slid off to safer topics, and left on the mind of the child an obscure but ineradicable sense of something wrong.

Mrs. Weir’s philosophy of life was summed in one expression—tenderness. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and plants had no souls; they were here but for a day, and let their day pass gently! And as for the immortal men, on what black, downward path were many of them wending, and to what a horror of an immortality! “Are not two sparrows,” “Whosoever shall smite thee,” “God sendeth His rain,” “Judge not, that ye be not judged”—these texts made her body of divinity; she put them on in the morning with her clothes and lay down to sleep with them at night; they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her—her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering—glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the mere grass top of a hill, sometimes (and this is her own expression) like a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon the sudden view of it, her hand would tighten on the child’s fingers, her voice rise like a song. “I to the hills!” she would repeat. “And O, Erchie, arena these like the hills of Naphtali?” and her tears would flow.

Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman’s quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child’s pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. The judge was that day in an observant mood, and remarked upon the absent teeth.

“I am afraid Erchie will have been fechting with some of thae blagyard lads,” said Mrs. Weir.

My lord’s voice rang out as it did seldom in the privacy of his own house. “I’ll have nonn of that, sir!” he cried. “Do you hear me?—nonn of that! No son of mine shall be speldering in the glaur with any dirty raibble.”

The anxious mother was grateful for so much support; she had even feared the contrary. And that night when she put the child to bed—“Now, my dear, ye see!” she said, “I told you what your faither would think of it, if he heard ye had fallen into this dreidful sin; and let you and me pray to God that ye may be keepit from the like temptation or stren’thened to resist it!”

The womanly falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long been a stumbling-block to Archie, and with every year of his age the difficulty grew more instant. The man was mostly silent; when he spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a worldly spirit, often in language that the child had been schooled to think coarse, and sometimes with words that he knew to be sins in themselves. Tenderness was the first duty, and my lord was invariably harsh. God was love; the name of my lord (to all who knew him) was fear. In the world, as schematised for Archie by his mother, the place was marked for such a creature. There were some whom it was good to pity and well (though very likely useless) to pray for; they were named reprobates, goats, God’s enemies, brands for the burning; and Archie tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private inference that the Lord Justice-Clerk was the chief of sinners.

The mother’s honesty was scarce complete. There was one influence she feared for the child and still secretly combated; that was my lord’s; and half unconsciously, half in a wilful blindness, she continued to undermine her husband with his son. As long as Archie remained silent, she did so ruthlessly, with a single eye to heaven and the child’s salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, when he brought the case up openly. If judging were sinful and forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade? to bear the name of it for a distinction?

“I can’t see it,” said the little Rabbi, and wagged his head.

Mrs. Weir abounded in commonplace replies.

“No, I canna see it,” reiterated Archie. “And I’ll tell you what, mamma, I don’t think you and me’s justifeed in staying with him.”

The woman awoke to remorse; she saw herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and bread-winner, in whom (with what she had of worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride. She expatiated in reply on my lord’s honour and greatness; his useful services in this world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in which he stood, far above where babes and innocents could hope to see or criticise. But she had builded too well—Archie had his answers pat: Were not babes and innocents the type of the kingdom of heaven? Were not honour and greatness the badges of the world? And at any rate, how about the mob that had once seethed about the carriage?

“It’s all very fine,” he concluded, “but in my opinion, papa has no right to be it. And it seems that’s not the worst yet of it. It seems he’s called ‘the Hanging Judge’—it seems he’s crooool. I’ll tell you what it is, mamma, there’s a tex’ borne in upon me: It were better for that man if a milestone were bound upon his back and him flung into the deepestmost pairts of the sea.”

“O my lamb, ye must never say the like of that!” she cried. “Ye’re to honour faither and mother, dear, that your days may be long in the land. It’s Atheists that cry out against him—French Atheists, Erchie! Ye would never surely even yourself down to be saying the same thing as French Atheists? It would break my heart to think that of you. And O, Erchie, here arena you setting up to judge? And have ye no forgot God’s plain command—the First with Promise, dear? Mind you upon the beam and the mote!”

Having thus carried the war into the enemy’s camp, the terrified lady breathed again. And no doubt it is easy thus to circumvent a child with catchwords, but it may be questioned how far it is effectual. An instinct in his breast detects the quibble, and a voice condemns it. He will instantly submit, privately hold the same opinion. For even in this simple and antique relation of the mother and the child, hypocrisies are multiplied.

When the Court rose that year and the family returned to Hermiston, it was a common remark in all the country that the lady was sore failed. She seemed to lose and seize again her touch with life, now sitting inert in a sort of durable bewilderment, anon waking to feverish and weak activity. She dawdled about the lasses at their work, looking stupidly on; she fell to rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and desisted when half through; she would begin remarks with an air of animation and drop them without a struggle. Her common appearance was of one who has forgotten something and is trying to remember; and when she overhauled, one after another, the worthless and touching mementoes of her youth, she might have been seeking the clue to that lost thought. During this period she gave many gifts to the neighbours and house lasses, giving them with a manner of regret that embarrassed the recipients.

The last night of all she was busy on some female work, and toiled upon it with so manifest and painful a devotion that my lord (who was not often curious) inquired as to its nature.

She blushed to the eyes. “O, Edom, it’s for you!” she said. “It’s slippers. I—I hae never made ye any.”

“Ye daft auld wife!” returned his lordship. “A bonny figure I would be, palmering about in bauchles!”

The next day, at the hour of her walk, Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard; bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her, the anxiety of a genuine love wearing the disguise of temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. But, “No, no,” she said, “it’s my lord’s orders,” and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she stood and looked at him a while like one about to call; then thought otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds alone. The house lasses were at the burn-side washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait.

“She’s a terrible feckless wife the mistress!” said the one.

“Tut,” said the other, “the wumman’s seeck.”

“Weel, I canna see nae differ in her,” returned the first. “A füshionless quean, a feckless carline.”

The poor creature thus discussed rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like seaweed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered, or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with an important errand.

“Kirstie!” she began, and paused; and then with conviction, “Mr. Weir isna speeritually minded, but he has been a good man to me.”

It was perhaps the first time since her husband’s elevation that she had forgotten the handle to his name, of which the tender, inconsistent woman was not a little proud. And when Kirstie looked up at the speaker’s face, she was aware of a change.

“Godsake, what’s the maitter wi’ ye, mem?” cried the housekeeper, starting from the rug.

“I do not ken,” answered her mistress, shaking her head. “But he is not speeritually minded, my dear.”

“Here, sit down with ye! Godsake, what ails the wife?” cried Kirstie, and helped and forced her into my lord’s own chair by the cheek of the hearth.

“Keep me, what’s this?” she gasped. “Kirstie, what’s this? I’m frich’ened.”

They were her last words.

It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset in his back, all clouds and glory; and before him, by the wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in the high, false note of barbarous mourning, such as still lingers modified among Scots heather.

“The Lord peety ye, Hermiston! the Lord prepare ye!” she keened out. “Weary upon me, that I should have to tell it!”

He reined in his horse and looked upon her with the hanging face.

“Has the French landit?” cried he.

“Man, man,” she said, “is that a’ ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye: the Lord comfort and support ye!”

“Is onybody deid?” says his lordship. “It’s no Erchie?”

“Bethankit, no!” exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural tone. “Na, na, it’s no sae bad as that. It’s the mistress, my lord; she just fair flittit before my e’en. She just gi’ed a sab and was by wi’ it. Eh, my bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel!” And forth again upon that pouring tide of lamentation in which women of her class excel and over-abound.

Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to recover command upon himself.

“Weel, it’s something of the suddenest,” said he. “But she was a dwaibly body from the first.”

And he rode home at a precipitate amble with Kirstie at his horse’s heels.

Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her bed. She was never interesting in life; in death she was not impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed behind his powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image of the insignificant.

“Her and me were never cut out for one another,” he remarked at last. “It was a daft-like marriage.” And then, with a most unusual gentleness of tone, “Puir bitch,” said he, “puir bitch!” Then suddenly: “Where’s Erchie?”

Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him “a jeely-piece.”

“Ye have some kind of gumption, too,” observed the judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. “When all’s said,” he added, “I micht have done waur—I micht have been marriet upon a skirling Jezebel like you!”

“There’s naebody thinking of you, Hermiston!” cried the offended woman. “We think of her that’s out of her sorrows. And could she have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston—tell me that before her clay-cauld corp!”

“Weel, there’s some of them gey an’ ill to please,” observed his lordship.