Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (287 page)

“My poor, dear boy!” observed Glenalmond.  “My poor dear and, if you will allow me to say so, very foolish boy!  You are only discovering where you are; to one of your temperament, or of mine, a painful discovery.  The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions of men, all different from each other and from us; there’s no royal road there, we just have to sclamber and tumble.  Don’t think that I am at all disposed to be surprised; don’t suppose that I ever think of blaming you; indeed I rather admire!  But there fall to be offered one or two observations on the case which occur to me and which (if you will listen to them dispassionately) may be the means of inducing you to view the matter more calmly.  First of all, I cannot acquit you of a good deal of what is called intolerance.  You seem to have been very much offended because your father talks a little sculduddery after dinner, which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste.  Your father, I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so trite a commonplace, is older than yourself.  At least, he is
major
and
sui juris
, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation.  And, do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against you and me?  We say we sometimes find him
coarse
, but I suspect he might retort that he finds us always dull.  Perhaps a relevant exception.”

He beamed on Archie, but no smile could be elicited.

“And now,” proceeded the Judge, “for ‘Archibald on Capital Punishment.’  This is a very plausible academic opinion; of course I do not and I cannot hold it; but that’s not to say that many able and excellent persons have not done so in the past.  Possibly, in the past also, I may have a little dipped myself in the same heresy.  My third client, or possibly my fourth, was the means of a return in my opinions.  I never saw the man I more believed in; I would have put my hand in the fire, I would have gone to the cross for him; and when it came to trial he was gradually pictured before me, by undeniable probation, in the light of so gross, so cold-blooded, and so black-hearted a villain, that I had a mind to have cast my brief upon the table.  I was then boiling against the man with even a more tropical temperature than I had been boiling for him.  But I said to myself: ‘No, you have taken up his case; and because you have changed your mind it must not be suffered to let drop.  All that rich tide of eloquence that you prepared last night with so much enthusiasm is out of place, and yet you must not desert him, you must say something.’  So I said something, and I got him off.  It made my reputation.  But an experience of that kind is formative.  A man must not bring his passions to the bar — or to the bench,” he added.

The story had slightly rekindled Archie’s interest.  “I could never deny,” he began — ”I mean I can conceive that some men would be better dead.  But who are we to know all the springs of God’s unfortunate creatures?  Who are we to trust ourselves where it seems that God Himself must think twice before He treads, and to do it with delight? Yes, with delight. 
Tigris ut aspera
.”

“Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle,” said Glenalmond.  “And yet, do you know, I think somehow a great one.”

“I’ve had a long talk with him to-night,” said Archie.

“I was supposing so,” said Glenalmond.

“And he struck me — I cannot deny that he struck me as something very big,” pursued the son.  “Yes, he is big.  He never spoke about himself; only about me.  I suppose I admired him.  The dreadful part — ”

“Suppose we did not talk about that,” interrupted Glenalmond.  “You know it very well, it cannot in any way help that you should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether you and I — who are a pair of sentimentalists — are quite good judges of plain men.”

“How do you mean?” asked Archie.

“
Fair
judges, mean,” replied Glenalmond.  “Can we be just to them?  Do we not ask too much?  There was a word of yours just now that impressed me a little when you asked me who we were to know all the springs of God’s unfortunate creatures.  You applied that, as I understood, to capital cases only.  But does it — I ask myself — does it not apply all through?  Is it any less difficult to judge of a good man or of a half-good man, than of the worst criminal at the bar?  And may not each have relevant excuses?”

“Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the good,” cried Archie.

“No, we do not talk of it,” said Glenalmond.  “But I think we do it.  Your father, for instance.”

“You think I have punished him?” cried Archie.

Lord Glenalmond bowed his head.

“I think I have,” said Archie.  “And the worst is, I think he feels it! How much, who can tell, with such a being?  But I think he does.”

“And I am sure of it,” said Glenalmond.

“Has he spoken to you, then?” cried Archie.

“O no,” replied the judge.

“I tell you honestly,” said Archie, “I want to make it up to him.  I will go, I have already pledged myself to go to Hermiston.  That was to him.  And now I pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will close my mouth on capital punishment and all other subjects where our views may clash, for — how long shall I say? when shall I have sense enough? — ten years.  Is that well?”

“It is well,” said my lord.

“As far as it goes,” said Archie.  “It is enough as regards myself, it is to lay down enough of my conceit.  But as regards him, whom I have publicly insulted?  What am I to do to him?  How do you pay attentions to a — an Alp like that?”

“Only in one way,” replied Glenalmond.  “Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, and scrupulous.”

“And I promise that he shall have it,” answered Archie.  “I offer you my hand in pledge of it.”

“And I take your hand as a solemnity,” replied the judge.  “God bless you, my dear, and enable you to keep your promise.  God guide you in the true way, and spare your days, and preserve to you your honest heart.” At that, he kissed the young man upon the forehead in a gracious, distant, antiquated way; and instantly launched, with a marked change of voice, into another subject.  “And now, let us replenish the tankard; and I believe if you will try my Cheddar again, you would find you had a better appetite.  The Court has spoken, and the case is dismissed.”

“No, there is one thing I must say,” cried Archie.  “I must say it in justice to himself.  I know — I believe faithfully, slavishly, after our talk — he will never ask me anything unjust.  I am proud to feel it, that we have that much in common, I am proud to say it to you.”

The Judge, with shining eyes, raised his tankard.  “And I think perhaps that we might permit ourselves a toast,” said he.  “I should like to propose the health of a man very different from me and very much my superior — a man from whom I have often differed, who has often (in the trivial expression) rubbed me the wrong way, but whom I have never ceased to respect and, I may add, to be not a little afraid of.  Shall I give you his name?”

“The Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Hermiston,” said Archie, almost with gaiety; and the pair drank the toast deeply.

It was not precisely easy to re-establish, after these emotional passages, the natural flow of conversation.  But the Judge eked out what was wanting with kind looks, produced his snuff-box (which was very rarely seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing of any further social success, was upon the point of getting down a book to read a favourite passage, when there came a rather startling summons at the front door, and Carstairs ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, hot from a midnight supper.  I am not aware that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful object, being short, and gross-bodied, and with an expression of sensuality comparable to a bear’s.  At that moment, coming in hissing from many potations, with a flushed countenance and blurred eyes, he was strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glenalmond.  A rush of confused thought came over Archie — of shame that this was one of his father’s elect friends; of pride, that at the least of it Hermiston could carry his liquor; and last of all, of rage, that he should have here under his eyes the man that had betrayed him.  And then that too passed away; and he sat quiet, biding his opportunity.

The tipsy senator plunged at once into an explanation with Glenalmond.  There was a point reserved yesterday, he had been able to make neither head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just dropped in for a glass of porter — and at this point he became aware of the third person.  Archie saw the cod’s mouth and the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition twinkle in his eyes.

“Who’s this?” said he.  “What? is this possibly you, Don Quickshot?  And how are ye?  And how’s your father?  And what’s all this we hear of you? It seems you’re a most extraordinary leveller, by all tales.  No king, no parliaments, and your gorge rises at the macers, worthy men!  Hoot, toot!  Dear, dear me!  Your father’s son too!  Most rideeculous!”

Archie was on his feet, flushing a little at the reappearance of his unhappy figure of speech, but perfectly self-possessed.  “My lord — and you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear friend,” he began, “this is a happy chance for me, that I can make my confession and offer my apologies to two of you at once.”

“Ah, but I don’t know about that.  Confession?  It’ll be judeecial, my young friend,” cried the jocular Glenkindie.  “And I’m afraid to listen to ye.  Think if ye were to make me a coanvert!”

“If you would allow me, my lord,” returned Archie, “what I have to say is very serious to me; and be pleased to be humorous after I am gone!”

“Remember, I’ll hear nothing against the macers!” put in the incorrigible Glenkindie.

But Archie continued as though he had not spoken.  “I have played, both yesterday and to-day, a part for which I can only offer the excuse of youth.  I was so unwise as to go to an execution; it seems I made a scene at the gallows; not content with which, I spoke the same night in a college society against capital punishment.  This is the extent of what I have done, and in case you hear more alleged against me, I protest my innocence.  I have expressed my regret already to my father, who is so good as to pass my conduct over — in a degree, and upon the condition that I am to leave my law studies.” . . .

CHAPTER V — WINTER ON THE MOORS

I. At Hermiston

The road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch.  Here and there, but at great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation.  Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for fifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-score gravestones.  The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is surrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of bees; and the whole colony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, finds harbourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round in a great silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn, and the bell on Sundays.  A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before the coach-house.  All beyond and about is the great field, of the hills; the plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship’s rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset.

The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farmyard and a kitchen-garden on the left, with a fruit wall where little hard green pears came to their maturity about the end of October.

The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed; heather and moorfowl had crossed the boundary wall and spread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began.  My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors.  A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds.  Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect would be often black with tempest, and often white with the snows of winter.  But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were kept bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might sit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch the fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up the chimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter.

Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours.  Every night, if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a “brewst” of toddy with the minister — a hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and light and still active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voice broke continually in childish trebles — and his lady wife, a heavy, comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond good-even and good-day.  Harum-scarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbourhood paid him the compliment of a visit.  Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call, on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony grey.  Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed; Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view-holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith.  Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.