Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (340 page)
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Authors: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
A little before the coming of the squall there was a different scene enacting at the outposts. For the most part, the sentinels were faithful to their important duty; the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this particular day had been somewhat lax from the beginning, and grew laxer during the inordinate length of the discourse. Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole, looking abroad between two whin-bushes. His view was across the course of the burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap between two hills; nothing moved but grouse, and some cattle who slowly traversed his field of view, heading northward: he heard the psalms, and sang words of his own to the savage and melancholy music; for he had his own design in hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied through all its length with this impromptu strain:
“And I will ding Jock Crozer down No later than the day.” |
Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in wafts, at the wind’s will, as by the opening and shutting of a door; wild spasms of screaming, as of some undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with inordinate passion, succeeded to intervals of silence; and Francie heard them with a critical ear. “Ay,” he thought at last, “he’ll do; he has the bit in his mou’ fairly.”
He had observed that his friend, or rather his enemy, Jock Crozer, had been established at a very critical part of the line of outposts; namely, where the burn issues by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of high moors. If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was this. The post was important; next to the Hill-end itself, it might be called the key to the position; and it was where the cover was bad, and in which it was most natural to place a child. It should have been Heathercat’s; why had it been given to Crozer? An exquisite fear of what should be the answer passed through his marrow every time he faced the question. Was it possible that Crozer could have boasted? that there were rumours abroad to his — Heathercat’s — discredit? that his honour was publicly sullied? All the world went dark about him at the thought; he sank without a struggle into the midnight pool of despair; and every time he so sank, he brought back with him — not drowned heroism indeed, but half-drowned courage by the locks. His heart beat very slowly as he deserted his station, and began to crawl towards that of Crozer. Something pulled him back, and it was not the sense of duty, but a remembrance of Crozer’s build and hateful readiness of fist. Duty, as he conceived it, pointed him forward on the rueful path that he was travelling. Duty bade him redeem his name if he were able, at the risk of broken bones; and his bones and every tooth in his head ached by anticipation. An awful subsidiary fear whispered him that if he were hurt, he should disgrace himself by weeping. He consoled himself, boy-like, with the consideration that he was not yet committed; he could easily steal over unseen to Crozer’s post, and he had a continuous private idea that he would very probably steal back again. His course took him so near the minister that he could hear some of his words: “What news, minister, of Claver’se? He’s going round like a roaring rampaging lion....
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
A FRAGMENT
IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED
CHAPTER I
NANCE AT THE “GREEN DRAGON”
Nance Holdaway was on her knees before the fire blowing the green wood that voluminously smoked upon the dogs, and only now and then shot forth a smothered flame; her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for she had been some while at this ungrateful task, but her mind was gone far away to meet the coming stranger. Now she met him in the wood, now at the castle gate, now in the kitchen by candle-light; each fresh presentment eclipsed the one before; a form so elegant, manners so sedate, a countenance so brave and comely, a voice so winning and resolute — sure such a man was never seen! The thick-coming fancies poured and brightened in her head like the smoke and flames upon the hearth.
Presently the heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work. He glanced at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing of the casement clumsily repaired with paper.
“Leave that fire a-be,” he cried. “What, have I toiled all my life to turn innkeeper at the hind end? Leave it a-be, I say.”
“La, uncle, it doesn’t burn a bit; it only smokes,” said Nance, looking up from her position.
“You are come of decent people of both sides,” returned the old man. “Who are you to blow the coals for any Robin-run-agate? Get up, get on your hood, make yourself useful, and be off to the ‘Green Dragon.’”
“I thought you was to go yourself,” Nance faltered.
“So did I,” quoth Jonathan; “but it appears I was mistook.”
The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and she began to hang back. “I think I would rather not, dear uncle,” she said. “Night is at hand, and I think, dear, I would rather not.”
“Now you look here,” replied Jonathan, “I have my lord’s orders, have I not? Little he gives me, but it’s all my livelihood. And do you fancy, if I disobey my lord, I’m likely to turn round for a lass like you? No, I’ve that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I wouldn’t walk a mile, not for King George upon his bended knees.” And he walked to the window and looked down the steep scarp to where the river foamed in the bottom of the dell.
Nance stayed for no more bidding. In her own room, by the glimmer of the twilight, she washed her hands and pulled on her Sunday mittens; adjusted her black hood, and tied a dozen times its cherry ribbons; and in less than ten minutes, with a fluttering heart and excellently bright eyes, she passed forth under the arch and over the bridge, into the thickening shadows of the groves. A well-marked wheel-track conducted her. The wood, which upon both sides of the river dell was a mere scrambling thicket of hazel, hawthorn, and holly, boasted on the level of more considerable timber. Beeches came to a good growth, with here and there an oak; and the track now passed under a high arcade of branches, and now ran under the open sky in glades. As the girl proceeded these glades became more frequent, the trees began again to decline in size, and the wood to degenerate into furzy coverts. Last of all there was a fringe of elders; and beyond that the track came forth upon an open, rolling moorland, dotted with wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot with ice.
Some half a mile beyond the borders of the wood the lights of the “Green Dragon” hove in sight, and running close beside them, very faint in the dying dusk, the pale ribbon of the Great North Road. It was the back of the post-house that was presented to Nance Holdaway; and as she continued to draw near and the night to fall more completely, she became aware of an unusual brightness and bustle. A post-chaise stood in the yard, its lamps already lighted: light shone hospitably in the windows and from the open door; moving lights and shadows testified to the activity of servants bearing lanterns. The clank of pails, the stamping of hoofs on the firm causeway, the jingle of harness, and, last of all, the energetic hissing of a groom, began to fall upon her ear. By the stir you would have thought the mail was at the door, but it was still too early in the night. The down mail was not due at the “Green Dragon” for hard upon an hour; the up mail from Scotland not before two in the black morning.
Nance entered the yard somewhat dazzled. Sam, the tall ostler, was polishing a curb-chain with sand; the lantern at his feet letting up spouts of candle-light through the holes with which its conical roof was peppered.
“Hey, miss,” said he jocularly, “you won’t look at me any more, now you have gentry at the castle.”
Her cheeks burned with anger.
“That’s my lord’s chay,” the man continued, nodding at the chaise, “Lord Windermoor’s. Came all in a fluster — dinner, bowl of punch, and put the horses to. For all the world like a runaway match, my dear — bar the bride. He brought Mr. Archer in the chay with him.”
“Is that Holdaway?” cried the landlord from the lighted entry, where he stood shading his eyes.
“Only me, sir,” answered Nance.
“O, you, Miss Nance,” he said. “Well, come in quick, my pretty. My lord is waiting for your uncle.”
And he ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch. One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short, purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt and gobbling utterance. This was my Lord Windermoor. In his companion Nance beheld a younger man, tall, quiet, grave, demurely dressed, and wearing his own hair. Her glance but lighted on him, and she flushed, for in that second she made sure that she had twice betrayed herself — betrayed by the involuntary flash of her black eyes her secret impatience to behold this new companion, and, what was far worse, betrayed her disappointment in the realisation of her dreams. He, meanwhile, as if unconscious, continued to regard her with unmoved decorum.
“O, a man of wood,” thought Nance.
“What — what?” said his lordship. “Who is this?”
“If you please, my lord, I am Holdaway’s niece,” replied Nance, with a curtsey.
“Should have been here himself,” observed his lordship. “Well, you tell Holdaway that I’m aground, not a stiver — not a stiver. I’m running from the beagles — going abroad, tell Holdaway. And he need look for no more wages: glad of ‘em myself, if I could get ‘em. He can live in the castle if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I recommend him to take him in — a friend of mine — and Mr. Archer will pay, as I wrote. And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing for Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off against the wages.”
“But O, my lord!” cried Nance, “we live upon the wages, and what are we to do without?”
“What am I to do? — what am I to do?” replied Lord Windermoor with some exasperation. “I have no wages. And there is Mr. Archer. And if Holdaway doesn’t like it, he can go to the devil, and you with him! — and you with him!”
“And yet, my lord,” said Mr. Archer, “these good people will have as keen a sense of loss as you or I; keener, perhaps, since they have done nothing to deserve it.”
“Deserve it?” cried the peer. “What? What? If a rascally highwayman comes up to me with a confounded pistol, do you say that I’ve deserved it? How often am I to tell you, sir, that I was cheated — that I was cheated?”
“You are happy in the belief,” returned Mr. Archer gravely.
“Archer, you would be the death of me!” exclaimed his lordship. “You know you’re drunk; you know it, sir; and yet you can’t get up a spark of animation.”
“I have drunk fair, my lord,” replied the younger man; “but I own I am conscious of no exhilaration.”
“If you had as black a look-out as me, sir,” cried the peer, “you would be very glad of a little innocent exhilaration, let me tell you. I am glad of it — glad of it, and I only wish I was drunker. For let me tell you it’s a cruel hard thing upon a man of my time of life and my position, to be brought down to beggary because the world is full of thieves and rascals — thieves and rascals. What? For all I know, you may be a thief and a rascal yourself; and I would fight you for a pinch of snuff — a pinch of snuff,” exclaimed his lordship.
Here Mr. Archer turned to Nance Holdaway with a pleasant smile, so full of sweetness, kindness, and composure that, at one bound, her dreams returned to her. “My good Miss Holdaway,” said he, “if you are willing to show me the road, I am even eager to be gone. As for his lordship and myself, compose yourself; there is no fear; this is his lordship’s way.”
“What? what?” cried his lordship. “My way? Ish no such a thing, my way.”