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THE MASTER OF
BALLANTRAE
By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE Duries of Ballantrae were a strong family in Scotland from the days of David I. Their ups and downs I pass over, to come to that year 1745 when the foundations of this tragedy were laid. There was my lord, studious, tactful and retired from the world. There was The Master (James in baptism) with his father's love of study; but what was tact in the father changed to black dissimulation in him. Though ever in broils, invariably he left his partners in mischief to pay the piper. The second son, Mr. Henry, was neither able nor bad; an out-of-doors, solid sort, who had had an active hand from a boy in the management of the estate. In the house also was Miss Alison Graeme, an orphan, comely and self-willed, heiress to a fortune and, because of my lord's necessities, pledged in marriage to The Master. Then came the uprising for Prince Charlie. Against the wishes of the other three The Master elected to ride with the Prince; which left Mr. Henry to take King George's side, this being a common policy of great houses in that day. So The Master rode to the north. Then came the word of Culloden and The Master's death. After a decent time Mr. Henry, to preserve the estate, married Miss Alison, although he no more than any other doubted her love for The Master's memory. But The Master was not dead. He had escaped to sea, his escape being not to his credit. At sea he was captured by a pirate ship. By the most ingenious deviltry he secured the treasure of the pirate ship as she was about to fall into the hands of a King's cruiser, and escaped with it to the swamps on the American shore. One man he took to guide him out of the swamp, and dirked him to death after they were safely clear of it. Thence he continued his march to French Canada, although forced on the way to hide his treasure in the wilderness. This we learned from a Colonel Burke, an Irish soldier of fortune, who came in the night to plead money for the support of The Master, who was then in France. There was a letter from The Master which threw Mr. Henry in a passion. "He calls me a niggardly dog!" he cried. "But if I ruin the estate I shall stuff him, the blood-sucker! And all this I foresaw when he elected himself and not me to go with Prince Charlie." The gap made in our accounts by The Master's demands became a sore embarrassment. As steward of the estate I must needs ride to Edinburgh and there raise new loans on hard terms to keep old ones afloat; and this held for seven years, Mr. Henry shaving everything to the last far-thing to raise more money, and yet more money, winning for himself thereby no better title than miser with the countryside as well as at home; for never a word of this business did he even tell to the old lord or Mrs. Henry, it being the devilish malice of The Master to require this secrecy and the loyal nature of his brother to comply. The odium attaching to Mr. Henry, and the knowledge, which came to me, that The Master all this time had also a pension from the Scotch fund in Paris, became too great a burden for me. I took it on myself to tell Mrs. Henry how her husband had already sent seven thousand to The Master. Thereafter no further moneys were sent abroad, and the telling did much to check a widening restraint between Mr. Henry and my lady, a great joy to me. This action resulted in The Master's return to us, a great curse to the household; for in all matters of contention, though Mr. Henry might be right, The Master had the trick of setting him in the wrong. He still demanded money, and, to satisfy him, the entail was broken and a great piece of land sold; and all the while he ceased not to lay siege to the heart of Mrs. Henry, carrying it on so deftly that I scarce knew if she was aware of it herself, she that I doubt not still loved him. This brings me to the night when he laid the most unbearable of insults on Mr. Henry. "I never knew a woman," said The Master, "who, did not prefer me, not -I think-w het did. riot continue to prefer me to you." At which Mr. Henry coldly struck him on the mouth. "A blow!" cried The Master. "I will not take a blow from God Almighty! I must have blood for this!" They fought beyond the shrubbery, I bringing the candles for them. From the first Mr. Henry showed himself the stronger, which so surprised and confused The Master that he tried foul play, but got only the length of Mr. Henry's sword through the body. He fell, apparently lifeless. Mr. Henry shook with sobs. I led him into the house and told the old lord and my lady; but, going back to bring in the body, I found it gone. A good riddance, I thought, whether dead or alive, but the night's work threw Mr. Henry into a fever, and his mind was never again the same clear mind as of old. The old lord died, and to my lady and Mr. Henry, now my lord, was born a boy, and to that boy my lord became a slave, which had not been so with his first child, Katherine. He would pass by his wife as though she were a dog before the hearth to come at the boy. Without doubt this was in the nature of a judgment on my lady, she who had been so cold so many years to every mark of his tenderness; but to me it was monstrous, and I was emboldened, much as I loved him, to say so; but my saying so only served to send my lord sick to bed and to earn for me from my lady the word that I was no better than an old maid. This brings me to that morning in April, 1764, that The Master returned to us again, this time with an Indian servant. With his return my lord and lady, I urging them on, took ship for New York, where my lady had property through her father. This voyage, so I thought, will at one stroke rid them of The Master and weave them closer together. Twenty days it took The Master to learn where they had gone; whereupon he also sailed for New York, and I on the same ship, praying that she would go down, even with myself with her, if it would but take The Master also. I looked forward with woe to the day he should set foot in New York; but our ship was a slow sailer, and other ships which sailed later arrived before us ; so it happened that my lord had word of The Master's coming and prepared for him. There was suspicion of more than one murder, it seems, to The Master's hand during the earlier stay he made in America, and so now he found it a better business to leave New York and hunt in the wilderness for that treasure which he had buried so many years before. At this time all the evil The Master had done seemed borne in a flood upon my lord's brain. He became moody and took to drink. There had been talk that he connived with the crew which The Master had hired for his expedition into the wilderness, bribing the leaders to make way with his brother. There is no evidence of that, but it is true that The Master's Indian servant, to save his life, as he said, did bury him alive, with the intent to resurrect and restore him later by the agency of some secret Oriental trick. My lord and a party, I being of it, followed The Master, and it was when the East Indian was lifting his body from the grave that we came upon them. I thought for a moment that the eyelids fluttered. Others say that the lips strove to speak, that his teeth showed through his beard, which may have been, as I was busy else-where, for at the first disclosure of the dead man's eyes my lord had fallen to the ground. When I raised him he was a corpse. I buried him there; my lady laid an equal stone to each; and there where they died, side by side, they lie to this day. |