The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 21

“There, sir,” said she, getting upon her feet, “your fire is doing bravely now. Good-night.”

He rose and held out his hand. “Come,” said he, “you are my only friend in these parts, and you must shake hands.”

She brushed her hand upon her skirt and offered it, blushing.

“God bless you, my dear,” said he.

And then, when he was alone, he opened one of the windows, and stared down into the dark valley. A gentle wimpling of the river among stones ascended to his ear; the trees upon the other bank stood very black against the sky; farther away an owl was hooting. It was dreary and cold, and as he turned back to the hearth and the fine glow of fire, “Heavens!” said he to himself, “what an unfortunate destiny is mine!”

He went to bed, but sleep only visited his pillow in uneasy snatches. Outbreaks of loud speech came up the staircase; he heard the old stones of the castle crack in the frosty night with sharp reverberations, and the bed complained under his tossings. Lastly, far on into the morning, he awakened from a doze to hear, very far off, in the extreme and breathless quiet, a wailing flourish on the horn. The down mail was drawing near to the “Green Dragon.” He sat up in bed; the sound was tragical by distance, and the modulation appealed to his ear like human speech. It seemed to call upon him with a dreary insistence – to call him far away, to address him personally, and to have a meaning that he failed to seize. It was thus, at least, in this nodding castle, in a cold, miry woodland, and so far from men and society, that the traffic on the Great North Road spoke to him in the intervals of slumber.

CHAPTER III

JONATHAN HOLDAWAY

Nance descended the tower stair, pausing at every step. She was in no hurry to confront her uncle with bad news, and she must dwell a little longer on the rich note of Mr. Archer’s voice, the charm of his kind words, and the beauty of his manner and person. But, once at the stair-foot, she threw aside the spell and recovered her sensible and workaday self.

Jonathan was seated in the middle of the settle, a mug of ale beside him, in the attitude of one prepared for trouble; but he did not speak, and suffered her to fetch her supper and eat of it, with a very excellent appetite, in silence. When she had done, she, too, drew a tankard of home-brewed, and came and planted herself in front of him upon the settle.

“Well?” said Jonathan.

“My lord has run away,” said Nance.

“What?” cried the old man.

“Abroad,” she continued; “run away from creditors. He said he had not a stiver, but he was drunk enough. He said you might live on in the castle, and Mr. Archer would pay you; but you was to look for no more wages, since he would be glad of them himself.”

Jonathan’s face contracted; the flush of a black, bilious anger mounted to the roots of his hair; he gave an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his feet, and began rapidly pacing the stone floor. At first he kept his hands behind his back in a tight knot; then he began to gesticulate as he turned.

“This man – this lord,” he shouted, “who is he? He was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, and I with a dirty straw. He rolled in his coach when he was a baby. I have dug and toiled and laboured since I was that high – that high.” And he shouted again. “I’m bent and broke, and full of pains. D’ye think I don’t know the taste of sweat? Many’s the gallon I’ve drunk of it – ay, in the midwinter, toiling like a slave. All through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, bend my old creaking back till it would ache like breaking; wade about in the foul mire, never a dry stitch; empty belly, sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks and ha’pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when I’m worn to my poor bones, a kick and done with it.” He walked a little while in silence, and then, extending his hand, “Now, you Nance Holdaway,” says he, “you come of my blood, and you’re a good girl. When that man was a boy, I used to carry his gun for him. I carried the gun all day on my two feet, and many a stitch I had, and chewed a bullet for. He rode upon a horse, with feathers in his hat; but it was him that had the shots and took the game home. Did I complain? Not I. I knew my station. What did I ask, but just the chance to live and die honest? Nance Holdaway, don’t let them deny it to me – don’t let them do it. I’ve been as poor as Job, and as honest as the day, but now, my girl, you mark these words of mine, I’m getting tired of it.”

“I wouldn’t say such words, at least,” said Nance.

“You wouldn’t?” said the old man grimly. “Well, and did I when I was your age? Wait till your back’s broke and your hands tremble, and your eyes fail, and you’re weary of the battle and ask no more but to lie down in your bed and give the ghost up like an honest man; and then let there up and come some insolent, ungodly fellow – ah! if I had him in these hands! ‘Where’s my money that you gambled?’ I should say. ‘Where’s my money that you drank and diced?’ ‘Thief!’ is what I would say; ‘Thief!’” he roared, “‘Thief!’”

“Mr. Archer will hear you if you don’t take care,” said Nance, “and I would be ashamed, for one, that he should hear a brave, old, honest, hard-working man like Jonathan Holdaway talk nonsense like a boy.”

“D’ye think I mind for Mr. Archer?” he cried shrilly, with a clack of laughter; and then he came close up to her, stooped down with his two palms upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard expression, something like a smile. “Do I mind for God, my girl?” he said; “that’s what it’s come to be now, do I mind for God?”

“Uncle Jonathan,” she said, getting up and taking him by the arm; “you sit down again, where you were sitting. There, sit still; I’ll have no more of this; you’ll do yourself a mischief. Come, take a drink of this good ale, and I’ll warm a tankard for you. La, we’ll pull through, you’ll see. I’m young, as you say, and it’s my turn to carry the bundle; and don’t you worry your bile, or we’ll have sickness, too, as well as sorrow.”

“D’ye think that I’d forgotten you?” said Jonathan, with something like a groan; and thereupon his teeth clicked to, and he sat silent with the tankard in his hand and staring straight before him.

“Why,” says Nance, setting on the ale to mull, “men are always children, they say, however old; and if ever I heard a thing like this, to set to and make yourself sick, just when the money’s failing. Keep a good heart up; you haven’t kept a good heart these seventy years, nigh hand, to break down about a pound or two. Here’s this Mr. Archer come to lodge, that you disliked so much. Well, now you see it was a clear Providence. Come, let’s think upon our mercies. And here is the ale mulling lovely; smell of it; I’ll take a drop myself, it smells so sweet. And, Uncle Jonathan, you let me say one word. You’ve lost more than money before now; you lost my aunt, and bore it like a man. Bear this.”

His face once more contracted; his fist doubled, and shot forth into the air, and trembled. “Let them look out!” he shouted. “Here, I warn all men; I’ve done with this foul kennel of knaves. Let them look out!”

“Hush, hush! for pity’s sake,” cried Nance.

And then all of a sudden he dropped his face into his hands, and broke out with a great hiccoughing dry sob that was horrible to hear. “O,” he cried, “my God, if my son hadn’t left me, if my Dick was here!” and the sobs shook him; Nance sitting still and watching him, with distress. “O, if he were here to help his father!” he went on again. “If I had a son like other fathers, he would save me now, when all is breaking down; O, he would save me! Ay, but where is he? Raking taverns, a thief perhaps. My curse be on him!” he added, rising again into wrath.

“Hush!” cried Nance, springing to her feet: “your boy, your dead wife’s boy – Aunt Susan’s baby that she loved – would you curse him? O, God forbid!”

The energy of her address surprised him from his mood. He looked upon her, tearless and confused. “Let me go to my bed,” he said at last, and he rose, and, shaking as with ague, but quite silent, lighted his candle, and left the kitchen.

Poor Nance! the pleasant current of her dreams was all diverted. She beheld a golden city, where she aspired to dwell; she had spoken with a deity, and had told herself that she might rise to be his equal; and now the earthly ligaments that bound her down had been tightened. She was like a tree looking skyward, her roots were in the ground. It seemed to her a thing so coarse, so rustic, to be thus concerned about a loss in money; when Mr. Archer, fallen from the sky-level of counts and nobles, faced his changed destiny with so immovable a courage. To weary of honesty; that, at least, no one could do, but even to name it was already a disgrace; and she beheld in fancy her uncle, and the young lad, all laced and feathered, hand upon hip, bestriding his small horse. The opposition seemed to perpetuate itself from generation to generation; one side still doomed to the clumsy and the servile, the other born to beauty.

She thought of the golden zones in which gentlemen were bred, and figured with so excellent a grace; zones in which wisdom and smooth words, white linen and slim hands, were the mark of the desired inhabitants; where low temptations were unknown, and honesty no virtue, but a thing as natural as breathing.

CHAPTER IV

MINGLING THREADS

It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his apartment. On the landing he found another door beside his own opening on a roofless corridor, and presently he was walking on the top of the ruins. On one hand he could look down a good depth into the green courtyard; on the other his eye roved along the downward course of the river, the wet woods all smoking, the shadows long and blue, the mists golden and rosy in the sun, here and there the water flashing across an obstacle. His heart expanded and softened to a grateful melancholy, and with his eye fixed upon the distance, and no thought of present danger, he continued to stroll along the elevated and treacherous promenade.

A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the courtyard. He looked down, and saw in a glimpse Nance standing below with hands clasped in horror and his own foot trembling on the margin of a gulf. He recoiled and leant against a pillar, quaking from head to foot, and covering his face with his hands; and Nance had time to run round by the stair and rejoin him where he stood before he had changed a line of his position.

“Ah!” he cried, and clutched her wrist; “don’t leave me. The place rocks; I have no head for altitudes.”

“Sit down against that pillar,” said Nance. “Don’t you be afraid; I won’t leave you, and don’t look up or down: look straight at me. How white you are!”

“The gulf,” he said, and closed his eyes again and shuddered.

“Why,” said Nance, “what a poor climber you must be! That was where my cousin Dick used to get out of the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut the gate. I’ve been down there myself with him helping me. I wouldn’t try with you,” she said, and laughed merrily.

The sound of her laughter was sincere and musical, and perhaps its beauty barbed the offence to Mr. Archer. The blood came into his face with a quick jet, and then left it paler than before. “It is a physical weakness,” he said harshly, “and very droll, no doubt, but one that I can conquer on necessity. See, I am still shaking. Well, I advance to the battlements and look down. Show me your cousin’s path.”

“He would go sure-foot along that little ledge,” said Nance, pointing as she spoke; “then out through the breach and down by yonder buttress. It is easier coming back, of course, because you see where you are going. From the buttress foot a sheep-walk goes along the scarp – see, you can follow it from here in the dry grass. And now, sir,” she added, with a touch of womanly pity, “I would come away from here if I were you, for indeed you are not fit.”

Sure enough Mr. Archer’s pallor and agitation had continued to increase; his cheeks were deathly, his clenched fingers trembled pitifully. “The weakness is physical,” he sighed, and had nearly fallen. Nance led him from the spot, and he was no sooner back in the tower-stair, than he fell heavily against the wall and put his arm across his eyes. A cup of brandy had to be brought him before he could descend to breakfast; and the perfection of Nance’s dream was for the first time troubled.

Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with yellow, blood-shot eyes and a peculiar dusky complexion. He hardly waited till they found their seats, before, raising one hand, and stooping with his mouth above his plate, he put up a prayer for a blessing on the food and a spirit of gratitude in the eaters, and thereupon, and without more civility, fell to. But it was notable that he was no less speedily satisfied than he had been greedy to begin. He pushed his plate away and drummed upon the table.

“These are silly prayers,” said he, “that they teach us. Eat and be thankful, that’s no such wonder. Speak to me of starving – there’s the touch. You’re a man, they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has met with some reverses?”

“I have met with many,” replied Mr. Archer.

“Ha!” said Jonathan. “None reckons but the last. Now, see; I tried to make this girl here understand me.”

“Uncle,” said Nance, “what should Mr. Archer care for your concerns? He hath troubles of his own, and came to be at peace, I think.”

“I tried to make her understand me,” repeated Jonathan doggedly; “and now I’ll try you. Do you think this world is fair?”

“Fair and false!” quoth Mr. Archer.

The old man laughed immoderately. “Good,” said he, “very good, but what I mean is this: do you know what it is to get up early and go to bed late, and never take so much as a holiday but four: and one of these your own marriage day, and the other three the funerals of folk you loved, and all that, to have a quiet old age in shelter, and bread for your old belly, and a bed to lay your crazy bones upon, with a clear conscience?”

“Sir,” said Mr. Archer with an inclination of his head, “you portray a very brave existence.”