"I get overtaken, Mackellar. But I will be more upon my guard.""That is what I would ask of you," I replied. "You are to bear in mind that you are Mr. Alexander's father: give the bairn a chance to carry his name with some responsibility.""Ay, ay," said he. "Ye're a very sensible man, Mackellar, and have been long in my employ. But I think, if you have nothing more to say to me I will be stepping. If you have nothing more to say?" he added, with that burning, childish eagerness that was now so common with the man.
"No, my lord, I have nothing more," said I, dryly enough.
"Then I think I will be stepping," says my lord, and stood and looked at me fidgeting with his hat, which he had taken off again.
"I suppose you will have no errands? No? I am to meet Sir William Johnson, but I will be more upon my guard." He was silent for a time, and then, smiling: "Do you call to mind a place, Mackellar -it's a little below Engles - where the burn runs very deep under a wood of rowans. I mind being there when I was a lad - dear, it comes over me like an old song! - I was after the fishing, and Imade a bonny cast. Eh, but I was happy. I wonder, Mackellar, why I am never happy now?""My lord," said I, "if you would drink with more moderation you would have the better chance. It is an old byword that the bottle is a false consoler.""No doubt," said he, "no doubt. Well, I think I will be going.""Good-morning, my lord," said I.
"Good-morning, good-morning," said he, and so got himself at last from the apartment.
I give that for a fair specimen of my lord in the morning; and Imust have described my patron very ill if the reader does not perceive a notable falling off. To behold the man thus fallen: to know him accepted among his companions for a poor, muddled toper, welcome (if he were welcome at all) for the bare consideration of his title; and to recall the virtues he had once displayed against such odds of fortune; was not this a thing at once to rage and to be humbled at?
In his cups, he was more expensive. I will give but the one scene, close upon the end, which is strongly marked upon my memory to this day, and at the time affected me almost with horror I was in bed, lying there awake, when I heard him stumbling on the stair and singing. My lord had no gift of music, his brother had all the graces of the family, so that when I say singing, you are to understand a manner of high, carolling utterance, which was truly neither speech nor song. Something not unlike is to be heard upon the lips of children, ere they learn shame; from those of a man grown elderly, it had a strange effect. He opened the door with noisy precaution; peered in, shading his candle; conceived me to slumber; entered, set his light upon the table, and took off his hat. I saw him very plain; a high, feverish exultation appeared to boil in his veins, and he stood and smiled and smirked upon the candle. Presently he lifted up his arm, snapped his fingers, and fell to undress. As he did so, having once more forgot my presence, he took back to his singing; and now I could hear the words, which were those from the old song of the TWA CORBIESendlessly repeated:
"And over his banes when they are bare The wind sall blaw for evermair!"I have said there was no music in the man. His strains had no logical succession except in so far as they inclined a little to the minor mode; but they exercised a rude potency upon the feelings, and followed the words, and signified the feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears of drunkenness, and turned my back impatiently on this poor sight.
But he had started himself (I am to suppose) on that slippery descent of self-pity; on the which, to a man unstrung by old sorrows and recent potations there is no arrest except exhaustion.
His tears continued to flow, and the man to sit there, three parts naked, in the cold air of the chamber. I twitted myself alternately with inhumanity and sentimental weakness, now half rising in my bed to interfere, now reading myself lessons of indifference and courting slumber, until, upon a sudden, the QUANTUM MUTATUS AB ILLO shot into my mind; and calling to remembrance his old wisdom, constancy, and patience, I was overborne with a pity almost approaching the passionate, not for my master alone but for the sons of man.
At this I leaped from my place, went over to his side and laid a hand on his bare shoulder, which was cold as stone. He uncovered his face and showed it me all swollen and begrutten (10) like a child's; and at the sight my impatience partially revived.
"Think shame to yourself," said I. "This is bairnly conduct. Imight have been snivelling myself, if I had cared to swill my belly with wine. But I went to my bed sober like a man. Come: get into yours, and have done with this pitiable exhibition.""Oh, Mackellar," said he, "my heart is wae!"
"Wae?" cried I. "For a good cause, I think. What words were these you sang as you came in? Show pity to others, we then can talk of pity to yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but Iwill be no party to half-way houses. If you're a striker, strike, and if you're a bleater, bleat!""Cry!" cries he, with a burst, "that's it - strike! that's talking!
Man, I've stood it all too long. But when they laid a hand upon the child, when the child's threatened" - his momentary vigour whimpering off - "my child, my Alexander!" - and he was at his tears again.
I took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Alexander!" said I.
