And sure enough, the next day, there fell a sprinkle even in Albany; but it passed as it came, and was but a of what lay before us. I thought of it lightly then, knowing so little as I did of that province: the is different; and I wonder at times if some of the horror of there events which I must now rehearse flowed not from the skies and winds to which we were exposed, and the agony of cold that we must suffer.
The boat having passed by, I thought at first we should have left the town. But no such matter. My lord continued his stay in Albany where he had no affairs, and kept me by him, far from my due employment, and making a of occupation. It is upon this passage I expect, and perhaps deserve, . I was not so dull but what I had my own thoughts. I could not see the Master himself into the hands of Harris, and not suspect some underhand contrivance. Harris bore a villainous reputation, and he had been with in private by my lord; Mountain, the trader, proved, upon , to be another of the same kidney; the errand they were all gone upon being the recovery of ill-gotten treasures, offered in itself a very strong to foul play; and the character of the country where they journeyed promised to deeds of blood. Well: it is true I had all these thoughts and fears, and guesses of the Master’s fate. But you are to consider I was the same man that sought to dash him from the of a ship in the mid-sea; the same that, a little before, very impiously but sincerely offered God a bargain, seeking to hire God to be my bravo. It is true again that I had a good deal melted towards our enemy. But this I always thought of as a weakness of the flesh and even ; my mind remaining steady and quite against him. True, yet again, that it was one thing to assume on my own shoulders the and danger of a criminal attempt, and another to stand by and see my lord imperil and himself. But this was the very ground of my inaction. For (should I anyway stir in the business) I might fail indeed to save the Master, but I could not miss to make a byword of my lord.
Thus it was that I did nothing; and upon the same reasons, I am still strong to my course. We lived meanwhile in Albany, but though alone together in a strange place, had little traffic beyond formal salutations. My lord had carried with him several introductions to chief people of the town and neighbourhood; others he had before encountered in New York: with this consequence, that he went much abroad, and I am sorry to say was altogether too in his habits. I was often in bed, but never asleep, when he returned; and there was scarce a night when he did not betray the influence of liquor. By day he would still lay upon me endless tasks, which he showed considerable to fish up and renew, in the manner of Penelope’s web. I never refused, as I say, for I was hired to do his bidding; but I took no pains to keep my under a bushel, and would sometimes smile in his face.
“I think I must be the devil and you Michael Scott,” I said to him one day. “I have bridged Tweed and split the Eildons; and now you set me to the rope of sand.”
He looked at me with shining eyes, and looked away again, his chewing, but without words.
“Well, well, my lord,” said I, “your will is my pleasure. I will do this thing for the fourth time; but I would beg of you to invent another task against to-morrow, for by my troth, I am weary of this one.”
“You do not know what you are saying,” returned my lord, putting on his hat and turning his back to me. “It is a strange thing you should take a pleasure to annoy me. A friend—but that is a different affair. It is a strange thing. I am a man that has had ill-fortune all my life through. I am still surrounded by contrivances. I am always treading in plots,” he burst out. “The whole world is banded against me.”
“I would not talk wicked nonsense if I were you,” said I; “but I will tell you what I would do—I would put my head in cold water, for you had more last night than you could carry.”
“Do ye think that?” said he, with a manner of interest highly . “Would that be good for me? It’s a thing I never tried.”
“I mind the days when you had no call to try, and I wish, my lord, that they were back again,” said I. “But the plain truth is, if you continue to exceed, you will do yourself a .”
“I don’t appear to carry drink the way I used to,” said my lord. “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 I made 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 of my lord in the morning; and I must have described my patron very ill if the reader does not perceive a notable falling off. To the man thus fallen: to know him accepted among his companions for a poor, toper, welcome (if he were welcome at all) for the bare consideration of his title; and to recall the he had once displayed against such of fortune; was not this a thing at once to rage and to be at?
In his cups, he was more excessive. 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 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 , 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 ; entered, set his light upon the table, and took off his hat. I saw him very plain; a high, appeared to boil in his , and he stood and smiled and 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 Corbies endlessly 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 mode; but they exercised a rude 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 ; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness , he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of
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