The Master of Ballantrae quotes

This was the work of Tam Macmorland. There was not much harm in Tam; but he had that grievous weakness, a long tongue; and as the only man in that country who had been out—or, rather, who had come in again—he was sure of listeners.

Those that have the underhand in any fighting, I have observed, are ever anxious to persuade themselves they were betrayed.

By Tam’s account of it, the rebels had been betrayed at every turn and by every officer they had; they had been betrayed at Derby, and betrayed at Falkirk; the night march was a step of treachery of my Lord George’s;

Ay, weel—he has his way o’t: he’s to be my lord, nae less, and there’s mony a cold corp amang the Hieland heather!” And at this, if Tam had been drinking, he would begin to weep.

Let anyone speak long enough, he will get believers.

This view of Mr. Henry’s behaviour crept about the country by little and little; it was talked upon by folk that knew the contrary, but were short of topics;

“You would not guess what I was thinking,” says he. “

I was thinking I would be a happier man if I could ride and run the danger of my life with these lawless companions.

”

Henry’s heart, and how much better he were employed to shatter that false idol; for by this time I saw very well how the land lay between my patron and his wife.

My pen is clear enough to tell a plain tale; but to render the effect of an infinity of small things, not one great enough in itself to be narrated; and to translate the story of looks, and the message of voices when they are saying no great matter; and to put in half a page the essence of near eighteen months⁠—this is what I despair to accomplish.

The fault, to be very blunt, lay all in Mrs. Henry. She felt it a merit to have consented to the marriage, and she took it like a martyrdom; in which my old lord, whether he knew it or not, fomented her.

But if we are to have our noses rubbed together in this course of flight, let us each dare to be ourselves like savages, and each swear that he will neither resent nor deprecate the other.

I am a pretty bad fellow at bottom, and I find the pretence of virtues very irksome.

”

“I said no such foolishness,” he replied. “

I have a brother of my own, and I think no more of him than of a colewort.

But if we are to have our noses rubbed together in this course of flight, let us each dare to be ourselves like savages, and each swear that he will neither resent nor deprecate the other.

“The devil may come of it for what I care,” says the reckless fellow. “

I have always done exactly as I felt inclined.

”

I confessed to him ingenuously that my nerve was quite shook amid these horrible surroundings, and I durst scarce tell him to count upon me.

“I am not very easy frightened,” said he, “nor very easy beat.”

A few days after there befell an accident which had nearly hanged us all; and offers the most extraordinary picture of the folly that ruled in our concerns. We were all pretty drunk:

I pass swiftly over those twelve or fifteen months in which we continued to keep the sea in the North Atlantic, getting our food and water from the ships we overhauled, and doing on the whole a pretty fortunate business.

Sure, no one could wish to read anything so ungenteel as the memoirs of a pirate, even an unwilling one like me!

Things went extremely better with our designs, and Ballantrae kept his lead, to my admiration, from that day forth. I would be tempted to suppose that a gentleman must everywhere be first, even aboard a rover;

But the rest, having no such grounds of hope, fell to another pastime, that of computation. All day long they would be telling up their shares or glooming over the result. I have said we were pretty fortunate.

But an observation falls to be made: that in this world, in no business that I have tried, do the profits rise to a man’s expectations.

We found many ships, and took many;

and deserting the rest of our possessions, even to our swords, which would have much embarrassed us among the woods, we set forth on this deplorable adventure.

The labours of Hercules, so finely described by Homer, were a trifle to what we now underwent.

Some parts of the forest were perfectly dense down to the ground, so that we must cut our way like mites in a cheese. In some the bottom was full of deep swamp, and the whole wood entirely rotten.

The next day, and the next, were passed in similar labours; Ballantrae often deciding on our course by the spinning of a coin; and once, when I expostulated on this childishness, he had an odd remark that I never have forgotten.

“I know no better way,” said he, “to express my scorn of human reason.”

I think it was the third day that we found the body of a Christian, scalped and most abominably mangled, and lying in a pudder of his blood; the birds of the desert screaming over him, as thick as flies.

and to say the honest truth, Mackellar, I had begun to take a pride in the estates.” He gloomed for a moment. “But what would you have?” he went on. “Nothing is mine, nothing. This day’s news has knocked the bottom out of my life.

I have only the name and the shadow of things⁠—only the shadow; there is no substance in my rights.

”

“Truly,” said he, “this Mackellar improves upon acquaintance.

But look you here, my man, and understand it once for all⁠—you waste your breath upon me, and I go my own way with inevitable motion.

”

It was on him the burden fell. How was he to respond to the public advances of one who never lost a chance of gibing him in private? How was he to smile back on the deceiver and the insulter?

He was condemned to seem ungracious. He was condemned to silence.

Had he been less proud, had he spoken, who would have credited the truth? The acted calumny had done its work; my lord and Mrs. Henry were the daily witnesses of what went on;

How was he to respond to the public advances of one who never lost a chance of gibing him in private? How was he to smile back on the deceiver and the insulter? He was condemned to seem ungracious. He was condemned to silence.

Had he been less proud, had he spoken, who would have credited the truth?

The acted calumny had done its work; my lord and Mrs. Henry were the daily witnesses of what went on; they could have sworn in court that the Master was a model of long-suffering good-nature, and Mr. Henry a pattern of jealousy and thanklessness.

after all these years of marriage she might have commanded or captured his confidence. And my old lord, too—that very watchful gentleman—where was all his observation? But, for one thing, the deceit was practised by a master hand, and might have gulled an angel.

For another (in the case of Mrs. Henry), I have observed there are no persons so far away as those who are both married and estranged, so that they seem out of earshot, or to have no common tongue.

For a third (in the case of both of these spectators), they were blinded by old ingrained predilection.

There were times, too, when we talked, and a strange manner of talk it was; there was never a person named, nor an individual circumstance referred to; yet we had the same matter in our minds, and we were each aware of it.

It is a strange art that can thus be practised; to talk for hours of a thing, and never name nor yet so much as hint at it.

And I remember I wondered if it was by some such natural skill that the Master made love to Mrs. Henry all day long (as he manifestly did), yet never startled her into reserve.

and forgiveness (so to misapply a noble word) flowed from him in sheer weakness, like the tears of senility. Mrs. Henry’s was a different case; and Heaven alone knows what he found to say to her, or how he persuaded her from her contempt.

It is one of the worst things of sentiment, that the voice grows to be more important than the words, and the speaker than that which is spoken.

But some excuse the Master must have found, or perhaps he had even struck upon some art to wrest this exposure to his own advantage; for after a time of coldness, it seemed as if things went worse than ever between him and Mrs. Henry.

I can carry no such base thoughts to anyone—to my father least of all; that would be to fall into the bottom of his scorn. The weakness of my ground,” he continued, “lies in myself, that I am not one who engages love.

I have their gratitude, they all tell me that; I have a rich estate of it! But I am not present in their minds; they are moved neither to think with me nor to think for me.

There is my loss!” He got to his feet, and trod down the fire. “But some method must be found, Mackellar,” said he, looking at me suddenly over his shoulder; “some way must be found.

There is my loss!” He got to his feet, and trod down the fire. “But some method must be found, Mackellar,” said he, looking at me suddenly over his shoulder; “some way must be found.

I am a man of a great deal of patience⁠—far too much⁠—far too much. I begin to despise myself.

And yet, sure, never was a man involved in such a toil!” He fell back to his brooding.

About noon there came a blink of sunshine; showing a very pretty, wintry, frosty landscape of white hills and woods, with Crail’s lugger waiting for a wind under the Craig Head, and the smoke mounting straight into the air from every farm and cottage.

With the coming of night, the haze closed in overhead; it fell dark and still and starless, and exceeding cold: a night the most unseasonable, fit for strange events.

Mrs. Henry withdrew, as was now her custom, very early. We had set ourselves of late to pass the evening with a game of cards; another mark that our visitor was wearying mightily of the life at Durrisdeer;

And even now his is the more affectionate nature. But I will not speak of him. All that you say of Henry is most true; I do not wonder, I know him to be very magnanimous; you will say I trade upon the knowledge?

It is possible; there are dangerous virtues: virtues that tempt the encroacher.

Mr. Mackellar, I will make it up to him; I will take order with all this. I have been weak; and, what is worse, I have been dull.”

What you call your sword, Mr. Mackellar, and which had been one indeed against a man of any remnant of propriety, would have been but a sword of paper against him. He would smile in your face at such a threat.

He stands upon his degradation, he makes that his strength; it is in vain to struggle with such characters.

” She cried out this last a little desperately, and then with more quiet: “No, Mr. Mackellar; I have thought upon this matter all night, and there is no way out of it.

It was to this temper that he owed the felicity of his later days; and yet here it was, if anywhere, that you could call the man insane.

A great part of this life consists in contemplating what we cannot cure; but Mr. Henry, if he could not dismiss solicitude by an effort of the mind, must instantly and at whatever cost annihilate the cause of it; so that he played alternately the ostrich and the bull.

It is to this strenuous cowardice of pain that I have to set down all the unfortunate and excessive steps of his subsequent career.

“Ah! that is easy saying,” said my lord. “That is very easy saying, Mackellar.

But for me to forgive!⁠—I think I would cut a very silly figure if I had the affectation to pretend it.

”

“

There is an obligation in happiness⁠—do you not think so?

” says he musingly.

“I think so indeed,” says I, “and one in sorrow too.

If we are not here to try to do the best, in my humble opinion the sooner we are away the better for all parties.

”

For a lamp was taken from a carriage, and waved three times up and down by way of a farewell. And then they were gone indeed, having looked their last on the kind roof of Durrisdeer, their faces toward a barbarous country.

I never knew before the greatness of that vault of night in which we two poor serving-men⁠—the one old, and the one elderly⁠—stood for the first time deserted; I had never felt before my own dependency upon the countenance of others.

The sense of isolation burned in my bowels like a fire.

I never knew before the greatness of that vault of night in which we two poor serving-men—the one old, and the one elderly—stood for the first time deserted; I had never felt before my own dependency upon the countenance of others.

The sense of isolation burned in my bowels like a fire.

It seemed that we who remained at home were the true exiles, and that Durrisdeer and Solwayside, and all that made my country native, its air good to me, and its language welcome, had gone forth and was far over the sea with my old …

“Not easily,” said he. “You put your finger on the point with your usual excellent good sense.

I never fight with the inevitable.

”

it seemed of a piece with that impudent grossness which I knew to underlie the veneer of his fine manners; and sometimes my gorge rose against him as though he were deformed—and sometimes I would draw away as though from something partly spectral.

I had moments when I thought of him as of a man of pasteboard⁠—as though, if one should strike smartly through the buckram of his countenance, there would be found a mere vacuity within.

This horror (not merely fanciful, I think) vastly increased my detestation of his neighbourhood; I began to feel something shiver within me on his drawing near; I had at times a longing to cry out;

Thereupon he would shake his head at me. “Ah! Mackellar, you might live a thousand years and never understand my nature,” he would say. “

This battle is now committed, the hour of reflection quite past, the hour for mercy not yet come.

It began between us when we span a coin in the hall of Durrisdeer, now twenty years ago; we have had our ups and downs, but never either of us dreamed of giving in;

“It is so we all dupe ourselves,” I cried. “

Had I been St. Paul, it would have been all one; I would have made the same hash of that career that you now see me making of my own.

”

Cast in your lot with me tomorrow, become my slave, my chattel, a thing I can command as I command the powers of my own limbs and spirit—you will see no more that dark side that I turn upon the world in anger.

I must have all or none. But where all is given I give it back with usury.

I have a kingly nature: there is my loss!”

“

O! there are double words for everything: the word that swells, the word that belittles; you cannot fight me with a word!

” said he. “You said the other day that I relied on your conscience: were I in your humour of detraction, I might say I built upon your vanity. It is your pretension to be un homme de parole; ’tis mine not to accept defeat.

It was but twice that I must stoop to that ungrateful necessity of playing spy. I was then certain of my lord’s purpose in his rambles and of the secret source of his delight.

Here was his mistress: it was hatred and not love that gave him healthful colours.

Some moralists might have been relieved by the discovery; I confess that I was dismayed. I found this situation of two brethren not only odious in itself, but big with possibilities of further evil;

That sight of him patiently returning to his needlework was more than my imagination could digest. There was never a man made, and the Master the least of any, that could accept so long a series of insults.

The air smelt blood to me.

And I vowed there should be no neglect of mine if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be yet turned aside. That same day, therefore, I came to my lord in his business room, where he sat upon some trivial occupation.

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.

Harris. Consider of it,” he concluded, dealing the man a gentle tap upon the shoulder, “and don’t be in haste.

Dead or alive, you will find me an ill man to quarrel with.

”