Chapter 2

SUMMARY OF EVENTS DURING THIS MASTER’S WANDERINGS.

The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been
looking for, and public curiosity is sure to welcome. It so befell that
I was intimately mingled with the last years and history of the house;
and there does not live one man so able as myself to make these matters
plain, or so desirous to narrate them faithfully. I knew the Master; on
many secret steps of his career I have an authentic memoir in my hand;
I sailed with him on his last voyage almost alone; I made one upon that
winter’s journey of which so many tales have gone abroad; and I was
there at the man’s death. As for my late Lord Durrisdeer, I served him
and loved him near twenty years; and thought more of him the more I
knew of him. Altogether, I think it not fit that so much evidence
should perish; the truth is a debt I owe my lord’s memory; and I think
my old years will flow more smoothly, and my white hair lie quieter on
the pillow, when the debt is paid.

The Duries of Durrisdeer and Ballantrae were a strong family in the
south-west from the days of David First. A rhyme still current in the
countryside—

Kittle folk are the Durrisdeers,
They ride wi’ over mony spears—

bears the mark of its antiquity; and the name appears in another, which
common report attributes to Thomas of Ercildoune himself—I cannot say
how truly, and which some have applied—I dare not say with how much
justice—to the events of this narration:

Twa Duries in Durrisdeer,
Ane to tie and ane to ride,
An ill day for the groom
And a waur day for the bride.

Authentic history besides is filled with their exploits which (to our
modern eyes) seem not very commendable: and the family suffered its
full share of those ups and downs to which the great houses of Scotland
have been ever liable. But all these I pass over, to come to that
memorable year 1745, when the foundations of this tragedy were laid.

At that time there dwelt a family of four persons in the house of
Durrisdeer, near St. Bride’s, on the Solway shore; a chief hold of
their race since the Reformation. My old lord, eighth of the name, was
not old in years, but he suffered prematurely from the disabilities of
age; his place was at the chimney side; there he sat reading, in a
lined gown, with few words for any man, and wry words for none: the
model of an old retired housekeeper; and yet his mind very well
nourished with study, and reputed in the country to be more cunning
than he seemed. The master of Ballantrae, James in baptism, took from
his father the love of serious reading; some of his tact perhaps as
well, but that which was only policy in the father became black
dissimulation in the son. The face of his behaviour was merely popular
and wild: he sat late at wine, later at the cards; had the name in the
country of “an unco man for the lasses;” and was ever in the front of
broils. But for all he was the first to go in, yet it was observed he
was invariably the best to come off; and his partners in mischief were
usually alone to pay the piper. This luck or dexterity got him several
ill-wishers, but with the rest of the country, enhanced his reputation;
so that great things were looked for in his future, when he should have
gained more gravity. One very black mark he had to his name; but the
matter was hushed up at the time, and so defaced by legends before I
came into those parts, that I scruple to set it down. If it was true,
it was a horrid fact in one so young; and if false, it was a horrid
calumny. I think it notable that he had always vaunted himself quite
implacable, and was taken at his word; so that he had the addition
among his neighbours of “an ill man to cross.” Here was altogether a
young nobleman (not yet twenty-four in the year ’45) who had made a
figure in the country beyond his time of life. The less marvel if there
were little heard of the second son, Mr. Henry (my late Lord
Durrisdeer), who was neither very bad nor yet very able, but an honest,
solid sort of lad like many of his neighbours. Little heard, I say; but
indeed it was a case of little spoken. He was known among the salmon
fishers in the firth, for that was a sport that he assiduously
followed; he was an excellent good horse-doctor besides; and took a
chief hand, almost from a boy, in the management of the estates. How
hard a part that was, in the situation of that family, none knows
better than myself; nor yet with how little colour of justice a man may
there acquire the reputation of a tyrant and a miser. The fourth person
in the house was Miss Alison Graeme, a near kinswoman, an orphan, and
the heir to a considerable fortune which her father had acquired in
trade. This money was loudly called for by my lord’s necessities;
indeed the land was deeply mortgaged; and Miss Alison was designed
accordingly to be the Master’s wife, gladly enough on her side; with
how much good-will on his, is another matter. She was a comely girl,
and in those days very spirited and self-willed; for the old lord
having no daughter of his own, and my lady being long dead, she had
grown up as best she might.

To these four came the news of Prince Charlie’s landing, and set them
presently by the ears. My lord, like the chimney-keeper that he was,
was all for temporising. Miss Alison held the other side, because it
appeared romantical; and the Master (though I have heard they did not
agree often) was for this once of her opinion. The adventure tempted
him, as I conceive; he was tempted by the opportunity to raise the
fortunes of the house, and not less by the hope of paying off his
private liabilities, which were heavy beyond all opinion. As for Mr.
Henry, it appears he said little enough at first; his part came later
on. It took the three a whole day’s disputation, before they agreed to
steer a middle course, one son going forth to strike a blow for King
James, my lord and the other staying at home to keep in favour with
King George. Doubtless this was my lord’s decision; and, as is well
known, it was the part played by many considerable families. But the
one dispute settled, another opened. For my lord, Miss Alison, and Mr.
Henry all held the one view: that it was the cadet’s part to go out;
and the Master, what with restlessness and vanity, would at no rate
consent to stay at home. My lord pleaded, Miss Alison wept, Mr. Henry
was very plain spoken: all was of no avail.

“It is the direct heir of Durrisdeer that should ride by his King’s
bridle,” says the Master.

“If we were playing a manly part,” says Mr. Henry, “there might be
sense in such talk. But what are we doing? Cheating at cards!”

“We are saving the house of Durrisdeer, Henry,” his father said.

“And see, James,” said Mr. Henry, “if I go, and the Prince has the
upper hand, it will be easy to make your peace with King James. But if
you go, and the expedition fails, we divide the right and the title.
And what shall I be then?”

“You will be Lord Durrisdeer,” said the Master. “I put all I have upon
the table.”

“I play at no such game,” cries Mr. Henry. “I shall be left in such a
situation as no man of sense and honour could endure. I shall be
neither fish nor flesh!” he cried. And a little after he had another
expression, plainer perhaps than he intended. “It is your duty to be
here with my father,” said he. “You know well enough you are the
favourite.”

“Ay?” said the Master. “And there spoke Envy! Would you trip up my
heels—Jacob?” said he, and dwelled upon the name maliciously.

Mr. Henry went and walked at the low end of the hall without reply; for
he had an excellent gift of silence. Presently he came back.

“I am the cadet and I _should_ go,” said he. “And my lord here is the
master, and he says I _shall_ go. What say ye to that, my brother?”

“I say this, Harry,” returned the Master, “that when very obstinate
folk are met, there are only two ways out: Blows—and I think none of us
could care to go so far; or the arbitrament of chance—and here is a
guinea piece. Will you stand by the toss of the coin?”

“I will stand and fall by it,” said Mr. Henry. “Heads, I go; shield, I
stay.”

The coin was spun, and it fell shield. “So there is a lesson for
Jacob,” says the Master.

“We shall live to repent of this,” says Mr. Henry, and flung out of the
hall.

As for Miss Alison, she caught up that piece of gold which had just
sent her lover to the wars, and flung it clean through the family
shield in the great painted window.

“If you loved me as well as I love you, you would have stayed,” cried
she.

“‘I could not love you, dear, so well, loved I not honour more,’” sang
the Master.

“Oh!” she cried, “you have no heart—I hope you may be killed!” and she
ran from the room, and in tears, to her own chamber.

It seems the Master turned to my lord with his most comical manner, and
says he, “This looks like a devil of a wife.”

“I think you are a devil of a son to me,” cried his father, “you that
have always been the favourite, to my shame be it spoken. Never a good
hour have I gotten of you, since you were born; no, never one good
hour,” and repeated it again the third time. Whether it was the
Master’s levity, or his insubordination, or Mr. Henry’s word about the
favourite son, that had so much disturbed my lord, I do not know; but I
incline to think it was the last, for I have it by all accounts that
Mr. Henry was more made up to from that hour.

Altogether it was in pretty ill blood with his family that the Master
rode to the North; which was the more sorrowful for others to remember
when it seemed too late. By fear and favour he had scraped together
near upon a dozen men, principally tenants’ sons; they were all pretty
full when they set forth, and rode up the hill by the old abbey,
roaring and singing, the white cockade in every hat. It was a desperate
venture for so small a company to cross the most of Scotland
unsupported; and (what made folk think so the more) even as that poor
dozen was clattering up the hill, a great ship of the king’s navy, that
could have brought them under with a single boat, lay with her broad
ensign streaming in the bay. The next afternoon, having given the
Master a fair start, it was Mr. Henry’s turn; and he rode off, all by
himself, to offer his sword and carry letters from his father to King
George’s Government. Miss Alison was shut in her room, and did little
but weep, till both were gone; only she stitched the cockade upon the
Master’s hat, and (as John Paul told me) it was wetted with tears when
he carried it down to him.

In all that followed, Mr. Henry and my old lord were true to their
bargain. That ever they accomplished anything is more than I could
learn; and that they were anyway strong on the king’s side, more than
believe. But they kept the letter of loyalty, corresponded with my Lord
President, sat still at home, and had little or no commerce with the
Master while that business lasted. Nor was he, on his side, more
communicative. Miss Alison, indeed, was always sending him expresses,
but I do not know if she had many answers. Macconochie rode for her
once, and found the highlanders before Carlisle, and the Master riding
by the Prince’s side in high favour; he took the letter (so Macconochie
tells), opened it, glanced it through with a mouth like a man
whistling, and stuck it in his belt, whence, on his horse passageing,
it fell unregarded to the ground. It was Macconochie who picked it up;
and he still kept it, and indeed I have seen it in his hands. News came
to Durrisdeer of course, by the common report, as it goes travelling
through a country, a thing always wonderful to me. By that means the
family learned more of the Master’s favour with the Prince, and the
ground it was said to stand on: for by a strange condescension in a man
so proud—only that he was a man still more ambitious—he was said to
have crept into notability by truckling to the Irish. Sir Thomas
Sullivan, Colonel Burke and the rest, were his daily comrades, by which
course he withdrew himself from his own country-folk. All the small
intrigues he had a hand in fomenting; thwarted my Lord George upon a
thousand points; was always for the advice that seemed palatable to the
Prince, no matter if it was good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like
the gambler he was all through life) to have had less regard to the
chances of the campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire
to, if, by any luck, it should succeed. For the rest, he did very well
in the field; no one questioned that; for he was no coward.

The next was the news of Culloden, which was brought to Durrisdeer by
one of the tenants’ sons—the only survivor, he declared, of all those
that had gone singing up the hill. By an unfortunate chance John Paul
and Macconochie had that very morning found the guinea piece—which was
the root of all the evil—sticking in a holly bush; they had been “up
the gait,” as the servants say at Durrisdeer, to the change-house; and
if they had little left of the guinea, they had less of their wits.
What must John Paul do but burst into the hall where the family sat at
dinner, and cry the news to them that “Tam Macmorland was but new
lichtit at the door, and—wirra, wirra—there were nane to come behind
him”?

They took the word in silence like folk condemned; only Mr. Henry
carrying his palm to his face, and Miss Alison laying her head outright
upon her hands. As for my lord, he was like ashes.

“I have still one son,” says he. “And, Henry, I will do you this
justice—it is the kinder that is left.”

It was a strange thing to say in such a moment; but my lord had never
forgotten Mr. Henry’s speech, and he had years of injustice on his
conscience. Still it was a strange thing, and more than Miss Alison
could let pass. She broke out and blamed my lord for his unnatural
words, and Mr. Henry because he was sitting there in safety when his
brother lay dead, and herself because she had given her sweetheart ill
words at his departure, calling him the flower of the flock, wringing
her hands, protesting her love, and crying on him by his name—so that
the servants stood astonished.

Mr. Henry got to his feet, and stood holding his chair. It was he that
was like ashes now.

“Oh!” he burst out suddenly, “I know you loved him.”

“The world knows that, glory be to God!” cries she; and then to Mr.
Henry: “There is none but me to know one thing—that you were a traitor
to him in your heart.”

“God knows,” groans he, “it was lost love on both sides.”

Time went by in the house after that without much change; only they
were now three instead of four, which was a perpetual reminder of their
loss. Miss Alison’s money, you are to bear in mind, was highly needful
for the estates; and the one brother being dead, my old lord soon set
his heart upon her marrying the other. Day in, day out, he would work
upon her, sitting by the chimney-side with his finger in his Latin
book, and his eyes set upon her face with a kind of pleasant intentness
that became the old gentleman very well. If she wept, he would condole
with her like an ancient man that has seen worse times and begins to
think lightly even of sorrow; if she raged, he would fall to reading
again in his Latin book, but always with some civil excuse; if she
offered, as she often did, to let them have her money in a gift, he
would show her how little it consisted with his honour, and remind her,
even if he should consent, that Mr. Henry would certainly refuse. _Non
vi sed sæpe cadendo_ was a favourite word of his; and no doubt this
quiet persecution wore away much of her resolve; no doubt, besides, he
had a great influence on the girl, having stood in the place of both
her parents; and, for that matter, she was herself filled with the
spirit of the Duries, and would have gone a great way for the glory of
Durrisdeer; but not so far, I think, as to marry my poor patron, had it
not been—strangely enough—for the circumstance of his extreme
unpopularity.

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; and Culloden was lost by the treachery of the
Macdonalds. This habit of imputing treason grew upon the fool, till at
last he must have in Mr. Henry also. Mr. Henry (by his account) had
betrayed the lads of Durrisdeer; he had promised to follow with more
men, and instead of that he had ridden to King George. “Ay, and the
next day!” Tam would cry. “The puir bonnie Master, and the puir, kind
lads that rade wi’ him, were hardly ower the scaur, or he was aff—the
Judis! 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;
and it was heard and believed and given out for gospel by the ignorant
and the ill-willing. Mr. Henry began to be shunned; yet awhile, and the
commons began to murmur as he went by, and the women (who are always
the most bold because they are the most safe) to cry out their
reproaches to his face. The Master was cried up for a saint. It was
remembered how he had never any hand in pressing the tenants; as,
indeed, no more he had, except to spend the money. He was a little wild
perhaps, the folk said; but how much better was a natural, wild lad
that would soon have settled down, than a skinflint and a sneckdraw,
sitting, with his nose in an account book, to persecute poor tenants!
One trollop, who had had a child to the Master, and by all accounts
been very badly used, yet made herself a kind of champion of his
memory. She flung a stone one day at Mr. Henry.

“Whaur’s the bonnie lad that trustit ye?” she cried.

Mr. Henry reined in his horse and looked upon her, the blood flowing
from his lip. “Ay, Jess?” says he. “You too? And yet ye should ken me
better.” For it was he who had helped her with money.

The woman had another stone ready, which she made as if she would cast;
and he, to ward himself, threw up the hand that held his riding-rod.

“What, would ye beat a lassie, ye ugly—?” cries she, and ran away
screaming as though he had struck her.

Next day word went about the country like wildfire that Mr. Henry had
beaten Jessie Broun within an inch of her life. I give it as one
instance of how this snowball grew, and one calumny brought another;
until my poor patron was so perished in reputation that he began to
keep the house like my lord. All this while, you may be very sure, he
uttered no complaints at home; the very ground of the scandal was too
sore a matter to be handled; and Mr. Henry was very proud and strangely
obstinate in silence. My old lord must have heard of it, by John Paul,
if by no one else; and he must at least have remarked the altered
habits of his son. Yet even he, it is probable, knew not how high the
feeling ran; and as for Miss Alison, she was ever the last person to
hear news, and the least interested when she heard them.

In the height of the ill-feeling (for it died away as it came, no man
could say why) there was an election forward in the town of St.
Bride’s, which is the next to Durrisdeer, standing on the Water of
Swift; some grievance was fermenting, I forget what, if ever I heard;
and it was currently said there would be broken heads ere night, and
that the sheriff had sent as far as Dumfries for soldiers. My lord
moved that Mr. Henry should be present, assuring him it was necessary
to appear, for the credit of the house. “It will soon be reported,”
said he, “that we do not take the lead in our own country.”

“It is a strange lead that I can take,” said Mr. Henry; and when they
had pushed him further, “I tell you the plain truth,” he said, “I dare
not show my face.”

“You are the first of the house that ever said so,” cries Miss Alison.

“We will go all three,” said my lord; and sure enough he got into his
boots (the first time in four years—a sore business John Paul had to
get them on), and Miss Alison into her riding-coat, and all three rode
together to St. Bride’s.

The streets were full of the riff-raff of all the countryside, who had
no sooner clapped eyes on Mr. Henry than the hissing began, and the
hooting, and the cries of “Judas!” and “Where was the Master?” and
“Where were the poor lads that rode with him?” Even a stone was cast;
but the more part cried shame at that, for my old lord’s sake, and Miss
Alison’s. It took not ten minutes to persuade my lord that Mr. Henry
had been right. He said never a word, but turned his horse about, and
home again, with his chin upon his bosom. Never a word said Miss
Alison; no doubt she thought the more; no doubt her pride was stung,
for she was a bone-bred Durie; and no doubt her heart was touched to
see her cousin so unjustly used. That night she was never in bed; I
have often blamed my lady—when I call to mind that night, I readily
forgive her all; and the first thing in the morning she came to the old
lord in his usual seat.

“If Henry still wants me,” said she, “he can have me now.” To himself
she had a different speech: “I bring you no love, Henry; but God knows,
all the pity in the world.”

June the 1st, 1748, was the day of their marriage. It was December of
the same year that first saw me alighting at the doors of the great
house; and from there I take up the history of events as they befell
under my own observation, like a witness in a court.