Chapter IV

I Run a Great Danger in the House of Shaws

For a day that was begun so ill, the day passed fairly well. We had the porridge cold again at noon, and hot porridge at night; porridge and small beer was my uncle’s diet. He spoke but little, and that in the same way as before, shooting a question at me after a long silence; and when I sought to lead him to talk about my future, slipped out of it again. In a room next door to the kitchen, where he suffered me to go, I found a great number of books, both Latin and English, in which I took great pleasure all the afternoon. Indeed, the time passed so lightly in this good company, that I began to be almost reconciled to my residence at Shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and his eyes playing hide-and-seek with mine, revived the force of my distrust.

One thing I discovered, which put me in some doubt. This was an entry on the fly-leaf of a chapbook plainly written by my father’s hand and thus conceived: ‘To my brother Ebenezer on his fifth birthday’. Now, what puzzled me was this: That, as my father was of course the younger brother, he must either have made some strange error, or he must have written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear manly hand of writing.

I tried to get this out of my head; but when at length I went back into the kitchen, and sat down once more to porridge and small beer, the first thing I said to Uncle Ebenezer was to ask him if my father had not been very quick at his book.

‘Alexander? No him!’ was the reply. ‘I was far quicker mysel’; I was a clever chappie when I was young. Why, I could read as soon as he could.’

This puzzled me yet more; and a thought coming into my head, I asked if he and my father had been twins.

He jumped upon his stool, and the horn spoon fell out of his hand upon the floor. ‘What gars ye ask that?’ he said, and he caught me by the breast of the jacket, and looked this time straight into my eyes: his own were little and light, and bright like a bird’s, blinking and winking strangely.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, very calmly, for I was far stronger than he, and not easily frightened. ‘Take your hand from my jacket. This is no way to behave.’

My uncle seemed to make a great effort upon himself. ‘Dod man, David,’ he said, ‘ye shouldnae speak to me about your father. That’s where the mistake is.’ He sat awhile and shook, blinking in his plate: ‘He was all the brother that ever I had,’ he added, but with no heart in his voice; and then he caught up his spoon and fell to supper again, but still shaking.

Now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and sudden profession of love for my dead father, went so clean beyond my comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope. On the one hand, I began to think my uncle was perhaps insane and might be dangerous; on the other, there came up into my mind (quite unbidden by me and even discouraged) a story like some ballad I had heard folk singing, of a poor lad that was a rightful heir and a wicked kinsman that tried to keep him from his own. For why should my uncle play a part with a relative that came, almost a beggar, to his door, unless in his heart he had some cause to fear him?

‘Davie,’ he said, at length, ‘I’ve been thinking;’ then he paused, and said it again. ‘There’s a wee bit siller that I half promised ye before ye were born,’ he continued; ‘promised it to your father. O, naething legal, ye understand; just gentlemen dafing at their wine. Well, I keepit that bit money separate – it was a great expense, but a promise is a promise – and it has grown by now to be a matter of just precisely – just exactly’ – and here he paused and stumbled – ‘of just exactly forty pounds!’ This last he rapped out with a sidelong glance over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream, ‘Scots!’

The pound Scots being the same thing as an English shilling, the difference made by this second thought was considerable; I could see, besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it puzzled me to guess; and I made no attempt to conceal the tone of raillery in which I answered —

‘O, think again, sir! Pounds sterling, I believe!’

‘That’s what I said,’ returned my uncle: ‘pounds sterling! And if you’ll step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it is, I’ll get it out to ye and call ye in again.’

I did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think I was so easily to be deceived. It was a dark night, with a few stars low down; and as I stood just outside the door, I heard a hollow moaning of wind far off among the hills. I said to myself there was something thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast importance that should prove to me before the evening passed.

When I was called in again, my uncle counted out into my hand seven and thirty golden guinea pieces; the rest was in his hand, in small gold and silver; but his heart failed him there, and he crammed the change into his pocket.

‘There,’ said he, ‘that’ll show you! I’m a queer man, and strange wi’ strangers; but my word is my bond, and there’s the proof of it.’

Now, my uncle seemed so miserly that I was struck dumb by this sudden generosity, and could find no words in which to thank him.

‘No a word!’ said he. ‘Nae thanks; I want nae thanks. I do my duty. I’m no saying that everybody would have, done it; but for my part (though I’m a careful body, too) it’s a pleasure to me to do the right by my brother’s son; and it’s a pleasure to me to think that now we’ll agree as such near friends should.’

I spoke him in return as handsomely as I was able; but all the while I was wondering what would come next, and why he had parted with his precious guineas; for as to the reason he had given, a baby would have refused it.

Presently he looked towards me sideways.

‘And see here,’ says he, ‘tit for tat.’

I told him I was ready to prove my gratitude in any reasonable degree, and then waited, looking for some monstrous demand. And yet, when at last he plucked up courage to speak, it was only to tell me (very properly, as I thought) that he was growing old and a little broken, and that he would expect me to help him with the house and the bit garden.

I answered, and expressed my readiness to serve. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s begin.’ He pulled out of his pocket a rusty key. ‘There,’ says he, ‘there’s the key of the stair-tower at the far end of the house. Ye can only win into it from the outside, for that part of the house is no finished. Gang ye in there, and up the stairs, and bring me down the chest that’s at the top. There’s papers in’t,’ he added.

‘Can I have a light, sir?’ said I.

‘Na,’ said he, very cunningly. ‘Nae lights in my house.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said I. ‘Are the stairs good?’

‘They’re grand,’ said he; and then, as I was going, ‘Keep to the wall,’ he added; ‘there’s nae bannisters. But the stairs are grand underfoot.’

Out I went into the night. It had fallen blacker than ever; and I was glad to feel along the wall, till I came the length of the stair-tower door at the far end of the unfinished wing. I had got the key into the keyhole and had just turned it, when all upon a sudden, without sound of wind or thunder, the whole sky lighted up with wild fire and went black again. I had to put my hand over my eyes to get back to the colour of the darkness; and indeed I was already half blinded when I stepped into the tower.

The wall, by the touch, was of fine hewn stone; the steps too, though somewhat steep and narrow, were of polished masonwork, and regular and solid underfoot. Minding my uncle’s word about the bannisters, I kept close to the tower side, and felt my way in the pitch darkness with a beating heart.

As I advanced, it seemed to me the stair grew airier and a thought more lightsome; and I was wondering what might be the cause of this change, when a second blink of the summer lightning came and went. If I did not cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if I did not fall, it was more by Heaven’s mercy than my own strength. It was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in the wall, so that I seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold, but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches of the well.

This was the grand stair! I thought; and with the thought, a gust of a kind of angry courage came into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that ‘perhaps,’ if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled.

I had come close to one of the turns, when, feeling forward as usual, my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness beyond it. The stair had been carried no higher; to set a stranger mounting it in the darkness was to send him straight to his death; and the mere thought of the peril in which I might have stood, and the dreadful height I might have fallen from, brought out the sweat upon my body and relaxed my joints.

But I knew what I wanted now, and turned and groped my way down again, with a wonderful anger in my heart. I put out my head into the storm, and looked along towards the kitchen. The door, which I had shut behind me when I left, now stood open, and shed a little glimmer of light; and I thought I could see a figure standing in the rain, quite still, like a man hearkening. And then there came a blinding flash, which showed me my uncle plainly, just where I had fancied him to stand; and hard upon the heels of it, a great tow-row of thunder. Now, whether my uncle thought the crash to be the sound of my fall, or whether he heard in it God’s voice denouncing murder, he was seized on by a kind of panic fear, and that he ran into the house and left the door open behind him. I followed as softly as I could, and, coming unheard into the kitchen, stood and watched him.

He had found time to open the corner cupboard and bring out a great case bottle of aqua vitae, and now sat with his back towards me at the table. I stepped forward, came close behind him where he sat, and suddenly clapping my two hands down upon his shoulders – ‘Ah!’ cried I.

My uncle gave a kind of broken cry like a sheep’s bleat, flung up his arms, and tumbled to the floor like a dead man. Fear came on me that he was dead; then I got water and dashed it in his face; and with that he seemed to come a little to himself, working his mouth and fluttering his eyelids. At last he looked up and saw me, and there came into his eyes a terror that was not of this world.

‘Come, come,’ said I; ‘sit up.’

‘Are ye alive?’ he sobbed. ‘O man, are ye alive?’

‘That am I,’ said I. ‘Small thanks to you!’

He had begun to seek for his breath with deep sighs. ‘The blue phial,’ said he – ‘in the aumry – the blue phial.’ His breath came slower still. I ran to the cupboard, and, sure enough, found there a blue phial of medicine, with the dose written on it on a paper, and this I administered to him with what speed I might.

‘It’s the trouble,’ said he, reviving a little; ‘I have a trouble, Davie. It’s the heart.’

I set him on a chair and looked at him. It is true I felt some pity for a man that looked so sick, but I was full besides of righteous anger; and I numbered over before him the points on which I wanted explanation: why he lied to me at every word; why he feared that I should leave him; why he disliked it to be hinted that he and my father were twins; why he had given me money to which I was convinced I had no claim; and, last of all, why he had tried to kill me. He heard me all through in silence; and then, in a broken voice, begged me to let him go to bed.

‘I’ll tell ye the morn,’ he said; ‘as sure as death I will.’

And so weak was he that I could do nothing but consent. I locked him into his room, however, and pocketed the key, and then returning to the kitchen, made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long year, and wrapping myself in my plaid, lay down upon the chests and fell asleep.