Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (428 page)

Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil.  He got his tinder-box, an’ lit a can’le, an’ made three steps o’t ower to Janet’s door.  It was on the hasp, an’ he pushed it open, an’ keeked bauldly in.  It was a big room, as big as the minister’s ain, an’ plenished wi’ grand, auld, solid gear, for he had naething else.  There was a fower-posted bed wi’ auld tapestry; and a braw cabinet of aik, that was fu’ o’ the minister’s divinity books, an’ put there to be out o’ the gate; an’ a wheen duds o’ Janet’s lying here and there about the floor.  But nae Janet could Mr. Soulis see; nor ony sign of a contention.  In he gaed (an’ there’s few that wad ha’e followed him) an’ lookit a’ round, an’ listened.  But there was naethin’ to be heard, neither inside the manse nor in a’ Ba’weary parish, an’ naethin’ to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin’ round the can’le.  An’ then a’ at aince, the minister’s heart played dunt an’ stood stock-still; an’ a cauld wund blew amang the hairs o’ his heid.  Whaten a weary sicht was that for the puir man’s een!  For there was Janat hangin’ frae a nail beside the auld aik cabinet: her heid aye lay on her shoother, her een were steeked, the tongue projekit frae her mouth, and her heels were twa feet clear abune the floor.

‘God forgive us all!’ thocht Mr. Soulis; ‘poor Janet’s dead.’

He cam’ a step nearer to the corp; an’ then his heart fair whammled in his inside.  For by what cantrip it wad ill-beseem a man to judge, she was hingin’ frae a single nail an’ by a single wursted thread for darnin’ hose.

It’s an awfu’ thing to be your lane at nicht wi’ siccan prodigies o’ darkness; but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord.  He turned an’ gaed his ways oot o’ that room, and lockit the door ahint him; and step by step, doon the stairs, as heavy as leed; and set doon the can’le on the table at the stairfoot.  He couldnae pray, he couldnae think, he was dreepin’ wi’ caul’ swat, an’ naething could he hear but the dunt-dunt-duntin’ o’ his ain heart.  He micht maybe have stood there an hour, or maybe twa, he minded sae little; when a’ o’ a sudden, he heard a laigh, uncanny steer upstairs; a foot gaed to an’ fro in the cha’mer whaur the corp was hingin’; syne the door was opened, though he minded weel that he had lockit it; an’ syne there was a step upon the landin’, an’ it seemed to him as if the corp was lookin’ ower the rail and doun upon him whaur he stood.

He took up the can’le again (for he couldnae want the licht), and as saftly as ever he could, gaed straucht out o’ the manse an’ to the far end o’ the causeway.  It was aye pit-mirk; the flame o’ the can’le, when he set it on the grund, brunt steedy and clear as in a room; naething moved, but the Dule water seepin’ and sabbin’ doon the glen, an’ yon unhaly footstep that cam’ ploddin doun the stairs inside the manse.  He kenned the foot over weel, for it was Janet’s; and at ilka step that cam’ a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals.  He commanded his soul to Him that made an’ keepit him; ‘and O Lord,’ said he, ‘give me strength this night to war against the powers of evil.’

By this time the foot was comin’ through the passage for the door; he could hear a hand skirt alang the wa’, as if the fearsome thing was feelin’ for its way.  The saughs tossed an’ maned thegether, a lang sigh cam’ ower the hills, the flame o’ the can’le was blawn aboot; an’ there stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi’ her grogram goun an’ her black mutch, wi’ the heid aye upon the shouther, an’ the girn still upon the face o’t — leevin’, ye wad hae said — deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned — upon the threshold o’ the manse.

It’s a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into his perishable body; but the minister saw that, an’ his heart didnae break.

She didnae stand there lang; she began to move again an’ cam’ slowly towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs.  A’ the life o’ his body, a’ the strength o’ his speerit, were glowerin’ frae his een.  It seemed she was gaun to speak, but wanted words, an’ made a sign wi’ the left hand.  There cam’ a clap o’ wund, like a cat’s fuff; oot gaed the can’le, the saughs skrieghed like folk; an’ Mr. Soulis kenned that, live or die, this was the end o’t.

‘Witch, beldame, devil!’ he cried, ‘I charge you, by the power of God, begone — if you be dead, to the grave — if you be damned, to hell.’

An’ at that moment the Lord’s ain hand out o’ the Heevens struck the Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid, desecrated corp o’ the witch-wife, sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by deils, lowed up like a brunstane spunk and fell in ashes to the grund; the thunder followed, peal on dirling peal, the rairing rain upon the back o’ that; and Mr. Soulis lowped through the garden hedge, and ran, wi’ skelloch upon skelloch, for the clachan.

That same mornin’, John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn as it was chappin’ six; before eicht, he gaed by the change-house at Knockdow; an’ no lang after, Sandy M’Lellan saw him gaun linkin’ doun the braes frae Kilmackerlie.  There’s little doubt but it was him that dwalled sae lang in Janet’s body; but he was awa’ at last; and sinsyne the deil has never fashed us in Ba’weary.

But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay ravin’ in his bed; and frae that hour to this, he was the man ye ken the day.

OLALLA

‘Now,’ said the doctor, ‘my part is done, and, I may say, with some vanity, well done.  It remains only to get you out of this cold and poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy conscience.  The last is your affair.  To the first I think I can help you.  It fells indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the Padre came in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although of contrary professions, he applied to me in a matter of distress among some of his parishioners.  This was a family — but you are ignorant of Spain, and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you; suffice it, then, that they were once great people, and are now fallen to the brink of destitution.  Nothing now belongs to them but the residencia, and certain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part of which not even a goat could support life.  But the house is a fine old place, and stands at a great height among the hills, and most salubriously; and I had no sooner heard my friend’s tale, than I remembered you.  I told him I had a wounded officer, wounded in the good cause, who was now able to make a change; and I proposed that his friends should take you for a lodger.  Instantly the Padre’s face grew dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would.  It was out of the question, he said.  Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride.  There-upon we separated, not very content with one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and made a submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon enquiry to be less than he had feared; or, in other words, these proud people had put their pride in their pocket.  I closed with the offer; and, subject to your approval, I have taken rooms for you in the residencia.  The air of these mountains will renew your blood; and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the medicines in the world.’

‘Doctor,’ said I, ‘you have been throughout my good angel, and your advice is a command.  But tell me, if you please, something of the family with which I am to reside.’

‘I am coming to that,’ replied my friend; ‘and, indeed, there is a difficulty in the way.  These beggars are, as I have said, of very high descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand, from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty forces them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation.  You are to remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea of the smallest intimacy.’

I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthened my desire to go, for I was confident that I could break down that barrier if I desired.  ‘There is nothing offensive in such a stipulation,’ said I; ‘and I even sympathise with the feeling that inspired it.’

‘It is true they have never seen you,’ returned the doctor politely; ‘and if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that ever came from England (where I am told that handsome men are common, but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome with a better grace.  But since you take the thing so well, it matters not.  To me, indeed, it seems discourteous.  But you will find yourself the gainer.  The family will not much tempt you.  A mother, a son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country lout, and a country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is, therefore,’ chuckled the physician, ‘most likely plain; there is not much in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.’

‘And yet you say they are high-born,’ I objected.

‘Well, as to that, I should distinguish,’ returned the doctor.  ‘The mother is; not so the children.  The mother was the last representative of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune.  Her father was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the residencia till his death.  Then, much of the fortune having died with him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever, until at last she married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say, others a smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was no marriage at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards.  The union, such as it was, was tragically dissolved some years ago; but they live in such seclusion, and the country at that time was in so much disorder, that the precise manner of the man’s end is known only to the priest — if even to him.’

‘I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,’ said I.

‘I would not romance, if I were you,’ replied the doctor; ‘you will find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality.  Felipe, for instance, I have seen.  And what am I to say?  He is very rustic, very cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are probably to match.  No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial society among the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least, if you are at all a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will not be disappointed.’

The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a mule; and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had befriended me during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the Eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra.  I had been so long a prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me smiling.  The country through which we went was wild and rocky, partially covered with rough woods, now of the cork-tree, and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and frequently intersected by the beds of mountain torrents.  The sun shone, the wind rustled joyously; and we had advanced some miles, and the city had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us, before my attention began to be diverted to the companion of my drive.  To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-made country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and active, but devoid of any culture; and this first impression was with most observers final.  What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering talk; so strangely inconsistent with the terms on which I was to be received; and partly from his imperfect enunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very difficult to follow clearly without an effort of the mind.  It is true I had before talked with persons of a similar mental constitution; persons who seemed to live (as he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the visual object of the moment and unable to discharge their minds of that impression.  His seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of conversation proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of the intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country.  But this was not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home-keeper; ‘I wish I was there now,’ he said; and then, spying a tree by the wayside, he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a crow among its branches.

‘A crow?’ I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and thinking I had heard imperfectly.

But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace.  Then he smiled and shook his head.

‘What did you hear?’ I asked.

‘O, it is all right,’ he said; and began encouraging his mule with cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.

I looked at him more closely.  He was superlatively well-built, light, and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairyness; two characteristics that I disliked.  It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me.  The doctor’s phrase — an innocent — came back to me; and I was wondering if that were, after all, the true description, when the road began to go down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent.  The waters thundered tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound, the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied their descent.  The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion.  The voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to the clamour, that my driver more particularly winced and blanched.  Some thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river Kelpie, passed across my mind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part of Spain; and turning to Felipe, sought to draw him out.