Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson (good book recommendations txt) 📕

with my own character, and jeopardised the lives of James and Alan? And I was to seek the way out by the same road as I had entered in? No; the hurt that had been caused by self-indulgence must be cured by self-denial; the flesh I had pampered must be crucified. I looked about me for that course which I least liked to follow: this was to leave the wood without waiting to see Alan, and go forth again alone, in the dark and in the midst of my perplexed and dangerous fortunes.

I have been the more careful to narrate this passage of my reflections, because I think it is of some utility, and may serve as an example to young men. But there is reason (they say) in planting kale, and even in ethic and religion, room for common sense. It was already close on Alan’s hour, and the moon was down. If I left (as I could not very decently whistle to my spies to follow me) they might miss me in the dark and tack themselves to Alan by mistake. If I stayed, I could at the least of it set my friend upon his guard which might prove his mere salvation. I had adventured other peoples’ safety in a course of self-indulgence; to have endangered them again, and now on a mere design of penance, would have been scarce rational. Accordingly, I had scarce risen from my place ere I sat down again, but already in a different frame of spirits, and equally marvelling at my past weakness and rejoicing in my present composure.

Presently after came a crackling in the thicket. Putting my mouth near down to the ground, I whistled a note or two, of Alan’s air; an answer came in the like guarded tone, and soon we had knocked together in the dark.

“Is this you at last, Davie?” he whispered.

“Just myself,” said I.

“God, man, but I’ve been wearying to see ye!” says he. “I’ve had the longest kind of a time. A’ day, I’ve had my dwelling into the inside of a stack of hay, where I couldnae see the nebs of my ten fingers; and then two hours of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! Dod, and ye’re none too soon the way it is, with me to sail the morn! The morn? what am I saying?—the day, I mean.”

“Ay, Alan, man, the day, sure enough,” said I. “It’s past twelve now, surely, and ye sail the day. This’ll be a long road you have before you.”

“We’ll have a long crack of it first,” said he.

“Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to hear,” said I.

And I told him what behooved, making rather a jumble of it, but clear enough when done. He heard me out with very few questions, laughing here and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his laughing (above all there, in the dark, where neither one of us could see the other) was extraordinary friendly to my heart.

“Ay, Davie, ye’re a queer character,” says he, when I had done: “a queer bitch after a’, and I have no mind of meeting with the like of ye. As for your story, Prestongrange is a Whig like yoursel’, so I’ll say the less of him; and, dod! I believe he was the best friend ye had, if ye could only trust him. But Simon Fraser and James More are my ain kind of cattle, and I’ll give them the name that they deserve. The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a’body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet. I bloodied the nose of one, I mind, when I was still so wambly on my legs that I cowped upon the top of him. A proud man was my father that day, God rest him! and I think he had the cause. I’ll never can deny but what Robin was something of a piper,” he added; “but as for James More, the deil guide him for me!”

“One thing we have to consider,” said I. “Was Charles Stewart right or wrong? Is it only me they’re after, or the pair of us?”

“And what’s your ain opinion, you that’s a man of so much experience?” said he.

“It passes me,” said I.

“And me too,” says Alan. “Do ye think this lass would keep her word to ye?” he asked.

“I do that,” said I.

“Well, there’s nae telling,” said he. “And anyway, that’s over and done: he’ll be joined to the rest of them lang syne.”

“How many would ye think there would be of them?” I asked.

“That depends,” said Alan. “If it was only you, they would likely send two-three lively, brisk young birkies, and if they thought that I was to appear in the employ, I daresay ten or twelve,” said he.

It was no use, I gave a little crack of laughter.

“And I think your own two eyes will have seen me drive that number, or the double of it, nearer hand!” cries he.

“It matters the less,” said I, “because I am well rid of them for this time.”

“Nae doubt that’s your opinion,” said he; “but I wouldnae be the least surprised if they were hunkering this wood. Ye see, David man; they’ll be Hieland folk. There’ll be some Frasers, I’m thinking, and some of the Gregara; and I would never deny but what the both of them, and the Gregara in especial, were clever experienced persons. A man kens little till he’s driven a spreagh of neat cattle (say) ten miles through a throng lowland country and the black soldiers maybe at his tail. It’s there that I learned a great part of my penetration. And ye need nae tell me: it’s better than war; which is the next best, however, though generally rather a bauchle of a business. Now the Gregara have had grand practice.”

“No doubt that’s a branch of education that was left out with me,” said I.

“And I can see the marks of it upon ye constantly,” said Alan. “But that’s the strange thing about you folk of the college learning: ye’re ignorat, and ye cannae see ’t. Wae’s me for my Greek and Hebrew; but, man, I ken that I dinnae ken them—there’s the differ of it. Now, here’s you. Ye lie on your wame a bittie in the bield of this wood, and ye tell me that ye’ve cuist off these Frasers and Macgregors. Why? Because I couldnae see them, says you. Ye blockhead, that’s their livelihood.”

“Take the worst of it,” said I, “and what are we to do?”

“I am thinking of that same,” said he. “We might twine. It wouldnae be greatly to my taste; and forbye that, I see reasons against it. First, it’s now unco dark, and it’s just humanly possible we might give them the clean slip. If we keep together, we make but the ae line of it; if we gang separate, we make twae of them: the more likelihood to stave in upon some of these gentry of yours. And then, second, if they keep the track of us, it may come to a fecht for it yet, Davie; and then, I’ll confess I would be blythe to have you at my oxter, and I think you would be none the worse of having me at yours. So, by my way of it, we should creep out of this wood no further gone than just the inside of next minute, and hold away east for Gillane, where I’m to find my ship. It’ll be like old days while it lasts, Davie; and (come the time) we’ll have to think what you should be doing. I’m wae to leave ye here, wanting me.”

“Have with ye, then!” says I. “Do ye gang back where you were stopping?”

“Deil a fear!” said Alan. “They were good folks to me, but I think they would be a good deal disappointed if they saw my bonny face again. For (the way times go) I am nae just what ye could call a Walcome Guest. Which makes me the keener for your company, Mr. David Balfour of the Shaws, and set ye up! For, leave aside twa cracks here in the wood with Charlie Stewart, I have scarce said black or white since the day we parted at Corstorphine.”

With which he rose from his place, and we began to move quietly eastward through the wood.