Kidnapped. Robert Louis Stevenson
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in upon us between two peaks, put his pocket handkerchief over his cocked hat, to shelter him. There, then, with uplifted forefinger, he first put me on my guard against a considerable number of heresies, to which I had no temptation, and urged upon me to be instant in my prayers and reading of the bible. That done, he drew a picture of the great house that I was bound to, and how I should conduct myself with its inhabitants.
“Be soople, Davie, in things immaterial,” said he. “Bear ye this in mind, that, though gentle born, ye have had a country rearing. Dinnae shame us, Davie,—dinnae shame us! In yon great, muckle house, with all these domestics upper and under, show yourself as nice, as circumspect, as quick at the conception and as slow of speech, as any. As for the laird—remember he’s the laird; I say no more: honour to whom honour. It’s a pleasure to obey a laird; or should be, to the young.”
“Well, sir,” said I, “it may be; and I promise you, I’ll try to make it so.”
“Why, very well said,” replied Mr Campbell, heartily. “And now, to come to the material or (to make a quibble) to the immaterial. I have here a little packet which contains four things,” he tugged it, as he spoke and with some difficulty, from the skirt pocket of his coat. “Of these four things, the first is your legal due: the little pickle money for your father’s books and plenishing, which I have bought (as I have explained from the first) in the design of re-selling at a profit to the incoming dominie. The other three are gifties that Mrs Campbell and myself would be blythe of your acceptance. The first, which is round, will likely please ye best at the first off-go; but O Davie laddie, it’s but a drop of water in the sea; it’ll help you but a step and vanish like the dew. The second which is flat and square, and written upon, will stand by you all through life, like a good staff for the road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. And as for the last, which is cubical, that’ll see you, it’s my prayerful wish, into a better land.”
With that he got upon his feet, took off his hat and prayed a little while aloud and in affecting terms for a young man setting out into the world; then suddenly took me in his arms and embraced me very hard; then held me at arm’s length, looking at me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about and, crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. It might have been laughable to another; but I was in no mind to laugh. I watched him as long as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying nor once looked back. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard and fast, because I (for my part) was overjoyed to get away out of that quiet countryside, and go to a great, busy house, among rich and respected gentlefolk of my own name and blood.
“Davie, Davie,” I thought, “was ever seen such black ingratitude? Can you forget old favours and old friends at the mere whistle of a name? Fy, fy; think shame!”
And I sat down on the boulder the good man had just left, and opened the parcel to see the nature of my gifts. That which he had called cubical, I had never had much doubt of; sure enough it was a little bible, to carry in a plaid-neuk. That which he had called round, I found to be a shilling piece; and the third which was to help me so wonderfully both in health and sickness all the days of my life, was a little piece of coarse yellow paper, written upon thus in red ink:
“To Make Lilly of the Valley Water.
Take the flowers of lilly of the valley and distil them in sack, and drink a spooneful or two, as there is occasion. It restores speach to those that have the dumb palsey: It is good against the Gout; it comforts the heart and strengthens the memory; and the flowers put into a Glasse close stopt, and set into ane hill of ants for a month, then take it out and you will find a liquor which comes from the flowers, which keep in a vial; it is good, ill or well, and whether man or woman.”
And then in the Minister’s own hand was added: “Likewise for sprains, rub it in; and for the cholic, a great spooneful in the hour.”
To be sure I laughed over this; but it was rather tremulous laughter; and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff’s end, and set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till, just as I came on the green drove-road, running wide through the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my father and my mother lay.
On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly, and both brought my country heart into my mouth.
Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond; and so, from one to another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by Colinton, till I came out upon the Glasgow road. And there, to my great pleasure and wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time; an old, red-faced general on a gray horse at the one end; and at the other the company of Grenadiers with their Pope’s-hats. The pride of life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the hearing of that merry music.
A little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which I was bound. But after two or maybe three had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself.
The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shafts of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of Shaws?
He stopped his cart and looked at me, like all the others. “Ay,” said he: “What for?”
“It’s a great house?” I asked.
“Doubtless,” says he; “the house is a big, muckle house.”
“Ay,”, said I; “but the folk that are in it?”
“Folk?” cried he. “Are ye daft? There’s nae folk there—to call folk!”
“What?” says I. “Not Mr Ebenezer?”
“Ou, ay,” says the man, “there’s the laird, to be sure, if it’s him you’re wanting. What’ll like be your business, mannie?”
“I was led to think that I would get a situation,” I said, looking as modest as I could.
“What?” cries the carter, on so sharp a note that his very horse started; and then, “Well, mannie,” he added, “it’s nane of my affairs; but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye’ll take a word from me, ye’ll keep clear of the Shaws.”
The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man was Mr Balfour of the Shaws?
“Hoot, hoot, hoot,” said the Barber; “nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all:” and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was; but I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next customer no wiser than he came.
I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. The more indistinct the accusations were, the less I liked them; for they left the wider field to fancy. What kind of a great house was this, that all the parish should start