There was a murmur of applause from the provincials.
“I should have remembered how a title would shine out in such a hole as this,” says the Master, white as a sheet: “no matter how unjustly come by. It remains for me, then, to die at my lord’s door, where my dead body will form a very cheerful ornament.”
“Away with your affectations!” cries my lord. “You know very well I have no such meaning; only to protect myself from calumny, and my home from your intrusion. I offer you a choice. Either I shall pay your passage home on the first ship, when you may perhaps be able to resume your occupations under Government, although God knows I would rather see you on the highway! Or, if that likes you not, stay here and welcome! I have inquired the least sum on which body and soul can be decently kept together in New York; so much you shall have, paid weekly; and if you cannot labour with your hands to better it, high time you should betake yourself to learn. The condition is—that you speak with no member of my family except myself,” he added.
I do not think I have ever seen any man so pale as was the Master; but he was erect and his mouth firm.
“I have been met here with some very unmerited insults,” said he, “from which I have certainly no idea to take refuge by flight. Give me your pittance; I take it without shame, for it is mine already—like the shirt upon your back; and I choose to stay until these gentlemen shall understand me better. Already they must spy the cloven hoof, since with all your pretended eagerness for the family honour, you take a pleasure to degrade it in my person.”
“This is all very fine,” says my lord; “but to us who know you of old, you must be sure it signifies nothing. You take that alternative out of which you think that you can make the most. Take it, if you can, in silence; it will serve you better in the long-run, you may believe me, than this ostentation of ingratitude.”
“O, gratitude, my lord!” cries the Master, with a mounting intonation, and his forefinger very conspicuously lifted up. “Be at rest: it will not fail you. It now remains that I should salute these gentlemen whom we have wearied with our family affairs.”
And he bowed to each in succession, settled his walking-sword, and took himself off, leaving everyone amazed at his behaviour, and me not less so at my lord’s.
We were now to enter on a changed phase of this family division. The Master was by no manner of means so helpless as my lord supposed, having at his hand, and entirely devoted to his service, an excellent artist in all sorts of goldsmith work. With my lord’s allowance, which was not so scanty as he had described it, the pair could support life; and all the earnings of Secundra Dass might be laid upon one side for any future purpose. That this was done, I have no doubt. It was in all likelihood the Master’s design to gather a sufficiency, and then proceed in quest of that treasure which he had buried long before among the mountains; to which, if he had confined himself, he would have been more happily inspired. But unfortunately for himself and all of us, he took counsel of his anger. The public disgrace of his arrival—which I sometimes wonder he could manage to survive—rankled in his bones; he was in that humour when a man—in the words of the old adage—will cut off his nose to spite his face; and he must make himself a public spectacle in the hopes that some of the disgrace might spatter on my lord.
He chose, in a poor quarter of the town, a lonely, small house of boards, overhung with some acacias. It was furnished in front with a sort of hutch opening, like that of a dog’s kennel, but about as high as a table from the ground, in which the poor man that built it had formerly displayed some wares; and it was this which took the Master’s fancy, and possibly suggested his proceedings. It appears, on board the pirate ship he had acquired some quickness with the needle—enough, at least, to play the part of tailor in the public eye, which was all that was required by the nature of his vengeance. A placard was hung above the hutch, bearing these words in something of the following disposition:
James Durie,
formerly Master of Ballantrae.
clothes neatly clouted.Secundra Dass,
decayed gentleman of India.
fine goldsmith work.
Underneath this, when he had a job, my gentleman sat withinside tailor-wise and busily stitching. I say, when he had a job; but such customers as came were rather for Secundra, and the Master’s sewing would be more in the manner of Penelope’s. He could never have designed to gain even butter to his bread by such a means of livelihood: enough for him that there was the name of Durie dragged in the dirt on the placard, and the sometime heir of that proud family set up cross-legged in public for a reproach upon his brother’s meanness. And in so far his device succeeded that there was murmuring in the town and a party formed highly inimical to my lord. My lord’s favour with the Governor laid him more open on the other side; my lady (who was never so well received in the colony) met with painful innuendoes; in a party of women, where it would be the topic most natural to
