Thus it was that I did nothing; and upon the same reasons, I am still strong to justify my course. My lord had carried with him several introductions to chief people of the town and neighbourhood; others he had before encountered in New York: with this consequence, that he went much abroad, and I am sorry to say was altogether too convivial in his habits. I was often in bed, but never asleep, when he returned; and there was scarce a night when he did not betray the influence of liquor. By day he would still lay upon me endless tasks, which he showed considerable ingenuity to fish up and renew, in the manner of Penelope’s web. I never refused, as I say, for I was hired to do his bidding; but I took no pains to keep my penetration under a bushel, and would sometimes smile in his face.
“I think I must be the devil and you Michael Scott,” I said to him one day. “I have bridged Tweed and split the Eildons; and now you set me to the rope of sand.”
He looked at me with shining eyes, and looked away again, his jaw chewing, but without words.
“Well, well, my lord,” said I, “your will is my pleasure. I will do this thing for the fourth time; but I would beg of you to invent another task against tomorrow, for by my troth, I am weary of this one.”
“You do not know what you are saying,” returned my lord, putting on his hat and turning his back to me. “It is a strange thing you should take a pleasure to annoy me. A friend—but that is a different affair. It is a strange thing. I am a man that has had ill-fortune all my life through. I am still surrounded by contrivances. I am always treading in plots,” he burst out. “The whole world is banded against me.”
“I would not talk wicked nonsense if I were you,” said I; “but I will tell you what I would do—I would put my head in cold water, for you had more last night than you could carry.”
“Do ye think that?” said he, with a manner of interest highly awakened. “Would that be good for me? It’s a thing I never tried.”
“I mind the days when you had no call to try, and I wish, my lord, that they were back again,” said I. “But the plain truth is, if you continue to exceed, you will do yourself a mischief.”
“I don’t appear to carry drink the way I used to,” said my lord. “I get overtaken, Mackellar. But I will be more upon my guard.”
“That is what I would ask of you,” I replied. “You are to bear in mind that you are Mr. Alexander’s father: give the bairn a chance to carry his name with some responsibility.”
“Ay, ay,” said he. “Ye’re a very sensible man, Mackellar, and have been long in my employ. But I think, if you have nothing more to say to me I will be stepping. If you have nothing more to say?” he added, with that burning, childish eagerness that was now so common with the man.
“No, my lord, I have nothing more,” said I, drily enough.
“Then I think I will be stepping,” says my lord, and stood and looked at me, fidgeting with his hat, which he had taken off again. “I suppose you will have no errands? No? I am to meet Sir William Johnson, but I will be more upon my guard.” He was silent for a time, and then, smiling: “Do you call to mind a place, Mackellar—it’s a little below Eagles—where the burn runs very deep under a wood of rowans? I mind being there when I was a lad—dear, it comes over me like an old song!—I was after the fishing, and I made a bonny cast. Eh, but I was happy. I wonder, Mackellar, why I am never happy now?”
“My lord,” said I, “if you would drink with more moderation you would have the better chance. It is an old byword that the bottle is a false consoler.”
“No doubt,” said he, “no doubt. Well, I think I will be going.”
“Good morning, my lord,” said I.
“Good morning, good morning,” said he, and so got himself at last from the apartment.
I give that for a fair specimen of my lord in the morning and I must have described my patron very ill if the reader does not perceive a notable falling off. To behold the man thus fallen: to know him accepted among his companions for a poor, muddled toper, welcome (if he were welcome at all) for the bare consideration of his title; and to recall the virtues he had once displayed against such odds of fortune; was not this a thing at once to rage and to be humbled at?
In his
