Alister

“ The Scotch boy was soon a better sailor than the mate, which will be the less surprising, when one remembers how few men in any trade give more than about a third of their real powers to their work—and Alister gave all his. This, and the knowledge that he was supported by the public opinion of a small but able-bodied crew, may have screwed the captain’s courage to the sticking-point, or the mate may have pushed matters just too far ”

“ The O’Moores are by no means good letter-writers at the best of times, but he’d have let us know if he was dead, anyhow, and if he’s alive, we’ll be as welcome as the flowers.”
Before Alister could reply, he was interrupted by a message from our late captain. The Water-Lily was still in harbour, and the captain wanted the ex-mate to help him on some matters connected with the ship or her cargo. ”

“ He is my chief. I will have what he wills, not what I should like! A thousand years I will wait for my rights if he chooses. I will trust him to do splendidly for me. No; I will have no other way than my chief's! He will set everything straight!"
"You must be right, sir! only I can't help wishing for the old times, when a man could strike a blow for himself!"
With all who came Alister held similar talk; for though they were not all so warlike as the cobbler, they keenly felt the wrong that was done them, and would mostly, but for a doubt of its rectitude, have opposed force with force. ”

“ John was the only one who actually did.”
“In other words, my brother is the ringleader—is that so?”
“I think his lordship is the only one of the whole crew who has any pluck,” was the response. “He was in the chair when the thing was decided on.”
The Duke of Trent drew his lips together.
“Do you know where to find him?”
“I have men watching them all. Lord Alistair has stayed indoors all day.” The Chief Commissioner hesitated, and then went on. “Your Grace will excuse me if I refer to a private matter which perhaps you would wish to hear at once. ”

“ A grimace of pain was Allister's only answer.
"And was the sleep of this poor worm's wise and illustrious benefactor filled with the jassmine-incense of celestial happiness?"
"May your flesh be jellied and your bones splintered," was Allister's discourteous shot into the trumpet. "May your ancestors——"
"Harmless is the bluster of the paper tiger," interrupted Ssu Yin, with a playful malice. He went on in a more kindly vein: "A gem cannot be polished without friction, or a man perfected without adversity. ”

“ Curse upon this poverty of mine, which mars as yet the life of us both, Alison. I have done wrong in loving you and winning you without your father's permission; but he never would have accorded it.'
'Oh!' moaned Alison, with her cheek on his breast; 'something is about to happen—something terrible about to befall us!'
'Something, darling—what?'
'Death, or a calamity little short of it, perhaps.'
'I do not understand you,' said Bevil, caressing her with great tenderness, and becoming very anxious on finding how faint her voice was, and how excessively she was trembling. ”

“ Fair against the bars of a window, low down at their right, there was a dark smudge; the ribbon, black under the moon. Annister’s heart leaped up in answer, as, with a quick word, he halted his companions in the shadow of a tree. A moment they conferred; then Ellison—and Annister could almost see his grin in the darkness—spoke beneath his hand:
“Why, that’ll be easy! I’ve got m’ tools; they’re right here in my pocket, Mr. Annister! Those bars ought to be easy! For a fair journeyman sledge-swinger, it’ll be easy an’ you can lay to that!” ”

“ Annister drew a faint, hissing breath. In the star-shine, for there was no moon, the fingers showed in a luminous grayness against the sill, clawlike, malformed, like the talons of a beast, which in effect they were.
Annister knew them upon the instant, for, in far-off Java, for instance, he had seen those hands, or, rather, the same and yet not the same. And in that instant he had acted.
Both hands upon the window-sash, he brought it down with a crash upon those fingers; there followed a yelp of pain, inhuman, doglike—a groaning curse—the slam of a falling ladder—a heavy thud—silence. ”

“ How can you think of old-world Scotch nonsense in this age, Alison?' said Bevil Goring.
'If a boding of evil it is, I hope it menaces me, and not poor papa,' said Alison, down whose cheeks the unseen tears were streaming in the dark, 'and as for Lord Cadbury——'
'Don't speak about him—don't think about him!' interrupted Bevil, impatiently. 'And yet,' he added, 'if this old fellow loves you, I do not wonder at it.'
'Why?'
'Because all men who know you must love you, though I hope it is to be your destiny, your strength, to love but one. ”

“ Fair, examining Alison's legacy with interest.
"Keep it bright! Why, you can see your face in it now," cried Floss, peering into its shining sides. "Sister, I don't see how you can wait to 'fill and light it.' I would like to see it lighted right away."
"But she says, 'Keep it as it is until you are in some strait,'" said Alison thoughtfully. "I would rather do just as she wished."
"So it will be just an ornament to stand on your table," said Billy disgustedly. "What a cranky old lady! What good will it do you?" ”

“ It was necessary, Allister well knew, to wait for the soya-brown eye that glistened intently through the peephole at a certain hour of the day—the eye of Ssu Yin, focused expectantly upon some indeterminate object within the temple grounds.
The impatient accents of a woman, half-concealed behind the discolored marble flank of a stone lion with the head of a dog, roused Allister. He had been long enough in the Orient to absorb an understanding of many dialects. ”

“ She drove to the Cooperage in her father’s carriage at the fashionable hour of the afternoon, walked up the yard without noticing its inmates, except by a nod in passing, and knocked at the bright green door.
It was opened by Alistair himself, who could not restrain an exclamation of pleasure.
“Is Lady Alistair at home?” Hero asked smilingly.
“You have come to call on her? That is good of you! She is upstairs; I will fetch her down.” ”

“ Lord Astar admired her dress, and Elsie told him that she had sat up all the night before to finish it. She also informed him that the bonnet, or at least the bird which composed it, had been a present from King Tommy, of Yoolaman.
"And so the Prince is not your only royal admirer," said Lord Astar. "Are lower mortals privileged to lay tributes of loyalty at your feet?"
As he spoke, Elsie became suddenly aware that Blake was passing along the gangway behind her chair. She felt that he stopped, knew instinctively that he had heard Lord Astar's speech, and was waiting for her reply. ”

“ Alistair was touched by his mother’s self-denial on his behalf, and cheered by Hero’s delicate sympathy. In the first flush of his new resolution, amid the distractions of his changed life, and buoyed up by the inspiration of his love, the path of reformation was made smooth for him. The gloomy feelings that had haunted him in London returned into the remote recesses of consciousness. The bright constellation of Ormuzd rose beckoning before him, and the dark [279] Sign of the Suffering One sank below the horizon of life. ”

“ A shot would bring discovery; they dared not risk it. Annister could see the great head, the wide ruff at the neck, the grinning jaws.... Then, the giant’s hands had gone up and out; there came a straining heave, a wrench, a queer, whistling croak; Ellison, rising from his knees, looked downward a moment to where the beast, its jaw broken by that mighty strength, lay stretched, lifeless, at his feet. ”

“ It was the first time Lord Alistair had ever visited this part of the house, and the whole spectacle depressed him. He found himself pitying the departed servants who had had to occupy such mean and desolate quarters. Why should it be necessary for these fellow-creatures to pass their lives so shabbily? Why should one man be worse off than another? And that sensation of a spiritual kinship between himself [257] and all the underlings of the world, which had first come to him as he stood on Westminster Bridge, returned like a wave of melancholy over his heart. ”

“ Alison sighed deeply. She was too prostrate in body and even mind to regard anything as very extraordinary, even her unusual surroundings in the convent; yet she longed for her father to come to her, or to have tidings of him; of aught else she said nothing.
'Oh, if I should die without seeing papa again!' said she, wringing her hands.
'One can die but once,' said Sister Lisette, placidly. 'You are too strong and too young to die, though those who die are sometimes better off than those who are left in the world. ”

“ Ellison, almost out, stood, weaving on his feet, fronting his-adversary, a queer look of surprise in his face, and a something more. Annister, strangely enough, as has been mentioned, had, in spite of his encounter with Ellison in the smoker, conceived something for the man that had been close to liking. Somehow, rough as the man was; crooked, by all the signs; the tool of Rook and of his minions, he had the blue eye of a fighter—the straight, level look of a man who, though an enemy, would yet fight fair. ”

“ Annister, though you have guessed something from the change in the expression of his countenance. For years he has been like a carrier of typhoid, spreading the contagion of his own sinful nature wherever he went, himself unpunished, even admired, looked up to and patterned after. Do you want to keep such a man alive? Do you think, do you really believe, Dr. Annister, that the genius of such [Pg 327] a man as that, whatever it is, could make amends to the world for all the evil that he does?”
“You forget, Mr. Gordon, that it is no part of my purpose to keep him as he is. ”

“ She knew that Vanbrugh held opinions which she had been accustomed to hear described in the venomous language of her creed as infidelity, and which she had been taught to attribute to moral perversity rather than to mental aberration. Such a man was not the father-in-law she would have chosen for her son, though she had resigned herself to the relationship as an inevitable evil, the flaw inseparable from all human arrangements. While it pleased her to see that he liked Alistair, she watched with secret uneasiness Alistair’s unaffected liking for him. ”

“ But Annister, his gaze set straight ahead, turned inward at the entrance of the saddler’s shop, mounting the stairs, as, behind him he heard the heavy door slam shut.
Perhaps it had been the wind, but as Annister went upward he heard, just beyond that door, the murmur of voices; they reached him in a sing-song mutter against the rising of the wind, in a quick, growling chorus. ”

“ Alistair murmured an expression of gratitude.
“I hope you will look on me as a friend too,” the Duchess of Gloucester went on. “Will you let me speak to you frankly, and will you be frank with me in return?”
“Will you pardon me if I am?” asked Alistair. “It is easy for some men to be frank; but when I am frank I find I only shock good people.” ”

“ Alaster was a lover, and lovers are fertile in stratagem. In the presence of his mistress he sought leave from the old man, her father, with whom he was much a favourite, to spend his Halloween at a cottage on a neighbouring farm, where there were several young people to meet ”

“ Legs like iron columns upbore that mighty strength, but a pile-driving right, behind it the full weight of Annister’s two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, sinking with an audible “plop!” in his adversary’s midriff, brought from the giant a quick, gasping grunt.
Ellison’s endurance was almost done. He could “take it,” but, hog-fat from a protracted period of easy living, professional fighter as he had been, this amateur, with the arching chest of a greyhound and the stamina of a lucivee of the long trail, was wearing him down. ”

“ If I were a Catholic, I would go into a monastery, so as to leave her free. That is the last word of Christianity for a man like me. The last word of science is the lethal chamber.”
Sir Bernard had an inspiration.
“Why don’t you go back to Molly Finucane?”
Alistair fell back in his chair as if he had received a blow. He woke out of his dream. Sir Bernard was right, and his mother had been wrong. He had no business to unite his wrecked career with such a life as Hero Vanbrugh’s. Molly Finucane was the true match for him. She was a scapegoat like himself. ”

“ Pouring forth alternate threats of vengeance and entreaties to desist, Alison, whose well-rouged cheeks and painted brow were by turns blanched with terror and crimsoned with rage, led them reluctantly towards an apartment which, in former days, had been a little private oratory for the Lady Superior, or Reverend Mother. The pointed door was of oak, carved with the emblems of religion—the crown of thorns, and the hands and feet pierced by nails; the sacred heart and the cross were still there, but they ornamented what the change of manners had made the abode of a gleewoman. ”

“ Yet Alison knew her lover’s mind, or at least a part of it, so well that she presently said, “And yet I am not jesting, Ewen, when I say that I think you would be hard put to it to choose between me and Loch na h-Iolaire—Loch na h-Iolaire and the house of Ardroy.”
His arm tightened round her. “Alison, how can you——”
“But you’ll never have to choose, m’eudail. I love this place most dearly already. I have never had a home like it to love, living as we have for so long, now in France, now in Holland. But your heart is as strongly rooted here as . . . ”