Allister

“ For it is only the strong who can sip safely at the pleasant vices of a mellower civilization.
On a day squally with the pestilent dust of an obscure Chinese outport, Allister sat gazing at a wooden door in a wall. He was oblivious to outward discomfort, although his clothes were remnants through which the wind drove chill misery. He felt only one need, and his mind had room for but one thought, and that was the gratification of an unholy lust. It was three days since opium had caressed his shrieking nerves. ”

“ But I hope some of us will always be in Orchard Glen. John always will."
"I suppose so. John's spent all his life working hard for the rest of us," cried Christina, "and I suppose he'll go on doing it to the end."
"There's nobody better than John," declared Allister. "But let me tell you this, that the man or woman, either, who gives up all his chance in life to somebody else is bound to come out with the small end of the stick. It sounds fine, but it don't pay." Allister spoke with the assurance of the successful man of business. ”

“ Allister's sister. She has come all the way from Scotland to nurse him." The crustiness disappeared; the face lighted up with a better feeling. Mr. Allister had been a favourite of Mrs. Benn's, and if she could be sorry for anybody's illness, she was sorry for his.
"Mr. Allister's sister! If I had but known it, sir! What a pleasant-speaking young lady she is." Following his wife up the kitchen stairs, had come Benn. He waited until this colloquy was over, and then began to speak on his own account.
"A gentleman is waiting for you in your sitting-room, sir."
"Who is it?" asked Oswald. ”

“ He saw that the outlaw was staring with a smile, half grim and half sad, into the shadows and far away.
"Lanning, let me tell you. You'll never get away."
"You don't understand," said Andrew. "Those fellows downstairs wouldn't have known what I was talking about, but I can explain to you. Allister, I don't like fighting. It—it makes me sick inside. It isn't easy to say, but I'll whisper it to you—Allister, I'm not a brave man!" ”

“ Death or the devil—or dishonor that is worse than either—claims him who escapes payment of a just debt. Therefore it need not be surprising that the magnitude of his fancied obligation to Allister discomfited Ssu Yin, and left him more than melancholy for the remainder of the voyage. On the other hand, his devotion to the serpent, a poisonous six feet of willow-green relieved by the satin-white ribbon of its belly, was greater than before, and the venom of his regard for the second mate, who had dared toss the reptile's basket overboard, was disquieting to observe. ”

“ Scales for weighing honor and indebtedness, however, are not the same in the East as in the West, where motives are perhaps more closely scanned; and it would have been difficult to persuade Ssu Yin that he did not owe more than life to Allister. He felt that he owed two lives; that of his own leather-yellowed body and that of the woman whose soul, so he believed, now sojourned on its vast pilgrimage along the Nirvana-road of incarnations, within his snake's scaly longitude.
To the Chinese, an obligation clearly understood is a collectible asset. ”

“ Looking back across his life to this point of departure, it seemed to Alistair that he had found the clue of his tangled skein, and that he might in time achieve a complete answer to the riddle of his fate. For a moment the longing of his heart returned to that green islet in its grey sea, and he bitterly regretted that he had not been left to live out his life there among the clansmen whom he loved, and by whom he was beloved, who esteemed him as a prince among them, and would have still esteemed and shielded him had he become the outlaw of the Raj. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I write on behalf of my son Alistair. I hardly know how to express myself without seeming unkind, but you will understand what a shock it has been to his mother to see him in the Bankruptcy Court. He was here last night, and from what he has said to me I feel sure that you do not wish him ill. His only chance of salvation is an entire change of life, and that can only be brought about by your influence. The tremendous hold you have over him is my only excuse for appealing to you like this. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alistair trembled.
“You mean that I ought not to have been born?”
The physician was silent.
“I am a waste product, for which science has no use. O, why not? You have found beautiful dyes in coal-tar; can you find nothing in me?”
Vanbrugh was a father fighting for his child, a zealot fighting for his faith. But he was touched by this appeal.
“I have not said that. I have only told you that you ought not to become a father. It is not your fault if you have received an evil inheritance, but it will be your fault if you pass it on.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On Alistair his mother’s teaching had another effect. A poet’s sensitiveness on the score of words made him shrink at times from the familiar language of his mother’s creed. But his temperament responded readily to the exciting influence of religious emotion, and the cunning which usually accompanies hysteria taught him to use this faculty for his own protection. When he had been naughty during the day—and Alistair was already marked out as the naughty one of the two brothers—it was his mother’s habit to come into his room after he had gone to bed, and try to soften him. ”

“ Vanbrugh was the first to resume.
“Every objection I had against the Duke of Trent, of course, applies with ten-fold force to his brother. The Duke is physically sound; he has personally escaped the taint of his family stock, and it is possible that it may disappear in his descendants. But Lord Alistair has inherited his father’s vices. He is an idler, a profligate, and I might say a drunkard.”
“He has ceased to drink,” Hero protested. “I do not believe the life he has been leading is his natural one. I am sure that if he were to marry a woman who understood him he would become a changed man.” ”

“ They were simply saying what modern science is saying, only they said it far more beautifully. The criminal is the sin-bearer; he is crucified [289] for the good of the people even to-day. He is imprisoned and hanged that our lives and purses may be safe. By his stripes we are healed.”
Sir Bernard Vanbrugh told his daughter that night that he was a little disappointed in Lord Alistair.
“He is brilliant enough in his own way,” was the scientist’s verdict, “but not practical. I am afraid he is a dreamer.”
It was the dreamer that Hero loved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet he judged better of Lord Alistair than of some of those splendid types of healthy manhood whom the modern world goes forth to worship, as [306] they practise foul play against each other for a few pounds upon the football field. For he decided to appeal from Hero to her betrothed. He was going to ask the young man to give up voluntarily the prize within his grasp; and somehow he did not think that he should ask in vain.
He left the house about the time Lord Alistair usually came round, and met him strolling up the road.
“My daughter is at home,” he said, in answer to Stuart’s inquiry. ”

“ Alistair knew also—for these things were the history and politics of Oig—that his father stood next in succession to the dukedom, and that his brother’s favour with the reigning Duke was in right of his exalted destiny as heir.
Thus the boy, reared in the society of herdsmen and fishers, who were to him as kinsmen of a lower rank, had had always before his eyes the vision of [34] the great world in which he was one day to play a part. Civilization shone for him afar off, as it shines for the native of some colonial wilderness, in all the hues of hope and wonder. ”

“ It was an illogical face-about, but Alister responded at once.
"I know it," he said. "The moment I heard your voice, I knew it.—How is it, Ian,"—here he fell back into Gaelic—"that when you are by me, I know what is right so much quicker? I don't understand it. I meant to do right, but—"
"But your pride got up. Alister, you always set out well—nobly—and then comes the devil's turn! Then you begin to do as if you repented! You don't carry the thing right straight out. I hate to see the devil make a fool of a man like you! Do YOU not know that in your own country you owe a stranger hospitality?" ”

“ These scenes had endeared Alistair to his mother, whose tenderness for her younger son aroused the elder’s secret jealousy. They had been ruinous to the boy himself, whom they made an emotional debauchee. He spent his sincerity in spasms of repentance which left him worse than before. There were yet other consequences: the nervous organization is a sensitive instrument, which ignorant fingers do not touch for nothing.
For a year past Alistair had inspired his mother with hopes that he was ripening for the change of mind which she called conversion. ”

“ She loved Ian more than the chief, yet could have better borne to see him the husband of Mercy; what was wanting to the equality of her love was in this regard more than balanced by her respect for the chief of the clan and head of the family. Alister's light was thus left to burn in very darkness, that it might burn the better; for as strength is made perfect through weakness, so does the light, within grow by darkness. It was the people that sat in darkness that saw a great light. ”

“ Perhaps Lord Alistair’s transgressions had aroused in their breasts a secret fellow-feeling such as they could never have for their upright, decorous master. The conduct which had disgraced Lord Alistair in the eyes of his equals had made him a hero in theirs. Disgrace, after all, is a relative term; what is ignominy in the schoolroom is often glory in the playground. ”

“ He means to marry a great fortune. Hero will have money, no doubt,” she was quick to add. “Her father is rich for a professional man, I believe. But, of course, he could not give her enough for Trent.”
[269] Alistair received the assurance with a throb of delight, as his mother’s project suddenly shone out to him in the bright light of hope. But a misgiving of another kind assailed him, and one which he found it more difficult to explain to her. He found himself ashamed to pass straight from the side of Molly Finucane to such a girl as Hero Vanbrugh. ”