Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson (the gingerbread man read aloud TXT) 📗

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his greatcoat clapping behind him in the wind.

“This is a pity,” he said at last. “There are things said that cannot be passed over.”

“I never asked you to,” said I. “I am as ready as yourself.”

“Ready?” said he.

“Ready,” I repeated. “I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!” And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

“David!” he cried. “Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It’s fair murder.”

“That was your lookout when you insulted me,” said I.

“It’s the truth!” cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. “It’s the bare truth,” he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. “Na, na,” he kept saying, “na, na⁠—I cannae, I cannae.”

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan’s kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost forever that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.

This it was that gave me a thought. No apology could blot out what I had said; it was needless to think of one, none could cover the offence; but where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Alan back to my side. I put my pride away from me. “Alan!” I said; “if ye cannae help me, I must just die here.”

He started up sitting, and looked at me.

“It’s true,” said I. “I’m by with it. O, let me get into the bield of a house⁠—I’ll can die there easier.” I had no need to pretend; whether I chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart of stone.

“Can ye walk?” asked Alan.

“No,” said I, “not without help. This last hour my legs have been fainting under me; I’ve a stitch in my side like a red-hot iron; I cannae breathe right. If I die, ye’ll can forgive me, Alan? In my heart, I liked ye fine⁠—even when I was the angriest.”

“Wheesht, wheesht!” cried Alan. “Dinna say that! David man, ye ken⁠—” He shut his mouth upon a sob. “Let me get my arm about ye,” he continued; “that’s the way! Now lean upon me hard. Gude kens where there’s a house! We’re in Balwhidder, too; there should be no want of houses, no, nor friends’ houses here. Do ye gang easier so, Davie?”

“Ay,” said I, “I can be doing this way;” and I pressed his arm with my hand.

Again he came near sobbing. “Davie,” said he, “I’m no a right man at all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I could nae remember ye were just a bairn, I couldnae see ye were dying on your feet; Davie, ye’ll have to try and forgive me.”

“O man, let’s say no more about it!” said I. “We’re neither one of us to mend the other⁠—that’s the truth! We must just bear and forbear, man Alan. O, but my stitch is sore! Is there nae house?”

“I’ll find a house to ye, David,” he said, stoutly. “We’ll follow down the burn, where there’s bound to be houses. My poor man, will ye no be better on my back?”

“O, Alan,” says I, “and me a good twelve inches taller?”

“Ye’re no such a thing,” cried Alan, with a start. “There may be a trifling matter of an inch or two; I’m no saying I’m just exactly what ye would call a tall man, whatever; and I dare say,” he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, “now when I come to think of it, I dare say ye’ll be just about right. Ay, it’ll be a foot, or near hand; or may be even mair!”

It was sweet and laughable to hear Alan eat his words up in the fear of some fresh quarrel. I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard; but if I had laughed, I think I must have wept too.

“Alan,” cried I, “what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?”

“ ’Deed, and I don’t know” said Alan. “For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:⁠—and now I like ye better!”

At the door of the first house we came to, Alan knocked, which was of no very safe enterprise in such a part of the Highlands as the Braes of Balquhidder. No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call “chiefless folk,” driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Campbells. Here were Stewarts and Maclarens, which came to the same thing, for the Maclarens followed Alan’s chief in war, and made but one clan with Appin. Here, too, were many of that old, proscribed, nameless, red-handed clan of the Macgregors. They had always been ill-considered, and now worse than ever, having credit with no side or party in the whole country of Scotland. Their chief, Macgregor of Macgregor, was in exile; the more immediate leader of that part of them about Balquhidder, James More, Rob Roy’s eldest son, lay waiting his trial