Kidnapped / Похищенный. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Роберт Льюис Стивенсон

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СКАЧАТЬ but you and me that ought the name.’ And then on he rambled about the family, and its ancient greatness, and his father that began to enlarge the house, and himself that stopped the building as a sinful waste.

      ‘I’ll aff[17] and see the session clerk,’ uncle said in the end. He was for setting out, when a thought arrested him. ‘I cannae leave you by yoursel’ in the house,’ said he. ‘I’ll have to lock you out.’ The blood came to my face. ‘If you lock me out,’ I said, ‘it’ll be the last you’ll see of me in friendship.’

      Uncle Ebenezer turned very pale, and sucked his mouth in. He went and looked out of the window for awhile. I could see him all trembling and twitching, like a man with palsy. But when he turned round, he had a smile upon his face.

      ‘Well, well,’ said he, ‘we must bear and forbear. I’ll no go; that’s all that’s to be said of it.’

      ‘Uncle Ebenezer,’ I said, ‘I can make nothing out of this. You use me like a thief; you hate to have me in this house. Why do you seek to keep me, then? Let me gang back to the friends I have, and that like me!’

      ‘Na, na; na, na,’ he said, very earnestly. ‘I like you fine; and for the honour of the house I couldnae let you leave the way ye came. Just you bide here quiet a bittie[18], and ye’ll find that we agree.’

      ‘Well, sir,’ said I, after I had thought the matter out in silence, ‘I’ll stay awhile. It’s more just I should be helped by my own blood than strangers; and if we don’t agree, I’ll do my best it shall be through no fault of mine.’

      Chapter IV

      I Run a Great Danger in the House of Shaws

      For a day that was begun so ill, the day passed fairly well. We had the porridge cold again at noon, and hot porridge at night; porridge and small beer was my uncle’s diet. He spoke but little, and that in the same way as before, shooting a question at me after a long silence; and when I sought to lead him to talk about my future, slipped out of it again. In a room next door to the kitchen, where he suffered me to go, I found a great number of books, both Latin and English, in which I took great pleasure all the afternoon. Indeed, the time passed so lightly in this good company, that I began to be almost reconciled to my residence at Shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and his eyes playing hide-and-seek with mine, revived the force of my distrust.

      One thing I discovered, which put me in some doubt. This was an entry on the fly-leaf of a chapbook plainly written by my father’s hand and thus conceived: ‘To my brother Ebenezer on his fifth birthday’. Now, what puzzled me was this: That, as my father was of course the younger brother, he must either have made some strange error, or he must have written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear manly hand of writing.

      I tried to get this out of my head; but when at length I went back into the kitchen, and sat down once more to porridge and small beer, the first thing I said to Uncle Ebenezer was to ask him if my father had not been very quick at his book.

      ‘Alexander? No him!’ was the reply. ‘I was far quicker mysel’; I was a clever chappie when I was young. Why, I could read as soon as he could.’

      This puzzled me yet more; and a thought coming into my head, I asked if he and my father had been twins.

      He jumped upon his stool, and the horn spoon fell out of his hand upon the floor. ‘What gars[19] ye ask that?’ he said, and he caught me by the breast of the jacket, and looked this time straight into my eyes: his own were little and light, and bright like a bird’s, blinking and winking strangely.

      ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, very calmly, for I was far stronger than he, and not easily frightened. ‘Take your hand from my jacket. This is no way to behave.’

      My uncle seemed to make a great effort upon himself. ‘Dod man, David,’ he said, ‘ye shouldnae speak to me about your father. That’s where the mistake is.’ He sat awhile and shook, blinking in his plate: ‘He was all the brother that ever I had,’ he added, but with no heart in his voice; and then he caught up his spoon and fell to supper again, but still shaking.

      Now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and sudden profession of love for my dead father, went so clean beyond my comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope. On the one hand, I began to think my uncle was perhaps insane and might be dangerous; on the other, there came up into my mind (quite unbidden by me and even discouraged) a story like some ballad I had heard folk singing, of a poor lad that was a rightful heir and a wicked kinsman that tried to keep him from his own. For why should my uncle play a part with a relative that came, almost a beggar, to his door, unless in his heart he had some cause to fear him?

      ‘Davie,’ he said, at length, ‘I’ve been thinking;’ then he paused, and said it again. ‘There’s a wee bit siller[20] that I half promised ye before ye were born,’ he continued; ‘promised it to your father. O, naething legal, ye understand; just gentlemen dafing at their wine. Well, I keepit[21] that bit money separate – it was a great expense, but a promise is a promise – and it has grown by now to be a matter of just precisely – just exactly’ – and here he paused and stumbled – ‘of just exactly forty pounds!’ This last he rapped out with a sidelong glance over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream, ‘Scots!’

      The pound Scots being the same thing as an English shilling, the difference made by this second thought was considerable; I could see, besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it puzzled me to guess; and I made no attempt to conceal the tone of raillery in which I answered —

      ‘O, think again, sir! Pounds sterling, I believe!’

      ‘That’s what I said,’ returned my uncle: ‘pounds sterling! And if you’ll step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it is, I’ll get it out to ye and call ye in again.’

      I did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think I was so easily to be deceived. It was a dark night, with a few stars low down; and as I stood just outside the door, I heard a hollow moaning of wind far off among the hills. I said to myself there was something thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast importance that should prove to me before the evening passed.

      When I was called in again, my uncle counted out into my hand seven and thirty golden guinea[22] pieces; the rest was in his hand, in small gold and silver; but his heart failed him there, and he crammed the change into his pocket.

      ‘There,’ said he, ‘that’ll show you! I’m a queer man, and strange wi’ strangers; but my word is my bond, and there’s the proof of it.’

      Now, my uncle seemed so miserly that I was struck dumb by this sudden generosity, and could find no words in which to thank him.

      ‘No a word!’ said he. ‘Nae thanks; I want nae thanks. I do my duty. I’m no saying that everybody would have, done it; but for my part (though I’m a careful body, too) it’s a pleasure to me to do the right by my brother’s son; and it’s a pleasure to me to think that now we’ll agree as such near friends should.’

      I spoke him in return as handsomely as I was able; but all the while I was wondering what would come next, and why he had parted with his precious guineas; for as to the reason he had given, a baby would have СКАЧАТЬ