Short-Stories

"You are very good," he said; "but you cannot make me forget that I was asked in pity and not for love."

"I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding down her head. "Hear me to an end, Monsieur de Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I feel you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to occupy one thought of your mind, although, alas! you must die for me this morning. But when I asked you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was because I respected and admired you, and loved you with my whole soul, from the very moment that you took my part against my uncle. If you had seen yourself, and how noble you looked, you would pity rather than despise me. And now," she went on, hurriedly checking him with her hand, "although I have laid aside all reserve and told you so much, remember that I know your sentiments toward me already. I would not, believe me, being nobly born, weary you with importunities into consent. I too have a pride of my own: and I declare before the holy mother of God, if you should now go back from your word already given, I would no more marry you than I would marry my uncle's groom."

Denis smiled a little bitterly.

"It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little pride."

She made no answer, although she probably had her own thoughts.

"Come hither to the window," he said with a sigh. "Here is the dawn."

And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The hollow of the sky was full of essential daylight, colorless and clean; and the valley underneath was flooded with a gray reflection. A few thin vapors clung in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among the steadings[112 - 231: 26 steadings. A farmstead – barns, stables, cattle-sheds, etc.]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a clangor in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising sun.

Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.

"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough: "the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when he returns?"

"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.

She was silent.

"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance, "you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and spend my life in your service."

As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior of the house; and a clatter of armor in the corridor showed that the retainers were returning to their post, and the two hours were at an end.

"After all that you have heard?" she whispered, leaning toward him with her lips and eyes.

"I have heard nothing," he replied.

"The captain's name was Florimond de Champdivers," she said in his ear.

"I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple body in his arms, and covered her wet face with kisses.

A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a good morning.

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. He was an only child. On his mother's side he came from a line of Scotch philosophers and ministers; on his father's, from a line of active workers and scientists. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, and his father, Thomas Stevenson, gained world-wide reputations in engineering.

Robert inherited from his mother throat and lung troubles. His health was very poor from his birth and his life was preserved only by the careful watchfulness of his mother and his devoted nurse, Alison Cunningham. As a child he was very lovable and possessed a very active imagination.

He went to school in Edinburgh between the years 1858-1867. He first attended a preparatory school, then the Edinburgh academy. He spent considerable time at his maternal grandfather's home. It was there that he first tasted the delights of romance. In his school work he was none too studious, but all his teachers were charmed by his pleasing manner and general intelligence. Though an idler in other things, he worked constantly on the art of writing. Throughout his study in Edinburgh University and his unsuccessful efforts in engineering and the practice of law, literature became more and more a passion with him.

The period between 1875 and 1879 was one of improved health and considerable literary activity. During this time he published A Lodging for the Night, Will o' the Mill, The New Arabian Nights, and an Inland Voyage.

While in southern Europe he met and fell in love with Mrs. Osbourne. So after she returned to her home in California, Stevenson received the news that she was seriously ill. He immediately sailed for San Francisco, travelling as a steerage passenger because of lack of funds and a desire for literary material. Out of this experience grew a number of stories and essays. Exposure on the voyage affected his health and caused a very dangerous illness. After his recovery he married Mrs. Osbourne and returned to England with his wife and stepson.

For a few years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the publication of Treasure Island. Markheim appeared in 1884. Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were published in 1886.

After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family sailed to America, where they settled in the Adirondacks for the winter of 1888. Here his health was good and he wrote a number of essays for Scribner's Magazine. In the spring of the same year they started on a cruise of the south seas. They visited many of the southern islands and settled at Vailima, Samoa. Stevenson was interested in the Samoaas and took an active part in their political affairs. The tropical climate agreed with him and his creative power was renewed. He wrote a number of short stories, a series of letters on the South Seas, and the novel David Balfour.

Political reverses and failing strength took away for a time his power to write. He was again stimulated, however, by the love and appreciation of his Samoan followers, and started on what promised to be his period of highest achievement. This promise was soon blighted by his untimely death from a stroke of apoplexy, December 13, 1894. He was buried in Samoa.

BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 vols., Graham Balfour.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Isobel Strong.

Memories and Portraits, Robert Louis Stevenson.

Friends on the Shelf, Bradford Torrey.

"Personal Recollections," Edmund Gosse, Century Magazine, 50:447.

"Character Sketch," Atlantic Monthly, 89:89-99.

"The Real Stevenson," Atlantic Monthly, 85:702-5.

A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, W.F. Prideaux.

CRITICISMS

Fundamentally Stevenson's style is marked by a conscious aim to entertain. His engaging humor, free of all affectation, sentimentality, and exaggeration, is spontaneous and natural. His most original writing is The Child's Garden of Verses. His touch is light and his thought is clear and lucid. Across the Plains is written in his most straightforward and natural style.

Stevenson was a careful writer, doing with great skill any established piece of art. He practised diligently, and gained, as he himself states, his high rank by constantly drilling himself in the art of writing. This imitation of form to the point of perfection, rather than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and spirituality into his writings that prove delightful to all his readers.

The subject of Markheim, a man failing through weakness, was a favorite topic for Stevenson. Markheim is almost an ideal specimen of the impressionistic short-story. It has a plot in which Hawthorne might justly have revelled, a treatment as intellectual as that of Poe, descriptions not unlike those of Flaubert's, and a moral ending true to the Puritanic type. The movement of the story is swift and possesses perfect unity. The surprise at the end comes as a shock although the author has consistently and logically constructed his plot.

GENERAL REFERENCES

Emerson and Other Essays, John Jay Chapman.

Robert Louis Stevenson, L. Cope Cornford.

Modern Novelists, William Lyon Phelps.

Makers of English Fiction, W.J. Dawson.

"Art of Stevenson," North American Review, 171: 348-358.

"Criticism," Dial, 30:345. May 18, 1901.

COLLATERAL READINGS

The Suicide Club (New Arabian Nights), Robert Louis Stevenson.

Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk, Robert Louis Stevenson.