1011] on Robert Louis Stevenson. 43 



in her eye ; she was more gentle with all of iis, even with Mr. Henry, 

 even with myself ; methought she breathed of some quiet melancholy 

 happiness. To look on at this, what a torment it was for Mr. Henry ! " 



To any writer possessed by an overruling creative impulse, what 

 an opportunity — what an irresistible call, one would have said — must 

 tile situation thus subtly conceived and defined give to work out in 

 full the scenes thus suggested, to detail the words, the tones, the 

 phases and fluctuations of the man's sinister pursuit and the woman's 

 wavering heart and conscience. But no, Stevenson has put the tale 

 into the mouth of the homely house-steward Epln-aim MacKellar, and 

 his artistic scheme compels him to tell it no otherwise or more fully 

 or dramatically than MacKellar himself would have done. Remember 

 his own account, in the dedication to Sir Percy and Lady Shelley, of 

 the special problems which the tale presented to him. " The 

 character and fortune," he writes, "of the fraternal enemies, the hall 

 and sln-ubbery of Durrisdeer, the problem of MacKellar 's homespun 

 and how to shape it for superior flights ; these were his company on 

 deck in many star-reflecting harbours, ran often in his mind at sea to 

 the tune of slattering canvas, and were dismissed (something of the 

 suddenest) on the approach of squalls." 



Let us remember, in any estimate of Stevenson's work in fiction, 

 that what he most admired in the work of others, and aimed at in 

 his own, was the expresssion of the romance and the morality which 

 lie deep together at the soul of nature and experience. " In the 

 highest achievements of the art of words," he writes, " the moral and 

 the romantic interest rise and fall together by a common and organic 

 law. Situation is animated by passion, passion clothed upon with 

 situation." And again, " To embody character, thought, or emotion 

 in some act or attribute that shall be remarkably striking in the mind's 

 eye, this is the highest and hardest thing to do in words." What he 

 meant by the romantic interest, then, is the striking and the memor- 

 able and figuratively appropriate scene, situation, or incident : that 

 which the mind and imagination under the given circumstances craves 

 for, or again, in his own words, " the crystallisation of a day-dream." 

 What he meant by the moral interest is the crisis of conflicting motive 

 or passionate tension in a story : and he would have these two 

 interests coincide or come together at one or more culminating 

 moments. He has attempted himself to bring about such coincidence 

 in scenes like that, in Prince Otto, of the change of Seraphina's heart, 

 re-baptised to humility and love under the mystic thrill of starlight 

 and the forest dews : like that where Henry Durie, watching in 

 maddened suspense, again under the thrill of a forest night, the ex- 

 humation of his abhorred brother, falls dead at the sight of the dead 

 man's eyes for one ghastly moment opening on liim : or, again, that of 

 Archie Weir deciding to sacrifice his love under the appeal of the 

 elder Kirstie as she stands in the midnight chamber transfigured by 

 the passion of her pleading. 



