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If the NONESUCH foundered, she would carry down with her into the deeps of that unsounded sea the creature whom we all so feared and hated; there would be no more Master of Ballantrae, the fish would sport among his ribs; his schemes all brought to nothing, his harmless enemies at peace. At first, I have said, it was but a ray of comfort; but it had soon grown to be broad sunshine.
The same method has a different effect, according to the subject upon which it is used; as a splash of the same grey might darken white surface and lighten a black. In Esmond the use of the first person raises the book in the direction of drama, in Ballantrae it thrusts the book in the other direction, towards the pictured impression.
Those modern artists who pride themselves most on the separation and unity of a work of art have indulged in it often; thus, for instance, Stevenson gave a glimpse of Alan Breck in The Master of Ballantrae, and meant to give a glimpse of the Master of Ballantrae in another unwritten tale called The Rising Sun.
'Why, it's "The Master of Ballantrae!" I exclaimed, shocked. 'So it is! said my mother, equally surprised. But I looked sternly at her, and perhaps she blushed. 'Well what do you think: not nearly equal to mine? said I with humour. 'Nothing like them, she said determinedly. 'Not a bit, said I, though whether with a smile or a groan is immaterial; they would have meant the same thing.
This gets fullest expression in the Scotch romances. "The Master of Ballantrae," for one illustration; the interplay of motive and act as it affects a group of human beings is so conducted that plot becomes a mere framework, within which we are permitted to see a typical tragedy of kinship.
But for my part I have always found such information highly tedious; and beyond the fact that we were now in the country of the Adirondack Indians, and not so distant from our destination, could we but have found the way, I was entirely ignorant. The wisdom of my course was soon the more apparent; for with all his pains, Ballantrae was no further advanced than myself.
To him enter another shady tramping exile, Blairthwaite, a murderer. And so it was to run on, as the author's fancy might lead him, with Alan Breck and the Master for characters. At last, in unpublished MSS. I found an actual Master of Ballantrae, a Highland chief noble, majestically handsome and a paid spy of England! All these papers I sent out to Samoa, too late.
Yet it ought to be very easy to distinguish a novel that may be dramatized from a novel that may not. Certain scenes in novelistic literature, like the duel in "The Master of Ballantrae," are essentially dramatic both in content and in mood. Such scenes may be adapted with very little labor to the uses of the theatre.
The master of Ballantrae, James in baptism, took from his father the love of serious reading; some of his tact perhaps as well, but that which was only policy in the father became black dissimulation in the son.
Ballantrae would have fought it out, I believe; but I prevailed with him the other way; and we made a stop and ate a meal.
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