HKB
for deep insight and magic fancy joined in one. Hence his essays, containing as they do the gist of his reflective wisdom, are ranked by some critics above his stories.
A novel cannot, of course, be moral as an action is moral; there is no question in art of police regulations or conformity to established codes, but rather of insight both deep and wide. Polygamy and monogamy, suttee, thuggism, and cannibalism, are all acceptable to the romancer, whose business is with the heart of a man in all times and places. He is not bound to display allegiance to particular moral laws of the kind that can be broken; he is bound to show his consciousness of that wider moral order which can no more be broken by crime than the law of gravitation can be broken by the fall of china--the morality without which life would be impossible; the relations, namely, of human beings to each other, the feelings, habits, and thoughts that are the web of society. For the appreciation of morality in this wider sense high gifts of imagination are necessary. Shakespeare could never have drawn Macbeth, and thereby made apparent the awfulness of murder, without some sympathy for the murderer--the sympathy of intelligence. These gifts of imagination and sympathy belong to Stevenson in a very high degree; in all his romances there are gleams from time to time of wise and subtle reflection upon life, from the eternal side of things, which shine the more luminously that they spring from the events and situations with no suspicion of homily. In The Black Arrow, Dick Shelton begs from the Duke of Gloucester the life of the old shipmaster Arblaster, whose ship he had taken and accidentally wrecked earlier in the story. The Duke of Gloucester, who, in his own words, 'loves not mercy nor mercy-mongers,' yields the favour reluctantly. Then Dick turns to Arblaster.
'"Come," said Dick, "a life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly, be not so churlish."
'"An I had my ship," said Arblaster, "I would 'a' been forth and safe on the high seas--I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, and I'm a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in russet shot him down, 'Murrain,' quoth he, and spake never again. 'Murrain' was the last of his words, and the poor spirit of him passed. 'A will never sail no more, will my Tom."
'Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he sought to take the skipper's hand, but Arblaster avoided his touch.
'"Nay," said he, "let be. Y' have played the devil with me, and let that content you."
'The words died in Richard's throat. He saw, through tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels; and for the first time began to understand the desperate game that we play in life, and how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied by any penitence.'
A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on the lips of the spiritual visitant in Markheim.
'"Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself."'