"The Master played upon that little ballad, and upon those who heard him, like an instrument, and seemed now upon the point of failing, and now to conquer his distress, so that the words and music seemed to pour out of his own heart and his own past, and to be aimed directly at Mrs. Henry.... When it came to an end we all sat silent for a time: he had chosen the dusk of the afternoon, so that none could see his neighbour's face: but it seemed as if we held our breathing: only my old lord cleared his throat. The first to move was the singer, who got to his feet suddenly and softly, and went and walked softly to and fro in the low end of the hall." (_The Master of Ballantrae._)
But Mrs. Henry plays a very minor part in the marring or making, here, of two men's lives: it is a rôle of _vis inertiæ_ at best. And, indeed, when all is said, what shall a petticoat be if not irrelevant, among the clash of steel and smoke of pistols, in an atmosphere permeated by Spanish doubloons or illicit piratical treasure? Stevenson's infallible artistic instinct led him to keep the adventure-story pendant upon the deeds of men, and the eager mistakes of boys; and a certain curious penchant for the squalid, the submerged, the picturesque, brought him by choice into such company as no heroine should enter--that of Villon, for instance, and John Silver, and Herrick the cockney vagabond. "The spice of life is battle," he said; and his life, and his books, were brimful of battles with foes or with fortune.
"'The words and music seemed to pour out of his own heart and his own past and to be aimed directly at Mrs. Henry."
The open-air life which he had perforce abandoned, the joy of physical strength and hair-breadth 'scape, could still be his by proxy. He revelled in delineating his ideal man:
"Being a true lover of living, a fellow with something pushing and spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any other soldier, in any other stirring, deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he touch the goal. 'A peerage or Westminster Abbey!' cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living, of being about their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the nettle danger, and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-blocks of prudence." (_Virginibus Puerisque._)