Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Tales and Fantasies
Contents
The Misadventures of John Nicholson
The Body-Snatcher
The Story of a Lie
THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON
CHAPTER I - IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND
JOHN VAREY NICHOLSON was stupid; yet, stupider men than he
are now sprawling in Parliament, and lauding themselves as
the authors of their own distinction. He was of a fat habit,
even from boyhood, and inclined to a cheerful and cursory
reading of the face of life; and possibly this attitude of
mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this
hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition
steps in with the more ready explanation that he was detested
of the gods.
His father - that iron gentleman - had long ago enthroned
himself on the heights of the Disruption Principles. What
these are (and in spite of their grim name they are quite
innocent) no array of terms would render thinkable to the
merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often prove
unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the
milk of lions. About the period when the churches convene at
Edinburgh in their annual assemblies, he was to be seen
descending the Mound in the company of divers red-headed
clergymen: these voluble, he only contributing oracular nods,
brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his stretched
upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in
these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran on the
Residuary Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A
stranger to the tight little theological kingdom of Scotland
might have listened and gathered literally nothing. And Mr.
Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew this, and raged at
it. He knew there was a vast world outside, to whom
Disruption Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes;
the paper brought him chill whiffs from it; he had met
Englishmen who had asked lightly if he did not belong to the
Church of Scotland, and then had failed to be much interested
by his elucidation of that nice point; it was an evil, wild,
rebellious world, lying sunk in DOZENEDNESS, for nothing
short of a Scots word will paint this Scotsman's feelings.
And when he entered into his own house in Randolph Crescent
(south side), and shut the door behind him, his heart swelled
with security. Here, at least, was a citadel impregnable by
right-hand defections or left-hand extremes. Here was a
family where prayers came at the same hour, where the Sabbath
literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who
should have leaned to any false opinion was instantly set
down, and over which there reigned all week, and grew denser
on Sundays, a silence that was agreeable to his ear, and a
gloom that he found comfortable.
Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, and left him with three
children: a daughter two years, and a son about eight years
younger than John; and John himself, the unlucky bearer of a
name infamous in English history. The daughter, Maria, was a
good girl - dutiful, pious, dull, but so easily startled that
to speak to her was quite a perilous enterprise. 'I don't
think I care to talk about that, if you please,' she would
say, and strike the boldest speechless by her unmistakable
pain; this upon all topics - dress, pleasure, morality,
politics, in which the formula was changed to 'my papa thinks
otherwise,' and even religion, unless it was approached with
a particular whining tone of voice. Alexander, the younger
brother, was sickly, clever, fond of books and drawing, and
full of satirical remarks. In the midst of these, imagine
that natural, clumsy, unintelligent, and mirthful animal,
John; mighty well-behaved in comparison with other lads,
although not up to the mark of the house in Randolph
Crescent; full of a sort of blundering affection, full of
caresses, which were never very warmly received; full of
sudden and loud laughter which rang out in that still house
like curses. Mr. Nicholson himself had a great fund of
humour, of the Scots order - intellectual, turning on the
observation of men; his own character, for instance - if he
could have seen it in another - would have been a rare feast
to him; but his son's empty guffaws over a broken plate, and
empty, almost light-hearted remarks, struck him with pain as
the indices of a weak mind.
Outside the family John had early attached himself (much as a
dog may follow a marquis) to the steps of Alan Houston, a lad
about a year older than himself, idle, a trifle wild, the
heir to a good estate which was still in the hands of a
rigorous trustee, and so royally content with himself that he
took John's devotion as a thing of course. The intimacy was
gall to Mr. Nicholson; it took his son from the house, and he
was a jealous parent; it kept him from the office, and he was
a martinet; lastly, Mr. Nicholson was ambitious for his
family (in which, and the Disruption Principles, he entirely
lived), and he hated to see a son of his play second fiddle
to an idler. After some hesitation, he ordered that the
friendship should cease - an unfair command, though seemingly
inspired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, saying nothing,
continued to disobey the order under the rose.
John was nearly nineteen when he was one day dismissed rather
earlier than usual from his father's office, where he was
studying the practice of the law. It was Saturday; and
except that he had a matter of four hundred pounds in his
pocket which it was his duty to hand over to the British
Linen Company's Bank, he had the whole afternoon at his
disposal. He went by Princes Street enjoying the mild
sunshine, and the little thrill of easterly wind that tossed
the flags along that terrace of palaces, and tumbled the
green trees in the garden. The band was playing down in the
valley under the castle; and when it came to the turn of the
pipers, he heard their wild sounds with a stirring of the
blood. Something distantly martial woke in him; and he
thought of Miss Mackenzie, whom he was to meet that day at
dinner.
Now, it is undeniable that he should have gone directly to
the bank, but right in the way stood the billiard-room of the
hotel where Alan was almost certain to be found; and the
temptation proved too strong. He entered the billiard-room,
and was instantly greeted by his friend, cue in hand.
'Nicholson,' said he, 'I want you to lend me a pound or two
till Monday.'
'You've come to the right shop, haven't you?' returned John.
'I have twopence.'
'Nonsense,' said Alan. 'You can get some. Go and borrow at
your tailor's; they all do it. Or I'll tell you what: pop
your watch.'
'Oh, yes, I dare say,' said John. 'And how about my father?'
'How is he to know? He doesn't wind it up for you at night,
does he?' inquired Alan, at which John guffawed. 'No,
seriously; I am in a fix,' continued the tempter. 'I have
lost some money to a man here. I'll give it you to-night,
and you can get the heir-loom out again on Monday. Come;
it's a small service, after all. I would do a good deal more
for you.'
Whereupon John went forth, and pawned his gold watch under
the assumed name of John Froggs, 85 Pleasance. But the
nervousness that assailed him at the door of that inglorious
haunt - a pawnshop - and the effort necessary to invent the
pseudonym (which, somehow, seemed to him a necessary part of
the procedure), had taken more time than he imagined: and
when he returned to the billiard-room with the spoils, the
bank had already closed its doors.
This was a shrewd knock. 'A piece of business had been
neglected.' He heard these words in his father's trenchant
voice, and trembled, and then dodged the thought. After all,
who was to know? He must carry four hundred pounds about
with him till Monday, when the neglect could be
surreptitiously repaired; and meanwhile, he was free to pass
the afternoon on the encircling divan of the billiard-room,
smoking his pipe, sipping a pint of ale, and enjoying to the
masthead the modest pleasures of admiration.
None can admire like a young man. Of all youth's passions
and pleasures, this is the most common and least alloyed; and
every flash of Alan's black eyes; every aspect of his curly
head; every graceful reach, every easy, stand-off attitude of
waiting; ay, and down to his shirt-sleeves and wrist-links,
were seen by John through a luxurious glory. He valued
himself by the possession of that royal friend, hugged
himself upon the thought, and swam in warm azure; his own
defects, like vanquished difficulties, becoming things on
which to plume himself. Only when he thought of Miss
Mackenzie there fell upon his mind a shadow of regret; that
young lady was worthy of better things than plain John
Nicholson, still known among schoolmates by the derisive name
of 'Fatty'; and he felt, if he could chalk a cue, or stand at
ease, with such a careless grace as Alan, he could approach
the object of his sentiments with a less crushing sense of
inferiority.
Before they parted, Alan made a proposal that was startling
in the extreme. He would be at Colette's that night about
twelve, he said. Why should not John come there and get the
money? To go to Colette's was to see life, indeed; it was
wrong; it was against the laws; it partook, in a very dingy
manner, of adventure. Were it known, it was the sort of
exploit that disconsidered a young man for good with the more
serious classes, but gave him a standing with the riotous.
And yet Colette's was not a hell; it could not come, without
vaulting hyperbole, under the rubric of a gilded saloon; and,
if it was a sin to go there, the sin was merely local and
municipal. Colette (whose name I do not know how to spell,
for I was never in epistolary communication with that
hospitable outlaw) was simply an unlicensed publican, who
gave suppers after eleven at night, the Edinburgh hour of
closing. If you belonged to a club, you could get a much
better supper at the same hour, and lose not a jot in public
esteem. But if you lacked that qualification, and were an
hungered, or inclined toward conviviality at unlawful hours,
Colette's was your only port. You were very ill-supplied.
The company was not recruited from the Senate or the Church,
though the Bar was very well represented on the only occasion
on which I flew in the face of my country's laws, and, taking
my reputation in my hand, penetrated into that grim supper-
house. And Colette's frequenters, thrillingly conscious of
wrong-doing and 'that two-handed engine (the policeman) at
the door,' were perhaps inclined to somewhat feverish excess.
But the place was in no sense a very bad one; and it is
somewhat strange to me, at this distance of time, how it had
acquired its dangerous repute.
In precisely the same spirit as a man may debate a project to
ascend the Matterhorn or to cross Africa, John considered
Alan's proposal, and, greatly daring, accepted it. As he
walked home, the thoughts of this excursion out of the safe
places of life into the wild and arduous, stirred and
struggled in his imagination with the image of Miss Mackenzie
- incongruous and yet kindred thoughts, for did not each
imply unusual tightening of the pegs of resolution? did not
each woo him forth and warn him back again into himself?
Between these two considerations, at least, he was more than
usually moved; and when he got to Randolph Crescent, he quite
forgot the four hundred pounds in the inner pocket of his
greatcoat, hung up the coat, with its rich freight, upon his
particular pin of the hatstand; and in the very action sealed
his doom.
CHAPTER II - IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND
ABOUT half-past ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer
his arm to Miss Mackenzie, and escort her home. The night
was chill and starry; all the way eastward the trees of the
different gardens rustled and looked black. Up the stone
gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, the breeze
made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering;
and when at last they had mounted to the Royal Terrace, where
Captain Mackenzie lived, a great salt freshness came in their
faces from the sea. These phases of the walk remained
written on John's memory, each emphasised by the touch of
that light hand on his arm; and behind all these aspects of
the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's-eye, a picture of
the lighted drawing-room at home where he had sat talking
with Flora; and his father, from the other end, had looked on
with a kind and ironical smile. John had read the
significance of that smile, which might have escaped a
stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglement
with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it
still was a thought contemptuous, had implied consent.
At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a
certain emphasis; and John took it and kept it a little
longer, and said, 'Good-night, Flora, dear,' and was
instantly thrown into much fear by his presumption. But she
only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell; and while
she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in the
porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a
fortification. She had a knitted shawl over her head; her
blue Highland eyes took the light from the neighbouring
street-lamp and sparkled; and when the door opened and closed
upon her, John felt cruelly alone.
He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow;
and when he came to Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful
mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay
the way to Colette's, where Alan would soon be looking for
his arrival, and where he would now have no more consented to
go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the touch
of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in his
father's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him
was the way home, which pointed only to bed, a place of
little ease for one whose fancy was strung to the lyrical
pitch, and whose not very ardent heart was just then
tumultuously moved. The hilltop, the cool air of the night,
the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city
under his feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files
of lamps, drew him by all he had of the poetic, and he turned
that way; and by that quite innocent deflection, ripened the
crop of his venial errors for the sickle of destiny.
On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps half
an hour, looking down upon the lamps of Edinburgh, and up at
the lamps of heaven. Wonderful were the resolves he formed;
beautiful and kindly were the vistas of future life that sped
before him. He uttered to himself the name of Flora in so
many touching and dramatic keys, that he became at length
fairly melted with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. At
that juncture a certain creasing in his greatcoat caught his
ear. He put his hand into his pocket, pulled forth the
envelope that held the money, and sat stupefied. The Calton
Hill, about this period, had an ill name of nights; and to be
sitting there with four hundred pounds that did not belong to
him was hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a
very bad hat a little on one side of him, apparently looking
at the scenery; from a little on the other a second night-
walker was drawing very quietly near. Up jumped John. The
envelope fell from his hands; he stooped to get it, and at
the same moment both men ran in and closed with him.
A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the
poorer by a purse which contained exactly one penny postage-
stamp, by a cambric handkerchief, and by the all-important
envelope.
Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of lovely
exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported
alone; and not many hundred yards away his greatest friend
was sitting at supper - ay, and even expecting him. Was it
not in the nature of man that he should run there? He went
in quest of sympathy - in quest of that droll article that we
all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait, and have
agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, with vague but
rather splendid expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or
would be so when he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he
might remedy this misfortune, and avert that dreaded
interview with Mr. Nicholson, from which John now shrunk in
imagination as the hand draws back from fire.
Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow
avenue, part street, part by-road. The head of it faces the
doors of the prison; its tail descends into the sunless slums
of the Low Calton. On one hand it is overhung by the crags
of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard. Between these
two the roadway runs in a trench, sparsely lighted at night,
sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it was cleared
the place of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of
these was the house of Colette; and at his door our ill-
starred John was presently beating for admittance. In an
evil hour he satisfied the jealous inquiries of the
contraband hotel-keeper; in an evil hour he penetrated into
the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was
there, seated in a room lighted by noisy gas-jets, beside a
dirty table-cloth, engaged on a coarse meal, and in the
company of several tipsy members of the junior bar. But Alan
was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds upon a horse-
race, had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, in
default of any possible means of extrication, drowning the
memory of his predicament. He to help John! The thing was
impossible; he couldn't help himself.
'If you have a beast of a father,' said he, 'I can tell you I
have a brute of a trustee.'
'I'm not going to hear my father called a beast,' said John
with a beating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound
rivet of the chain that bound him to life.
But Alan was quite good-natured.
'All right, old fellow,' said he. 'Mos' respec'able man your
father.' And he introduced his friend to his companions as
'old Nicholson the what-d'ye-call-um's son.'
John sat in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate
table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters,
seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came
a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent
from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party,
taken FLAGRANTE DELICTO, with their glasses at their elbow,
were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly
summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent case
against that arch-shebeener, Colette.
It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came
forth again. The vague terror of public opinion weighed
generally on them all; but there were private and particular
horrors on the minds of individuals. Alan stood in dread of
his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the group was the
son of a country minister, another of a judge; John, the
unhappiest of all, had David Nicholson to father, the idea of
facing whom on such a scandalous subject was physically
sickening. They stood awhile consulting under the buttresses
of Saint Giles; thence they adjourned to the lodgings of one
of the number in North Castle Street, where (for that matter)
they might have had quite as good a supper, and far better
drink, than in the dangerous paradise from which they had
been routed. There, over an almost tearful glass, they
debated their position. Each explained he had the world to
lose if the affair went on, and he appeared as a witness. It
was remarkable what bright prospects were just then in the
very act of opening before each of that little company of
youths, and what pious consideration for the feelings of
their families began now to well from them. Each, moreover,
was in an odd state of destitution. Not one could bear his
share of the fine; not one but evinced a wonderful twinkle of
hope that each of the others (in succession) was the very man
who could step in to make good the deficit. One took a high
hand; he could not pay his share; if it went to a trial, he
should bolt; he had always felt the English Bar to be his
true sphere. Another branched out into touching details
about his family, and was not listened to. John, in the
midst of this disorderly competition of poverty and meanness,
sat stunned, contemplating the mountain bulk of his
misfortunes.
At last, upon a pledge that each should apply to his family
with a common frankness, this convention of unhappy young
asses broke up, went down the common stair, and in the grey
of the spring morning, with the streets lying dead empty all
about them, the lamps burning on into the daylight in
diminished lustre, and the birds beginning to sound
premonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went
each his own way with bowed head and echoing footfall.
The rooks were awake in Randolph Crescent; but the windows
looked down, discreetly blinded, on the return of the
prodigal. John's pass-key was a recent privilege; this was
the first time it had been used; and, oh! with what a
sickening sense of his unworthiness he now inserted it into
the well-oiled lock and entered that citadel of the
proprieties! All slept; the gas in the hall had been left
faintly burning to light his return; a dreadful stillness
reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eight-day clock.
He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the hall, waiting
and counting the minutes, longing for any human countenance.
But when at last he heard the alarm spring its rattle in the
lower story, and the servants begin to be about, he instantly
lost heart, and fled to his own room, where he threw himself
upon the bed.
CHAPTER III - IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HARVEST HOME
SHORTLY after breakfast, at which he assisted with a highly
tragical countenance, John sought his father where he sat,
presumably in religious meditation, on the Sabbath mornings.
The old gentleman looked up with that sour, inquisitive
expression that came so near to smiling and was so different
in effect.
'This is a time when I do not like to be disturbed,' he said.
'I know that,' returned John; 'but I have - I want - I've
made a dreadful mess of it,' he broke out, and turned to the
window.
Mr. Nicholson sat silent for an appreciable time, while his
unhappy son surveyed the poles in the back green, and a
certain yellow cat that was perched upon the wall. Despair
sat upon John as he gazed; and he raged to think of the
dreadful series of his misdeeds, and the essential innocence
that lay behind them.
'Well,' said the father, with an obvious effort, but in very
quiet tones, 'what is it?'
'Maclean gave me four hundred pounds to put in the bank,
sir,' began John; 'and I'm sorry to say that I've been robbed
of it!'
'Robbed of it?' cried Mr. Nicholson, with a strong rising
inflection. 'Robbed? Be careful what you say, John!'
'I can't say anything else, sir; I was just robbed of it,'
said John, in desperation, sullenly.
'And where and when did this extraordinary event take place?'
inquired the father.
'On the Calton Hill about twelve last night.'
'The Calton Hill?' repeated Mr. Nicholson. 'And what were
you doing there at such a time of the night?'
'Nothing, sir,' says John.
Mr. Nicholson drew in his breath.
'And how came the money in your hands at twelve last night?'
he asked, sharply.
'I neglected that piece of business,' said John, anticipating
comment; and then in his own dialect: 'I clean forgot all
about it.'
'Well,' said his father, 'it's a most extraordinary story.
Have you communicated with the police?'
'I have,' answered poor John, the blood leaping to his face.
'They think they know the men that did it. I dare say the
money will be recovered, if that was all,' said he, with a
desperate indifference, which his father set down to levity;
but which sprung from the consciousness of worse behind.
'Your mother's watch, too?' asked Mr. Nicholson.
'Oh, the watch is all right!' cried John. 'At least, I mean
I was coming to the watch - the fact is, I am ashamed to say,
I - I had pawned the watch before. Here is the ticket; they
didn't find that; the watch can be redeemed; they don't sell
pledges.' The lad panted out these phrases, one after
another, like minute guns; but at the last word, which rang
in that stately chamber like an oath, his heart failed him
utterly; and the dreaded silence settled on father and son.
It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking up the pawn-ticket:
'John Froggs, 85 Pleasance,' he read; and then turning upon
John, with a brief flash of passion and disgust, 'Who is John
Froggs?' he cried.
'Nobody,' said John. 'It was just a name.'
'An ALIAS,' his father commented.
'Oh! I think scarcely quite that,' said the culprit; 'it's a
form, they all do it, the man seemed to understand, we had a
great deal of fun over the name - '
He paused at that, for he saw his father wince at the picture
like a man physically struck; and again there was silence.
'I do not think,' said Mr. Nicholson, at last, 'that I am an
ungenerous father. I have never grudged you money within
reason, for any avowable purpose; you had just to come to me
and speak. And now I find that you have forgotten all
decency and all natural feeling, and actually pawned - pawned
- your mother's watch. You must have had some temptation; I
will do you the justice to suppose it was a strong one. What
did you want with this money?'
'I would rather not tell you, sir,' said John. 'It will only
make you angry.'
'I will not be fenced with,' cried his father. 'There must
be an end of disingenuous answers. What did you want with
this money?'
'To lend it to Houston, sir,' says John.
'I thought I had forbidden you to speak to that young man?'
asked the father.
'Yes, sir,' said John; 'but I only met him.'
'Where?' came the deadly question.
And 'In a billiard-room' was the damning answer. Thus, had
John's single departure from the truth brought instant
punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he
have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate
the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he
frequented these disreputable haunts upon his own account.
Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile tidings in silence,
and when John stole a glance at his father's countenance, he
was abashed to see the marks of suffering.
'Well,' said the old gentleman, at last, 'I cannot pretend
not to be simply bowed down. I rose this morning what the
world calls a happy man - happy, at least, in a son of whom I
thought I could be reasonably proud - '
But it was beyond human nature to endure this longer, and
John interrupted almost with a scream. 'Oh, wheest!' he
cried, 'that's not all, that's not the worst of it - it's
nothing! How could I tell you were proud of me? Oh! I
wish, I wish that I had known; but you always said I was such
a disgrace! And the dreadful thing is this: we were all
taken up last night, and we have to pay Colette's fine among
the six, or we'll be had up for evidence - shebeening it is.
They made me swear to tell you; but for my part,' he cried,
bursting into tears, 'I just wish that I was dead!' And he
fell on his knees before a chair and hid his face.
Whether his father spoke, or whether he remained long in the
room or at once departed, are points lost to history. A
horrid turmoil of mind and body; bursting sobs; broken,
vanishing thoughts, now of indignation, now of remorse;
broken elementary whiffs of consciousness, of the smell of
the horse-hair on the chair bottom, of the jangling of church
bells that now began to make day horrible throughout the
confines of the city, of the hard floor that bruised his
knees, of the taste of tears that found their way into his
mouth: for a period of time, the duration of which I cannot
guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these
were the whole of God's world for John Nicholson.
When at last, as by the touching of a spring, he returned
again to clearness of consciousness and even a measure of
composure, the bells had but just done ringing, and the
Sabbath silence was still marred by the patter of belated
feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by these more
speaking signs, the service had not long begun; and the
unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church,
might count on near two hours of only comparative
unhappiness. With his father, the superlative degree
returned infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking fibre in
his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his
brain, at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a
half, perhaps an hour and three-quarters, if the doctor was
long-winded, and then would begin again that active agony
from which, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk
as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family
pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm-books,
Maria with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled
and critical; and at once he was struck with indignation, not
unjustly. It was inhuman to go off to church, and leave a
sinner in suspense, unpunished, unforgiven. And at the very
touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity was lessened; yet
the paternal terror only grew; and the two strands of feeling
pushed him in the same direction.
And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his father
should have locked him in. The notion had no ground in
sense; it was probably no more than a reminiscence of similar
calamities in childhood, for his father's room had always
been the chamber of inquisition and the scene of punishment;
but it stuck so rigorously in his mind that he must instantly
approach the door and prove its untruth. As he went, he
struck upon a drawer left open in the business table. It was
the money-drawer, a measure of his father's disarray: the
money-drawer - perhaps a pointing providence! Who is to
decide, when even divines differ between a providence and a
temptation? or who, sitting calmly under his own vine, is to
pass a judgment on the doings of a poor, hunted dog,
slavishly afraid, slavishly rebellious, like John Nicholson
on that particular Sunday? His hand was in the drawer,
almost before his mind had conceived the hope; and rising to
his new situation, he wrote, sitting in his father's chair
and using his father's blotting-pad, his pitiful apology and
farewell:-
'MY DEAR FATHER, - I have taken the money, but I will pay it
back as soon as I am able. You will never hear of me again.
I did not mean any harm by anything, so I hope you will try
and forgive me. I wish you would say good-bye to Alexander
and Maria, but not if you don't want to. I could not wait to
see you, really. Please try to forgive me. Your
affectionate son,
JOHN NICHOLSON.'
The coins abstracted and the missive written, he could not be
gone too soon from the scene of these transgressions; and
remembering how his father had once returned from church, on
some slight illness, in the middle of the second psalm, he
durst not even make a packet of a change of clothes. Attired
as he was, he slipped from the paternal doors, and found
himself in the cool spring air, the thin spring sunshine, and
the great Sabbath quiet of the city, which was now only
pointed by the cawing of the rooks. There was not a soul in
Randolph Crescent, nor a soul in Queensferry Street; in this
outdoor privacy and the sense of escape, John took heart
again; and with a pathetic sense of leave-taking, he even
ventured up the lane and stood awhile, a strange peri at the
gates of a quaint paradise, by the west end of St. George's
Church. They were singing within; and by a strange chance,
the tune was 'St. George's, Edinburgh,' which bears the name,
and was first sung in the choir of that church. 'Who is this
King of Glory?' went the voices from within; and, to John,
this was like the end of all Christian observances, for he
was now to be a wild man like Ishmael, and his life was to be
cast in homeless places and with godless people.
It was thus, with no rising sense of the adventurous, but in
mere desolation and despair, that he turned his back on his
native city, and set out on foot for California, with a more
immediate eye to Glasgow.
CHAPTER IV - THE SECOND SOWING
IT is no part of mine to narrate the adventures of John
Nicholson, which were many, but simply his more momentous
misadventures, which were more than he desired, and, by human
standards, more than he deserved; how he reached California,
how he was rooked, and robbed, and beaten, and starved; how
he was at last taken up by charitable folk, restored to some
degree of self-complacency, and installed as a clerk in a
bank in San Francisco, it would take too long to tell; nor in
these episodes were there any marks of the peculiar
Nicholsonic destiny, for they were just such matters as
befell some thousands of other young adventurers in the same
days and places. But once posted in the bank, he fell for a
time into a high degree of good fortune, which, as it was
only a longer way about to fresh disaster, it behooves me to
explain.
It was his luck to meet a young man in what is technically
called a 'dive,' and thanks to his monthly wages, to
extricate this new acquaintance from a position of present
disgrace and possible danger in the future. This young man
was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill magnates, who run the
San Francisco Stock Exchange, much as more humble
adventurers, in the corner of some public park at home, may
be seen to perform the simple artifice of pea and thimble:
for their own profit, that is to say, and the discouragement
of public gambling. It was thus in his power - and, as he
was of grateful temper, it was among the things that he
desired - to put John in the way of growing rich; and thus,
without thought or industry, or so much as even understanding
the game at which he played, but by simply buying and selling
what he was told to buy and sell, that plaything of fortune
was presently at the head of between eleven and twelve
thousand pounds, or, as he reckoned it, of upward of sixty
thousand dollars.
How he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than how he
had formerly earned disgrace at home, was a problem beyond
the reach of his philosophy. It was true that he had been
industrious at the bank, but no more so than the cashier, who
had seven small children and was visibly sinking in decline.
Nor was the step which had determined his advance - a visit
to a dive with a month's wages in his pocket - an act of such
transcendent virtue, or even wisdom, as to seem to merit the
favour of the gods. From some sense of this, and of the
dizzy see-saw - heaven-high, hell-deep - on which men sit
clutching; or perhaps fearing that the sources of his fortune
might be insidiously traced to some root in the field of
petty cash; he stuck to his work, said not a word of his new
circumstances, and kept his account with a bank in a
different quarter of the town. The concealment, innocent as
it seems, was the first step in the second tragicomedy of
John's existence.
Meanwhile, he had never written home. Whether from
diffidence or shame, or a touch of anger, or mere
procrastination, or because (as we have seen) he had no skill
in literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes tempted to
suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents young
men - not otherwise beasts - from the performance of this
simple act of piety - months and years had gone by, and John
had never written. The habit of not writing, indeed, was
already fixed before he had begun to come into his fortune;
and it was only the difficulty of breaking this long silence
that withheld him from an instant restitution of the money he
had stolen or (as he preferred to call it) borrowed. In vain
he sat before paper, attending on inspiration; that heavenly
nymph, beyond suggesting the words 'my dear father,' remained
obstinately silent; and presently John would crumple up the
sheet and decide, as soon as he had 'a good chance,' to carry
the money home in person. And this delay, which is
indefensible, was his second step into the snares of fortune.
Ten years had passed, and John was drawing near to thirty.
He had kept the promise of his boyhood, and was now of a
lusty frame, verging toward corpulence; good features, good
eyes, a genial manner, a ready laugh, a long pair of sandy
whiskers, a dash of an American accent, a close familiarity
with the great American joke, and a certain likeness to a R-
y-l P-rs-n-ge, who shall remain nameless for me, made up the
man's externals as he could be viewed in society. Inwardly,
in spite of his gross body and highly masculine whiskers, he
was more like a maiden lady than a man of twenty-nine.
It chanced one day, as he was strolling down Market Street on
the eve of his fortnight's holiday, that his eye was caught
by certain railway bills, and in very idleness of mind he
calculated that he might be home for Christmas if he started
on the morrow. The fancy thrilled him with desire, and in
one moment he decided he would go.
There was much to be done: his portmanteau to be packed, a
credit to be got from the bank where he was a wealthy
customer, and certain offices to be transacted for that other
bank in which he was an humble clerk; and it chanced, in
conformity with human nature, that out of all this business
it was the last that came to be neglected. Night found him,
not only equipped with money of his own, but once more (as on
that former occasion) saddled with a considerable sum of
other people's.
Now it chanced there lived in the same boarding-house a
fellow-clerk of his, an honest fellow, with what is called a
weakness for drink - though it might, in this case, have been
called a strength, for the victim had been drunk for weeks
together without the briefest intermission. To this
unfortunate John intrusted a letter with an inclosure of
bonds, addressed to the bank manager. Even as he did so he
thought he perceived a certain haziness of eye and speech in
his trustee; but he was too hopeful to be stayed, silenced
the voice of warning in his bosom, and with one and the same
gesture committed the money to the clerk, and himself into
the hands of destiny.
I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on John's minutest
errors, his case being so perplexing to the moralist; but we
have done with them now, the roll is closed, the reader has
the worst of our poor hero, and I leave him to judge for
himself whether he or John has been the less deserving.
Henceforth we have to follow the spectacle of a man who was a
mere whip-top for calamity; on whose unmerited misadventures
not even the humourist can look without pity, and not even
the philosopher without alarm.
That same night the clerk entered upon a bout of drunkenness
so consistent as to surprise even his intimate acquaintance.
He was speedily ejected from the boarding-house; deposited
his portmanteau with a perfect stranger, who did not even
catch his name; wandered he knew not where, and was at last
hove-to, all standing, in a hospital at Sacramento. There,
under the impenetrable ALIAS of the number of his bed, the
crapulous being lay for some more days unconscious of all
things, and of one thing in particular: that the police were
after him. Two months had come and gone before the
convalescent in the Sacramento hospital was identified with
Kirkman, the absconding San Francisco clerk; even then, there
must elapse nearly a fortnight more till the perfect stranger
could be hunted up, the portmanteau recovered, and John's
letter carried at length to its destination, the seal still
unbroken, the inclosure still intact.
Meanwhile, John had gone upon his holidays without a word,
which was irregular; and there had disappeared with him a
certain sum of money, which was out of all bounds of
palliation. But he was known to be careless, and believed to
be honest; the manager besides had a regard for him; and
little was said, although something was no doubt thought,
until the fortnight was finally at an end, and the time had
come for John to reappear. Then, indeed, the affair began to
look black; and when inquiries were made, and the penniless
clerk was found to have amassed thousands of dollars, and
kept them secretly in a rival establishment, the stoutest of
his friends abandoned him, the books were overhauled for
traces of ancient and artful fraud, and though none were
found, there still prevailed a general impression of loss.
The telegraph was set in motion; and the correspondent of the
bank in Edinburgh, for which place it was understood that
John had armed himself with extensive credits, was warned to
communicate with the police.
Now this correspondent was a friend of Mr. Nicholson's; he
was well acquainted with the tale of John's calamitous
disappearance from Edinburgh; and putting one thing with
another, hasted with the first word of this scandal, not to
the police, but to his friend. The old gentleman had long
regarded his son as one dead; John's place had been taken,
the memory of his faults had already fallen to be one of
those old aches, which awaken again indeed upon occasion, but
which we can always vanquish by an effort of the will; and to
have the long lost resuscitated in a fresh disgrace was
doubly bitter.
'Macewen,' said the old man, 'this must be hushed up, if
possible. If I give you a cheek for this sum, about which
they are certain, could you take it on yourself to let the
matter rest?'
'I will,' said Macewen. 'I will take the risk of it.'
'You understand,' resumed Mr. Nicholson, speaking precisely,
but with ashen lips, 'I do this for my family, not for that
unhappy young man. If it should turn out that these
suspicions are correct, and he has embezzled large sums, he
must lie on his bed as he has made it.' And then looking up
at Macewen with a nod, and one of his strange smiles: 'Good-
bye,' said he, and Macewen, perceiving the case to be too
grave for consolation, took himself off, and blessed God on
his way home that he was childless.
CHAPTER V - THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN
BY a little after noon on the eve of Christmas, John had left
his portmanteau in the cloak-room, and stepped forth into
Princes Street with a wonderful expansion of the soul, such
as men enjoy on the completion of long-nourished schemes. He
was at home again, incognito and rich; presently he could
enter his father's house by means of the pass-key, which he
had piously preserved through all his wanderings; he would
throw down the borrowed money; there would be a
reconciliation, the details of which he frequently arranged;
and he saw himself, during the next month, made welcome in
many stately houses at many frigid dinner-parties, taking his
share in the conversation with the freedom of the man and the
traveller, and laying down the law upon finance with the
authority of the successful investor. But this programme was
not to be begun before evening - not till just before dinner,
indeed, at which meal the reassembled family were to sit
roseate, and the best wine, the modern fatted calf, should
flow for the prodigal's return.
Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminiscences
crowding round him, sad ones also, both with the same
surprising pathos. The keen frosty air; the low, rosy,
wintry sun; the castle, hailing him like an old acquaintance;
the names of friends on door-plates; the sight of friends
whom he seemed to recognise, and whom he eagerly avoided, in
the streets; the pleasant chant of the north-country accent;
the dome of St. George's reminding him of his last
penitential moments in the lane, and of that King of Glory
whose name had echoed ever since in the saddest corner of his
memory; and the gutters where he had learned to slide, and
the shop where he had bought his skates, and the stones on
which he had trod, and the railings in which he had rattled
his clachan as he went to school; and all those thousand and
one nameless particulars, which the eye sees without noting,
which the memory keeps indeed yet without knowing, and which,
taken one with another, build up for us the aspect of the
place that we call home: all these besieged him, as he went,
with both delight and sadness.
His first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Regent
Terrace, kept for him in old days by an aunt. The door was
opened (to his surprise) upon the chain, and a voice asked
him from within what he wanted.
'I want Mr. Houston - Mr. Alan Houston,' said he.
'And who are ye?' said the voice.
'This is most extraordinary,' thought John; and then aloud he
told his name.
'No' young Mr. John?' cried the voice, with a sudden increase
of Scotch accent, testifying to a friendlier feeling.
'The very same,' said John.
And the old butler removed his defences, remarking only 'I
thocht ye were that man.' But his master was not there; he
was staying, it appeared, at the house in Murrayfield; and
though the butler would have been glad enough to have taken
his place and given all the news of the family, John, struck
with a little chill, was eager to be gone. Only, the door
was scarce closed again, before he regretted that he had not
asked about 'that man.'
He was to pay no more visits till he had seen his father and
made all well at home; Alan had been the only possible
exception, and John had not time to go as far as Murrayfield.
But here he was on Regent Terrace; there was nothing to
prevent him going round the end of the hill, and looking from
without on the Mackenzies' house. As he went, he reflected
that Flora must now be a woman of near his own age, and it
was within the bounds of possibility that she was married;
but this dishonourable doubt he dammed down.
There was the house, sure enough; but the door was of another
colour, and what was this - two door-plates? He drew nearer;
the top one bore, with dignified simplicity, the words, 'Mr.
Proudfoot'; the lower one was more explicit, and informed the
passer-by that here was likewise the abode of 'Mr. J. A.
Dunlop Proudfoot, Advocate.' The Proudfoots must be rich,
for no advocate could look to have much business in so remote
a quarter; and John hated them for their wealth and for their
name, and for the sake of the house they desecrated with
their presence. He remembered a Proudfoot he had seen at
school, not known: a little, whey-faced urchin, the
despicable member of some lower class. Could it be this
abortion that had climbed to be an advocate, and now lived in
the birthplace of Flora and the home of John's tenderest
memories? The chill that had first seized upon him when he
heard of Houston's absence deepened and struck inward. For a
moment, as he stood under the doors of that estranged house,
and looked east and west along the solitary pavement of the
Royal Terrace, where not a cat was stirring, the sense of
solitude and desolation took him by the throat, and he wished
himself in San Francisco.
And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, his
whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar that he
now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory comparison
with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a certain spring
Sunday ten years before, and in the hour of church-time
silence, had stolen from that city by the Glasgow road. In
the face of these changes, it were impious to doubt fortune's
kindness. All would be well yet; the Mackenzies would be
found, Flora, younger and lovelier and kinder than before;
Alan would be found, and would have so nicely discriminated
his behaviour as to have grown, on the one hand, into a
valued friend of Mr. Nicholson's, and to have remained, upon
the other, of that exact shade of joviality which John
desired in his companions. And so, once more, John fell to
work discounting the delightful future: his first appearance
in the family pew; his first visit to his uncle Greig, who
thought himself so great a financier, and on whose purblind
Edinburgh eyes John was to let in the dazzling daylight of
the West; and the details in general of that unrivalled
transformation scene, in which he was to display to all
Edinburgh a portly and successful gentleman in the shoes of
the derided fugitive.
The time began to draw near when his father would have
returned from the office, and it would be the prodigal's cue
to enter. He strolled westward by Albany Street, facing the
sunset embers, pleased, he knew not why, to move in that cold
air and indigo twilight, starred with street-lamps. But
there was one more disenchantment waiting him by the way.
At the corner of Pitt Street he paused to light a fresh
cigar; the vesta threw, as he did so, a strong light upon his
features, and a man of about his own age stopped at sight of
it.
'I think your name must be Nicholson,' said the stranger.
It was too late to avoid recognition; and besides, as John
was now actually on the way home, it hardly mattered, and he
gave way to the impulse of his nature.
'Great Scott!' he cried, 'Beatson!' and shook hands with
warmth. It scarce seemed he was repaid in kind.
'So you're home again?' said Beatson. 'Where have you been
all this long time?'
'In the States,' said John - 'California. I've made my pile
though; and it suddenly struck me it would be a noble scheme
to come home for Christmas.'
'I see,' said Beatson. 'Well, I hope we'll see something of
you now you're here.'
'Oh, I guess so,' said John, a little frozen.
'Well, ta-ta,' concluded Beatson, and he shook hands again
and went.
This was a cruel first experience. It was idle to blink
facts: here was John home again, and Beatson - Old Beatson -
did not care a rush. He recalled Old Beatson in the past -
that merry and affectionate lad - and their joint adventures
and mishaps, the window they had broken with a catapult in
India Place, the escalade of the castle rock, and many
another inestimable bond of friendship; and his hurt surprise
grew deeper. Well, after all, it was only on a man's own
family that he could count; blood was thicker than water, he
remembered; and the net result of this encounter was to bring
him to the doorstep of his father's house, with tenderer and
softer feelings.