The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 10, Page 3

  CHAPTER II

  IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND

  About half-past ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer his arm toMiss Mackenzie, and escort her home. The night was chill and starry; allthe way eastward the trees of the different gardens rustled and lookedblack. Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, thebreeze made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering; andwhen at last they mounted to the Royal Terrace, where Captain Mackenzielived, a great salt freshness came in their faces from the sea. Thesephases of the walk remained written on John's memory, each emphasised bythe touch of that light hand on his arm; and behind all these aspects ofthe nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's eye, a picture of the lighteddrawing-room at home where he had sat talking with Flora; and hisfather, from the other end, had looked on with a kind and ironicalsmile. John had read the significance of that smile, which might haveescaped a stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked his son's entanglementwith satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it still was athought contemptuous, had implied consent.

  At the captain's door the girl held out her hand with a certainemphasis; and John took it and kept it a little longer, and said,"Good-night, Flora, dear," and was instantly thrown into much fear byhis presumption. But she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang thebell; and while she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in theporch, and talked to him from that point as out of a fortification. Shehad a knitted shawl over her head; her blue Highland eyes took thelight from the neighbouring street-lamp and sparkled; and when the dooropened and closed upon her, John felt cruelly alone.

  He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when hecame to Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crownof the Calton Hill, to his left, lay the way to Collette's, where Alanwould soon be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have nomore consented to go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; thetouch of the girl's hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in hisfather's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him was the wayhome, which pointed only to bed, a place of little ease for one whosefancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent heartwas just then tumultuously moved. The hill-top, the cool air of thenight, the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city underhis feet, with its hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drewhim by all he had of the poetic, and he turned that way; and by thatquite innocent deflection ripened the crop of his venial errors for thesickle 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 thevistas of future life that sped before him. He uttered to himself thename of Flora in so many touching and dramatic keys that he became atlength fairly melted with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. At thatjuncture a certain creasing in his greatcoat caught his ear. He put hishand into the pocket, pulled forth the envelope that held the money, andsat stupefied. The Calton Hill, about this period, had an ill name ofnights; and to be sitting there with four hundred pounds that did notbelong to him was hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a verybad 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 veryquietly near. Up jumped John. The envelope fell from his hands; hestooped to get it, and at the same moment both men ran in and closedwith him.

  A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the poorer by apurse which contained exactly one penny postage-stamp, by a cambrichandkerchief, and by the all-important envelope.

  Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of loverlyexaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported alone; andnot many hundred yards away his greatest friend was sitting atsupper--ay, and even expecting him. Was it not in the nature of man thathe should run there? He went in quest of sympathy--in quest of thatdroll article that we all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait,and have agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, with vague butrather splendid expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or would be sowhen he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he might remedy thismisfortune, and avert that dreaded interview with Mr. Nicholson, fromwhich John now shrank in imagination as the hand draws back from fire.

  Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow avenue, partstreet, part by-road. The head of it faces the doors of the prison; itstail descends into the sunless slums of the Low Calton. On one hand itis 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 atnight, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it has cleared theplace of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of these was thehouse of Collette; and at his door our ill-starred John was presentlybeating for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealousinquiries of the contraband hotel-keeper; in an evil hour he penetratedinto the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was there,seated in a room lit by noisy gas-jets, beside a dirty table-cloth,engaged on a coarse meal, and in the company of several tipsy members ofthe junior Bar. But Alan was not sober; he had lost a thousand poundsupon a horse-race, had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, indefault of any possible means of extrication, drowning the memory of hispredicament. He to help John! The thing was impossible; he couldn't helphimself.

  "If you have a beast of a father," said he, "I can tell you I have abrute of a trustee."

  "I'm not going to hear my father called a beast," said John, with abeating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound rivet of the chainthat 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 thewhat-d'ye-call-um's son."

  John sat in dumb agony. Collette's foul walls and spotted table-linen,everything even down to Collette's villainous casters, seemed likeobjects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and ascurrying: the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill,appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken _flagrante delicto_, withtheir glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the policeoffice, and all duly summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequentcase against that arch-shebeener, Collette.

  It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came forth again.The vague terror of public opinion weighed generally on them all; butthere were private and particular horrors on the minds of individuals.Alan stood in dread of his trustee, already sorely tried. One of thegroup was the son of a country minister, another of a judge; John, theunhappiest of all, had David Nicholson to father, the idea of facingwhom on such a scandalous subject was physically sickening. They stood awhile consulting under the buttresses of St. Giles'; thence theyadjourned 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, andfar better drink, than in the dangerous paradise from which they hadbeen routed. There, over an almost tearful glass, they debated theirposition. Each explained that he had the world to lose if the affairwent on, and he appeared as a witness. It was remarkable what brightprospects were just then in the very act of opening before each of thatlittle company of youths, and what pious consideration for the feelingsof their families began now to well from them. Each, moreover, was in anodd state of destitution. Not one could bear his share of the fine; notone but evinced a wonderful twinkle of hope that each of the others (insuccession) 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 truesphere. Another branched out into touching details about his family, towhich no one listened. John, in the midst of this disorderly competitionof poverty and meanness, sat stunned, contemplating the mountain bulk ofhis misfortunes.

  At last, upon a pledge that each should apply to his family with ac
ommon frankness, this convention of unhappy young asses broke up, wentdown the common stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, with thestreets lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on into thedaylight in diminished lustre, and the birds beginning to soundpremonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went each his ownway 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 arecent privilege; this was the first time it had been used; and, O! withwhat a sickening sense of his unworthiness he now inserted it into thewell-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; adreadful stillness reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eight-dayclock. He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the hall, waiting andcounting the minutes, longing for any human countenance. But when atlast he heard the alarm-clock spring its rattle in the lower story, andthe servants begin to be about, he instantly lost heart, and fled to hisown room, where he threw himself upon the bed.