Tales and Fantasies | Page 7

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