CHAPTER VI
THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD
How John passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind, in whatsqualls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what pacing of streetsand plunging into public-houses, it would profit little to relate. Hismisery, if it were not progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish;for in proportion as grief and indignation abated, fear began to taketheir place. At first, his father's menacing words lay by in some safedrawer of memory, biding their hour. At first, John was all thwartedaffection and blighted hope; next bludgeoned vanity raised its headagain, with twenty mortal gashes; and the father was disowned even as hehad disowned the son. What was this regular course of life, that Johnshould have admired it? what were these clock-work virtues, from whichlove was absent? Kindness was the test, kindness the aim and soul; andjudged by such a standard, the discarded prodigal--now rapidly drowninghis sorrows and his reason in successive drams--was a creature of alovelier morality than his self-righteous father. Yes, he was the betterman; he felt it, glowed with the consciousness, and entering apublic-house at the corner of Howard Place (whither he had somehowwandered) he pledged his own virtues in a glass--perhaps the fourthsince his dismissal. Of that he knew nothing, keeping no account of whathe did or where he went; and in the general crashing hurry of hisnerves, unconscious of the approach of intoxication. Indeed, it is aquestion whether he were really growing intoxicated, or whether at firstthe spirits did not even sober him. For it was even as he drained thislast glass that his father's ambiguous and menacing words--popping fromtheir hiding-place in memory--startled him like a hand laid upon hisshoulder. "Crimes, hunted, the gallows." They were ugly words; in theears of an innocent man, perhaps all the uglier; for if some judicialerror were in act against him, who should set a limit to its grossnessor to how far it might be pushed? Not John, indeed; he was no believerin the powers of innocence, his cursed experience pointing in quiteother ways; and his fears, once wakened, grew with every hour and huntedhim about the city streets.
It was perhaps nearly nine at night; he had eaten nothing since lunch,he had drunk a good deal, and he was exhausted by emotion, when thethought of Houston came into his head. He turned, not merely to the manas a friend, but to his house as a place of refuge. The danger thatthreatened him was still so vague, that he knew neither what to fear norwhere he might expect it; but this much at least seemed undeniable, thata private house was safer than a public inn. Moved by these counsels, heturned at once to the Caledonian Station, passed (not without alarm)into the bright lights of the approach, redeemed his portmanteau fromthe cloak-room, and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow road.The change of movement and position, the sight of the lamps twinkling tothe rear, and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw which clungabout the vehicle, wrought in him strange alternations of lucidity andmortal giddiness.
"I have been drinking," he discovered; "I must go straight to bed, andsleep." And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness that came upon his mindin waves.
From one of these spells he was awakened by the stoppage of the cab;and, getting down, found himself in quite a country road, the last lampof the suburb shining some way below, and the high walls of a gardenrising before him in the dark. The Lodge (as the place was named) stood,indeed, very solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, butstanding in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on all othersides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of Corstorphine Hill,or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or downward towards the valley ofthe Leith. The effect of seclusion was aided by the great height of thegarden walls, which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested informer days, defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of the cab threw agleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle of the bell.
"Shall I ring for ye?" said the cabman, who had descended from hisperch, and was slapping his chest, for the night was bitter.
"I wish you would," said John, putting his hand to his brow in one ofhis accesses of giddiness.
The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell replied fromfurther in the garden; twice and thrice he did it, with sufficientintervals; in the great, frosty silence of the night the sounds fellsharp and small.
"Does he expect ye?" asked the driver, with that manner of familiarinterest that well became his port-wine face; and when John had told himno, "Well, then," said the cabman, "if ye'll tak' my advice of it, we'lljust gang back. And that's disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are inthe Glesgie road."
"The servants must hear," said John.
"Hout!" said the driver. "He keeps no servants here, man. They're a' inthe town house; I drive him often; it's just a kind of a hermitagethis."
"Give me the bell," said John; and he plucked at it like a mandesperate.
The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon thegravel, and a voice of singular nervous irritability cried to themthrough the door, "Who are you, and what do you want?"
"Alan," said John, "it's me--it's Fatty--John, you know. I'm just comehome, and I've come to stay with you."
There was no reply for a moment, and then the door was opened.
"Get the portmanteau down," said John to the driver.
"Do nothing of the kind," said Alan; and then to John, "Come in here amoment. I want to speak to you."
John entered the garden, and the door was closed behind him. A candlestood on the gravel walk, winking a little in the draughts; it threwinconstant sparkles on the clumped holly, struck the light and darknessto and fro like a veil on Alan's features, and sent his shadow hoveringbehind him. All beyond was inscrutable; and John's dizzy brain rockedwith the shadow. Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was pale, and hisvoice, when he spoke, unnatural.
"What brings you here to-night?" he began. "I don't want, God knows, toseem unfriendly; but I cannot take you in, Nicholson; I cannot do it."
"Alan," said John, "you've just got to! You don't know the mess I'm in;the governor's turned me out, and I daren't show face in an inn, becausethey're down on me for murder or something!"
"For what?" cried Alan, starting.
"Murder, I believe," says John.
"Murder!" repeated Alan, and passed his hand over his eyes. "What wasthat you were saying?" he asked again.
"That they were down on me," said John. "I'm accused of murder, by whatI can make out; and I've really had a dreadful day of it, Alan, and Ican't sleep on the roadside on a night like this--at least, not with aportmanteau," he pleaded.
"Hush!" said Alan, with his head on one side; and then, "Did you hearnothing?" he asked.
"No," said John, thrilling, he knew not why, with communicated terror."No, I heard nothing; why?" And then, as there was no answer, hereverted to his pleading: "But I say, Alan, you've just got to take mein. I'll go right away to bed if you have anything to do. I seem to havebeen drinking; I was that knocked over. I wouldn't turn you away, Alan,if you were down on your luck."
"No?" returned Alan. "Neither will I you, then. Come and let's get yourportmanteau."
The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, lamp-lit hill, and thetwo friends stood on the side-walk beside the portmanteau till the lastrumble of the wheels had died in silence. It seemed to John as thoughAlan attached importance to this departure of the cab; and John, who wasin no state to criticise, shared profoundly in the feeling.
When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shouldered theportmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked the garden door; andthen, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon him, and he stood withhis hand on the key, until the cold began to nibble at John's fingers.
"Why are we standing here?" asked John.
"Eh?" said Alan blankly.
"Why, man, you don't seem yourself," said the other.
"No, I'm not myself," said Alan; and he sat down on the portmanteau andput his face in his hands.
John stood beside him swaying a little, and looking about him at theswaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady star
s overhead,until the windless cold began to touch him through his clothes on thebare skin. Even in his bemused intelligence, wonder began to awake.
"I say, let's come on to the house," he said at last.
"Yes, let's come on to the house," repeated Alan.
And he rose at once, re-shouldered the portmanteau, and, taking thecandle in his other hand, moved forward to the Lodge. This was a long,low building, smothered in creepers; and now, except for some chinks oflight between the dining-room shutters, it was plunged in darkness andsilence.
In the hall Alan lit another candle, gave it to John, and opened thedoor of a bedroom.
"Here," said he; "go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You'll be sorry for mewhen you know."
"Wait a bit," returned John; "I've got so cold with all that standingabout. Let's go into the dining-room a minute. Just one glass to warmme, Alan."
On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with a whisky labelon a tray. It was plain the bottle had been just opened, for the corkand corkscrew lay beside it.
"Take that," said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then with a certainroughness pushed his friend into the bedroom, and closed the door behindhim.
John stood amazed; then he shook the bottle, and, to his further wonder,found it partly empty. Three or four glasses were gone. Alan must haveuncorked a bottle of whisky and drunk three or four glasses one afterthe other, without sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in hisown cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully explained hiseccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. PoorAlan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing was drink, and what aslave to it poor Alan was, to drink in this unsociable, uncomfortablefashion! The man who would drink alone, except for health's sake--asJohn was now doing--was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, andfelt hazier but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau andfinding his night things; and before he was undressed, the cold hadstruck home to him once more. "Well," said he; "just a drop more.There's no sense in getting ill with all this other trouble." Andpresently dreamless slumber buried him.
When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already high in theheavens, but his watch had stopped, and it was impossible to tell thehour exactly. Ten, he guessed it, and made haste to dress, dismalreflections crowding on his mind. But it was less from terror than fromregret that he now suffered; and with his regret there were mingledcutting pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel,indeed, but yet only the punishment of old misdoing; and he had rebelledand plunged into fresh sin. The rod had been used to chasten, and he hadbit the chastening fingers. His father was right: John had justifiedhim; John was no guest for decent people's houses, and no fit associatefor decent people's children. And had a broader hint been needed, therewas the case of his old friend. John was no drunkard, though he could attimes exceed; and the picture of Houston drinking neat spirits at hishall-table struck him with something like disgust. He hung back frommeeting his old friend. He could have wished he had not come to him; andyet, even now, where else was he to turn?
These musings occupied him while he dressed, and accompanied him intothe lobby of the house. The door stood open on the garden; doubtlessAlan had stepped forth; and John did as he supposed his friend had done.The ground was hard as iron, the frost still rigorous; as he brushedamong the hollies, icicles jingled and glittered in their fall; andwherever he went, a volley of eager sparrows followed him. Here wereChristmas weather and Christmas morning duly met, to the delight ofchildren. This was the day of reunited families, the day to which he hadso long looked forward, thinking to awake in his own bed in RandolphCrescent, reconciled with all men and repeating the footprints of hisyouth; and here he was alone, pacing the alleys of a wintry garden andfilled with penitential thoughts.
And that reminded him: why was he alone? and where was Alan? The thoughtof the festal morning and the due salutations reawakened his desire forhis friend, and he began to call for him by name. As the sound of hisvoice died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence thatenvironed him. But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunchingof his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world of airseemed to hang over him entranced, and the stillness weighed upon hismind with a horror of solitude.
Still calling at intervals, but now with a moderated voice, he made thehasty circuit of the garden, and finding neither man nor trace of man inall its evergreen coverts, turned at last to the house. About the housethe silence seemed to deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open asbefore; but the windows were still shuttered, the chimneys breathed nostain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir(perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of theflesh) by which a house announces and betrays its human lodgers. And yetAlan must be there--Alan locked in drunken slumbers, forgetful of thereturn of day, of the holy season, and of the friend whom he had socoldly received and was now so churlishly neglecting. John's disgustredoubled at the thought; but hunger was beginning to grow stronger thanrepulsion, and as a step to breakfast, if to nothing else, he must findand arouse the sleeper.
He made the circuit of the bedroom quarters. All, until he came toAlan's chamber, were locked from without, and bore the marks of a longdisuse. But Alan's was a room in commission, filled with clothes,knick-knacks, letters, books, and the conveniences of a solitary man.The fire had been lit; but it had long ago burnt out, and the ashes werestone cold. The bed had been made, but it had not been slept in.
Worse and worse, then: Alan must have fallen where he sat, and nowsprawled brutishly, no doubt, upon the dining-room floor.
The dining-room was a very long apartment, and was reached through apassage; so that John, upon his entrance, brought but little light withhim, and must move towards the windows with spread arms, groping andknocking on the furniture. Suddenly he tripped and fell his length overa prostrate body. It was what he had looked for, yet it shocked him; andhe marvelled that so rough an impact should not have kicked a groan outof the drunkard. Men had killed themselves ere now in such excesses, adreary and degraded end that made John shudder. What if Alan were dead?There would be a Christmas Day!
By this, John had his hand upon the shutters, and flinging them back,beheld once again the blessed face of the day. Even by that light theroom had a discomfortable air. The chairs were scattered, and one hadbeen overthrown; the table-cloth, laid as if for dinner, was twitchedupon one side, and some of the dishes had fallen to the floor. Behindthe table lay the drunkard, still unaroused, only one foot visible toJohn.
But now that light was in the room, the worst seemed over; it was adisgusting business, but not more than disgusting; and it was with nogreat apprehension that John proceeded to make the circuit of the table:his last comparatively tranquil moment for that day. No sooner had heturned the corner, no sooner had his eyes alighted on the body, than hegave a smothered, breathless cry, and fled out of the room and out ofthe house.
It was not Alan who lay there, but a man well up in years, of sterncountenance and iron-grey locks; and it was no drunkard, for the bodylay in a black pool of blood and the open eyes stared upon the ceiling.
To and fro walked John before the door. The extreme sharpness of the airacted on his nerves like an astringent, and braced them swiftly.Presently, he not relaxing in his disordered walk, the images began tocome clearer and stay longer in his fancy; and next the power of thoughtcame back to him, and the horror and danger of his situation rooted himto the ground.
He grasped his forehead, and staring on one spot of gravel, piecedtogether what he knew and what he suspected. Alan had murdered some one:possibly "that man" against whom the butler chained the door in RegentTerrace; possibly another; some one at least: a human soul, whom it wasdeath to slay and whose blood lay spilt upon the floor. This was thereason of the whisky-drinking in the passage, of his unwillingness towelcome John, of his strange behaviour and bewildered words; this waswhy he had started at and harped upon the name of murder; th
is was whyhe had stood and hearkened, or sat and covered his eyes, in the blacknight. And now he was gone, now he had basely fled; and to all hisperplexities and dangers John stood heir.
"Let me think, let me think," he said aloud, impatiently, evenpleadingly, as if to some merciless interrupter. In the turmoil of hiswits, a thousand hints and hopes and threats and terrors dinningcontinuously in his ears, he was like one plunged in the hubbub of acrowd. How was he to remember--he, who had not a thought to spare--thathe was himself the author, as well as the theatre, of so much confusion?But in hours of trial the junto of man's nature is dissolved, andanarchy succeeds.
It was plain he must stay no longer where he was, for here was a newJudicial Error in the very making. It was not so plain where he must go,for the old Judicial Error, vague as a cloud, appeared to fill thehabitable world; whatever it might be, it watched for him, full-grown,in Edinburgh; it must have had its birth in San Francisco; it stoodguard, no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank where he should cash hiscredit; and though there were doubtless many other places, who shouldsay in which of them it was not ambushed? No, he could not tell where hewas to go; he must not lose time on these insolubilities. Let him goback to the beginning. It was plain he must stay no longer where he was.It was plain, too, that he must not flee as he was, for he could notcarry his portmanteau, and to flee and leave it was to plunge deeper inthe mire. He must go, leave the house unguarded, find a cab, andreturn--return after an absence? Had he courage for that?
And just then he spied a stain about a hand's breadth on histrousers-leg, and reached his finger down to touch it. The finger wasstained red: it was blood; he stared upon it with disgust, and awe, andterror, and in the sharpness of the new sensation fell instantly to act.
He cleansed his finger in the snow, returned into the house, drew nearwith hushed footsteps to the dining-room door, and shut and locked it.Then he breathed a little freer, for here at least was an oaken barrierbetween himself and what he feared. Next, he hastened to his room, toreoff the spotted trousers, which seemed in his eyes a link to bind him tothe gallows, flung them in a corner, donned another pair, breathlesslycrammed his night-things into his portmanteau, locked it, swung it withan effort from the ground, and with a rush of relief came forth againunder the open heavens.
The portmanteau, being of Occidental build, was no feather-weight; ithad distressed the powerful Alan; and as for John, he was crushed underits bulk, and the sweat broke upon him thickly. Twice he must set itdown to rest before he reached the gate; and when he had come so far, hemust do as Alan did, and take his seat upon one corner. Here, then, hesat a while and panted; but now his thoughts were sensibly lightened;now, with the trunk standing just inside the door, some part of hisdissociation from the house of crime had been effected, and the cabmanneed not pass the garden wall. It was wonderful how that relieved him;for the house, in his eyes, was a place to strike the most cursorybeholder with suspicion, as though the very windows had cried murder.
But there was to be no remission of the strokes of fate. As he thus sat,taking breath in the shadow of the wall, and hopped about by sparrows,it chanced that his eye roved to the fastening of the door; and what hesaw plucked him to his feet. The thing locked with a spring; once thedoor was closed, the bolt shot of itself; and without a key there was nomeans of entering from the road.
He saw himself compelled to one of two distasteful and perilousalternatives: either to shut the door altogether and set his portmanteauout upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the doorajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in andstumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, hismind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved.He peered out, and down the long road: it lay dead empty. He went tothe corner of the by-road that comes by way of Dean; there also not apassenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide ofhis affairs; and he drew the door as close as he durst, slipped a pebblein the chink, and made off downhill to find a cab.
Half-way down a gate opened, and a troop of Christmas children salliedforth in the most cheerful humour, followed more soberly by a smilingmother.
"And this is Christmas Day!" thought John; and could have laughed aloudin tragic bitterness of heart.