CHAPTER VII
A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB
In front of Donaldson's Hospital, John counted it good fortune toperceive a cab a great way off, and by much shouting and waving of hisarm, to catch the notice of the driver. He counted it good fortune, forthe time was long to him till he should have done for ever with theLodge; and the farther he must go to find a cab, the greater the chancethat the inevitable discovery had taken place, and that he should returnto find the garden full of angry neighbours. Yet when the vehicle drewup he was sensibly chagrined to recognise the port-wine cabman of thenight before. "Here," he could not but reflect, "here is another link inthe Judicial Error."
The driver, on the other hand, was pleased to drop again upon so liberala fare; and as he was a man--the reader must already have perceived--ofeasy, not to say familiar, manners, he dropped at once into a vein offriendly talk, commenting on the weather, on the sacred season, whichstruck him chiefly in the light of a day of liberal gratuities, on thechance which had reunited him to a pleasing customer, and on the factthat John had been (as he was pleased to call it) visibly "on theran-dan" the night before.
"And ye look dreidful bad the-day, sir, I must say that," he continued."There's nothing like a dram for ye--if ye'll take my advice of it; andbein' as it's Christmas, I'm no' saying," he added, with a fatherlysmile, "but what I would join ye mysel'."
John had listened with a sick heart.
"I'll give you a dram when we've got through," said he, affecting asprightliness which sat on him most unhandsomely, "and not a drop tillthen. Business first and pleasure afterwards."
With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to clamber to his placeand drive, with hideous deliberation, to the door of the Lodge. Therewere no signs as yet of any public emotion; only, two men stood not faroff in talk, and their presence, seen from afar, set John's pulsesbuzzing. He might have spared himself his fright, for the pair were lostin some dispute of a theological complexion, and, with lengthened upperlip and enumerating fingers, pursued the matter of their difference, andpaid no heed to John.
But the cabman proved a thorn in the flesh. Nothing would keep him onhis perch; he must clamber down, comment upon the pebble in the door(which he regarded as an ingenious but unsafe device), help John withthe portmanteau, and enliven matters with a flow of speech, andespecially of questions, which I thus condense:--
"He'll no' be here himsel', will he? No? Well, he's an eccentric man--afair oddity--if ye ken the expression. Great trouble with his tenants,they tell me. I've driven the faim'ly for years. I drove a cab at hisfather's waddin'. What'll your name be?--I should ken your face.Baigrey, ye say? There were Baigreys about Gilmerton; ye'll be one ofthat lot? Then this'll be a friend's portmantie, like? Why? Because thename upon it's Nucholson! O, if ye're in a hurry, that's another job.Waverley Brig'? Are ye for away?"
So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept John's heart in aflutter. But to this also, as to other evils under the sun, there came aperiod; and the victim of circumstances began at last to rumble towardsthe railway terminus at Waverley Bridge. During the transit he sat withraised glasses in the frosty chill and mouldy foetor of his chariot, andglanced out sidelong on the holiday face of things, the shuttered shops,and the crowds along the pavement, much as the rider in the Tyburn cartmay have observed the concourse gathering to his execution.
At the station his spirits rose again; another stage of his escape wasfortunately ended--he began to spy blue water. He called a railwayporter, and bade him carry the portmanteau to the cloak-room: not thathe had any notion of delay; flight, instant flight, was his design, nomatter whither; but he had determined to dismiss the cabman ere henamed, or even chose, his destination, thus possibly baulking theJudicial Error of another link. This was his cunning aim, and now withone foot on the roadway, and one still on the coach-step, he made hasteto put the thing in practice, and plunged his hand into histrousers-pocket.
There was nothing there!
O, yes; this time he was to blame. He should have remembered, and whenhe deserted his blood-stained pantaloons, he should not have desertedalong with them his purse. Make the most of his error, and then compareit with the punishment. Conceive his new position, for I lack words topicture it; conceive him condemned to return to that house, from thevery thought of which his soul revolted, and once more to expose himselfto capture on the very scene of the misdeed: conceive him linked to themouldy cab and the familiar cabman. John cursed the cabman silently, andthen it occurred to him that he must stop the incarceration of hisportmanteau; that, at least, he must keep close at hand, and he returnedto recall the porter. But his reflections, brief as they had appeared,must have occupied him longer than he supposed, and there was the manalready returning with the receipt.
Well, that was settled; he had lost his portmanteau also; for thesixpence with which he had paid the Murrayfield Toll was one that hadstrayed alone into his waistcoat-pocket, and unless he once moresuccessfully achieved the adventure of the house of crime, hisportmanteau lay in the cloak-room in eternal pawn, for lack of a pennyfee. And then he remembered the porter, who stood suggestivelyattentive, words of gratitude hanging on his lips.
John hunted right and left; he found a coin--prayed God that it was asovereign--drew it out, beheld a halfpenny, and offered it to theporter.
The man's jaw dropped.
"It's only a halfpenny," he said, startled out of railway decency.
"I know that," said John piteously.
And here the porter recovered the dignity of man.
"Thank you, sir," said he, and would have returned the base gratuity.But John, too, would none of it; and as they struggled, who must join inbut the cabman?
"Hoots, Mr. Baigrey," said he, "you surely forget what day it is!"
"I tell you I have no change!" cried John.
"Well," said the driver, "and what then? I would rather give a man ashillin' on a day like this than put him off with a derision like abawbee. I'm surprised at the like of you, Mr. Baigrey!"
"My name is not Baigrey!" broke out John, in mere childish temper anddistress.
"Ye told me it was yoursel'," said the cabman.
"I know I did; and what the devil right had you to ask?" cried theunhappy one.
"O very well," said the driver. "I know my place, if you know yours--ifyou know yours!" he repeated, as one who should imply grave doubts; andmuttered inarticulate thunders, in which the grand old name of gentlemanwas taken seemingly in vain.
O to have been able to discharge this monster, whom John now perceived,with tardy clear-sightedness, to have begun betimes the festivities ofChristmas! But far from any such ray of consolation visiting the lost,he stood bare of help and helpers, his portmanteau sequestered in oneplace, his money deserted in another and guarded by a corpse; himself,so sedulous of privacy, the cynosure of all men's eyes about thestation; and, as if these were not enough mischances, he was now fallenin ill-blood with the beast to whom his poverty had linked him! Inill-blood, as he reflected dismally, with the witness who perhaps mighthang or save him! There was no time to be lost; he durst not linger anylonger in that public spot; and whether he had recourse to dignity or toconciliation, the remedy must be applied at once. Some happily survivingelement of manhood moved him to the former.
"Let us have no more of this," said he, his foot once more upon thestep. "Go back to where we came from."
He had avoided the name of any destination, for there was now quite alittle band of railway folk about the cab, and he still kept an eye uponthe court of justice, and laboured to avoid concentric evidence. Buthere again the fatal jarvey out-manoeuvred him.
"Back to the Ludge?" cried he, in shrill tones of protest.
"Drive on at once!" roared John, and slammed the door behind him, sothat the crazy chariot rocked and jingled.
Forth trundled the cab into the Christmas streets, the fare withinplunged in the blackness of a despair that neighboured onunconsciousness, the driver on the box digestin
g his rebuke and hiscustomer's duplicity. I would not be thought to put the pair incompetition; John's case was out of all parallel. But the cabman, too,is worth the sympathy of the judicious; for he was a fellow of genuinekindliness and a high sense of personal dignity incensed by drink; andhis advances had been cruelly and publicly rebuffed. As he drove,therefore, he counted his wrongs, and thirsted for sympathy and drink.Now, it chanced he had a friend, a publican in Queensferry Street, fromwhom, in view of the sacredness of the occasion, he thought he mightextract a dram. Queensferry Street lies something off the direct road toMurrayfield. But then there is the hilly cross-road that passes by thevalley of the Leith and the Dean Cemetery; and Queensferry Street is onthe way to that. What was to hinder the cabman, since his horse wasdumb, from choosing the cross-roads, and calling on his friend inpassing? So it was decided; and the charioteer, already somewhatmollified, turned aside his horse to the right.
John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his chin sunk upon his chest, his mindin abeyance. The smell of the cab was still faintly present to hissenses, and a certain leaden chill about his feet; all else haddisappeared in one vast oppression of calamity and physical faintness.It was drawing on to noon--two-and-twenty hours since he had brokenbread; in the interval he had suffered tortures of sorrow and alarm, andhad been partly tipsy; and though it was impossible to say he slept, yetwhen the cab stopped, and the cabman thrust his head into the window,his attention had to be recalled from depths of vacancy.
"If you'll no' _stand_ me a dram," said the driver, with a well-meritedseverity of tone and manner, "I daresay ye'll have no objection to mytaking one mysel'?"
"Yes--no--do what you like," returned John; and then, as he watched histormentor mount the stairs and enter the whisky-shop, there floated intohis mind a sense as of something long ago familiar. At that he startedfully awake, and stared at the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them; but when?and how? Long since, he thought; and then, casting his eye through thefront glass, which had been recently occluded by the figure of thejarvey, he beheld the tree-tops of the rookery in Randolph Crescent. Hewas close to home--home, where he had thought, at that hour, to besitting in the well-remembered drawing-room in friendly converse; and,instead----!
It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the cab; his next,to cover his face with his hands. So he sat, while the cabman toastedthe publican, and the publican toasted the cabman, and both reviewed theaffairs of the nation; so he still sat, when his master condescended toreturn, and drive off at last downhill, along the curve of LynedochPlace; but even so sitting, as he passed the end of his father's street,he took one glance from between shielding fingers, and beheld a doctor'scarriage at the door.
"Well, just so," thought he; "I'll have killed my father! And this isChristmas Day!"
If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he must journey to thegrave; and down this road, on the same errand, his wife had preceded himyears before; and many other leading citizens, with the proper trappingsand attendance of the end. And now, in that frosty, ill-smelling,straw-carpeted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with his breath congealing onthe glasses, towards what other destination was John himself advancing?
The thought stirred his imagination, which began to manufacture manythousand pictures, bright and fleeting like the shapes in akaleidoscope; and now he saw himself, ruddy and comfortered, sliding inthe gutter; and again a little woe-begone, bored urchin tricked forth incrape and weepers, descending this same hill at the foot's-pace ofmourning coaches, his mother's body just preceding him; and yet again,his fancy, running far in front, showed him the house atMurrayfield--now standing solitary in the low sunshine, with thesparrows hopping on the threshold and the dead man within staring at theroof, and now, with a sudden change, thronged about with white-faced,hand-uplifting neighbours, the doctor bursting through their midst andfixing his stethoscope as he went, the policeman shaking a sagacioushead beside the body. It was to this he feared that he was driving; inthe midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faintexplanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his shoulder.Heavens! how he wished he had played the manlier part; how he despisedhimself that he had fled that fatal neighbourhood when all was quiet,and should now be tamely travelling back when it was thronging withavengers!
Any strong degree of passion lends, even to the dullest, the forces ofthe imagination. And so now as he dwelt on what was probably awaitinghim at the end of this distressful drive--John, who saw things little,remembered them less, and could not have described them at all, beheldin his mind's eye the garden of the Lodge, detailed as in a map; he wentto and fro in it, feeling his terrors; he saw the hollies, the snowyborders, the paths where he had sought Alan, the high, conventual walls,the shut door--what! was the door shut? Ay, truly, he had shut it--shutin his money, his escape, his future life--shut it with these hands, andnone could now open it! He heard the snap of the spring-lock likesomething bursting in his brain, and sat astonied.
And then he woke again, terror jarring through his vitals. This was notime to be idle; he must be up and doing, he must think. Once at the endof this ridiculous cruise, once at the Lodge door, there would benothing for it but to turn the cab and trundle back again. Why, then, goso far? why add another feature of suspicion to a case already sosuggestive? why not turn at once? It was easy to say, turn, but whither?He had nowhere now to go to; he could never--he saw it in letters ofblood--he could never pay that cab; he was saddled with that cab forever. O that cab! his soul yearned to be rid of it. He forgot all othercares. He must first quit himself of this ill-smelling vehicle and ofthe human beast that guided it--first do that; do that at least; do thatat once.
And just then the cab suddenly stopped, and there was his persecutorrapping on the front glass. John let it down, and beheld the port-winecountenance flamed with intellectual triumph.
"I ken wha ye are!" cried the husky voice. "I mind ye now. Ye're aNucholson. I drove ye to Hermiston to a Christmas party, and ye cameback on the box, and I let ye drive."
It was a fact. John knew the man; they had been even friends. His enemy,he now remembered, was a fellow of great good-nature--endlessgood-nature--with a boy; why not with a man? Why not appeal to hisbetter side? He grasped at the new hope.
"Great Scott; and so you did," he cried, as if in a transport ofdelight, his voice sounding false in his own ears. "Well, if that's so,I've something to say to you. I'll just get out, I guess. Where are we,any way?"
The driver had fluttered his ticket in the eyes of the branchtoll-keeper, and they were now brought to on the highest and mostsolitary part of the by-road. On the left, a row of field-side treesbeshaded it; on the right it was bordered by naked fallows, undulatingdownhill to the Queensferry Road; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised itssnow-bedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John looked all abouthim, drinking the clear air like wine; then, his eyes returned to thecabman's face as he sat, not ungleefully, awaiting John's communication,with the air of one looking to be tipped.
The features of that face were hard to read, drink had so swollen them,drink had so painted them, in tints that varied from brick-red tomulberry. The small grey eyes blinked, the lips moved, with greed; greedwas the ruling passion; and though there was some good-nature, somegenuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the old toper, his greed wasnow so set afire by hope, that all other traits of character laydormant. He sat there a monument of gluttonous desire.
John's heart slowly fell. He had opened his lips, but he stood there anduttered nought. He sounded the well of his courage, and it was dry. Hegroped in his treasury of words, and it was vacant. A devil of dumbnesshad him by the throat; a devil of terror babbled in his ears; andsuddenly, without a word uttered, with no conscious purpose formed inhis will, John whipped about, tumbled over the roadside wall, and beganrunning for his life across the fallows.
He had not gone far, he was not past the midst of the first field, whenhis whole brain thundered within him, "Fool! You have your watch!" Theshock st
opped him and he faced once more towards the cab. The driver wasleaning over the wall, brandishing his whip, his face empurpled, roaringlike a bull. And John saw (or thought) that he had lost the chance. Nowatch would pacify the man's resentment now; he would cry for vengeancealso. John would be under the eye of the police; his tale would beunfolded, his secret plumbed, his destiny would close on him at last,and for ever.
He uttered a deep sigh; and just as the cabman, taking heart of grace,was beginning at last to scale the wall, his defaulting customer fellagain to running and disappeared into the farther fields.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 10 Page 8