章节正文
where he might expect it; but this much at least seemed
undeniable, that a private house was safer than a public inn.
Moved by these counsels, he turned at once to the Caledonian
Station, passed (not without alarm) into the bright lights of
the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from the 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 to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and
rotten straw which clung about the vehicle, wrought in him
strange alternations of lucidity and mortal giddiness.
'I have been drinking,' he discovered; 'I must go straight to
bed, and sleep.' And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness
that came upon his mind in waves.
From one of these spells he was wakened by the stoppage of
the cab; and, getting down, found himself in quite a country
road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and
the high walls of a garden rising before him in the dark.
The Lodge (as the place was named), stood, indeed, very
solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, but
standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on
all other sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of
Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or
downward toward the valley of the Leith. The effect of
seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden walls,
which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in
former days, defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of the
cab threw a gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle
of the bell.
'Shall I ring for ye?' said the cabman, who had descended
from his perch, and was slapping his chest, for the night was
bitter.
'I wish you would,' said John, putting his hand to his brow
in one of his accesses of giddiness.
The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell
replied from further in the garden; twice and thrice he did
it, with sufficient intervals; in the great frosty silence of
the night the sounds fell sharp and small.
'Does he expect ye?' asked the driver, with that manner of
familiar interest that well became his port-wine face; and
when John had told him no, 'Well, then,' said the cabman, 'if
ye'll tak' my advice of it, we'll just gang back. And that's
disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in the Glesgie
Road.'
'The servants must hear,' said John.
'Hout!' said the driver. 'He keeps no servants here, man.
They're a' in the town house; I drive him often; it's just a
kind of a hermitage, this.'
'Give me the bell,' said John; and he plucked at it like a
man desperate.
The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon
the gravel, and a voice of singularnervous irritability
cried to them through 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 come home, 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 a moment. I want to speak to you.'
John entered the garden, and the door was closed behind him.
A candle stood on the gravel walk, winking a little in the
draughts; it threw inconstant sparkles on the clumped holly,
struck the light and darkness to and fro like a veil on
Alan's features, and sent his shadow hovering behind him.
All beyond was inscrutable; and John's dizzy brain rocked
with the shadow. Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was
pale, and his voice, when he spoke, unnatural.
'What brings you here to-night?' he began. 'I don't want,
God knows, to seem 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
my face in an inn, because they'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 was that you were saying?' he asked again.
'That they were down on me,' said John. 'I'm accused of
murder, by what I can make out; and I've really had a
dreadful day of it, Alan, and I can't sleep on the roadside
on a night like this - at least, not with a portmanteau,' he
pleaded.
'Hush!' said Alan, with his head on one side; and then, 'Did
you hear nothing?' 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, he reverted to his pleading: 'But I
say, Alan, you've just got to take me in. I'll go right away
to bed if you have anything to do. I seem to have been
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 you, then. Come and
let's get your portmanteau.'
The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, lamp-
lighted hill, and the two friends stood on the side-walk
beside the portmanteau till the last rumble of the wheels had
died in silence. It seemed to John as though Alan attached
importance to this departure of the cab; and John, who was in
no state to criticise, shared profoundly in the feeling.
When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shouldered the
portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked the garden
door; and then, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon
him, and he stood with his 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 and put his face in his hands.
John stood beside him swaying a little, and looking about him
at the swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady
stars overhead, until the windless cold began to touch him
through his clothes on the bare 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, reshouldered the portmanteau, and taking
the candle in his other hand, moved forward to the Lodge.
This was a long, low building, smothered in creepers; and
now, except for some chinks of light between the dining-room
shutters, it was plunged in darkness and silence.
In the hall Alan lighted another candle, gave it to John, and
opened the door of a bedroom.
'Here,' said he; 'go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You'll be
sorry for me when you know.'
'Wait a bit,' returned John; 'I've got so cold with all that
standing about. Let's go into the dining-room a minute.
Just one glass to warm me, Alan.'
On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with a
whisky label on a tray. It was plain the bottle had been
just opened, for the cork and corkscrew lay beside it.
'Take that,' said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then
with a certain roughness pushed his friend into the bedroom,
and closed the door behind him.
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 have uncorked a bottle of whisky and
drank three or four glasses one after the other, without
sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his own
cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully explained his
eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a
grog. Poor Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing
was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in
this unsociable, uncomfortable fashion! The man who would
drink alone, except for health's sake - as John was now doing
- was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and felt
hazier, but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau
and finding his night things; and before he was undressed,
the cold had struck home to him once more. 'Well,' said he;
'just a drop more. There's no sense in getting ill with all
this other trouble.' And presently dreamless slumber buried
him.
When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already
in the heavens, but his watch had stopped, and it was
impossible to tell the hour exactly. Ten, he guessed it, and
made haste to dress, dismal reflections crowding on his mind.
But it was less from terror than from regret that he now
suffered; and with his regret there were mingled cutting
pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel,
indeed, but yet only the punishment of old misdoing; and he
had rebelled and plunged into fresh sin. The rod had been
used to chasten, and he had bit the chastening fingers. His
father was right; John had justified him; John was no guest
for decent people's houses, and no fit associate for decent
people's children. And had a broader hint been needed, there
was the case of his old friend. John was no drunkard, though
he could at times exceed; and the picture of Houston drinking
neat spirits at his hall-table struck him with something like
disgust. He hung back from meeting his old friend. He could
have wished he had not come to him; and yet, even now, where
else was he to turn?
These musings occupied him while he dressed, and accompanied
him into the lobby of the house. The door stood open on the
garden; doubtless, Alan 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 brushed among the hollies,
icicles jingled and glittered in their fall; and wherever he
went, a volley of eager sparrows followed him. Here were
Christmas weather and Christmas morning duly met, to the
delight of children. This was the day of reunited families,
the day to which he had so long looked forward, thinking to
awake in his own bed in Randolph Crescent, reconciled with
all men and repeating the footprints of his youth; and here
he was alone, pacing the alleys of a wintry garden and filled
with penitential thoughts.
And that reminded him: why was he alone? and where was Alan?
The thought of the festal morning and the due salutations
reawakened his desire for his friend, and he began to call
for him by name. As the sound of his voice died away, he was
aware of the greatness of the silence that environed him.
But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunching of
his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world
of air hung over him entranced, and the stillness weighed
upon his mind with a horror of solitude.
Still calling at intervals, but now with a moderated voice,
he made the hasty circuit of the garden, and finding neither
man nor trace of man in all its evergreen coverts, turned at
last to the house. About the house the silence seemed to
deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open as before;
undeniable, that a private house was safer than a public inn.
Moved by these counsels, he turned at once to the Caledonian
Station, passed (not without alarm) into the bright lights of
the approach, redeemed his portmanteau from the 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 to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and
rotten straw which clung about the vehicle, wrought in him
strange alternations of lucidity and mortal giddiness.
'I have been drinking,' he discovered; 'I must go straight to
bed, and sleep.' And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness
that came upon his mind in waves.
From one of these spells he was wakened by the stoppage of
the cab; and, getting down, found himself in quite a country
road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and
the high walls of a garden rising before him in the dark.
The Lodge (as the place was named), stood, indeed, very
solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, but
standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on
all other sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of
Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or
downward toward the valley of the Leith. The effect of
seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden walls,
which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in
former days, defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of the
cab threw a gleam upon the door and the not brilliant handle
of the bell.
'Shall I ring for ye?' said the cabman, who had descended
from his perch, and was slapping his chest, for the night was
bitter.
'I wish you would,' said John, putting his hand to his brow
in one of his accesses of giddiness.
The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell
replied from further in the garden; twice and thrice he did
it, with sufficient intervals; in the great frosty silence of
the night the sounds fell sharp and small.
'Does he expect ye?' asked the driver, with that manner of
familiar interest that well became his port-wine face; and
when John had told him no, 'Well, then,' said the cabman, 'if
ye'll tak' my advice of it, we'll just gang back. And that's
disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in the Glesgie
Road.'
'The servants must hear,' said John.
'Hout!' said the driver. 'He keeps no servants here, man.
They're a' in the town house; I drive him often; it's just a
kind of a hermitage, this.'
'Give me the bell,' said John; and he plucked at it like a
man desperate.
The clamour had not yet subsided before they heard steps upon
the gravel, and a voice of singularnervous irritability
cried to them through 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 come home, 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 a moment. I want to speak to you.'
John entered the garden, and the door was closed behind him.
A candle stood on the gravel walk, winking a little in the
draughts; it threw inconstant sparkles on the clumped holly,
struck the light and darkness to and fro like a veil on
Alan's features, and sent his shadow hovering behind him.
All beyond was inscrutable; and John's dizzy brain rocked
with the shadow. Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was
pale, and his voice, when he spoke, unnatural.
'What brings you here to-night?' he began. 'I don't want,
God knows, to seem 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
my face in an inn, because they'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 was that you were saying?' he asked again.
'That they were down on me,' said John. 'I'm accused of
murder, by what I can make out; and I've really had a
dreadful day of it, Alan, and I can't sleep on the roadside
on a night like this - at least, not with a portmanteau,' he
pleaded.
'Hush!' said Alan, with his head on one side; and then, 'Did
you hear nothing?' 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, he reverted to his pleading: 'But I
say, Alan, you've just got to take me in. I'll go right away
to bed if you have anything to do. I seem to have been
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 you, then. Come and
let's get your portmanteau.'
The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, lamp-
lighted hill, and the two friends stood on the side-walk
beside the portmanteau till the last rumble of the wheels had
died in silence. It seemed to John as though Alan attached
importance to this departure of the cab; and John, who was in
no state to criticise, shared profoundly in the feeling.
When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shouldered the
portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked the garden
door; and then, once more, abstraction seemed to fall upon
him, and he stood with his 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 and put his face in his hands.
John stood beside him swaying a little, and looking about him
at the swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady
stars overhead, until the windless cold began to touch him
through his clothes on the bare 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, reshouldered the portmanteau, and taking
the candle in his other hand, moved forward to the Lodge.
This was a long, low building, smothered in creepers; and
now, except for some chinks of light between the dining-room
shutters, it was plunged in darkness and silence.
In the hall Alan lighted another candle, gave it to John, and
opened the door of a bedroom.
'Here,' said he; 'go to bed. Don't mind me, John. You'll be
sorry for me when you know.'
'Wait a bit,' returned John; 'I've got so cold with all that
standing about. Let's go into the dining-room a minute.
Just one glass to warm me, Alan.'
On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with a
whisky label on a tray. It was plain the bottle had been
just opened, for the cork and corkscrew lay beside it.
'Take that,' said Alan, passing John the whisky, and then
with a certain roughness pushed his friend into the bedroom,
and closed the door behind him.
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 have uncorked a bottle of whisky and
drank three or four glasses one after the other, without
sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his own
cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully explained his
eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a
grog. Poor Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing
was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in
this unsociable, uncomfortable fashion! The man who would
drink alone, except for health's sake - as John was now doing
- was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and felt
hazier, but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau
and finding his night things; and before he was undressed,
the cold had struck home to him once more. 'Well,' said he;
'just a drop more. There's no sense in getting ill with all
this other trouble.' And presently dreamless slumber buried
him.
When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was already
in the heavens, but his watch had stopped, and it was
impossible to tell the hour exactly. Ten, he guessed it, and
made haste to dress, dismal reflections crowding on his mind.
But it was less from terror than from regret that he now
suffered; and with his regret there were mingled cutting
pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel,
indeed, but yet only the punishment of old misdoing; and he
had rebelled and plunged into fresh sin. The rod had been
used to chasten, and he had bit the chastening fingers. His
father was right; John had justified him; John was no guest
for decent people's houses, and no fit associate for decent
people's children. And had a broader hint been needed, there
was the case of his old friend. John was no drunkard, though
he could at times exceed; and the picture of Houston drinking
neat spirits at his hall-table struck him with something like
disgust. He hung back from meeting his old friend. He could
have wished he had not come to him; and yet, even now, where
else was he to turn?
These musings occupied him while he dressed, and accompanied
him into the lobby of the house. The door stood open on the
garden; doubtless, Alan 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 brushed among the hollies,
icicles jingled and glittered in their fall; and wherever he
went, a volley of eager sparrows followed him. Here were
Christmas weather and Christmas morning duly met, to the
delight of children. This was the day of reunited families,
the day to which he had so long looked forward, thinking to
awake in his own bed in Randolph Crescent, reconciled with
all men and repeating the footprints of his youth; and here
he was alone, pacing the alleys of a wintry garden and filled
with penitential thoughts.
And that reminded him: why was he alone? and where was Alan?
The thought of the festal morning and the due salutations
reawakened his desire for his friend, and he began to call
for him by name. As the sound of his voice died away, he was
aware of the greatness of the silence that environed him.
But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunching of
his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world
of air hung over him entranced, and the stillness weighed
upon his mind with a horror of solitude.
Still calling at intervals, but now with a moderated voice,
he made the hasty circuit of the garden, and finding neither
man nor trace of man in all its evergreen coverts, turned at
last to the house. About the house the silence seemed to
deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open as before;
- movement [´mu:vmənt]
n.活动；运动；动作 (初中英语单词) - wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- upward [´ʌpwəd] a.&ad.向上(的)；以上 (初中英语单词)
- backward [´bækwəd] ad.向后 a.向后的 (初中英语单词)
- valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
- height [hait] n.高度；顶点；卓越 (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- terror [´terə] n.恐怖；惊骇 (初中英语单词)
- departure [di´pɑ:tʃə] n.离开，出发 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- overhead [´əuvə,hed] ad.当头 a.在头上的 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- slumber [´slʌmbə] v.&n.睡眠；沉睡状态 (初中英语单词)
- punishment [´pʌniʃmənt] n.罚，刑罚 (初中英语单词)
- associate [ə´səuʃieit] v.联合a.同伴的n.伙伴 (初中英语单词)
- exceed [ik´si:d] v.超(胜)过；凌驾 (初中英语单词)
- doubtless [´dautlis] ad.无疑地；大概，多半 (初中英语单词)
- wherever [weər´evə] conj.无论在哪里 (初中英语单词)
- frozen [´frəuzn] freeze 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- circuit [´sə:kit] n.环行 v.(绕....)环行 (初中英语单词)
- strangely [´streindʒli] ad.奇怪地；陌生地 (初中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- suburb [´sʌbə:b] n.郊区；附近 (高中英语单词)
- hermitage [´hə:mitidʒ] n.隐居生活(的地方) (高中英语单词)
- gravel [´grævəl] n.砾石 vt.铺砾石 (高中英语单词)
- singular [´siŋgjulə] a.单一的；非凡的 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- rumble [´rʌmbəl] v.(使)隆隆响 n.隆隆声 (高中英语单词)
- criticise [´kritisaiz] v.批评；批判；评论 (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- uncomfortable [ʌn´kʌmftəbəl] a.不舒服的，不自在的 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- dismal [´dizməl] a.灰暗的；阴郁的 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- houston [´hju:stən] n.休斯顿 (高中英语单词)
- greatness [´greitnis] n.巨大；高尚；卓越 (高中英语单词)
- glasgow [´glɑ:sgəu] n.格拉斯哥 (英语四级单词)
- vehicle [´vi:ikəl] n.车辆；媒介物 (英语四级单词)
- thrice [θrais] ad.三倍地；三次 (英语四级单词)
- frosty [´frɔsti] a.霜冻的；冷淡的 (英语四级单词)
- profoundly [prə´faundli] ad.深深地 (英语四级单词)
- nibble [´nibəl] v.啃 n.轻咬，啃 (英语四级单词)
- volley [´vɔli] n.&v.齐射；(话)迸发 (英语四级单词)
- crescent [´kresənt] n.月牙 a.新月形的 (英语四级单词)
- evergreen [´evəgri:n] a.常绿的，常青的 (英语四级单词)
- drunkard [´drʌŋkəd] n.醉汉；酒鬼 (英语六级单词)
- wintry [´wintri] a.冬天的；荒凉的 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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