When Zack reached Baregrove Square, it was four in the morning. The
neighboring church clock struck the hour as he approached his own door.
Immediately after parting with Mat, malicious Fate so ordained it
that he passed one of those late--or, to speak more correctly,
early--public-houses, which are open to customers during the “small
hours” of the morning. He was parched with thirst; and the hiccuping
fit which had seized him in the company of his new friend had not yet
subsided. “Suppose I try what a drop of brandy will do for me,” thought
Zack, stopping at the fatal entrance of the public-house.
He went in easily enough--but he came out with no little difficulty.
However, he had achieved his purpose of curing the hiccups. The remedy
employed acted, to be sure, on his legs as well as his stomach--but that
was a trifling physiological eccentricity quite unworthy of notice.
He was far too exclusively occupied in chuckling over the remembrance of
the agreeably riotous train of circumstances which had brought his
new acquaintance and himself together, to take any notice of his own
personal condition, or to observe that his course over the pavement was
of a somewhat sinuous nature, as he walked home. It was only when he
pulled the door-key out of his pocket, and tried to put it into the
keyhole, that his attention was fairly directed to himself; and then
he discovered that his hands were helpless, and that he was also by no
means rigidly steady on his legs.
There are some men whose minds get drunk, and some men whose bodies get
drunk, under the influence of intoxicating liquor. Zack belonged to the
second class. He was perfectly capable of understanding what was said to
him, and of knowing what he said himself, long after his utterance
had grown thick, and his gait had become uncertain. He was now quite
conscious that his visit to the public-house had by no means tended to
sober him; and quite awake to the importance of noiselessly stealing up
to bed--but he was, at the same time, totally unable to put the key into
the door at the first attempt, or to look comfortably for the key-hole,
without previously leaning against the area railings at his side.
“Steady,” muttered Zack, “I’m done for if I make any noise.” Here he
felt for the keyhole, and guided the key elaborately, with his left
hand, into its proper place. He next opened the door, so quietly that
he was astonished at himself--entered the passage with marvelous
stealthiness--then closed the door again, and cried “Hush!” when he
found that he had let the lock go a little too noisily.
He listened before he attempted to light his candle. The air of the
house felt strangely close and hot, after the air out of doors. The dark
stillness above and around him was instinct with an awful and virtuous
repose; and was deepened ominously by the solemn _tick-tick_ of the
kitchen clock--never audible from the passage in the day time: terribly
and incomprehensibly distinct at this moment.
“I won’t bolt the door,” he whispered to himself, “till I have struck
a--” Here the unreliability of brandy as a curative agent in cases
of fermentation in the stomach, was palpably demonstrated by a sudden
return of the hiccuping fit. “Hush!” cried Zack for the second time;
terrified at the violence and suddenness of the relapse, and clapping
his hand to his mouth when it was too late.
After groping, on his knees, with extraordinary perseverance all round
the rim of his bed-room candlestick, which stood on one of the hall
chairs, he succeeded--not in finding the box of matches--but in knocking
it off the chair, and sending it rolling over the stone floor, until it
was stopped by the opposite wall. With some difficulty he captured it,
and struck a light. Never, in all Zack’s experience, had any former
matches caught flame with such a shrill report, as was produced from
the one disastrous match which he happened to select to light his candle
with.
The next thing to be done was to bolt the door. He succeeded very well
with the bolt at the top, but failed signally with the bolt at the
bottom, which appeared particularly difficult to deal with that night.
It first of all creaked fiercely on being moved--then stuck spitefully
just at the entrance of the staple--then slipped all of a sudden, under
moderate pressure, and ran like lightning into its appointed place,
with a bang of malicious triumph. “If that doesn’t bring my father
down”--thought Zack, listening with all his ears, and stifling the
hiccups with all his might--“he’s a harder sleeper than I take him for.”
But no door opened, no voice called, no sound of any kind broke the
mysterious stillness of the bedroom regions. Zack sat down on
the stairs, and took his boots off, got up again with some little
difficulty, listened, took his candlestick, listened once more,
whispered to himself, “Now for it!” and began the perilous ascent to his
own room.
He held tight by the banisters, only falling against them, and making
them crack from top to bottom once, before he reached the drawing-room
landing. He ascended the second flight of stairs without casualties of
any kind, until he got to the top step, close by his father’s bed-room
door. Here, by a dire fatality, the stifled hiccups burst beyond all
control; and distinctly asserted themselves by one convulsive yelp,
which betrayed Zack into a start of horror. The start shook his
candlestick: the extinguisher, which lay loose in it, dropped out,
hopped playfully down the stone stairs, and rolled over the landing with
a loud and lively ring--a devilish and brazen flourish of exultation in
honor of its own activity.
“Oh Lord!” faintly ejaculated Zack, as he heard somebody’s voice
speaking, and somebody’s body moving, in the bed-room; and remembered
that he had to mount another flight of stairs--wooden stairs this
time--before he got to his own quarters on the garret-floor.
He went up, however, directly, with the recklessness of despair; every
separate stair creaking and cracking under him, as if a young elephant
had been retiring to bed instead of a young man. He blew out his light,
tore off his clothes, and, slipping between the sheets, began to breathe
elaborately, as if he was fast asleep--in the desperate hope of being
still able to deceive his father, if Mr. Thorpe came up stairs to look
after him.
No sooner had he assumed a recumbent position than a lusty and ceaseless
singing began in his ears, which bewildered and half deafened him. His
bed, the room, the house, the whole world tore round and round, and
heaved up and down frantically with him. He ceased to be a human being:
he became a giddy atom, spinning drunkenly in illimitable space. He
started up in bed, and was recalled to a sense of his humanity by a cold
perspiration and a deathly qualm. Hiccups burst from him no longer;
but they were succeeded by another and a louder series of sound--sounds
familiar to everybody who has ever been at sea--sounds nautically and
lamentably associated with white basins, whirling waves, and misery of
mortal stomachs wailing in emetic despair.
In the momentary pauses between the rapidly successive attacks of the
malady which now overwhelmed him, and which he attributed in after-life
entirely to the dyspeptic influences of toasted cheese, Zack was faintly
conscious of the sound of slippered feet ascending the stairs. His back
was to the door. He had no strength to move, no courage to look
round, no voice to raise in supplication. He knew that his door was
opened--that a light came into the room--that a voice cried “Degraded
beast!”--that the door was suddenly shut again with a bang--and that he
was left once more in total darkness. He did not care for the light,
or the voice, or the banging of the door: he did not think of them
afterwards; he did not mourn over the past, or speculate on the future.
He just sank back on his pillow with a gasp, drew the clothes over him
with a groan, and fell asleep, blissfully reckless of the retribution
that was to come with the coming daylight.
When he woke, late the next morning, conscious of nothing, at first,
except that it was thawing fast out of doors, and that he had a violent
headache, but gradually recalled to a remembrance of the memorable
fight in the Snuggery by a sense of soreness in his ribs, and a growing
conviction that his nose had become too large for his face, Zack’s
memory began, correctly though confusedly, to retrace the circumstances
attending his return home, and his disastrous journey up stairs to bed.
With these recollections were mingled others of the light which had
penetrated into his room, after his own candle was out; of the voice
which had denounced him as a “Degraded beast;” and of the banging of the
door which had followed. There could be no doubt that it was his father
who had entered the room and apostrophized him in the briefly emphatic
terms which he was now calling to mind. Never had Mr. Thorpe, on any
former occasion, been known to call names, or bang doors. It was quite
clear that he had discovered everything, and was exasperated with his
son as he had never been exasperated with any other human being before
in his life.
Just as Zack arrived at this conclusion, he heard the rustling of his
mother’s dress on the stairs, and Mrs. Thorpe, with her handkerchief
to her eyes, presented herself woefully at his bedside. Profoundly and
penitently wretched, he tried to gain his mother’s forgiveness before he
encountered his father’s wrath. To do him justice, he was so thoroughly
ashamed to meet her eye, that he turned his face to the wall, and in
that position appealed to his mother’s compassion in the most moving
terms, and with the most vehement protestations which he had ever
addressed to her.
The only effect he produced on Mrs. Thorpe was to make her walk up and
down the room in violent agitation, sobbing bitterly. Now and then a few
words burst lamentably and incoherently from her lips. They were just
articulate enough for him to gather from them that his father had
discovered everything, had suffered in consequence from an attack of
palpitation of the heart, and had felt himself, on rising that morning,
so unequal, both in mind and body, to deal unaided with the enormity of
his son’s offense, that he had just gone out to request the co-operation
of the Reverend Aaron Yollop. On discovering this, Zack’s penitence
changed instantly into a curious mixture of indignation and alarm. He
turned round quickly towards his mother. But, before he could open his
lips, she informed him, speaking with an unexampled severity of tone,
that he was on no account to think of going to the office as usual, but
was to wait at home until his father’s return--and then hurried from the
room. The fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe distrusted her own inflexibility,
if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack
could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him
abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the
gloomiest interpretation on her conduct.
“When mother turns against me, I’ve lost my last chance.” He stopped
before he ended the sentence, and sat up in bed, deliberating with
himself for a minute or two. “I could make up my mind to bear anything
from my father, because he has a right to be angry with me, after what
I’ve done. But if I stand old Yollop again, I’ll be--” Here, whatever
Zack said was smothered in the sound of a blow, expressive of fury and
despair, which he administered to the mattress on which he was sitting.
Having relieved himself thus, he jumped out of bed, pronouncing at last
in real earnest those few words of fatal slang which had often burst
from his lips in other days as an empty threat:--
“It’s all over with me; I must bolt from home.”
He refreshed both mind and body by a good wash; but still his resolution
did not falter. He hurried on his clothes, looked out of window,
listened at his door; and all this time his purpose never changed.
Remembering but too well the persecution he had already suffered at the
hands of Mr. Yollop, the conviction that it would now be repeated with
fourfold severity was enough of itself to keep him firm to his desperate
intention. When he had done dressing, his thoughts were suddenly
recalled by the sight of his pocket-book to his companion of the past
night. As he reflected on the appointment for Thursday morning, his eyes
brightened, and he said to himself aloud, while he turned resolutely to
the door, “That queer fellow talked of going back to America. If I can’t
do anything else, I’ll go back with him!”
Just as his hand was on the lock, he was startled by a knock at the
door. He opened it, and found the housemaid on the landing with a letter
for him. Returning to the window, he hastily undid the envelope. Several
gaily-printed invitation cards with gilt edges dropped out. There was
a letter among them, which proved to be in Mr. Blyth’s handwriting, and
ran thus:--
“Wednesday.
“MY DEAR ZACK--The enclosed are the tickets for my picture show, which I
told you about yesterday evening. I send them now, instead of waiting to
give them to you to-night, at Lavvie’s suggestion. She thinks only
three days’ notice, from now to Saturday, rather short, and considers
it advisable to save even a few hours, so as to enable you to give your
friends the most time possible to make their arrangements for coming
to my studio. Post all the invitation tickets, therefore, that you send
about among your connection, at once, as I am posting mine; and you will
save a day by that means, which is a good deal. Patty is obliged to pass
your house this morning on an errand, so I send my letter by her. How
conveniently things sometimes turn out, don’t they?
“Introduce anybody you like; but I should prefer _intellectual_ people;
my figure-subject of ‘Columbus in sight of the New World’ being treated
mystically, and, therefore, adapted to tax the popular mind to the
utmost. Please warn your friends beforehand that it is a work of high
art, and that nobody can hope to understand it in a hurry.
“Affectionately yours,
“V. BLYTH.”
The perusal of this letter reminded Zack of certain recent aspirations
in the direction of the fine arts, which had escaped his slippery memory
altogether, while he was thinking of his future prospects. “I’ll stick
to my first idea,” he thought, “and be an artist, if Blyth will let me,
after what’s happened. If he won’t, I’ve got Mat to fall back upon; and
I’ll run as wild in America as ever he did.”
Reflecting thus, Zack descended cautiously to the back parlor, which
was called a “library.” The open door showed him that no one was in the
room. He went in, and in great haste scrawled the following answer to
Mr. Blyth’s letter:--
“MY DEAR BLYTH--Thank you for the tickets. I have got into a dreadful
scrape, having been found out coming home tipsy at four in the morning,
which I did by stealing the family door-key. My prospects after this are
so extremely unpleasant that I am going to make a bolt of it. I write
these lines in a tearing hurry, for fear my father should come home
before I have done--he having gone to Yollop’s to set the parson at me
again worse than ever.
“I can’t come to you to-night, because your house would be the first
place they would send to after me. But I mean to be an artist, if you
won’t desert me. Don’t, my dear fellow! I know I’m a scamp; but I’ll try
and be a reformed character, if you will only stick by me. When you take
your walk tomorrow, I shall be at the turnpike in the Laburnum Road,
waiting for you, at three o’clock. If you won’t come there, or won’t
speak to me when you do come, I shall leave England and take to
something desperate.
“I have got a new friend--the best and most interesting fellow in the
world. He has been half his life in the wilds of America; so, if you
don’t give me the go-by, I shall bring him to see your picture of
Columbus.
“I feel so miserable, and have got such a headache, that I can’t write
any more. Ever yours,
“Z. THORPE, JUN.”
After directing this letter, and placing it in his pocket to be put
into the post by his own hand, Zack looked towards the door and
hesitated--advanced a step or two to go out--and ended by returning
to the writing-table, and taking a fresh sheet of paper out of the
portfolio before him.
“I can’t leave the old lady (though she won’t forgive me) without
writing a line to keep up her spirits and say goodbye,” he thought, as
he dipped the pen in the ink, and began in his usual dashing, scrawling
way. But he could not get beyond “My dear Mother.” The writing of those
three words seemed to have suddenly paralyzed him. The strong hand that
had struck out so sturdily all through the fight, trembled now at
merely touching a sheet of paper. Still, he tried desperately to write
something, even if it were only the one word, “Goodbye.”--tried till the
tears came into his eyes, and made all further effort hopeless.
He crumpled up the paper and rose hastily, brushing away the tears with
his hand, and feeling a strange dread and distrust of himself as he did
so. It was rarely, very rarely, that his eyes were moistened as they
were moistened now. Few human beings have lived to be twenty years of
age without shedding more tears than had ever been shed by Zack.
“I can’t write to her while I’m at home, and I know she’s in the next
room to me. I will send her a letter when I’m out of the house, saying
it’s only for a little time, and that I’m coming back when the angry
part of this infernal business is all blown over.” Such was his
resolution, as he tore up the crumpled paper, and went out quickly into
the passage.
He took his hat from the table. _His_ hat? No: he remembered that it
was the hat which had been taken from the man at the tavern. At the most
momentous instant of his life--when his heart was bowing down before the
thought of his mother--when he was leaving home in secret, perhaps for
ever--the current of his thoughts could be incomprehensibly altered in
its course by the influence of such a trifle as this!
It was thus with him; it is thus with all of us. Our faculties are never
more completely at the mercy of the smallest interests of our being,
than when they appear to be most fully absorbed by the mightiest. And
it is well for us that there exists this seeming imperfection in our
nature. The first cure of many a grief, after the hour of parting, or in
the house of death, has begun, insensibly to ourselves, with the first
moment when we were betrayed into thinking of so little a thing even as
a daily meal.
The rain which had accompanied the thaw was falling faster and faster;
inside the house was dead silence, and outside it damp desolation, as
Zack opened the street door, and, without hesitating a moment, dashed
out desperately through mud and wet, to cast himself loose on the
thronged world of London as a fugitive from his own home.
He paused before he took the turning out of the square; the
recollections of weeks, months, years past, all whirling through his
memory in a few moments of time. He paused, looking through the damp,
foggy atmosphere at the door which he had just left--never, it might be,
to approach it again; then moved away, buttoned his coat over his chest
with trembling, impatient fingers, and saying to himself, “I’ve done it,
and nothing can undo it now,” turned his back resolutely on Baregrove
Square.