CHAPTER VI - THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD

How John passed the evening, in what windy confusion of mind,

in what squalls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what

pacing of streets and plunging into public-houses, it would

profit little to relate. His misery, if it were not

progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish; for in

proportion as grief and indignation abated, fear began to

take their place. At first, his father's menacing words lay

by in some safe drawer of memory, biding their hour. At

first, John was all thwarted affection and blighted hope;

next bludgeoned vanity raised its head again, with twenty

mortal gashes: and the father was disowned even as he had

disowned the son. What was this regular course of life, that

John should have admired it? what were these clock-work

virtues, from which love was absent? Kindness was the test,

kindness the aim and soul; and judged by such a standard, the

discarded prodigal - now rapidly drowning his sorrows and his

reason in successive drams - was a creature of a lovelier

morality than his self-righteous father. Yes, he was the

better man; he felt it, glowed with the consciousness, and

entering a public-house at the corner of Howard Place

(

whither he had somehow wandered) he pledged his own virtues

in a glass - perhaps the fourth since his dismissal. Of that

Tales and Fantasies