The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 10

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Robert Louis Stevenson. The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 10

THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON

CHAPTER I. IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND

CHAPTER II. IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND

CHAPTER III. IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HARVEST HOME

CHAPTER IV. THE SECOND SOWING

CHAPTER V. THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN

CHAPTER VI. THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD

CHAPTER VII. A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB

CHAPTER VIII. SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTILITY OF PASS-KEYS

CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH MR. NICHOLSON CONCEDES THE PRINCIPLE OF AN ALLOWANCE

KIDNAPPED

DEDICATION

KIDNAPPED

CHAPTER I. I SET OFF UPON MY JOURNEY TO THE HOUSE OF SHAWS

CHAPTER II. I COME TO MY JOURNEY’S END

CHAPTER III. I MAKE ACQUAINTANCE OF MY UNCLE

CHAPTER IV. I RUN A GREAT DANGER IN THE HOUSE OF SHAWS

CHAPTER V. I GO TO THE QUEEN’S FERRY

CHAPTER VI. WHAT BEFELL AT THE QUEEN’S FERRY

CHAPTER VII. I GO TO SEA IN THE BRIG COVENANT OF DYSART

CHAPTER VIII. THE ROUND-HOUSE

CHAPTER IX. THE MAN WITH THE BELT OF GOLD

CHAPTER X. THE SIEGE OF THE ROUND-HOUSE

CHAPTER XI. THE CAPTAIN KNUCKLES UNDER

CHAPTER XII. I HEAR OF THE “RED FOX”

CHAPTER XIII. THE LOSS OF THE BRIG

CHAPTER XIV. THE ISLET

CHAPTER XV. THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON THROUGH THE ISLE OF MULL

CHAPTER XVI. THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON ACROSS MORVEN

CHAPTER XVII. THE DEATH OF THE RED FOX

CHAPTER XVIII. I TALK WITH ALAN IN THE WOOD OF LETTERMORE

CHAPTER XIX. THE HOUSE OF FEAR

CHAPTER XX. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS

CHAPTER XXI. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE HEUGH OF CORRYNAKIEGH

CHAPTER XXII. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE MOOR

CHAPTER XXIII. CLUNY’S CAGE

CHAPTER XXIV. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE QUARREL

CHAPTER XXV. IN BALQUHIDDER

CHAPTER XXVI. END OF THE FLIGHT: WE PASS THE FORTH

CHAPTER XXVII. I COME TO MR. RANKEILLOR

CHAPTER XXVIII. I GO IN QUEST OF MY INHERITANCE

CHAPTER XXIX. I COME INTO MY KINGDOM

CHAPTER XXX. GOOD-BYE

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John Varey Nicholson was stupid; yet stupider men than he are now sprawling in Parliament, and lauding themselves as the authors of their own distinction. He was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and inclined to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life; and possibly this attitude of mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in with the more ready explanation that he was detested of the gods.

His father – that iron gentleman – had long ago enthroned himself on the heights of the Disruption Principles. What these are (and in spite of their grim name they are quite innocent) no array of terms would render thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the milk of lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their annual assemblies, he was to be seen descending the Mound in the company of divers red-headed clergymen: these voluble, he only contributing oracular nods, brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his stretched upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residuary Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little theological kingdom of Scotland might have listened and gathered literally nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew this, and raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside to whom Disruption Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes; the paper brought him chill whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who had asked lightly if he did not belong to the Church of Scotland, and then had failed to be much interested by his elucidation of that nice point; it was an evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in dozenedness, for nothing short of a Scots word will paint this Scotsman’s feelings. And when he entered his own house in Randolph Crescent (south side), and shut the door behind him, his heart swelled with security. Here, at least, was a citadel unassailable by right-hand defections or left-hand extremes. Here was a family where prayers came at the same hour, where the Sabbath literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who should have leaned to any false opinion was instantly set down, and over which there reigned all the week, and grew denser on Sundays, a silence that was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he found comfortable.

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And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his father should have locked him in. The notion had no ground in sense; it was probably no more than a reminiscence of similar calamities in childhood, for his father’s room had always been the chamber of inquisition and the scene of punishment; but it stuck so rigorously in his mind that he must instantly approach the door and prove its untruth. As he went, he struck upon a drawer left open in the business table. It was the money-drawer, a measure of his father’s disarray: the money-drawer – perhaps a pointing providence! Who is to decide, when even divines differ, between a providence and a temptation? or who, sitting calmly under his own vine, is to pass a judgment on the doings of a poor, hunted dog, slavishly afraid, slavishly rebellious, like John Nicholson on that particular Sunday? His hand was in the drawer almost before his mind had conceived the hope; and rising to his new situation, he wrote, sitting in his father’s chair and using his father’s blotting-pad, his pitiful apology and farewell —

The coins abstracted and the missive written, he could not be gone too soon from the scene of these transgressions; and remembering how his father had once returned from church, on some slight illness, in the middle of the second psalm, he durst not even make a packet of a change of clothes. Attired as he was, he slipped from the paternal doors, and found himself in the cool spring air, the thin spring sunshine, and the great Sabbath quiet of the city, which was now only pointed by the cawing of the rooks. There was not a soul in Randolph Crescent, nor a soul in Queensferry Street; in this outdoor privacy and the sense of escape, John took heart again; and with a pathetic sense of leave-taking, he even ventured up the lane and stood a while, a strange peri at the gates of a quaint paradise, by the west end of St. George’s Church. They were singing within; and by a strange chance the tune was “St. George’s, Edinburgh,” which bears the name, and was first sung in the choir, of that church. “Who is this King of Glory?” went the voices from within; and to John this was like the end of all Christian observances, for he was now to be a wild man like Ishmael, and his life was to be cast in homeless places and with godless people.

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