"I would rather not tell you, sir," said John. "It will only make you angry."
"I will not be fenced with," cried his father. "There must be an end of disingenuous answers. What did you want with this money?"
"I thought I had forbidden you to speak to that young man?" asked the father.
"Yes, sir," said John; "but I only met him."
And "In a billiard-room" was the damning answer. Thus had John's single departure from the truth brought instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see Alan would he have entered a billiard-room; but he had desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts upon his own account.
Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile tidings in silence; and when John stole a glance at his father's countenance, he was abashed to see the marks of suffering.
"Well," said the old gentleman at last, "I cannot pretend not to be simply bowed down. I rose this morning what the world calls a happy man--happy, at least, in a son of whom I thought I could be reasonably proud----"
But it was beyond human nature to endure this longer, and John interrupted almost with a scream. "O, wheest!" he cried, "that's not all, that's not the worst of it--it's nothing! How could I tell you were proud of me? O! I wish, I wish that I had known; but you always said I was such a disgrace! And the dreadful thing is this: we were all taken up last night, and we have to pay Collette's fine among the six, or we'll be had up for evidence--shebeening it is. They made me swear to tell you; but for my part," he cried, bursting into tears, "I just wish that I was dead!" And he fell on his knees before a chair and hid his face.
Whether his father spoke, and whether he remained long in the room or at once departed, are points lost to history. A horrid turmoil of mind and body; bursting sobs; broken, vanishing thoughts, now of indignation, now of remorse; broken elementary whiffs of consciousness, of the smell of the horse-hair on the chair-bottom, of the jangling of church bells that now began to make day horrible throughout the confines of the city, of the hard floor that bruised his knees, of the taste of tears that found their way into his mouth: for a period of time, the duration of which I cannot guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these were the whole of God's world for John Nicholson.