I told myself this was mere superstition; I made wagers with
myself--and gained them; I went down on the esplanade of Princes
Street, walked and stood there, alone and conspicuous, looking
across the garden at the old grey bastions of the fortress, where
all these troubles had begun. I cocked my hat, set my hand on my
hip, and swaggered on the pavement, confronting detection. And I
found I could do all this with a sense of exhilaration that was not
unpleasing, and with a certain cranerie of manner that raised me in
my own esteem. And yet there was one thing I could not bring my
mind to face up to, or my limbs to execute; and that was to cross
the valley into the Old Town. It seemed to me I must be arrested
immediately if I had done so; I must go straight into the twilight
of a prison cell, and pass straight thence to the gross and final
embraces of the nightcap and the halter. And yet it was from no
reasoned fear of the consequences that I could not go. I was
unable. My horse baulked, and there was an end!
My nerve was gone: here was a discovery for a man in such imminent
peril, set down to so desperate a game, which I could only hope to
win by continual luck and unflagging effrontery! The strain had
been too long continued, and my nerve was gone. I fell into what
they call panic fear, as I have seen soldiers do on the alarm of a
night attack, and turned out of Princes Street at random as though
the devil were at my heels.
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