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PARTISAN ReVIEW
he struggles against drowsiness, strange and extraordinarily vivid
fantasies flit through his mind. He dozes but, hearing a man pass by,
wakes and inquires, with unwarranted peevishness,
if
he must wait
there all night for his kinsman, Major Molineux. The stranger ap–
proaches and, seeing a country youth who is apparently homeless
and without friends, offers to be of help. Mter hearing Robin's story
he joins him to wait the arrival of the Major.
Shortly a mighty stream of people come into view. Robin gra–
dually makes out that some of them are applauding spectators, some
participants in a curious procession. It is headed by a single horse–
man, who bears a drawn sword and whose face is painted red and
black: he is the man who has told Robin that his kinsman would
pass that way within the hour. Behind the horseman come a band
of wind instruments, men carrying torches, and then men in Indian
and many other kinds of costume.
Robin has a feeling that he is involved in this procession, a feel–
ing which is quickly confirmed.
As
the torches approach him, the
leader thunders a command, the parade stops, the tumult dies down.
Right before Robin's eye was an uncovered cart. There the torches
blazed the brightest, there the moon shone out like day, and there, in
tar-and-feathery dignity, sat his kinsman, Major Molineux!
The Major is a large and majestic man, but now his body is
"agitated by a quick and continual tremor" he cannot quell. The
encounter with Robin causes him to suffer still more deeply. He rec–
ognizes the youth on the instant.
Staring at his kinsman, Robin's knees shake and his hair bristles.
Soon, however, a curious change sets in. The adventures of the night,
his fatigue, the confusion of the spectacle, above all "the spectre of
his kinsman reviled by that great mult1tude ... [affect] him with a
sort of mental inebriety." In the crowd he sees the watchman he
has encountered earlier, enjoying his amazement. A woman twitches
his arm: it is the minx of the scarlet petticoat. Finally, from the
balcony of the large house across from the church comes a great,
broad laugh which momentarily dominates everything: it is the for–
midable old man of whom Robin made his first inquiries and whom
he later went out of his way to avoid.
Then Robin seemed to hear the voices of . . . all who had made
