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Title: The House with the Green Shutters


Author: George Douglas Brown



Release Date: June 22, 2008  [eBook #25876]

Language: English

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THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS

by

GEORGE DOUGLAS







[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.
London, Edinburgh, and New York




THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS.




CHAPTER I.


The frowsy chambermaid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the
front door steps. She rose from her stooping posture and, being of
slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without
moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water
glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of
his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when
it fell. The morning was of perfect stillness.

The hands of the clock across "the Square" were pointing to the hour of
eight. They were yellow in the sun.

Blowsalinda, of the Red Lion, picked up the big bass that usually lay
within the porch, and carrying it clumsily against her breast, moved off
round the corner of the public-house, her petticoat gaping behind.
Halfway she met the hostler, with whom she stopped in amorous dalliance.
He said something to her, and she laughed loudly and vacantly. The silly
_tee-hee_ echoed up the street.

A moment later a cloud of dust drifting round the corner, and floating
white in the still air, showed that she was pounding the bass against
the end of the house. All over the little town the women of Barbie were
equally busy with their steps and door-mats. There was scarce a man to
be seen either in the Square, at the top of which Gourlay stood, or in
the long street descending from its near corner. The men were at work;
the children had not yet appeared; the women were busy with their
household cares.

The freshness of the air, the smoke rising thin and far above the red
chimneys, the sunshine glistering on the roofs and gables, the rosy
clearness of everything beneath the dawn--above all, the quietness and
peace--made Barbie, usually so poor to see, a very pleasant place to
look down at on a summer morning. At this hour there was an unfamiliar
delicacy in the familiar scene, a freshness and purity of aspect--almost
an unearthliness--as though you viewed it through a crystal dream. But
it was not the beauty of the hour that kept Gourlay musing at his gate.
He was dead to the fairness of the scene, even while the fact of its
presence there before him wove most subtly with his mood. He smoked in
silent enjoyment because on a morning such as this everything he saw was
a delicate flattery to his pride. At the beginning of a new day, to look
down on the petty burgh in which he was the greatest man filled all his
being with a consciousness of importance. His sense of prosperity was
soothing and pervasive; he felt it all round him like the pleasant air,
as real as that and as subtle; bathing him, caressing. It was the most
secret and intimate joy of his life to go out and smoke on summer
mornings by his big gate, musing over Barbie ere he possessed it with
his merchandise.

He had growled at the quarry carters for being late in setting out this
morning (for, like most resolute dullards, he was sternly methodical),
but in his heart he was secretly pleased. The needs of his business were
so various that his men could rarely start at the same hour and in the
same direction. To-day, however, because of the delay, all his carts
would go streaming through the town together, and that brave pomp would
be a slap in the face to his enemies. "I'll show them," he thought
proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what
a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion,
Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate
by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness
of perfect scorn.

Through the big green gate behind him came the sound of carts being
loaded for the day. A horse, weary of standing idle between the shafts,
kicked ceaselessly and steadily against the ground with one impatient
hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye;
ye'll smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of
an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as
the horse quivered to the blow.

"Run a white tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae
melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there
wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for _you_ to
dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse,
warning whisper of impatience--loudish in anxiety, yet throaty from fear
of being heard. "Hurry up, man--hurry up, or he'll be down on us like
bleezes for being so late in getting off!"

Gourlay smiled grimly, and a black gleam shot from his eye as he glanced
round to the gate and caught the words. His men did not know he could
hear them.

The clock across the Square struck the hour, eight soft, slow strokes,
that melted away in the beauty of the morning. Five minutes passed.
Gourlay turned his head to listen, but no further sound came from the
yard. He walked to the green gate, his slippers making no noise.

"Are ye sleeping, my pretty men?" he said softly.... "_Eih?_"

The "_Eih_" leapt like a sword, with a slicing sharpness in its tone
that made it a sinister contrast to the first sweet question to his
"pretty men." "_Eih?_" he said again, and stared with open mouth and
fierce, dark eyes.

"Hurry up, Peter," whispered the gaffer, "hurry up, for God sake. He has
the black glower in his een."

"Ready, sir; ready now!" cried Peter Riney, running out to open the
other half of the gate. Peter was a wizened little man, with a sandy
fringe of beard beneath his chin, a wart on the end of his long,
slanting-out nose, light blue eyes, and bushy eyebrows of a reddish
gray. The bearded red brows, close above the pale blueness of his eyes,
made them more vivid by contrast; they were like pools of blue light
amid the brownness of his face. Peter always ran about his work with
eager alacrity. A simple and willing old man, he affected the quick
readiness of youth to atone for his insignificance.

"Hup, horse; hup then!" cried courageous Peter, walking backwards with
curved body through the gate, and tugging at the reins of a horse the
feet of which struck sparks from the paved ground as they stressed
painfully on edge to get weigh on the great wagon behind. The cart
rolled through, then another, and another, till twelve of them had
passed. Gourlay stood aside to watch them. All the horses were brown;
"he makes a point of that," the neighbours would have told you. As each
horse passed the gate the driver left its head, and took his place by
the wheel, cracking his whip, with many a "Hup, horse; yean, horse; woa,
lad; steady!"

In a dull little country town the passing of a single cart is an event,
and a gig is followed with the eye till it disappears. Anything is
welcome that breaks the long monotony of the hours and suggests a topic
for the evening's talk. "Any news?" a body will gravely inquire. "Ou
ay," another will answer with equal gravity: "I saw Kennedy's gig going
past in the forenoon." "Ay, man; where would _he_ be off till? He's owre
often in his gig, I'm thinking." And then Kennedy and his affairs will
last them till bedtime.

Thus the appearance of Gourlay's carts woke Barbie from its morning
lethargy. The smith came out in his leather apron, shoving back, as he
gazed, the grimy cap from his white-sweating brow; bowed old men stood
in front of their doorways, leaning with one hand on short, trembling
staffs, while the slaver slid unheeded along the cutties which the left
hand held to their toothless mouths; white-mutched grannies were keeking
past the jambs; an early urchin, standing wide-legged to stare, waved
his cap and shouted, "Hooray!"--and all because John Gourlay's carts
were setting off upon their morning rounds, a brave procession for a
single town! Gourlay, standing great-shouldered in the middle of the
road, took in every detail, devoured it grimly as a homage to his pride.
"Ha, ha, ye dogs!" said the soul within him. Past the pillar of the Red
Lion door he could see a white peep of the landlord's waistcoat--though
the rest of the mountainous man was hidden deep within his porch. (On
summer mornings the vast totality of the landlord was always inferential
to the town from the tiny white peep of him revealed.) Even fat Simpson
had waddled to the door to see the carts going past. It was fat
Simpson--might the Universe blast his adipose--who had once tried to
infringe Gourlay's monopoly as the sole carrier in Barbie. There had
been a rush to him at first, but Gourlay set his teeth and drove him off
the road, carrying stuff for nothing till Simpson had nothing to carry,
so that the local wit suggested "a wee parcel in a big cart" as a new
sign for his hotel. The twelve browns prancing past would be a pill to
Simpson! There was no smile about Gourlay's mouth--a fiercer glower was
the only sign of his pride--but it put a bloom on his morning, he felt,
to see the suggestive round of Simpson's waistcoat, down yonder at the
porch. Simpson, the swine! He had made short work o' _him_!

Ere the last of the carts had issued from the yard at the House with the
Green Shutters the foremost was already near the Red Lion. Gourlay swore
beneath his breath when Miss Toddle--described in the local records as
"a spinster of independent means"--came fluttering out with a silly
little parcel to accost one of the carriers. Did the auld fool mean to
stop Andy Gow about _her_ petty affairs, and thus break the line of
carts on the only morning they had ever been able to go down the brae
together? But no. Andy tossed her parcel carelessly up among his other
packages, and left her bawling instructions from the gutter, with a
portentous shaking of her corkscrew curls. Gourlay's men took their cue
from their master, and were contemptuous of Barbie, most unchivalrous
scorners of its old maids.

Gourlay was pleased with Andy for snubbing Sandy Toddle's sister. When
he and Elshie Hogg reached the Cross they would have to break off from
the rest to complete their loads; but they had been down Main Street
over night as usual picking up their commissions, and until they reached
the Bend o' the Brae it was unlikely that any business should arrest
them now. Gourlay hoped that it might be so; and he had his desire, for,
with the exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went
slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly
down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses
were unable to go fast--being forced to stell themselves back against
the heavy propulsion of the carts behind; and thus the procession
endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it
disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared
too; the event of the day had passed, and vacancy resumed her reign. The
street and the Square lay empty to the morning sun. Gourlay alone stood
idly at his gate, lapped in his own satisfaction.

It had been a big morning, he felt. It was the first time for many a
year that all his men, quarrymen and carriers, carters of cheese and
carters of grain, had led their teams down the brae together in the full
view of his rivals. "I hope they liked it!" he thought, and he nodded
several times at the town beneath his feet, with a slow up-and-down
motion of the head, like a man nodding grimly to his beaten enemy. It
was as if he said, "See what I have done to ye!"




CHAPTER II.


Only a man of Gourlay's brute force of character could have kept all the
carrying trade of Barbie in his own hands. Even in these days of
railways, nearly every parish has a pair of carriers at the least,
journeying once or twice a week to the nearest town. In the days when
Gourlay was the great man of Barbie, railways were only beginning to
thrust themselves among the quiet hills, and the bulk of inland commerce
was still being drawn by horses along the country roads. Yet Gourlay was
the only carrier in the town. The wonder is diminished when we remember
that it had been a decaying burgh for thirty years, and that its trade,
at the best of times, was of meagre volume. Even so, it was astonishing
that he should be the only carrier. If you asked the natives how he did
it, "Ou," they said, "he makes the one hand wash the other, doan't ye
know?"--meaning thereby that he had so many horses travelling on his own
business, that he could afford to carry other people's goods at rates
that must cripple his rivals.

"But that's very stupid, surely," said a visitor once, who thought of
entering into competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face!
Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries
stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the
roads? It's a daft-like thing to do!"

"To be sure is't, to be sure is't! Just the stupeedity o' spite! Oh,
there are times when Gourlay makes little or noathing from the carrying;
but then, ye see, it gies him a fine chance to annoy folk! If you ask
him to bring ye ocht, 'Oh,' he growls, 'I'll see if it suits my own
convenience.' And ye have to be content. He has made so much money of
late that the pride of him's not to be endured."

It was not the insolence of sudden wealth, however, that made Gourlay
haughty to his neighbours; it was a repressiveness natural to the man
and a fierce contempt of their scoffing envy. But it was true that he
had made large sums of money during recent years. From his father (who
had risen in the world) he inherited a fine trade in cheese; also the
carrying to Skeighan on the one side and Fleckie on the other. When he
married Miss Richmond of Tenshillingland, he started as a corn broker
with the snug dowry that she brought him. Then, greatly to his own
benefit, he succeeded in establishing a valuable connection with
Templandmuir.

It was partly by sheer impact of character that Gourlay obtained his
ascendency over hearty and careless Templandmuir, and partly by a bluff
joviality which he--so little cunning in other things--knew to affect
among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with
Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed"
his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?"
and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate production of the
big decanter.

More than ten years ago now Templandmuir gave this fine, dour upstanding
friend of his a twelve-year tack of the Red Quarry, and that was the
making of Gourlay. The quarry yielded the best building stone in a
circuit of thirty miles, easy to work and hard against wind and weather.
When the main line went north through Skeighan and Poltandie, there was
a great deal of building on the far side, and Gourlay simply coined the
money. He could not have exhausted the quarry had he tried--he would
have had to howk down a hill--but he took thousands of loads from it for
the Skeighan folk; and the commission he paid the laird on each was
ridiculously small. He built wooden stables out on Templandmuir's
estate--the Templar had seven hundred acres of hill land--and it was
there the quarry horses generally stood. It was only rarely--once in two
years, perhaps--that they came into the House with the Green Shutters.
Last Saturday they had brought several loads of stuff for Gourlay's own
use, and that is why they were present at the great procession on the
Monday following.

It was their feeling that Gourlay's success was out of all proportion to
his merits that made other great-men-in-a-small-way so bitter against
him. They were an able lot, and scarce one but possessed fifty times his
weight of brain. Yet he had the big way of doing, though most of them
were well enough to pass. Had they not been aware of his stupidity, they
would never have minded his triumphs in the countryside; but they felt
it with a sense of personal defeat that he--the donkey, as they thought
him--should scoop every chance that was going, and leave them, the
long-headed ones, still muddling in their old concerns. They consoled
themselves with sneers, he retorted with brutal scorn, and the feud kept
increasing between them.

They were standing at the Cross, to enjoy their Saturday at e'en, when
Gourlay's "quarriers"--as the quarry horses had been named--came through
the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets,
washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping
at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up,
their heads tossing to the hill. The big-men-in-a-small-way glowered and
said nothing.

"I wouldn't mind," said Sandy Toddle at last--"I wouldn't mind if he
weren't such a demned ess!"

"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked,
pretending not to understand.

"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.

"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But
there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned
ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"

When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he
was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the
passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.

"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech,
large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's
extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man--for gumption he has noan, noan
whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go
down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the
thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."

"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump
at the new way of doing."

"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar
than that--he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. _I_'m talling ye.
He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who
approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his
stupeedity."

"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and
Gourlay at the same time.

"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character,"
said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of
abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of
no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he
died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has
no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's----"

"The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.




CHAPTER III.


With the sudden start of a man roused from a daydream Gourlay turned
from the green gate and entered the yard. Jock Gilmour, the "orra" man,
was washing down the legs of a horse beside the trough. It was Gourlay's
own cob, which he used for driving round the countryside. It was a
black--Gourlay "made a point" of driving with a black. "The brown for
sturdiness, the black for speed," he would say, making a maxim of his
whim to give it the sanction of a higher law.

Gilmour was in a wild temper because he had been forced to get up at
five o'clock in order to turn several hundred cheeses, to prevent them
bulging out of shape owing to the heat, and so becoming cracked and
spoiled. He did not raise his head at his master's approach. And his
head being bent, the eye was attracted to a patent leather collar which
he wore, glazed with black and red stripes. It is a collar much affected
by ploughmen, because a dip in the horse-trough once a month suffices
for its washing. Between the striped collar and his hair (as he stooped)
the sunburnt redness of his neck struck the eye vividly--the cropped
fair hairs on it showing whitish on the red skin.

The horse quivered as the cold water swashed about its legs, and turned
playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up
beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its
head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off
hind leg was still unwashed.

"Has the horse but the three legs?" said Gourlay suavely.

Gilmour brought the horse back to the trough, muttering sullenly.

"Were ye saying anything?" said Gourlay. "_Eih?_"

Gilmour sulked out and said nothing; and his master smiled grimly at the
sudden redness that swelled his neck and ears to the verge of bursting.

A boy, standing in his shirt and trousers at an open window of the house
above, had looked down at the scene with craning interest--big-eyed. He
had been alive to every turn and phase of it--the horse's quiver of
delight and fear, his skittishness, the groom's ill-temper, and
Gourlay's grinding will. Eh, but his father was a caution! How easy he
had downed Jock Gilmour! The boy was afraid of his father himself, but
he liked to see him send other folk to the right about. For he was John
Gourlay, too. Hokey, but his father could down them!

Mr. Gourlay passed on to the inner yard, which was close to the scullery
door. The paved little court, within its high wooden walls, was
curiously fresh and clean. A cock-pigeon strutted round, puffing his
gleaming breast and _rooketty-cooing_ in the sun. Large, clear drops
fell slowly from the spout of a wooden pump, and splashed upon a flat
stone. The place seemed to enfold the stillness. There was a sense of
inclusion and peace.

There is a distinct pleasure to the eye in a quiet brick court where
everything is fresh and prim; in sunny weather you can lounge in a room
and watch it through an open door, in a kind of lazy dream. The boy,
standing at the window above to let the fresh air blow round his neck,
was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon
swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the
great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure
in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was round him too, but it
was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was
delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most
substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though it was,
was quite vague and inarticulate. If you had asked Gourlay what he was
thinking of he could not have told you, even if he had been willing to
answer you civilly--which is most unlikely. Yet his whole being,
physical and mental (physical, indeed, rather than mental), was
surcharged with the feeling that the fine buildings around him were his,
that he had won them by his own effort, and built them large and
significant before the world. He was lapped in the thought of it.

All men are suffused with that quiet pride in looking at the houses and
lands which they have won by their endeavours--in looking at the houses
more than at the lands, for the house which a man has built seems to
express his character and stand for him before the world, as a sign of
his success. It is more personal than cold acres, stamped with an
individuality. All men know that soothing pride in the contemplation of
their own property. But in Gourlay's sense of property there was another
element--an element peculiar to itself, which endowed it with its
warmest glow. Conscious always that he was at a disadvantage among his
cleverer neighbours, who could achieve a civic eminence denied to him,
he felt nevertheless that there was one means, a material means, by
which he could hold his own and reassert himself--by the bravery of his
business, namely, and all the appointments thereof, among which his
dwelling was the chief. That was why he had spent so much money on the
house. That was why he had such keen delight in surveying it. Every time
he looked at the place he had a sense of triumph over what he knew in
his bones to be an adverse public opinion. There was anger in his
pleasure, and the pleasure that is mixed with anger often gives the
keenest thrill. It is the delight of triumph in spite of opposition.
Gourlay's house was a material expression of that delight, stood for it
in stone and lime.

It was not that he reasoned deliberately when he built the house. But
every improvement that he made--and he was always spending money on
improvements--had for its secret motive a more or less vague desire to
score off his rivals. "_That_'ll be a slap in the face to the Provost!"
he smiled, when he planted his great mound of shrubs. "There's noathing
like _that_ about the Provost's! Ha, ha!"

Encased as he was in his hard and insensitive nature, he was not the man
who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But
he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen--oh yes,
he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab,
and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the
Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and
Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if
they should manage his!)--he, for his part, preferred the substantial
reality. He could never aspire to the provostship, but a man with a
house like that, he was fain to think, could afford to do without it. Oh
yes; he was of opinion he could do without it! It had run him short of
cash to build the place so big and braw, but, Lord! it was worth it.
There wasn't a man in the town who had such accommodation!

And so, gradually, his dwelling had come to be a passion of Gourlay's
life. It was a by-word in the place that if ever his ghost was seen, it
would be haunting the House with the Green Shutters. Deacon Allardyce,
trying to make a phrase with him, once quoted the saying in his
presence. "Likely enough!" said Gourlay. "It's only reasonable I should
prefer my own house to you rabble in the graveyard!"

Both in appearance and position the house was a worthy counterpart of
its owner. It was a substantial two-story dwelling, planted firm and
gawcey on a little natural terrace that projected a considerable
distance into the Square. At the foot of the steep little bank shelving
to the terrace ran a stone wall, of no great height, and the iron
railings it uplifted were no higher than the sward within. Thus the
whole house was bare to the view from the ground up, nothing in front to
screen its admirable qualities. From each corner, behind, flanking walls
went out to the right and left, and hid the yard and the granaries. In
front of these walls the dwelling seemed to thrust itself out for
notice. It took the eye of a stranger the moment he entered the Square.
"Whose place is that?" was his natural question. A house that challenges
regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its
aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its
infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like
house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts
its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a
place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its
commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay
himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did.

And its position, "cockit up there on the brae," made it the theme of
constant remark--to men because of the tyrant who owned it, and to women
because of the poor woman who mismanaged its affairs. "'Deed, I don't
wonder that gurly Gourlay, as they ca' him, has an ill temper," said the
gossips gathered at the pump, with their big, bare arms akimbo;
"whatever led him to marry that dishclout of a woman clean beats _me_! I
never could make head nor tail o't!" As for the men, they twisted every
item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment.
"What's the news?" asked one, returning from a long absence; to whom
the smith, after smoking in silence for five minutes, said, "Gourlay has
got new rones!" "Ha--ay, man, Gourlay has got new rones!" buzzed the
visitor; and then their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each
other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between
them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every
tongue--and with a scoff in the voice, if possible.




CHAPTER IV.


Gourlay went swiftly to the kitchen from the inner yard. He had stood so
long in silence on the step, and his coming was so noiseless, that he
surprised a long, thin trollop of a woman, with a long, thin, scraggy
neck, seated by the slatternly table, and busy with a frowsy
paper-covered volume, over which her head was bent in intent perusal.

"At your novelles?" said he. "Ay, woman; will it be a good story?"

She rose in a nervous flutter when she saw him; yet needlessly shrill in
her defence, because she was angry at detection.

"Ah, well!" she cried, in weary petulance, "it's an unco thing if a
body's not to have a moment's rest after such a morning's darg! I just
sat down wi' the book for a little, till John should come till his
breakfast!"

"So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of
_him_. _He_'ll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that
_you_ should neglect your work till _he_ consents to rise."

"Eh, the puir la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous,
maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and
the schooling's owre sore on him."

"Poor lamb, atweel," said Gourlay. "It was a muckle sheep that dropped
him."

It was Gourlay's pride in his house that made him harsher to his wife
than others, since her sluttishness was a constant offence to the order
in which he loved to have his dear possessions. He, for his part, liked
everything precise. His claw-toed hammer always hung by the head on a
couple of nails close together near the big clock; his gun always lay
across a pair of wooden pegs, projecting from the brown rafters, just
above the hearth. His bigotry in trifles expressed his character. Strong
men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately
defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else
to get a repute for. "No, no," said Gourlay; "you'll never see a brown
cob in _my_ gig--I wouldn't take one in a present!" He was full of such
fads, and nothing should persuade him to alter the crotchets, which, for
want of something better, he made the marks of his dour character. He
had worked them up as part of his personality, and his pride of
personality was such that he would never consent to change them. Hence
the burly and gurly man was prim as an old maid with regard to his
belongings. Yet his wife was continually infringing the order on which
he set his heart. If he went forward to the big clock to look for his
hammer, it was sure to be gone--the two bright nails staring at him
vacantly. "Oh," she would say, in weary complaint, "I just took it to
break a wheen coals;" and he would find it in the coal-hole, greasy and
grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so
smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of
these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething
rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of
his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and
span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House
with the Green Shutters--that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes
on the poor trollop, the fresh perception of her incompetence which the
sudden sight of her flashed, as she trailed aimlessly about, seemed to
fatten his rage and give a coarser birr to his tongue.

Mrs. Gourlay had only four people to look after--her husband, her two
children, and Jock Gilmour, the orra man. And the wife of Drucken
Wabster--who had to go charing because she was the wife of Drucken
Wabster--came in every day, and all day long, to help her with the work.
Yet the house was always in confusion. Mrs. Gourlay had asked for
another servant, but Gourlay would not allow that; "one's enough," said
he, and what he once laid down he never went back on. Mrs. Gourlay had
to muddle along as best she could, and having no strength either of mind
or body, she let things drift, and took refuge in reading silly fiction.

As Gourlay shoved his feet into his boots, and stamped to make them
easy, he glowered at the kitchen from under his heavy brows with a huge
disgust. The table was littered with unwashed dishes, and on the corner
of it next him was a great black sloppy ring, showing where a wet
saucepan had been laid upon the bare board. The sun streamed through the
window in yellow heat right on to a pat of melting butter. There was a
basin of dirty water beneath the table, with the dishcloth slopping over
on the ground.

"It's a tidy house!" said he.

"Ach, well," she cried, "you and your kitchen-range! It was that that
did it! The masons could have redd out the fireplace to make room for't
in the afternoon before it comes hame. They could have done't brawly,
but ye wouldna hear o't--oh no; ye bude to have the whole place gutted
out yestreen. I had to boil everything on the parlour fire this morning;
no wonder I'm a little tousy!"

The old-fashioned kitchen grate had been removed and the jambs had been
widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A
little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the
square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime
in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased the
discomfort of the kitchen.

"Oh, that's it!" said Gourlay. "I see! It was want of the fireplace that
kept ye from washing the dishes that we used yestreen. That was
terrible! However, ye'll have plenty of boiling water when I put in the
grand new range for ye; there winna be its equal in the parish! We'll
maybe have a clean house _than_."

Mrs. Gourlay leaned, with the outspread thumb and red raw knuckles of
her right hand, on the sloppy table, and gazed away through the back
window of the kitchen in a kind of mournful vacancy. Always when her
first complaining defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue,
her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by
drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary
contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and
wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to
meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence.
She scarcely heard them.

Her head hung a little to one side as if too heavy for her wilting neck.
Her hair, of a dry, red brown, curved low on either side of her brow, in
a thick, untidy mass, to her almost transparent ears. As she gazed in
weary and dreary absorption her lips had fallen heavy and relaxed, in
unison with her mood; and through her open mouth her breathing was
quick, and short, and noiseless. She wore no stays, and her slack cotton
blouse showed the flatness of her bosom, and the faint outlines of her
withered and pendulous breasts hanging low within.

There was something tragic in her pose, as she stood, sad and
abstracted, by the dirty table. She was scraggy helplessness, staring
in sorrowful vacancy. But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven,
even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the
Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her
feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady
and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with
crude, brief irony.

Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong
character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked
the brute in him. He was so dull--only dull is hardly the word for a man
of his smouldering fire--he was so dour of wit that he could never hope
to distinguish himself by anything in the shape of cleverness. Yet so
resolute a man must make the strong personality of which he was proud
tell in some way. How, then, should he assert his superiority and hold
his own? Only by affecting a brutal scorn of everything said and done
unless it was said and done by John Gourlay. His lack of understanding
made his affectation of contempt the easier. A man can never sneer at a
thing which he really understands. Gourlay, understanding nothing, was
able to sneer at everything. "Hah! I don't understand that; it's damned
nonsense!"--that was his attitude to life. If "that" had been an
utterance of Shakespeare or Napoleon it would have made no difference to
John Gourlay. It would have been damned nonsense just the same. And he
would have told them so, if he had met them.

The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life to maintain himself at
the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a
bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is
rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto
voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me,
dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?"
"Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"--these be
words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice
had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he
despised or disliked without "the birr." Not that he was voluble of
speech; he wasn't clever enough for lengthy abuse. He said little and
his voice was low, but every word from the hard, clean lips was a stab.
And often his silence was more withering than any utterance. It struck
life like a black frost.

In those early days, to be sure, Gourlay had less occasion for the use
of his crude but potent irony, since the sense of his material
well-being warmed him and made him less bitter to the world. To the
substantial farmers and petty squires around he was civil, even hearty,
in his manner--unless they offended him. For they belonged to the close
corporation of "bien men," and his familiarity with them was a proof to
the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him
already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate
foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town--and for his wife, who
was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long
that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay,
where have _you_ been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she
answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The
Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your
Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might
be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered,
"It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your
auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."

"Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had
them laced.

"Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window.
"Wha-at?"

"Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."

"I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him
wearily.

"No doubt ye had to send _her_," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye
couldna send _him_--eh?"

"Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang.
Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her
to run for a drop milk?"

"Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her
brother should still be abed--oh, it's right that he should get the
privilege--seeing he's the eldest!"

Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened[1] on her boy." In
spite of her slack grasp on life--perhaps, because of it--she clung with
a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a
thowless[2] thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And
Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be
hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he
adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son--which became
permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was
his own favourite--perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect
her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a
pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost
to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and
saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though
he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter. He took
her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to
buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when
she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man
mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at the dirty kitchen
table, and then marching off to the hutch, with the ridiculous dish in
his hand, to feed his daughter's pets.

       *       *       *       *       *

A sudden yell of pain and alarm rang through the kitchen. It came from
the outer yard.

When the boy, peering from the window above, saw his father disappear
through the scullery door, he stole out. The coast was clear at last.

He passed through to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water
on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone
besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in
front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and
knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of
silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the
feeling: "_My_ father is _your_ master, and ye daurna stand up till
him." Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards
dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.

Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's
quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood
there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his
father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's
pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate
malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we
fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't.

John, with his hands in his pockets, strutted across the yard, still
watching Gilmour with that silent, offensive look. He came into the
path of the whalebone. "Get out, you smeowt!" cried Gilmour, and with a
vicious shove of the brush he sent a shower of dirty drops spattering
about the boy's bare legs.

"Hallo you! what are ye after?" bawled the boy. "Don't you try that on
again, I'm telling ye. What are _you_, onyway? Ye're just a servant.
Hay-ay-ay, my man, my faither's the boy for ye. _He_ can put ye in your
place."

Gilmour made to go at him with the head of the whalebone besom. John
stooped and picked up the wet lump of cloth with which Gilmour had been
washing down the horse's legs.

"Would ye?" said Gilmour threateningly.

"Would I no?" said John, the wet lump poised for throwing, level with
his shoulder.

But he did not throw it for all his defiant air. He hesitated. He would
have liked to slash it into Gilmour's face, but a swift vision of what
would happen if he did withheld his craving arm. His irresolution was
patent in his face; in his eyes there were both a threat and a watchful
fear. He kept the dirty cloth poised in mid-air.

"Drap the clout," said Gilmour.

"I'll no," said John.

Gilmour turned sideways and whizzed the head of the besom round so that
its dirty spray rained in the boy's face and eyes. John let him have the
wet lump slash in his mouth. Gilmour dropped the besom and hit him a
sounding thwack on the ear. John hullabalooed. Murther and desperation!

Ere he had gathered breath for a second roar his mother was present in
the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed
her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized
the weary trollop of the kitchen.

"What's the matter, Johnny dear?" she cried, with a fierce glance at
Gilmour.

"Gilmour hut me!" he bellowed angrily.

"Ye muckle lump!" she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck
standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump--to strike a
defenceless wean!--Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle
ye.--Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But
I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie _you_ the order to
travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about _my_
hoose to ill-use _my_ bairn."

She stopped, panting angrily for breath, and glared at her darling's
enemy.

"_Your_ servant!" cried Gilmour in contempt. "Ye're a nice-looking
object to talk about servants." He pointed at her slovenly dress and
burst into a blatant laugh: "Huh, huh, huh!"

Mr. Gourlay had followed more slowly from the kitchen, as befitted a man
of his superior character. He heard the row well enough, but considered
it beneath him to hasten to a petty squabble.

"What's this?" he demanded with a widening look. Gilmour scowled at the
ground.

"This!" shrilled Mrs. Gourlay, who had recovered her breath
again--"this! Look at him there, the muckle slabber," and she pointed to
Gilmour, who was standing with a red-lowering, downcast face, "look at
him! A man of that size to even himsell to a wean!"

"He deserved a' he got," said Gilmour sullenly. "His mother spoils him,
at ony rate. And I'm damned if the best Gourlay that ever dirtied
leather's gaun to trample owre _me_."

Gourlay jumped round with a quick start of the whole body. For a full
minute he held Gilmour in the middle of his steady glower.

"Walk," he said, pointing to the gate.

"Oh, I'll walk," bawled Gilmour, screaming now that anger gave him
courage. "Gie me time to get _my_ kist, and I'll walk mighty quick. And
damned glad I'll be to get redd o' you and your hoose. The Hoose wi' the
Green Shutters," he laughed, "hi, hi, hi!--the Hoose wi' the Green
Shutters!"

Gourlay went slowly up to him, opening his eyes on him black and wide.
"You swine!" he said, with quiet vehemence; "for damned little I would
kill ye wi' a glower!"

Gilmour shrank from the blaze in his eyes.

"Oh, dinna be fee-ee-ared," said Gourlay quietly, "dinna be fee-ee-ared.
I wouldn't dirty my hand on 'ee! But get your bit kist, and I'll see ye
off the premises. Suspeecious characters are worth the watching."

"Suspeecious!" stuttered Gilmour, "suspeecious! Wh-wh-whan was I ever
suspeecious? I'll have the law of ye for that. I'll make ye answer for
your wor-rds."

"Imphm!" said Gourlay. "In the meantime, look slippy wi' that bit box o'
yours. I don't like daft folk about _my_ hoose."

"There'll be dafter folk as me in your hoose yet," spluttered Gilmour
angrily, as he turned away.

He went up to the garret where he slept and brought down his trunk. As
he passed through the scullery, bowed beneath the clumsy burden on his
left shoulder, John, recovered from his sobbing, mocked at him.

"Hay-ay-ay," he said, in throaty derision, "my faither's the boy for ye.
Yon was the way to put ye down!"

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Browdened._ A Scot devoted to his children is said to be "browdened
on his bairns."

[2] _Thowless_, weak, useless.




CHAPTER V.


In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as "the
bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will
be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does--he's juist a bodie!"
The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year
from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he
may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief
occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the
discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld
residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of pedigrees. He can
tell you exactly, for instance, how it is that young Pin-oe's taking
geyly to the dram; for his grandfather, it seems, was a terrible man for
the drink--ou, just terrible. Why, he went to bed with a full jar of
whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye
see, that's the reason o't.

The genus "bodie" is divided into two species--the "harmless bodies" and
the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second
variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough
fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay
spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure,
was not an impartial witness.

The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they
forgathered every day to pass judgment on the town's affairs. And,
indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it
was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to
which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing
at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left
and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets
that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street,
and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters,
the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a
fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned
to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never
be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing
speculation which often lasted half an hour.

It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the
yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their
morning dram.

"Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.

When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you
felt sure it was going to be good.

"Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam,
casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft,
white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds,
it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."

Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to
himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in
accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always
grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he
had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.

"Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be
cheap"--and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr.
Wylie.

Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.

"We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll
be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so
plentiful."

"Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the
three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune,
and Barbie dances till't."

That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a
clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave,
knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the
Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off
about the hay.

"Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the
baker.

"Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past
the Cross! Where'll _he_ be off till at this hour of the day? He's not
often up so soon."

"They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.

"H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man,
whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid
the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying
in _him_. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."

T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather
Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a
staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.

"What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's
big shoulder to get a look.

"He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to
_her_?"

"She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's
speiring him for bawbees."

"Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"

"Or the Fechars?"

"He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe
for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."

"Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly
gowk."

"A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur
than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:--


     'The Muse nae poet ever fand her,
     Till by himsel' he learned to wander,
     Adown some trottin' burn's meander,
           And no thick lang;
     Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder
           A heartfelt sang.'"


Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfortable. "Ay," he
said dryly in his throat; "verra good, baker, verra good!--Who's yellow
doag's that? I never saw the beast about the town before!"

"Nor me either. It's a perfect stranger!"

"It's like a herd's doag!"

"Man, you're right! That's just what it will be. The morn's Fleckie lamb
fair, and some herd or other'll be in about the town."

"He'll be drinking in some public-house, I'se warrant, and the doag will
have lost him."

"Imph, that'll be the way o't."

"I'm demned if he hasn't taken the Skeighan Road!" said Sandy Toddle,
who had kept his eye on the minister. Toddle's accent was a varying
quality. When he remembered he had been a packman in England it was
exceedingly fine. But he often forgot.

"The Skeighan Road! the Skeighan Road! Who'll he be going to see in that
airt? Will it be Templandmuir?"

"Gosh, it canna be Templandmuir; he was there no later than yestreen!"

"Here's a man coming down the brae!" announced Johnny Coe, in a solemn
voice, as if a man "coming down the brae" was something unusual. In a
moment every head was turned to the hill.

"What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.

"It looks like a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of
eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his
profoundest cogitations to the "boax."

"It _is_ a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."

"Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"

At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his
spine, so that his face was visible.

"Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll _he_ be
doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always
busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to
somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."

"I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than
usual in the animation of discovery--"I'll wager ye Gourlay has
quarrelled him and put him to the door!"

"Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay,
ay--faith ay--and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right,
Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news _this_
morning."

They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to
meet Gilmour coming down.

"Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.

"No wonder, sir," said Gilmour, with big-eyed solemnity, and set down
the chest; "it's no wonder, seeing that I'm carrying my a-all."

"Ay, man, John. How's that na?"

To be the centre of interest and the object of gracious condescension
was balm to the wounded feelings of Gilmour. Gourlay had lowered him,
but this reception restored him to his own good opinion. He was usually
called "Jock" (except by his mother, to whom, of course, he was "oor
Johnny"), but the best merchants in the town were addressing him as
"John." It was a great occasion. Gilmour expanded in gossip beneath its
influence benign.

He welcomed, too, this first and fine opportunity of venting his wrath
on the Gourlays.

"Oh, I just telled Gourlay what I thocht of him, and took the door ahint
me. I let him have it hot and hardy, I can tell ye. He'll no forget _me_
in a hurry"--Gilmour bawled angrily, and nodded his head significantly,
and glared fiercely, to show what good cause he had given Gourlay to
remember him--"he'll no forget _me_ for a month of Sundays."

"Ay, man, John, what did ye say till him?"

"Na, man, what did he say to you?"

"Wath he angry, Dyohn?"

"How did the thing begin?"

"Tell us, man, John."

"What was it a-all about, John?"

"Was Mrs. Gourlay there?"

Bewildered by this pelt of questions, Gilmour answered the last that hit
his ear. "There, ay; faith, she was there. It was her was the cause
o't."

"D'ye tell me that, John? Man, you surprise me. I would have thocht the
thowless trauchle[3] hadna the smeddum left to interfere."

"Oh, it was yon boy of hers. He's aye swaggerin' aboot, interferin' wi'
folk at their wark--he follows his faither's example in that, for as the
auld cock craws the young ane learns--and his mither's that daft aboot
him that ye daurna give a look! He came in my road when I was sweeping
out the close, and some o' the dirty jaups splashed about his shins. But
was I to blame for that?--ye maun walk wide o' a whalebone besom if ye
dinna want to be splashed. Afore I kenned where I was, he up wi' a dirty
washing-clout and slashed me in the face wi't! I hit him a thud in the
ear--as wha wadna? Out come his mither like a fury, skirling about _her_
hoose, and _her_ servants, and _her_ weans. 'Your servant!' says
I--'your servant! You're a nice-looking trollop to talk aboot servants,'
says I."

"Did ye really, John?"

"Man, that wath bauld o' ye."

"And what did _she_ say?"

"Oh, she just kept skirling! And then, to be sure, Gourlay must come out
and interfere! But I telled him to his face what I thocht of _him!_ 'The
best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather,' says I, ''s no gaun to make
dirt of me,' says I."

"Ay, man, Dyohn!" lisped Deacon Allardyce, with bright and eagerly
inquiring eyes. "And what did he thay to that na? _That_ wath a dig for
him! I'the warrant he wath angry."

"Angry? He foamed at the mouth! But I up and says to him, 'I have had
enough o' you,' says I, 'you and your Hoose wi' the Green Shutters,'
says I. 'You're no fit to have a decent servant,' says I. 'Pay _me my_
wages, and I'll be redd o' ye,' says I. And wi' that I flang my kist on
my shouther and slapped the gate ahint me."

"And _did_ he pay ye your wages?" Tam Wylie probed him slyly, with a
sideward glimmer in his eye.

"Ah, well, no--not exactly," said Gilmour, drawing in. "But I'll get
them right enough for a' that. He'll no get the better o' _me_." Having
grounded unpleasantly on the question of the wages, he thought it best
to be off ere the bloom was dashed from his importance, so he
shouldered his chest and went. The bodies watched him down the street.

"He's a lying brose, that," said the baker. "We a' ken what Gourlay is.
He would have flung Gilmour out by the scruff o' the neck if he had
daured to set his tongue against him!"

"Faith, that's so," said Tam Wylie and Johnny Coe together.

But the others were divided between their perception of the fact and
their wish to believe that Gourlay had received a thrust or two. At
other times they would have been the first to scoff at Gilmour's
swagger. Now their animus against Gourlay prompted them to back it up.

"Oh, I'm not so sure of tha-at, baker," cried the Provost, in the false,
loud voice of a man defending a position which he knows to be unsound;
"I'm no so sure of that at a-all. A-a-ah, mind ye," he drawled
persuasively, "he's a hardy fallow, that Gilmour. I've no doubt he gied
Gourlay a good dig or two. Let us howp they will do him good."

For many reasons intimate to the Scot's character, envious scandal is
rampant in petty towns such as Barbie. To go back to the beginning, the
Scot, as pundits will tell you, is an individualist. His religion alone
is enough to make him so; for it is a scheme of personal salvation
significantly described once by the Reverend Mr. Struthers of Barbie.
"At the Day of Judgment, my frehnds," said Mr. Struthers--"at the Day of
Judgment every herring must hang by his own tail!" Self-dependence was
never more luridly expressed. History, climate, social conditions, and
the national beverage have all combined (the pundits go on) to make the
Scot an individualist, fighting for his own hand. The better for him if
it be so; from that he gets the grit that tells.

From their individualism, however, comes inevitably a keen spirit of
competition (the more so because Scotch democracy gives fine chances to
compete), and from their keen spirit of competition comes, inevitably
again, an envious belittlement of rivals. If a man's success offends
your individuality, to say everything you can against him is a
recognized weapon of the fight. It takes him down a bit, and (inversely)
elevates his rival.

It is in a small place like Barbie that such malignity is most virulent,
because in a small place like Barbie every man knows everything to his
neighbour's detriment. He can redd up his rival's pedigree, for example,
and lower his pride (if need be) by detailing the disgraces of his kin.
"I have grand news the day!" a big-hearted Scot will exclaim (and when
their hearts are big they are big to hypertrophy)--"I have grand news
the day! Man, Jock Goudie has won the C.B."--"Jock Goudie"--an envious
bodie will pucker as if he had never heard the name--"Jock Goudie? Wha's
_he_ for a Goudie? Oh ay, let me see now. He's a brother o'--eh, a
brother o'--eh" (tit-tit-titting on his brow)--"oh, just a brother o'
Drucken Will Goudie o' Auchterwheeze! Oo-ooh, I ken _him_ fine. His
grannie keepit a sweetie-shop in Strathbungo." There you have the
"nesty" Scotsman.

Even if Gourlay had been a placable and inoffensive man, then, the
malignants of the petty burgh (it was scarce bigger than a village)
would have fastened on his character simply because he was above them.
No man has a keener eye for behaviour than the Scot (especially when
spite wings his intuition), and Gourlay's thickness of wit and pride of
place would in any case have drawn their sneers. So, too, on lower
grounds, would his wife's sluttishness. But his repressiveness added a
hundredfold to their hate of him. That was the particular cause which,
acting on their general tendency to belittle a too-successful rival,
made their spite almost monstrous against him. Not a man among them but
had felt the weight of his tongue--for edge it had none. He walked among
them like the dirt below his feet. There was no give and take in the
man; he could be verra jocose with the lairds, to be sure, but he never
dropped in to the Red Lion for a crack and a dram with the town-folk; he
just glowered as if he could devour them! And who was he, I should like
to know? His grandfather had been noathing but a common carrier!

Hate was the greater on both sides because it was often impotent.
Gourlay frequently suspected offence, and seethed because he had no idea
how to meet it--except by driving slowly down the brae in his new gig
and never letting on when the Provost called to him. That was a wipe in
the eye for the Provost! The "bodies," on their part, could rarely get
near enough Gourlay to pierce his armour; he kept them off him by his
brutal dourness. For it was not only pride and arrogance, but a
consciousness also that he was no match for them at their own game, that
kept Gourlay away from their society. They were adepts at the under
stroke, and they would have given him many a dig if he had only come
amongst them. But, oh no, not he; he was the big man; he never gave a
body a chance! Or if you did venture a bit jibe when you met him, he
glowered you off the face of the earth with thae black een of his. Oh,
how they longed to get at him! It was not the least of the evils caused
by Gourlay's black pride that it perverted a dozen characters. The
"bodies" of Barbie may have been decent enough men in their own way, but
against him their malevolence was monstrous. It showed itself in an
insane desire to seize on every scrap of gossip they might twist against
him. That was why the Provost lowered municipal dignity to gossip in the
street with a discharged servant. As the baker said afterwards, it was
absurd for a man in his "poseetion." But it was done with the sole
desire of hearing something that might tell against Gourlay. Even
countesses, we are told, gossip with malicious maids about other
countesses. Spite is a great leveller.

"Shall we adjourn?" said Brodie, when they had watched Jock Gilmour out
of sight. He pointed across his shoulder to the Red Lion.

"Better noat just now," said the Provost, nodding in slow
authority--"better noat just now! I'm very anxious to see Gourlay about
yon matter we were speaking of, doan't ye understa-and? But I'm
determined not to go to his house! On the other hand, if we go into the
Red Lion the now, we may miss him on the street. We'll noat have loang
to wait, though; he'll be down the town directly, to look at the horses
he has at the gerse out the Fechars Road. But _I'm_ talling ye, I simply
will noat go to his house--to put up with a wheen damned insults!" he
puffed in angry recollection.

"To tell the truth," said Wylie, "I don't like to call upon Gourlay
either. I'm aware of his eyes on my back when I slink beaten through his
gate, and I feel that my hurdies are wanting in dignity!"

"Huh!" spluttered Brodie, "that never affects me. I come stunting out in
a bleeze of wrath and slam the yett ahint me!"

"Oh, well," said the Deacon, "that'th one way of being dignified."

"I'm afraid," said Sandy Toddle, "that he won't be in a very good key to
consider our request this morning, after his quarrel with Gilmour."

"No," said the Provost; "he'll be blazing angry! It's most unfoartunate.
But we maun try to get his consent, be his temper what it will. It's a
matter of importance to the town, doan't ye see, and if he refuses we
simply can-noat proceed wi' the improvement."

"It was Gilmour's jibe at the House wi' the Green Shutters that would
anger him the most, for it's the perfect god of his idolatry. Eh, sirs,
he has wasted an awful money upon yon house!"

"Wasted's the word!" said Brodie, with a blatant laugh. "Wasted's the
word! They say he has verra little lying cash! And I shouldna be
surprised at all. For, ye see, Gibson the builder diddled him owre the
building o't."

"Oh, I'se warrant Cunning Johnny would get the better of an ass like
Gourlay. But how in particular, Mr. Brodie? Have ye heard ainy details?"

"I've been on the track o' the thing for a while back, but it was only
yestreen I had the proofs o't. It was Robin Wabster that telled me. He's
a jouking bodie, Robin, and he was ahint a dike up the Skeighan Road
when Gibson and Gourlay forgathered--they stoppit just forenenst him!
Gourlay began to curse at the size of Gibson's bill, but Cunning Johnny
kenned the way to get round him brawly. 'Mr. Gourlay,' says he, 'there's
not a thing in your house that a man in your poseetion can afford to be
without, and ye needn't expect the best house in Barbie for an oald
song!' And Gourlay was pacified at once! It appeared frae their crack,
however, that Gibson has diddled him tremendous. 'Verra well then,'
Robin heard Gourlay cry, 'you must allow me a while ere I pay that!' I
wager, for a' sae muckle as he's made of late, that his balance at the
bank's a sma' yin."

"More thyow than thubstanth," said the Deacon.

"Well, I'm sure!" said the Provost, "he needn't have built such a
gra-and house to put a slut of a wife like yon in!"

"I was surprised," said Sandy Toddle, "to hear about her firing up. I
wouldn't have thought she had the spirit, or that Gourlay would have
come to her support!"

"Oh," said the Provost, "it wasn't her he was thinking of! It was his
own pride, the brute. He leads the woman the life of a doag. I'm
surprised that he ever married her!"

"I ken fine how he married her," said Johnny Coe. "I was acquaint wi'
her faither, auld Tenshillingland owre at Fechars--a grand farmer he
was, wi' land o' his nain, and a gey pickle bawbees. It was the bawbees,
and not the woman, that Gourlay went after! It was _her_ money, as ye
ken, that set him on his feet, and made him such a big man. He never
cared a preen for _her_, and then when she proved a dirty trollop, he
couldna endure her look! That's what makes him so sore upon her now. And
yet I mind her a braw lass, too," said Johnny the sentimentalist, "a
braw lass she was," he mused, "wi' fine, brown glossy hair, I mind,
and--ochonee! ochonee!--as daft as a yett in a windy day. She had a
cousin, Jenny Wabster, that dwelt in Tenshillingland than, and mony a
summer nicht up the Fechars Road, when ye smelled the honeysuckle in the
gloaming, I have heard the two o' them tee-heeing owre the lads
thegither, skirling in the dark and lauching to themselves. They were of
the glaikit kind ye can always hear loang before ye see. Jock Allan
(that has done so well in Embro) was a herd at Tenshillingland than, and
he likit her, and I think she likit him; but Gourlay came wi' his gig
and whisked her away. She doesna lauch sae muckle now, puir bodie! But a
braw lass she----"

"It's you maun speak to Gourlay, Deacon," said the Provost, brushing
aside the reminiscent Coe.

"How can it be that, Provost? It'th _your_ place, surely. You're the
head of the town!"

When Gourlay was to be approached there was always a competition for who
should be hindmost.

"Yass, but you know perfectly well, Deacon, that I cannot thole the look
of him. I simply cannot thole the look. And he knows it too. The
thing'll gang smash at the outset--_I'm_ talling ye, now--it'll go
smash at the outset if it's left to me. And than, ye see, you have a
better way of approaching folk!"

"Ith that tho?" said the Deacon dryly. He shot a suspicious glance to
see if the Provost was guying him.

"Oh, it must be left to you, Deacon," said the baker and Tam Wylie in a
breath.

"Certainly, it maun be left to the Deacon," assented Johnny Coe, when he
saw how the others were giving their opinion.

"Tho be it, then," snapped the Deacon.

"Here he comes," said Sandy Toddle.

Gourlay came down the street towards them, his chest big, his thumbs in
the armholes of his waistcoat. He had the power of staring steadily at
those whom he approached without the slightest sign of recognition or
intelligence appearing in his eyes. As he marched down upon the bodies
he fixed them with a wide-open glower that was devoid of every
expression but courageous steadiness. It gave a kind of fierce vacancy
to his look.

The Deacon limped forward on his thin shanks to the middle of the road.

"It'th a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," he simpered.

"There's noathing wrong with the morning," grunted Gourlay, as if there
was something wrong with the Deacon.

"We wath wanting to thee ye on a very important matter, Mithter
Gourlay," lisped the Deacon, smiling up at the big man's face, with his
head on one side, and rubbing his fingers in front of him. "It'th a
matter of the common good, you thee; and we all agreed that we should
speak to _you_, ath the foremost merchant of the town!"

Allardyce meant his compliment to fetch Gourlay. But Gourlay knew his
Allardyce, and was cautious. It was well to be on your guard when the
Deacon was complimentary. When his language was most flowery there was
sure to be a serpent hidden in it somewhere. He would lisp out an
innocent remark and toddle away, and Gourlay would think nothing of the
matter till a week afterwards, perhaps, when something would flash a
light; then "Damn him, did he mean '_that_'?" he would seethe, starting
back and staring at the "_that_" while his fingers strangled the air in
place of the Deacon.

He glowered at the Deacon now till the Deacon blinked.

"You thee, Mr. Gourlay," Allardyce shuffled uneasily, "it'th for your
own benefit just ath much ath ourth. We were thinking of you ath well
ath of ourthelves! Oh yeth, oh yeth!"

"Ay, man!" said Gourlay, "that was kind of ye! I'll be the first man in
Barbie to get ainy benefit from the fools that mismanage our affairs."

The gravel grated beneath the Provost's foot. The atmosphere was
becoming electric, and the Deacon hastened to the point.

"You thee, there'th a fine natural supply of water--a perfect reservore
the Provost sayth--on the brae-face just above _your_ garden, Mr.
Gourlay. Now, it would be easy to lead that water down and alang through
all the gardenth on the high side of Main Street--and, 'deed, it might
feed a pump at the Cross, too, to supply the lower portionth o' the
town. It would really be a grai-ait convenience. Every man on the high
side o' Main Street would have a running spout at his own back door! If
your garden didna run tho far back, Mr. Gourlay, and ye hadna tho muckle
land about your place"--_that_ should fetch him, thought the Deacon--"if
it werena for that, Mr. Gourlay, we could easily lead the water round to
the other gardenth without interfering with your property. But, ath it
ith, we simply can-noat move without ye. The water must come through
your garden, if it comes at a-all."

"The most o' you important men live on the high side o' Main Street,"
birred Gourlay. "Is it the poor folk at the Cross, or your ain bits o'
back doors that you're thinking o'?"

"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!" protested Allardyce, head flung back, and palms
in air, to keep the thought of self-interest away, "oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!
We're thinking of noathing but the common good, I do assure ye."

"Ay, man! You're dis-in-ter-ested!" said Gourlay, but he stumbled on the
big word and spoiled the sneer. That angered him, and, "It's likely," he
rapped out, "that I'll allow the land round _my_ house to be howked and
trenched and made a mudhole of to oblige a wheen things like you!"

"Oh--oh, but think of the convenience to uth--eh--eh--I mean to the
common good," said Allardyce.

"I howked wells for myself," snapped Gourlay. "Let others do the like."

"Oh, but we haven't all the enterprithe of you, Mr. Gourlay. You'll
surely accommodate the town!"

"I'll see the town damned first," said Gourlay, and passed on his steady
way.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] _Trauchle_, a poor trollop who trails about; _smeddum_, grit.




CHAPTER VI.


The bodies watched Gourlay in silence until he was out of earshot. Then,
"It's monstrous!" the Provost broke out in solemn anger; "I declare it's
perfectly monstrous! But I believe we could get Pow-ers to compel him.
Yass; I believe we could get Pow-ers. I do believe we could get
Pow-ers."

The Provost was fond of talking about "Pow-ers," because it implied that
he was intimate with the great authorities who might delegate such
"Pow-ers" to him. To talk of "Pow-ers," mysteriously, was a tribute to
his own importance. He rolled the word on his tongue as if he enjoyed
the sound of it.

On the Deacon's cheek bones two red spots flamed, round and big as a
Scotch penny. His was the hurt silence of the baffled diplomatist, to
whom a defeat means reflections on his own ability.

"Demn him!" he skirled, following the solid march of his enemy with
fiery eyes.

Never before had his deaconship been heard to swear. Tam Wylie laughed
at the shrill oath till his eyes were buried in his merry wrinkles, a
suppressed snirt, a continuous gurgle in the throat and nose, in beaming
survey the while of the withered old creature dancing in his rage. (It
was all a good joke to Tam, because, living on the outskirts of the
town, he had no spigot of his own to feed.) The Deacon turned the eyes
of hate on him. Demn Wylie too--what was he laughing at!

"Oh, I dare thay you could have got round him!" he snapped.

"In my opinion, Allardyce," said the baker, "you mismanaged the whole
affair. Yon wasna the way to approach him!"

"It'th a pity you didna try your hand, then, I'm sure! No doubt a clever
man like _you_ would have worked wonderth!"

So the bodies wrangled among themselves. Somehow or other Gourlay had
the knack of setting them by the ears. It was not till they hit on a
common topic of their spite in railing at him that they became a band of
brothers and a happy few.

"Whisht!" said Sandy Toddle suddenly; "here's his boy!"

John was coming towards them on his way to school. The bodies watched
him as he passed, with the fixed look men turn on a boy of whose kinsmen
they were talking even now. They affect a stony and deliberate regard,
partly to include the newcomer in their critical survey of his family,
and partly to banish from their own eyes any sign that they have just
been running down his people. John, as quick as his mother to feel, knew
in a moment they were watching _him_. He hung his head sheepishly and
blushed, and the moment he was past he broke into a nervous trot, the
bag of books bumping on his back as he ran.

"He's getting a big boy, that son of Gourlay's," said the Provost; "how
oald will he be?"

"He's approaching twelve," said Johnny Coe, who made a point of being
able to supply such news because it gained him consideration where he
was otherwise unheeded. "He was born the day the brig on the Fleckie
Road gaed down, in the year o' the great flood; and since the great
flood it's twelve year come Lammas. Rab Tosh o' Fleckie's wife was
heavy-footed at the time, and Doctor Munn had been a' nicht wi' her, and
when he cam to Barbie Water in the morning it was roaring wide frae
bank to brae; where the brig should have been there was naething but the
swashing of the yellow waves. Munn had to drive a' the way round to the
Fechars brig, and in parts o' the road the water was so deep that it
lapped his horse's bellyband. A' this time Mrs. Gourlay was skirling in
her pains and praying to God she micht dee. Gourlay had been a great
crony o' Munn's, but he quarrelled him for being late; he had trysted
him, ye see, for the occasion, and he had been twenty times at the yett
to look for him. Ye ken how little he would stomach that; he was ready
to brust wi' anger. Munn, mad for the want of sleep and wat to the bane,
swüre back at him; and than Gourlay wadna let him near his wife! Ye mind
what an awful day it was; the thunder roared as if the heavens were
tumbling on the world, and the lichtnin sent the trees daudin on the
roads, and folk hid below their beds and prayed--they thocht it was the
Judgment! But Gourlay rammed his black stepper in the shafts, and drave
like the devil o' hell to Skeighan Drone, where there was a young
doctor. The lad was feared to come, but Gourlay swore by God that he
should, and he garred him. In a' the countryside driving like his that
day was never kenned or heard tell o'; they were back within the hour! I
saw them gallop up Main Street; lichtnin struck the ground before them;
the young doctor covered his face wi' his hands, and the horse nichered
wi' fear and tried to wheel, but Gourlay stood up in the gig and lashed
him on through the fire. It was thocht for lang that Mrs. Gourlay would
die; and she was never the same woman after. Atweel, ay, sirs, Gourlay
has that morning's work to blame for the poor wife he has now. Him and
Munn never spoke to each other again, and Munn died within the
twelvemonth--he got his death that morning on the Fleckie Road. But, for
a' so pack's they had been, Gourlay never looked near him."

Coe had told his story with enjoying gusto, and had told it well--for
Johnny, though constantly snubbed by his fellows, was in many ways the
ablest of them all. His voice and manner drove it home. They knew,
besides, he was telling what himself had seen. For they knew he was
lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay
went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had
seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in
spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on
the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on
his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the
sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of
admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything.
And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact
of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller,
and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them,
was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but
he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by
bringing the conversation back to its usual channel.

"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.

"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was
Doctor Dandy brocht _her_ hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and
Dandy had his place."

"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A
doctor or a minister or wha-at?"

"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business!
It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre
again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans
speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"

"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the
Provost.

Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy
flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the
direction of their thoughts.

"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing
his chin.

"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.

"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.

And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.




CHAPTER VII.


John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous
trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him.
There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every
other day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a
most appropriate _rôle_. If his father was not about he would hang
round his mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old
"Bleach-the-boys"--as the master had been christened by his scholars.
"Mother, I have a pain in _my_ heid," he would whimper, and she would
condole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her--were
it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but
strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was
really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at
home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to
keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from
his father.

On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that
was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag
slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie
scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now--and the
Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And
he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on
his return, never failing to note with delight the clean smell of the
yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad
nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On
Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming
arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of
his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes,
attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was
his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was
so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with
the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay
himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his
comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.

As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for
Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The
absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt
forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would
have been much more at his ease.

Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and
John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack
of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment
he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell
became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart--to feel
it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the
joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of
odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a
misgiving without knowing why. It was years after, in Edinburgh, ere he
knew the reason; he found that he never went past an upholsterer's shop,
on a hot day in spring, without being conscious of a vague depression,
and feeling like a boy slinking into school.

In spite of his forebodings, nothing more untoward befell him that
morning than a cut over the cowering shoulders for being late, as he
crept to the bottom of his class. He reached "leave," the ten minutes'
run at twelve o'clock, without misadventure. Perhaps it was this
unwonted good fortune that made him boastful when he crouched near the
pump among his cronies, sitting on his hunkers with his back to the
wall. Half a dozen boys were about him, and Swipey Broon was in front,
making mud pellets in a trickle from the pump.

He began talking of the new range.

"Yah! Auld Gemmell needn't have let welp at me for being late this
morning," he spluttered big-eyed, nodding his head in aggrieved and
solemn protest. "It wasna _my_ faut! We're getting in a grand new range,
and the whole of the kitchen fireplace has been gutted out to make room
for't; and my mother couldna get my breakfast in time this morning,
because, ye see, she had to boil everything in the parlour--and here,
when she gaed ben the house, the parlour fire was out!

"It's to be a splendid range, the new one," he went on, with a conceited
jerk of the head. "Peter Riney's bringin'd from Skeighan in the
afternune. My father says there winna be its equal in the parish!"

The faces of the boys lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly
thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys,
they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only
grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee.
It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in
uncomfortable silence.

"We're aye getting new things up at our place," he went on. "I heard my
father telling Gibson the builder he must have everything of the best!
Mother says it'll all be mine some day. I'll have the fine times when I
leave the schule--and that winna be long now, for I'm clean sick o't;
I'll no bide a day longer than I need! I'm to go into the business, and
then I'll have the times. I'll dash about the country in a gig wi' two
dogs wallopping ahin'. I'll have the great life o't."

"Ph-tt!" said Swipey Broon, and planted a gob of mud right in the middle
of his brow.

"Hoh! hoh! hoh!" yelled the others. They hailed Swipey's action with
delight because, to their minds, it exactly met the case. It was the one
fit retort to his bouncing.

Beneath the wet plunk of the mud John started back, bumping his head
against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he
brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added to his wrath
against Swipey.

"What are you after?" he bawled. "Don't try your tricks on me, Swipey
Broon. Man, I could kill ye wi' a glower!"

In a twinkling Swipey's jacket was off, and he was dancing in his shirt
sleeves, inviting Gourlay to come on and try't.

"G'way, man," said John, his face as white as the wall; "g'way, man!
Don't have _me_ getting up to ye, or I'll knock the fleas out of your
duds!"

Now the father of Swipey--so called because he always swiped when
batting at rounders--the father of Swipey was the rag and bone merchant
of Barbie, and it was said (with what degree of truth I know not) that
his home was verminous in consequence. John's taunt was calculated,
therefore, to sting him to the quick.

The scion of the Broons, fired for the honour of his house, drove
straight at the mouth of the insulter. But John jouked to the side, and
Swipey skinned his knuckles on the wall.

For a moment he rocked to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "_Ooh!_"
with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull
its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him
at the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his
knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily
(from between Swipey's legs), "Let me up, see!"

Swipey let him up. John came at him with whirling arms, but Swipey
jouked and gave him one on the mouth that split his lip. In another
moment Gourlay was grovelling on his hands and knees, and triumphant
Swipey, astride his back, was bellowing "Hurroo!"--Swipey's father was
an Irishman.

"Let him up, Broon!" cried Peter Wylie--"let him up, and meet each other
square!"

"Oh, I'll let him up," cried Swipey, and leapt to his feet with
magnificent pride. He danced round Gourlay with his fists sawing the
air. "I could fight ten of him!--Come on, Gourlay!" he cried, "and I'll
poultice the road wi' your brose."

John rose, glaring. But when Swipey rushed he turned and fled. The boys
ran into the middle of the street, pointing after the coward and
shouting, "Yeh! yeh! yeh!" with the infinite cruel derision of boyhood.

"Yeh! yeh! yeh!" the cries of execration and contempt pursued him as he
ran.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ere he had gone a hundred yards he heard the shrill whistle with which
Mr. Gemmell summoned his scholars from their play.




CHAPTER VIII.


All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the
sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings
and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the
sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an
anvil.

John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed
unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar
look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their
silent faces.

A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it
a lonely smell, and ran to get away.

"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in
through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"

"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and
simple expression of his wish.

"What for, my sweet?"

"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."

His mother saw his cut mouth.

"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear?
Has ainybody been meddling ye?"

"It was Swipey Broon," he said.

"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when
decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on
them! But what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be!
It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"

In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair,
on which she sank exhausted by her rage.

"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the
fleas off him. The other boys were on _his_ side, or I would have
walloped him."

"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy,
Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's
not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step
intil."

"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"

"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If _he_ saw ye!"

"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."

She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
up. He could hear the pigeons _rooketty-cooing_ on the roof, and every
now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!

If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets
live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess--good
jade!--stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and
the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat
roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath
she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face
glaring from the pool.--Perhaps he was not so far from being the right
kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that _he_ liked. He
wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals
were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved
waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a
somewhat too florid sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through
a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the
beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze
slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid
gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment
they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them
and their love!" quoth he.

To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from
something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things
to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of
the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed,
or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves
vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was
hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his
mottled nose--John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw
the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The
varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs.
Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself--to all
these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the
impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he
was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that
was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate
it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge,
among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended
beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall
suddenly down, and creep patiently again--this he would watch with
curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once,
"what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"

"They're queer," he said musingly.

Even if he _was_ a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come
to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.

But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was
moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the
numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the
story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer
world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while
wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the
rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back
from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's
voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and
then--oh, horror!--his father came up the stair. Would he come into the
garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud
against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the
bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another
room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.

The heavy steps came back to the landing.

"Whaur's _my_ gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.

"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his
mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."

"_Hah!_" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he
should come in!

But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his
pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the
kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch
them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by
himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole
drearily; "_oo-woo-oo_," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague
depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the
fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had
never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red
clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white
paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it
a thin silt of black dust had gathered--the light showed it plainly. All
these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their
unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But
it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at
all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as
his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing
his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.

At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He
crept down the stair.

"_You_ were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in
accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."

"If ye wud----" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She
shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.

The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing
it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs.
Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a
faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the
grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the
men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy
range.

"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye
get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"

"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the
train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he
added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."

The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a
little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright,
sharp edges.

"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of
the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I
happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as
the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says
he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?'
says I. 'How do _you_ ken what _I_ want?' I made short work o' _him!_
The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."

Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a
poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in
Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.

The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's
an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man
wi't."

"Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."

The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to
the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking
up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John,
with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father
laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too
heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle.
Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that,"
he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet
stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim,
fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.

"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look
here! It's exactly the same size!"

"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie.
"You'll be killing folk next."




CHAPTER IX.


"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.

"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart,
to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."

"Have the carriers a big load?"

"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And
there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."

The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and
this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy
thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky
of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the
cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of
the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.

"You had better snoove away then," said Gourlay. "Donnerton's five mile
ayont Fleckie, and by the time you deliver the meal there, and load the
ironwork, it'll be late ere you get back. Snoove away, Peter; snoove
away!"

Peter shuffled uneasily, and his pale blue eyes blinked at Gourlay from
beneath their grizzled crow nests of red hair.

"Are we a' to start thegither, sir?" he hesitated. "D'ye mean--d'ye mean
the carriers too?"

"Atweel, Peter!" said Gourlay. "What for no?"

Peter took a great old watch, with a yellow case, from his fob, and,
"It wants a while o' aicht, sir," he volunteered.

"Ay, man, Peter, and what of that?" said Gourlay.

There was almost a twinkle in his eye. Peter Riney was the only human
being with whom he was ever really at his ease. It is only when a mind
feels secure in itself that it can laugh unconcernedly at others. Peter
was so simple that in his presence Gourlay felt secure; and he used to
banter him.

"The folk at the Cross winna expect the carriers till aicht, sir," said
Peter, "and I doubt their stuff won't be ready."

"Ay, man, Peter," Gourlay joked lazily, as if Peter was a little boy.
"Ay, man, Peter. You think the folk at the Cross winna be prepared?"

"No, sir," said Peter, opening his eyes very solemnly, "they winna be
prepared."

"It'll do them good to hurry a little for once," growled Gourlay, humour
yielding to spite at the thought of his enemies. "It'll do them good to
hurry a little for once. Be off, the lot of ye!"

After ordering his carriers to start, to back down and postpone their
departure, just to suit the convenience of his neighbours, would
derogate from his own importance. His men might think he was afraid of
Barbie.

He strolled out to the big gate and watched his teams going down the
brae.

There were only four carts this morning because the two that had gone to
Fechars yesterday with the cheese would not be back till the afternoon;
and another had already turned west to Auchterwheeze, to bring slates
for the flesher's new house. Of the four that went down the street two
were the usual carriers' carts, the other two were off to Fleckie with
meal, and Gourlay had started them the sooner since they were to bring
back the ironwork which Templandmuir needed for his new improvements.
Though the Templar had reformed greatly since he married his birkie
wife, he was still far from having his place in proper order, and he had
often to depend on Gourlay for the carrying of stuff which a man in his
position should have had horses of his own to bring.

As Gourlay stood at his gate he pondered with heavy cunning how much he
might charge Templandmuir for bringing the ironwork from Fleckie. He
decided to charge him for the whole day, though half of it would be
spent in taking his own meal to Donnerton. In that he was carrying out
his usual policy--which was to make each side of his business help the
other.

As he stood puzzling his wits over Templandmuir's account, his lips
worked in and out, to assist the slow process of his brain. His eyes
narrowed between peering lids, and their light seemed to turn inward as
he fixed them abstractedly on a stone in the middle of the road. His
head was tilted that he might keep his eyes upon the stone; and every
now and then, as he mused, he rubbed his chin slowly between the thumb
and fingers of his left hand. Entirely given up to the thought of
Templandmuir's account, he failed to see the figure advancing up the
street.

At last the scrunch of a boot on the wet road struck his ear. He turned
with his best glower on the man who was approaching; more of the
"Wha-the-bleezes-are-you?" look than ever in his eyes--because he had
been caught unawares.

The stranger wore a light yellow overcoat, and he had been walking a
long time in the rain apparently, for the shoulders of the coat were
quite black with the wet, these black patches showing in strong contrast
with the dryer, therefore yellower, front of it. Coat and jacket were
both hanging slightly open, and between was seen the slight bulge of a
dirty white waistcoat. The newcomer's trousers were turned high at the
bottom, and the muddy spats he wore looked big and ungainly in
consequence. In this appearance there was an air of dirty and
pretentious well-to-do-ness. It was not shabby gentility. It was like
the gross attempt at dress of your well-to-do publican who looks down on
his soiled white waistcoat with complacent and approving eye.

"It's a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," simpered the stranger. His air was
that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on
the weather with his laird.

Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.

"Is that _your_ opinion?" said he. "I fail to see't mysell."

It was not in Gourlay to see the beauty of that gray, wet dawn. A fine
morning to him was one that burnt the back of your neck.

The stranger laughed: a little deprecating giggle. "I meant it was fine
weather for the fields," he explained. He had meant nothing of the kind,
of course; he had merely been talking at random in his wish to be civil
to that important man, John Gourlay.

"Imphm," he pondered, looking round on the weather with a wise air;
"imphm; it's fine weather for the fields."

"Are _you_ a farmer, then?" Gourlay nipped him, with his eye on the
white waistcoat.

"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi--hi! I'm not a farmer. I dare
say, now, you have no mind of _me_?"

"No," said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his
dark eyes. "I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering
_you_."

"Man, I'm a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee."

"Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!" said contemptuous Gourlay. "What's
this they christened him now? 'Toddling Johnnie,' was it noat?"

Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the awkwardness of the
remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the
insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed
aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure
might provoke.

But though Wilson was not a hardy man, it was not timidity only that
caused his tame submission to Gourlay.

He had come back after an absence of fifteen years, with a good deal of
money in his pocket, and he had a fond desire that he, the son of the
mole-catcher, should get some recognition of his prosperity from the
most important man in the locality. If Gourlay had said, with solemn and
fat-lipped approval, "Man, I'm glad to see that you have done so well,"
he would have swelled with gratified pride. For it is often the
favourable estimate of their own little village--"What they'll think of
me at home"--that matters most to Scotsmen who go out to make their way
in the world. No doubt that is why so many of them go home and cut a
dash when they have made their fortunes; they want the cronies of their
youth to see the big men they have become. Wilson was not exempt from
that weakness. As far back as he remembered Gourlay had been the big man
of Barbie; as a boy he had viewed him with admiring awe; to be received
by him now, as one of the well-to-do, were a sweet recognition of his
greatness. It was a fawning desire for that recognition that caused his
smirking approach to the grain merchant. So strong was the desire that,
though he coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his
father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had
been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they
are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy
self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to
divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped
comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a
dull man--perhaps because he was a dull man--suspected insult in a
moment. But it rarely entered Wilson's brain (though he was cleverer
than most) that the world could find anything to scoff at in such a fine
fellow as James Wilson. A less ironic brute than Gourlay would never
have pierced the thickness of his hide. It was because Gourlay succeeded
in piercing it that morning that Wilson hated him for ever--with a hate
the more bitter because he was rebuffed so seldom.

"Is business brisk?" he asked, irrepressible.

Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's
son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him
setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town
whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place,
the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!

For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson's manner that
offended Gourlay--as if mole-catcher's son and monopolist were
discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.

"Business!" he said gravely. "Well, I'm not well acquainted with your
line, but I believe mole traps are cheap--if ye have any idea of taking
up the oald trade."

Wilson's eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth
opened--then shut--then he decided to speak after all. "Oh, I was
thinking Barbie would be very quiet," said he, "compared wi' places
where they have the railway. I was thinking it would need stirring up a
bit."

"Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?" birred Gourlay, with a stupid man's
repetition of his jibe. "Well, I believe there's a grand opening in the
moleskin line, so _there's_ a chance for ye. My quarrymen wear out their
breeks in no time."

Wilson's face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white.
"Good-morning!" he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of
his stick upon the wet road.

"Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!" Gourlay birred after him; "goo-ood
mor-r-ning, serr!" He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put
the branks on Wilson!

Wilson was as furious at himself as at Gourlay. Why the devil had he
said "Good-morning"? It had slipped out of him unawares, and Gourlay had
taken it up with an ironic birr that rang in his ears now, poisoning his
blood. He felt equal in fancy to a thousand Gourlays now--so strong was
he in wrath against him. He had gone forward to pass pleasant remarks
about the weather, and why should he noat?--he was no disgrace to
Barbie, but a credit rather. It was not every working-man's son that
came back with five hundred in the bank. And here Gourlay had treated
him like a doag! Ah, well, he would maybe be upsides with Gourlay yet,
so he might!




CHAPTER X.


"Such a rickle of furniture I never saw!" said the Provost.

"Whose is it?" said Brodie.

"Oh, have ye noat heard?" said the Head of the Town with eyebrows in
air. "It beloangs to that fellow Wilson, doan't ye know? He's a son of
oald Wilson, the mowdie-man of Brigabee. It seems we're to have him for
a neighbour, or all's bye wi't. I declare I doan't know what this
world's coming to!"

"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at
Fleckie for the last ten days--my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I
dare say you have heard--oh yes, we must all go--so, ye see, I'm
scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I
thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."

"Noat he! It's _whispered_ indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help
in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled
there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to
understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the
Cross--for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his
furniture----"

"I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that.
Will that be a son of his?"

He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying
chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson
meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in
shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically
near his neck--so short was the space of shirt between the top line of
his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and
the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs,
being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth
instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a
"cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek
kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes,
so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose.
He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots--they only
_looked_ clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so
thin--skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair
inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes
wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and
sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.

"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.

"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for?
They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle,
forgetting his English in surprise.

"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in
Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe
wi't."

"Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.

"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.

"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.

"It would take a heap to revolutionize _hit_," said the baker, the
ironic man.

"There's a chance in that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's
gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred to me
before."

"Are ye thinking ye have missed a gude thing?" grinned the Deacon.

But Brodie's lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation,
and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient
parable.

"Atweel," said he, "there's a chance, Mr. Brodie. That road round to the
back's a handy thing. You could take a horse and cart brawly through an
opening like that. And there's a gey bit ground at the back, too, when a
body comes to think o't."

"What line's he meaning to purshoo?" queried Brodie, whose mind,
quickened by the chance he saw at No. 1 The Cross, was hot on the hunt
of its possibilities.

"He's been very close about that," said the Provost. "I asked Johnny
Gibson--it was him had the selling o't--but he couldn't give me ainy
satisfaction. All he could say was that Wilson had bought it and paid
it. 'But, losh,' said I, 'he maun 'a' lat peep what he wanted the place
for!' But na; it seems he was owre auld-farrant for the like of that.
'We'll let the folk wonder for a while, Mr. Gibson,' he had said. 'The
less we tell them, the keener they'll be to ken; and they'll advertise
me for noathing by speiring one another what I'm up till.'"

"Cunning!" said Brodie, breathing the word low in expressive admiration.

"Demned cute!" said Sandy Toddle.

"Very thmart!" said the Deacon.

"But the place has been falling down since ever I have mind o't," said
Sandy Toddle. "He's a very clever man if he makes anything out of
_that_."

"Well, well," said the Provost, "we'll soon see what he's meaning to be
at. Now that his furniture's in, he surely canna keep us in the dark
much loanger!"

Their curiosity was soon appeased. Within a week they were privileged to
read the notice here appended:--


     "Mr. James Wilson begs to announce to the inhabitants of Barbie
     and surrounding neighbourhood that he has taken these commodious
     premises, No. 1 The Cross, which he intends to open shortly as a
     Grocery, Ironmongery, and General Provision Store. J. W. is
     apprised that such an Emporium has long been a felt want in the
     locality. To meet this want is J. W.'s intention. He will try to do
     so, not by making large profits on a small business, but by making
     small profits on a large business. Indeed, owing to his long
     acquaintance with the trade, Mr. Wilson will be able to supply all
     commodities at a very little over cost price. For J. W. will use
     those improved methods of business which have been confined
     hitherto to the larger centres of population. At his Emporium you
     will be able, as the saying goes, to buy everything from a needle
     to an anchor. Moreover, to meet the convenience of his customers,
     J. W. will deliver goods at your own doors, distributing them with
     his own carts either in the town of Barbie or at any convenient
     distance from the same. Being a native of the district, his
     business hopes to secure a due share of your esteemed patronage.
     Thanking you, in anticipation, for the favour of an early visit,

       "Believe me, Ladies and Gentlemen,
                             "Yours faithfully,
                                     "JAMES WILSON."


Such was the poster with which "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood"
were besprinkled within a week of "J. W.'s" appearance on the scene. He
was known as "J. W." ever after. To be known by your initials is
sometimes a mark of affection, and sometimes a mark of disrespect. It
was not a mark of affection in the case of our "J. W." When Donald Scott
slapped him on the back and cried, "Hullo, J. W., how are the anchors
selling?" Barbie had found a cue which it was not slow to make use of.
Wilson even received letters addressed to "J. W., Anchor Merchant, No.
1 The Cross." Ours is a nippy locality.

But Wilson, cosy and cocky in his own good opinion, was impervious to
the chilly winds of scorn. His posters, in big blue letters, were on the
smiddy door and on the sides of every brig within a circuit of five
miles; they were pasted, in smaller letters, red on the gateposts of
every farm; and Robin Tam, the bellman, handed them about from door to
door. The folk could talk of nothing else.

"Dod!" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure
here! This is an unco splutter, as the oald sow said when she tumbled in
the gutter."

"Ay," said Sandy Toddle, "a fuff in the pan, I'm thinking. He promises
owre muckle to last long! He lauchs owre loud to be merry at the end
o't. For the loudest bummler's no the best bee, as my father, honest
man, used to tell the minister."

"Ah-ah, I'm no so sure o' that," said Tam Brodie. "I forgathered wi'
Wilson on Wednesday last, and I tell ye, sirs, he's worth the watching.
They'll need to stand on a baikie that put the branks on him. He has the
considering eye in his head--yon lang far-away glimmer at a thing from
out the end of the eyebrow. He turned it on mysell twa-three times, the
cunning devil, trying to keek into me, to see if he could use me. And
look at the chance he has! There's two stores in Barbie, to be sure. But
Kinnikum's a dirty beast, and folk have a scunner at his goods; and
Catherwood's a drucken swine, and his place but sairly guided. That's a
great stroke o' policy, too, promising to deliver folk's goods on their
own doorstep to them. There's a whole jing-bang of outlying clachans
round Barbie that he'll get the trade of by a dodge like that. The like
was never tried hereaway before. I wadna wonder but it works wonders."

It did.

It was partly policy and partly accident that brought Wilson back to
Barbie. He had been managing a wealthy old merchant's store for a long
time in Aberdeen, and he had been blithely looking forward to the
goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew,
and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose;
he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was
whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and
that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should
credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than to Wilson's
misdemeanour.

Wilson might have set up for himself in the nippy northern town. But it
is an instinct with men who have met with a rebuff in a place to shake
its dust from their shoes, and be off to seek their fortunes in the
larger world. We take a scunner at the place that has ill-used us.
Wilson took a scunner at Aberdeen, and decided to leave it and look
around him. Scotland was opening up, and there were bound to be heaps of
chances for a man like him! "A man like me," was a frequent phrase of
Wilson's retired and solitary speculation. "Ay," he said, emerging from
one of his business reveries, "there's bound to be heaps o' chances for
a man like me, if I only look about me."

He was "looking about him" in Glasgow when he forgathered with his
cousin William--the borer he! After many "How are ye, Jims's" and mutual
speirings over a "bit mouthful of yill"--so they phrased it; but that
was a meiosis, for they drank five quarts--they fell to a serious
discussion of the commercial possibilities of Scotland. The borer was of
the opinion that the Braes of Barbie had a future yet, "for a' the
gaffer was so keen on keeping his men in the dark about the coal."

Now Wilson knew (as what Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties
coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now
is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were
no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive
preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In
one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a
laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda
from its impoverished owner, laid the basis of a vast fortune.

"D'ye mean--to tell--_me_, Weelyum Wilson," said James, giving him his
full name in the solemnity of the moment, "d'ye mean--to tell--_me_,
sir"--here he sank his voice to a whisper--"that there's joukery-pawkery
at work?"

"A declare to God A div," said Weelyum, with equal solemnity, and he
nodded with alarmed sapience across his beer jug.

"You believe there's plenty of coal up Barbie Valley, and that they're
keeping it dark in the meantime for some purpose of their own?"

"I do," said Weelyum.

"God!" said James, gripping the table with both hands in his
excitement--"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has
been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra
little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a
puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If
I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I
have in't. You're going home the night, are ye not?"

"I was just on my road to the station when I met ye," said Weelyum.

"Send me a scrape of your pen to-morrow, man, if what you see on getting
back keeps you still in the same mind o't. And directly I get your
letter I'll run down and look about me."

The letter was encouraging, and Wilson went forth to spy the land and
initiate the plan of campaign. It was an important day for him. He
entered on his feud with Gourlay, and bought Rab Jamieson's house and
barn (with the field behind it) for a trifle. He had five hundred of his
own, and he knew where more could be had for the asking.

Rab Jamieson's barn was a curious building to be stranded in the midst
of Barbie. In quaint villages and little towns of England you sometimes
see a mellow red-tiled barn, with its rich yard, close upon the street;
it seems to have been hemmed in by the houses round, while dozing, so
that it could not escape with the fields fleeing from the town. There it
remains and gives a ripeness to the place, matching fitly with the great
horse-chestnut yellowing before the door, and the old inn further down,
mantled in its blood-red creepers. But that autumnal warmth and cosiness
is rarely seen in the barer streets of the north. How Rab Jamieson's
barn came to be stuck in Barbie nobody could tell. It was a gaunt, gray
building with never a window, but a bole high in one corner for the
sheaves, and a door low in another corner for auld Rab Jamieson. There
was no mill inside, and the place had not been used for years. But the
roof was good, and the walls stout and thick, and Wilson soon got to
work on his new possession. He had seen all that could be made of the
place the moment he clapped an eye on it, and he knew that he had found
a good thing, even if the pits should never come near Barbie. The bole
and door next the street were walled up, and a fine new door opened in
the middle, flanked on either side by a great window. The interior was
fitted up with a couple of counters and a wooden floor; and above the
new wood ceiling there was a long loft for a storeroom, lighted by
skylights in the roof. That loft above the rafters, thought the
provident Wilson, will come in braw and handy for storing things, so it
will. And there, hey presto! the transformation was achieved, and
Wilson's Emporium stood before you. It was crammed with merchandise. On
the white flapping slant of a couple of awnings, one over each window,
you might read in black letters, "JAMES WILSON: EMPORIUM." The letters
of "James Wilson" made a triumphal arch, to which "Emporium" was the
base. It seemed symbolical.

Now, the shops of Barbie (the drunken man's shop and the dirty man's
shop always excepted, of course) had usually been low-browed little
places with faded black scrolls above the door, on which you might read
in dim gilt letters (or it might be in white)


                "LICENS'D TO SELL TEA & TOBACCO."


"Licens'd" was on one corner of the ribboned scroll, "To Sell Tea &"
occupied the flowing arch above, with "Tobacco" in the other corner.
When you mounted two steps and opened the door, a bell of some kind went
"_ping_" in the interior, and an old woman in a mutch, with big specs
slipping down her nose, would come up a step from a dim little room
behind, and wiping her sunken mouth with her apron--she had just left
her tea--would say, "What's your wull the day, sir?" And if you said
your "wull" was tobacco, she would answer, "Ou, sir, I dinna sell ocht
now but the tape and sweeties." And then you went away, sadly.

With the exception of the dirty man's shop and the drunken man's shop,
that kind of shop was the Barbie kind of shop. But Wilson changed all
that. One side of the Emporium was crammed with pots, pans, pails,
scythes, gardening implements, and saws, with a big barrel of paraffin
partitioned off in a corner. The rafters on that side were bristling and
hoary with brushes of all kinds dependent from the roof, so that the
minister's wife (who was a six-footer) went off with a brush in her
bonnet once. Behind the other counter were canisters in goodly rows,
barrels of flour and bags of meal, and great yellow cheeses in the
window. The rafters here were heavy with their wealth of hams,
brown-skinned flitches of bacon interspersed with the white tight-corded
home-cured--"Barbie's Best," as Wilson christened it. All along the
back, in glass cases to keep them unsullied, were bales of cloth, layer
on layer to the roof. It was a pleasure to go into the place, so big and
bien was it, and to smell it on a frosty night set your teeth watering.
There was always a big barrel of American apples just inside the door,
and their homely fragrance wooed you from afar, the mellow savour
cuddling round you half a mile off. Barbie boys had despised the
provision trade, heretofore, as a mean and meagre occupation; but now
the imagination of each gallant youth was fired and radiant--he meant to
be a grocer.

Mrs. Wilson presided over the Emporium. Wilson had a treasure in his
wife. She was Aberdeen born and bred, but her manner was the manner of
the South and West. There is a broad difference of character between the
peoples of East and West Scotland. The East throws a narrower and a
nippier breed. In the West they take Burns for their exemplar, and
affect the jovial and robustious--in some cases it is affectation only,
and a mighty poor one at that. They claim to be bigger men and bigger
fools than the Eastern billies. And the Eastern billies are very willing
to yield one half of the contention.

Mrs. Wilson, though Eastie by nature, had the jovial manner that you
find in Kyle; more jovial, indeed, than was common in nippy Barbie,
which, in general character, seems to have been transplanted from some
sand dune looking out upon the German Ocean. She was big of hip and
bosom, with sloe-black hair and eyes, and a ruddy cheek, and when she
flung back her head for the laugh her white teeth flashed splendid on
the world. That laugh of hers became one of the well-known features of
Barbie. "Lo'd-sake!" a startled visitor would cry, "whatna skirl's
tha-at!" "Oh, dinna be alarmed," a native would comfort him, "it's only
Wilson's wife lauchin at the Cross!"

Her manner had a hearty charm. She had a laugh and a joke for every
customer, quick as a wink with her answer; her gibe was in you and out
again before you knew you were wounded. Some, it is true, took exception
to the loudness of her skirl--the Deacon, for instance, who "gave her a
good one" the first time he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a
mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff
of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her
popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the
penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways.
She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax
you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling
like the cadgers o' Kincardine. When Wilson was abroad on his affairs he
had no need to be afraid that things were mismanaging at home. During
his first year in Barbie Mrs. Wilson was his sole helper. She had the
brawny arm of a giantess, and could toss a bag of meal like a baby; to
see her twirl a big ham on the counter was to see a thing done as it
should be. When Drucken Wabster came in and was offensive once, "Poo-oor
fellow!" said she (with a wink to a customer), "I declare he's in a high
fever," and she took him kicking to the pump and cooled him.

With a mate like that at the helm every sail of Wilson's craft was
trimmed for prosperity. He began to "look about" him to increase the
fleet.




CHAPTER XI.


That the Scot is largely endowed with the commercial imagination his
foes will be ready to acknowledge. Imagination may consecrate the world
to a man, or it may merely be a visualizing faculty which sees that as
already perfect which is still lying in the raw material. The Scot has
the lower faculty in full degree; he has the forecasting leap of the
mind which sees what to make of things--more, sees them made and in
vivid operation. To him there is a railway through the desert where no
railway exists, and mills along the quiet stream. And his _perfervidum
ingenium_ is quick to attempt the realizing of his dreams. That is why
he makes the best of colonists. Galt is his type--Galt, dreaming in
boyhood of the fine water power a fellow could bring round the hill,
from the stream where he went a-fishing (they have done it since),
dreaming in manhood of the cities yet to rise amid Ontario's woods (they
are there to witness to his foresight). Indeed, so flushed and riotous
can the Scottish mind become over a commercial prospect that it
sometimes sends native caution by the board, and a man's really fine
idea becomes an empty balloon, to carry him off to the limbo of
vanities. There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not
so much as that; they're owre canny for that to be said of them. But in
every district almost you may find a poor creature who for thirty years
has cherished a great scheme by which he means to revolutionize the
world's commerce, and amass a fortune in monstrous degree. He is
generally to be seen shivering at the Cross, and (if you are a nippy
man) you shout carelessly in going by, "Good-morning, Tamson; how's the
scheme?" And he would be very willing to tell you, if only you would
wait to listen. "Man," he will cry eagerly behind you, "if I only had
anither wee wheel in my invention--she would do, the besom! I'll sune
have her ready noo." Poor Tamson!

But these are the exceptions. Scotsmen, more than other men perhaps,
have the three great essentials of commercial success--imagination to
conceive schemes, common sense to correct them, and energy to push them
through. Common sense, indeed, so far from being wanting, is in most
cases too much in evidence, perhaps, crippling the soaring mind and
robbing the idea of its early radiance; in quieter language, she makes
the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely
Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom
ventures on a daring policy. And yet his forecasting mind is always
detecting "possibeelities." So he contents himself by creeping
cautiously from point to point, ignoring big, reckless schemes and using
the safe and small, till he arrives at a florid opulence. He has
expressed his love of _festina lente_ in business in a score of
proverbs--"Bit-by-bit's the better horse, though big-by-big's the
baulder;" "Ca' canny, or ye'll cowp;" "Many a little makes a mickle;"
and "Creep before ye gang." This mingling of caution and imagination is
the cause of his stable prosperity. And its characteristic is a sure
progressiveness. That sure progressiveness was the characteristic of
Wilson's prosperity in Barbie. In him, too, imagination and caution were
equally developed. He was always foreseeing "chances" and using them,
gripping the good and rejecting the dangerous (had he not gripped the
chance of auld Rab Jamieson's barn? There was caution in that, for it
was worth the money whatever happened; and there was imagination in the
whole scheme, for he had a vision of Barbie as a populous centre and
streets of houses in his holm). And every "chance" he seized led to a
better one, till almost every "chance" in Barbie was engrossed by him
alone. This is how he went to work. Note the "bit-by-bitness" of his
great career.

When Mrs. Wilson was behind the counter, Wilson was out "distributing."
He was not always out, of course--his volume of trade at first was not
big enough for that; but in the mornings, and the long summer dusks, he
made his way to the many outlying places of which Barbie was the centre.
There, in one and the same visit, he distributed goods and collected
orders for the future. Though his bill had spoken of "carts," as if he
had several, that was only a bit of splurge on his part; his one
conveyance at the first was a stout spring cart, with a good brown cob
between the shafts. But with this he did such a trade as had never been
known in Barbie. The Provost said it was "shtupendous."

When Wilson was jogging homeward in the balmy evenings of his first
summer at Barbie, no eye had he for the large evening star, tremulous
above the woods, or for the dreaming sprays against the yellow west. It
wasn't his business; he had other things to mind. Yet Wilson was a
dreamer too. His close, musing eye, peering at the dusky-brown nodge of
his pony's hip through the gloom, saw not that, but visions of chances,
opportunities, occasions. When the lights of Barbie twinkled before him
in the dusk, he used to start from a pleasant dream of some commercial
enterprise suggested by the country round. "Yon holm would make a fine
bleaching green--pure water, fine air, labour cheap, and everything
handy. Or the Lintie's Linn among the woods--water power running to
waste yonder--surely something could be made of that." He would follow
his idea through all its mazes and developments, oblivious of the
passing miles. His delight in his visions was exactly the same as the
author's delight in the figments of his brain. They were the same good
company along the twilight roads. The author, happy with his thronging
thoughts (when they are kind enough to throng), is no happier than
Wilson was on nights like these.

He had not been a week on his rounds when he saw a "chance" waiting for
development. When out "delivering" he used to visit the upland farms to
buy butter and eggs for the Emporium. He got them cheaper so. But more
eggs and butter could be had than were required in the neighbourhood of
Barbie. Here was a chance for Wilson! He became a collector for
merchants at a distance. Barbie, before it got the railway, had only a
silly little market once a fortnight, which was a very poor outlet for
stuff. Wilson provided a better one. Another thing played into his
hands, too, in that connection. It is a cheese-making countryside about
Barbie, and the less butter produced at a cheese-making place, the
better for the cheese. Still, a good many pounds are often churned on
the sly. What need the cheese merchant ken? it keepit the gudewife in
bawbees frae week to week; and if she took a little cream frae the
cheese now and than they werena a pin the waur o't, for she aye did it
wi' decency and caution! Still, it is as well to dispose of this kind of
butter quietly, to avoid gabble among ill-speakers. Wilson, slithering
up the back road with his spring cart in the gloaming, was the man to
dispose of it quietly. And he got it dirt cheap, of course, seeing it
was a kind of contraband. All that he made in this way was not much to
be sure--threepence a dozen on the eggs, perhaps, and fourpence on the
pound of butter--still, you know, every little makes a mickle, and
hained gear helps weel.[4] And more important than the immediate profit
was the ultimate result. For Wilson in this way established with
merchants, in far-off Fechars and Poltandie, a connection for the sale
of country produce which meant a great deal to him in future, when he
launched out as cheese-buyer in opposition to Gourlay.

It "occurred" to him also (things were always occurring to Wilson) that
the "Scotch cuddy" business had as fine a chance in "Barbie and
surrounding neighbourhood" as ever it had in North and Middle England.
The "Scotch cuddy" is so called because he is a beast of burden, and not
from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman, who infests
communities of working-men, and disposes of his goods on the credit
system, receiving payment in instalments. You go into a working-man's
house (when he is away from home for preference), and laying a swatch of
cloth across his wife's knee, "What do you think of that, mistress?" you
inquire, watching the effect keenly. Instantly all her covetous heart is
in her eye, and, thinks she to herself, "Oh, but John would look well in
that at the kirk on Sunday!" She has no ready money, and would never
have the cheek to go into a draper's and order the suit; but when she
sees it lying there across her knee, she just cannot resist it. (And
fine you knew that when you clinked it down before her!) Now that the
goods are in the house, she cannot bear to let them out the door again.
But she hints a scarcity of cash. "Tut, woman!" quoth you, bounteous and
kind, "there's no obstacle in _that_! You can pay me in instalments!"
How much would the instalments be, she inquires. "Oh, a mere
trifle--half a crown a week, say." She hesitates and hankers. "John's
Sunday coat's getting quite shabby, so it is, and Tam Macalister has a
new suit, she was noticing--the Macalisters are always flaunting in
their braws! And, there's that Paisley shawl for herself, too; eh, but
they would be the canty pair, cocking down the road on Sunday in _that_
rig! they would take the licht frae Meg Macalister's een--thae
Macalisters are always so en-vy-fu'!" Love, vanity, covetousness,
present opportunity, are all at work upon the poor body. She succumbs.
But the half-crown weekly payments have a habit of lengthening
themselves out till the packman has made fifty per cent. by the
business. And why not? a man must have some interest on his money!
Then there's the risk of bad debts, too--that falls to be considered.
But there was little risk of bad debts when Wilson took to
cloth-distributing. For success in that game depends on pertinacity in
pursuit of your victim, and Wilson was the man for that.

He was jogging home from Brigabee, where he had been distributing
groceries at a score of wee houses, when there flashed on his mind a
whole scheme for cloth-distribution on a large scale; for mining
villages were clustering in about Barbie by this time, and he saw his
way to a big thing.

He was thinking of Sandy Toddle, who had been a Scotch cuddy in the
Midlands, and had retired to Barbie on a snug bit fortune--he was
thinking of Sandy when the plan rose generous on his mind. He would soon
have more horses than one on the road; why shouldn't they carry swatches
of cloth as well as groceries? If he had responsible men under him, it
would be their own interest, for a small commission on the profits, to
see that payments were levied correctly every week. And those colliers
were reckless with their cash, far readier to commit themselves to
buying than the cannier country bodies round. Lord! there was money in
the scheme. No sooner thought of than put in practice. Wilson gave up
the cloth-peddling after five or six years--he had other fish to fry by
that time--but while he was at it he made money hand over fist at the
job.

But what boots it to tell of all his schemes? He had the lucky eye, and
everything he looked on prospered.

Before he had been a week in Barbie he met Gourlay, just at the Bend o'
the Brae, in full presence of the bodies. Remembering their first
encounter, the grocer tried to outstare him; but Gourlay hardened his
glower, and the grocer blinked. When the two passed, "I declare!" said
the bodies, "did ye see yon?--they're not on speaking terms!" And they
hotched with glee to think that Gourlay had another enemy.

Judge of their delight when they saw one day about a month later, just
as Gourlay was passing up the street, Wilson come down it with a load of
coals for a customer! For he was often out Auchterwheeze road in the
early morning, and what was the use of an empty journey back again,
especially as he had plenty of time in the middle of the day to attend
to other folk's affairs? So here he was, started as a carrier, in full
opposition to Gourlay.

"Did you see Gourlay's face?" chuckled the bodies when the cart went by.
"Yon was a bash in the eye to him. Ha, ha! he's not to have it all his
own way now!"

Wilson had slid into the carrying in the natural development of
business. It was another of the possibilities which he saw and turned to
his advantage. The two other chief grocers in the place, Cunningham the
dirty and Calderwood the drunken, having no carts or horses of their
own, were dependent on Gourlay for conveyance of their goods from
Skeighan. But Wilson brought his own. Naturally, he was asked by his
customers to bring a parcel now and then, and naturally, being the man
he was, he made them pay for the privilege. With that for a start the
rest was soon accomplished. Gourlay had to pay now for his years of
insolence and tyranny; all who had irked beneath his domineering ways
got their carrying done by Wilson. Ere long that prosperous gentleman
had three carts on the road, and two men under him to help in his
various affairs.

Carting was only one of several new developments in the business of J.
W. When the navvies came in about the town and accommodation was ill to
find, Wilson rigged up an old shed in the corner of his holm as a
hostelry for ten of them--and they had to pay through the nose for their
night's lodging. Their food they obtained from the Emporium, and thus
the Wilsons bled them both ways. Then there was the scheme for supplying
milk--another of the "possibeelities." Hitherto in winter, Barbie was
dependent for its milk supply on heavy farm-carts that came lumbering
down the street, about half-past seven in the morning, jangling bells to
waken sleepy customers, and carrying lanterns that carved circles of
fairy yellow out the raw air. But Mrs. Wilson got four cows,
back-calvers who would be milking strong in December, and supplied milk
to all the folk about the Cross.

She had a lass to help her in the house now, and the red-headed boy was
always to be seen, jinking round corners like a weasel, running messages
hot-foot, errand boy to the "bisness" in general. Yet, though everybody
was busy and skelping at it, such a stress of work was accompanied with
much disarray. Wilson's yard was the strangest contrast to Gourlay's.
Gourlay's was a pleasure to the eye, everything of the best and
everything in order, since the master's pride would not allow it to be
other. But though Wilson's Emporium was clean, his back yard was
littered with dirty straw, broken boxes, old barrels, stable refuse, and
the sky-pointing shafts of carts, uptilted in between. When boxes and
barrels were flung out of the Emporium they were generally allowed to
lie on the dunghill until they were converted into firewood. "Mistress,
you're a trifle mixed," said the Provost in grave reproof, when he went
round to the back to see Wilson on a matter of business. But "Tut,"
cried Mrs. Wilson, as she threw down a plank, to make a path for him
across a dub--"Tut," she laughed, "the clartier the cosier!" And it was
as true as she said it. The thing went forward splendidly in spite of
its confusion.

Though trade was brisker in Barbie than it had ever been before, Wilson
had already done injury to Gourlay's business as general conveyor. But,
hitherto, he had not infringed on the gurly one's other monopolies. His
chance came at last.

He appeared on a market-day in front of the Red Lion, a piece of pinky
brown paper in his hand. That was the first telegram ever seen in
Barbie, and it had been brought by special messenger from Skeighan. It
was short and to the point. It ran: "Will buy 300 stone cheese 8
shillings stone[5] delivery at once," and was signed by a merchant in
Poltandie.

Gourlay was talking to old Tarmillan of Irrendavie, when Wilson pushed
in and addressed Tarmillan, without a glance at the grain-merchant.

"Have you a kane o' cheese to sell, Irrendavie?" was his blithe
salutation.

"I have," said Irrendavie, and he eyed him suspiciously. For what was
Wilson speiring for? _He_ wasna a cheese-merchant.

"How much the stane are ye seeking for't?" said Wilson.

"I have just been asking Mr. Gourlay here for seven-and-six," said
Irrendavie, "but he winna rise a penny on the seven!"

"_I_'ll gi'e ye seven-and-six," said Wilson, and slapped his long thin
flexible bank-book far too ostentatiously against the knuckles of his
left hand.

"But--but," stammered Irrendavie, suspicious still, but melting at the
offer, "_you_ have no means of storing cheese."

"Oh," said Wilson, getting in a fine one at Gourlay, "there's no
drawback in that! The ways o' business have changed greatly since steam
came close to our doors. It's nothing but vanity nowadays when a country
merchant wastes money on a ramshackle of buildings for storing--there's
no need for that if he only had brains to develop quick deliveries. Some
folk, no doubt, like to build monuments to their own pride, but I'm not
one of that kind; there's not enough sense in that to satisfy a man like
me. My offer doesna hold, you understand, unless you deliver the cheese
at Skeighan Station. Do you accept the condition?"

"Oh yes," said Irrendavie, "I'm willing to agree to that."

"C'way into the Red Lion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain
with a drink to make it hold the tighter!"

Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign
wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved
back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The
wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that
no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the
crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him
and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a
rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if
wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while
Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode--with a look on his face
that made the folk fall away.

"He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was
gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the
boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous
stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!"
cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt!
It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and
never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid
about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!"

"Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for
his thplendid wrath yet."

From that day Wilson and Gourlay were a pair of gladiators for whom the
people of Barbie made a ring. They pitted the protagonists against each
other and hounded them on to rivalry by their comments and remarks,
taking the side of the newcomer, less from partiality to him than from
hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable
as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin.
But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's
tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became
also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an
active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into
a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred Gourlay on to the
schemes that ruined him. He was not to be done, he said; he would show
the dogs what he thought of them. And so he plunged headlong, while the
wary Wilson watched him, smiling at the sight.

There was a pretty hell-broth brewing in the little town.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Hained gear_, saved money.

[5] That is for the stone of fourteen pounds. At that time Scotch cheese
was selling, _roughly_, at from fifty to sixty shillings the
hundred-weight.




CHAPTER XII.


"Ay, man, Templandmuir, it's you!" said Gourlay, coming forward with
great heartiness. "Ay, man, and how are ye? C'way into the parlour!"

"Good-evening, Mr. Gourlay," said the Templar. His manner was curiously
subdued.

Since his marriage there was a great change in the rubicund squireen.
Hitherto he had lived in sluttish comfort on his own land, content with
the little it brought in, and proud to be the friend of Gourlay, whom
everybody feared. If it ever dawned on his befuddled mind that Gourlay
turned the friendship to his own account, his vanity was flattered by
the prestige he acquired because of it. Like many another robustious big
toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay"
lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy,"
he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John
Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel
like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!" Provost Connal of
Barbie used to cry; "Gourlay both courts and cowes him--first he courts
and then he cowes--and the Templar hasn't the courage to break it off!"
The Provost hit the mark.

But when the Templar married the miller's daughter of the Mill o' Blink
(a sad come-down, said foolish neighbours, for a Halliday of
Templandmuir) there was a sudden change about the laird. In our good
Scots proverb, "A miller's daughter has a shrill voice," and the new
leddy of Templandmuir ("a leddy she is!" said the frightened
housekeeper) justified the proverb. Her voice went with the skirl of an
east wind through the rat-riddled mansion of the Hallidays. She was
nine-and-twenty, and a birkie woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good
husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look
in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over
when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl--she made it a
swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a
man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her
husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never
know the difference! It's been used to swine!"

But she was not content with the cessation of the old; she was
determined on bringing in the new. For a twelvemonth now she had urged
her husband to be rid of Gourlay. The country was opening up, she said,
and the quarry ought to be their own. A dozen times he had promised her
to warn Gourlay that he must yield the quarry when his tack ran out at
the end of the year, and a dozen times he had shrunk from the encounter.

"I'll write," he said feebly.

"Write!" said she, lowered in her pride to think her husband was a
coward. "Write, indeed! Man, have ye no spunk? Think what he has made
out o' ye! Think o' the money that has gone to him that should have come
to you! You should be glad o' the chance to tell him o't. My certy, if I
was you I wouldn't miss it for the world--just to let him know of his
cheatry! Oh, it's very right that _I_"--she sounded the _I_ big and
brave--"it's very right that _I_ should live in this tumbledown hole
while _he_ builds a palace from your plunder! It's right that _I_ should
put up with this"--she flung hands of contempt at her dwelling--"it's
right that _I_ should put up with this, while yon trollop has a
splendid mansion on the top o' the brae! And every bawbee of his
fortune has come out of you--the fool makes nothing from his other
business--he would have been a pauper if he hadn't met a softie like you
that he could do what he liked with. Write, indeed! I have no patience
with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear
the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with
the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of
his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, _I_ have. Write, indeed! In
you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't
show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!"

No wonder the Templar looked subdued.

When Gourlay came forward with his usual calculated heartiness, the
laird remembered his wife and felt very uncomfortable. It was ill to
round on a man who always imposed on him a hearty and hardy
good-fellowship. Gourlay, greeting him so warmly, gave him no excuse for
an outburst. In his dilemma he turned to the children, to postpone the
evil hour.

"Ay, man, John!" he said heavily, "you're there!" Heavy Scotsmen are
fond of telling folk that they are where they are. "You're there!" said
Templandmuir.

"Ay," said John, the simpleton, "I'm here."

In the grime of the boy's face there were large white circles round the
eyes, showing where his fists had rubbed off the tears through the day.

"How are you doing at the school?" said the Templar.

"Oh, he's an ass!" said Gourlay. "He takes after his mother in that! The
lassie's more smart--she favours our side o' the house! Eh, Jenny?" he
inquired, and tugged her pigtail, smiling down at her in grim fondness.

"Yes," nodded Janet, encouraged by the petting, "John's always at the
bottom of the class. Jimmy Wilson's always at the top, and the dominie
set him to teach John his 'counts the day--after he had thrashed him!"

She cried out at a sudden tug on her pigtail, and looked up, with tears
in her eyes, to meet her father's scowl.

"You eediot!" said Gourlay, gazing at his son with a savage contempt,
"have you no pride to let Wilson's son be your master?"

John slunk from the room.

"Bide where you are, Templandmuir," said Gourlay after a little. "I'll
be back directly."

He went through to the kitchen and took a crystal jug from the dresser.
He "made a point" of bringing the water for his whisky. "I like to pump
it up _cold_," he used to say, "cold and cold, ye know, till there's a
mist on the outside of the glass like the bloom on a plum, and then, by
Goad, ye have the fine drinking! Oh no--ye needn't tell me, I wouldn't
lip drink if the water wasna ice-cold." He never varied from the tipple
he approved. In his long sederunts with Templandmuir he would slip out
to the pump, before every brew, to get water of sufficient coldness.

To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandmuir as usual, till the
fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow as being the
intimate of John Gourlay--and then, sober as a judge himself, he would
drive him home in the small hours. And when next they met, the
pot-valiant squireen would chuckle proudly, "Faith, yon was a night." By
a crude cunning of the kind Gourlay had maintained his ascendancy for
years, and to-night he would maintain it still. He went out to the pump
to fetch water with his own hands for their first libation.

But when he came back and set out the big decanter Templandmuir started
to his feet.

"Noat to-night, Mr. Gourlay," he stammered--and his unusual flutter of
refusal might have warned Gourlay--"noat to-night, if _you_ please; noat
to-night, if _you_ please. As a matter of fact--eh--what I really came
into the town for, doan't you see, was--eh--to attend the meeting the
Provost has convened about the railway. You'll come down to the meeting,
will ye noat?"

He wanted to get Gourlay away from the House with the Green Shutters. It
would be easier to quarrel with him out of doors.

But Gourlay gaped at him across the table, his eyes big with surprise
and disapproval.

"Huh!" he growled, "I wonder at a man like you giving your head to that!
It's a wheen damned nonsense."

"Oh, I'm no so sure of that," drawled the Templar. "I think the railway
means to come."

The whole country was agog about the new railway. The question agitating
solemn minds was whether it should join the main line at Fechars, thirty
miles ahead, or pass to the right, through Fleckie and Barbie, to a
junction up at Skeighan Drone. Many were the reasons spluttered in
vehement debate for one route or the other. "On the one side, ye see,
Skeighan was a big place a'readys, and look what a centre it would be if
it had three lines of rail running out and in! Eh, my, what a centre!
Then there was Fleckie and Barbie--they would be the big towns! Up the
valley, too, was the shortest road; it would be a daft-like thing to
build thirty mile of rail, when fifteen was enough to establish the
connection! And was it likely--I put it to ainy man of sense--was it
likely the Coal Company wouldn't do everything in their power to get the
railway up the valley, seeing that if it didn't come that airt they
would need to build a line of their own?"--"Ah, but then, ye see,
Fechars was a big place too, and there was lots of mineral up there as
well! And though it was a longer road to Fechars and part of it lay
across the moors, there were several wee towns that airt just waiting
for a chance of growth! I can tell ye, sirs, this was going to be a
close question!"

Such was the talk in pot-house and parlour, at kirk and mart and tryst
and fair, and wherever potentates did gather and abound. The partisans
on either side began to canvass the country in support of their
contentions. They might have kept their breath to cool their porridge,
for these matters, we know, are settled in the great Witenagemot. But
petitions were prepared and meetings were convened. In those days
Provost Connal of Barbie was in constant communion with the "Pow-ers."
"Yass," he nodded gravely--only "nod" is a word too swift for the grave
inclining of that mighty pow--"yass, ye know, the great thing in matters
like this is to get at the Pow-ers, doan't you see? Oh yass, yass; we
must get at the Pow-ers!" and he looked as if none but he were equal to
the job. He even went to London (to interrogate the "Pow-ers"), and
simple bodies, gathered at the Cross for their Saturday at e'en, told
each other with bated breath that the Provost was away to the "seat of
Goaver'ment to see about the railway." When he came back and shook his
head, hope drained from his fellows and left them hollow in an empty
world. But when he smacked his lips on receiving an important letter,
the heavens were brightened and the landscapes smiled.

The Provost walked about the town nowadays with the air of a man on
whose shoulders the weight of empires did depend. But for all his airs
it was not the Head o' the Town who was the ablest advocate of the route
up the Water of Barbie. It was that public-spirited citizen, Mr. James
Wilson of the Cross! Wilson championed the cause of Barbie with an
ardour that did infinite credit to his civic heart. For one thing, it
was a grand way of recommending himself to his new townsfolk, as he told
his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present trade, don't ye
understand?"--for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the
railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must
agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything
they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road
the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in
our behalf? Local opinion ought to be expressed! They're sending a
monster petition from the Fechars side; we'll send the Company a bigger
one from ours! Look at Skeighan and Fleckie and Barbie--three towns at
our back, and the new Coal Company forbye! A public opinion of that size
ought to have a great weight--if put forward properly! We must agitate,
sirs, we must agitate; we maun scour the country for names in our
support. Look what a number of things there are to recommend _our_
route. It's the shortest, and there's no need for heavy cuttings such as
are needed on the other side; the road's there a'ready--Barbie Water has
cut it through the hills. It's the manifest design of Providence that
there should be a line up Barbie Valley! What a position for't!--And,
oh," thought Wilson, "what a site for building houses in my holm!--Let a
meeting be convened at wunst!"

The meeting was convened, with Provost Connal in the chair and Wilson as
general factotum.

"You'll come down to the meeting?" said Templandmuir to Gourlay.

Go to a meeting for which Wilson had sent out the bills! At another,
Gourlay would have hurled his usual objurgation that he would see him
condemned to eternal agonies ere he granted his request! But
Templandmuir was different. Gourlay had always flattered this man (whom
he inwardly despised) by a companionship which made proud the other. He
had always yielded to Templandmuir in small things, for the sake of the
quarry, which was a great thing. He yielded to him now.

"Verra well," he said shortly, and rose to get his hat.

When Gourlay put on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid,
and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was
a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the
side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter
because of his enormous breadth. He had a chest like the heave of a
hill. Templandmuir was afraid of him. And fretting at the necessity he
felt to quarrel with a man of whom he was afraid, he had an unreasonable
hatred of Gourlay, whose conduct made this quarrel necessary at the same
time that his character made it to be feared; and he brooded on his
growing rage that, with it for a stimulus, he might work his cowardly
nature to the point of quarrelling. Conscious of the coming row, then,
he felt awkward in the present, and was ignorant what to say. Gourlay
was silent too. He felt it an insult to the House with the Green
Shutters that the laird should refuse its proffered hospitality. He
hated to be dragged to a meeting he despised. Never before was such
irritation between them.

When they came to the hall where the meeting was convened, there were
knots of bodies grouped about the floor. Wilson fluttered from group to
group, an important man, with a roll of papers in his hand. Gourlay,
quick for once in his dislike, took in every feature of the man he
loathed.

Wilson was what the sentimental women of the neighbourhood called a
"bonny man." His features were remarkably regular, and his complexion
was remarkably fair. His brow was so delicate of hue that the blue veins
running down his temples could be traced distinctly beneath the
whiteness of the skin. Unluckily for him, he was so fair that in a
strong light (as now beneath the gas) the suspicion of his unwashedness
became a certainty--"as if he got a bit idle slaik now and than, and
never a good rub," thought Gourlay in a clean disgust. Full lips showed
themselves bright red in the middle between the two wings of a very
blonde and very symmetrical moustache. The ugly feature of the face was
the blue calculating eyes. They were tender round the lids, so that the
white lashes stuck out in little peaks. And in conversation he had a
habit of peering out of these eyes as if he were constantly spying for
something to emerge that he might twist to his advantage. As he talked
to a man close by and glimmered (not at the man beside him, but far away
in the distance of his mind at some chance of gain suggested by the
other's words) Gourlay heard him say musingly, "Imphm, imphm, imphm!
there might be something _in_ that!" nodding his head and stroking his
moustache as he uttered each meditative "imphm."

It was Wilson's unconscious revelation that his mind was busy with a
commercial hint which he had stolen from his neighbour's talk. "The
damned sneck-drawer!" thought Gourlay, enlightened by his hate; "he's
sucking Tam Finlay's brains, to steal some idea for himsell!" And still
as Wilson listened he murmured swiftly, "Imphm! I see, Mr. Finlay;
imphm! imphm! imphm!" nodding his head and pulling his moustache and
glimmering at his new "opportunity."

Our insight is often deepest into those we hate, because annoyance fixes
our thought on them to probe. We cannot keep our minds off them. "Why do
they do it?" we snarl, and wondering why, we find out their character.
Gourlay was not an observant man, but every man is in any man somewhere,
and hate to-night driving his mind into Wilson, helped him to read him
like an open book. He recognized with a vague uneasiness--not with fear,
for Gourlay did not know what it meant, but with uneasy anger--the
superior cunning of his rival. Gourlay, a strong block of a man cut off
from the world by impotence of speech, could never have got out of
Finlay what Wilson drew from him in two minutes' easy conversation.

Wilson ignored Gourlay, but he was very blithe with Templandmuir, and
inveigled him off to a corner. They talked together very briskly, and
Wilson laughed once with uplifted head, glancing across at Gourlay as he
laughed. Curse them, were they speaking of him?

The hall was crammed at last, and the important bodies took their seats
upon the front benches. Gourlay refused to be seated with the rest, but
stood near the platform, with his back to the wall, by the side of
Templandmuir.

After what the Provost described "as a few preliminary remarks"--they
lasted half an hour--he called on Mr. Wilson to address the meeting.
Wilson descanted on the benefits that would accrue to Barbie if it got
the railway, and on the needcessity for a "long pull, and a strong pull,
and a pull all together"--a phrase which he repeated many times in the
course of his address. He sat down at last amid thunders of applause.

"There's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech," said the
Provost.

"Hear, hear!" said Gourlay, and the meeting was unkind enough to laugh.

"Order, order!" cried Wilson perkily.

"As I was saying when I was grossly interrupted," fumed the Provost,
"there's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech. I had thoat we
were a-all agreed on the desirabeelity of the rileway coming in our
direction. I had thoat, after the able--I must say the very able--speech
of Mr. Wilson, that there wasn't a man in this room so shtupid as to
utter a word of dishapproval. I had thoat we might prosheed at woance to
elect a deputation. I had thoat we would get the name of everybody here
for the great petition we mean to send the Pow-ers. I had thoat it was
all, so to shpeak, a foregone conclusion. But it seems I was mistaken,
ladies and gentlemen--or rather, I oat to say gentlemen, for I believe
there are no ladies present. Yass, it seems I was mistaken. It may be
there are some who would like to keep Barbie going on in the oald way
which they found so much to their advantage. It may be there are some
who regret a change that will put an end to their chances of
tyraneezin'. It may be there are some who know themselves so shtupid
that they fear the new condeetions of trade the railway's bound to
bring."--Here Wilson rose and whispered in his ear, and the people
watched them, wondering what hint J. W. was passing to the Provost. The
Provost leaned with pompous gravity toward his monitor, hand at ear to
catch the treasured words. He nodded and resumed.--"Now, gentlemen, as
Mr. Wilson said, this is a case that needs a loang pull, and a stroang
pull, and a pull all together. We must be unanimous. It will _noat_ do
to show ourselves divided among ourselves. Therefore I think we oat to
have expressions of opinion from some of our leading townsmen. That will
show how far we are unanimous. I had thoat there could be only one
opinion, and that we might prosheed at once with the petition. But it
seems I was wroang. It is best to inquire first exactly where we stand.
So I call upon Mr. John Gourlay, who has been the foremost man in the
town for mainy years--at least he used to be that--I call upon Mr.
Gourlay as the first to express an opinion on the subjeck."

Wilson's hint to the Provost placed Gourlay in a fine dilemma. Stupid as
he was, he was not so stupid as not to perceive the general advantage of
the railway. If he approved it, however, he would seem to support Wilson
and the Provost, whom he loathed. If he disapproved, his opposition
would be set down to a selfish consideration for his own trade, and he
would incur the anger of the meeting, which was all for the coming of
the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false
position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public,
and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give himself away.

Gourlay evaded the question.

"It would be better to convene a meeting," he bawled to the Provost, "to
consider the state of some folk's back doors."--That was a nipper to
Wilson!--"There's a stink at the Cross that's enough to kill a cuddy!"

"Evidently not," yelled Wilson, "since you're still alive!"

A roar went up against Gourlay. All he could do was to scowl before him,
with hard-set mouth and gleaming eyes, while they bellowed him to scorn.

"I would like to hear what Templandmuir has to say on the subject," said
Wilson, getting up. "But no doubt he'll follow his friend Mr. Gourlay."

"No, I don't follow Mr. Gourlay," bawled Templandmuir with unnecessary
loudness. The reason of his vehemence was twofold. He was nettled (as
Wilson meant he should) by the suggestion that he was nothing but
Gourlay's henchman. And being eager to oppose Gourlay, yet a coward, he
yelled to supply in noise what he lacked in resolution.

"I don't follow Mr. Gourlay at all," he roared; "I follow nobody but
myself! Every man in the district's in support of this petition. It
would be absurd to suppose anything else. I'll be glad to sign't among
the first, and do everything I can in its support."

"Verra well," said the Provost; "it seems we're agreed after all. We'll
get some of our foremost men to sign the petition at this end of the
hall, and then it'll be placed in the anteroom for the rest to sign as
they go out."

"Take it across to Gourlay," whispered Wilson to the two men who were
carrying the enormous tome. They took it over to the grain merchant, and
one of them handed him an inkhorn. He dashed it to the ground.

The meeting hissed like a cellarful of snakes. But Gourlay turned and
glowered at them, and somehow the hisses died away. His was the high
courage that feeds on hate, and welcomes rather than shrinks from its
expression. He was smiling as he faced them.

"Let _me_ pass," he said, and shouldered his way to the door, the
bystanders falling back to make room. Templandmuir followed him out.

"I'll walk to the head o' the brae," said the Templar.

He must have it out with Gourlay at once, or else go home to meet the
anger of his wife. Having opposed Gourlay already, he felt that now was
the time to break with him for good. Only a little was needed to
complete the rupture. And he was the more impelled to declare himself
to-night because he had just seen Gourlay discomfited, and was beginning
to despise the man he had formerly admired. Why, the whole meeting had
laughed at his expense! In quarrelling with Gourlay, moreover, he would
have the whole locality behind him. He would range himself on the
popular side. Every impulse of mind and body pushed him forward to the
brink of speech; he would never get a better occasion to bring out his
grievance.

They trudged together in a burning silence. Though nothing was said
between them, each was in wrathful contact with the other's mind.
Gourlay blamed everything that had happened on Templandmuir, who had
dragged him to the meeting and deserted him. And Templandmuir was
longing to begin about the quarry, but afraid to start.

That was why he began at last with false, unnecessary loudness. It was
partly to encourage himself (as a bull bellows to increase his rage),
and partly because his spite had been so long controlled. It burst the
louder for its pent fury.

"Mr. Gourlay!" he bawled suddenly, when they came opposite the House
with the Green Shutters, "I've had a crow to pick with you for more than
a year."

It came on Gourlay with a flash that Templandmuir was slipping away from
him. But he must answer him civilly for the sake of the quarry.

"Ay, man," he said quietly, "and what may that be?"

"I'll damned soon tell you what it is," said the Templar. "Yon was a
monstrous overcharge for bringing my ironwork from Fleckie. I'll be
damned if I put up with that!"

And yet it was only a trifle. He had put up with fifty worse impositions
and never said a word. But when a man is bent on a quarrel any spark
will do for an explosion.

"How do ye make that out?" said Gourlay, still very quietly, lest he
should alienate the quarry laird.

"Damned fine do I make that out," yelled Templandmuir, and louder than
ever was the yell. He was the brave man now, with his bellow to hearten
him. "Damned fine do I make that out. You charged me for a whole day,
though half o't was spent upon your own concerns. I'm tired o' you and
your cheatry. You've made a braw penny out o' me in your time. But curse
me if I endure it loanger. I give you notice this verra night that your
tack o' the quarry must end at Martinmas."

He was off, glad to have it out and glad to escape the consequence,
leaving Gourlay a cauldron of wrath in the darkness. It was not merely
the material loss that maddened him. But for the first time in his life
he had taken a rebuff without a word or a blow in return. In his desire
to conciliate he had let Templandmuir get away unscathed. His blood
rocked him where he stood.

He walked blindly to the kitchen door, never knowing how he reached it.
It was locked--at this early hour!--and the simple inconvenience let
loose the fury of his wrath. He struck the door with his clenched fist
till the blood streamed on his knuckles.

It was Mrs. Gourlay who opened the door to him. She started back before
his awful eyes.

"John!" she cried, "what's wrong wi' ye?"

The sight of the she-tatterdemalion there before him, whom he had
endured so long and must endure for ever, was the crowning burden of his
night. Damn her, why didn't she get out of the way? why did she stand
there in her dirt and ask silly questions? He struck her on the bosom
with his great fist, and sent her spinning on the dirty table.

She rose from among the broken dishes and came towards him, with slack
lips and great startled eyes. "John," she panted, like a pitiful
frightened child, "what have I been doing?... Man, what did you hit me
for?"

He gaped at her with hanging jaw. He knew he was a brute--knew she had
done nothing to-night more than she had ever done--knew he had vented on
her a wrath that should have burst on others. But his mind was at a
stick; how could he explain--to _her_? He gaped and glowered for a
speechless moment, then turned on his heel and went into the parlour,
slamming the door till the windows rattled in their frames.

She stared after him a while in large-eyed stupor, then flung herself in
her old nursing-chair by the fire, and spat blood in the ribs, hawking
it up coarsely--we forget to be delicate in moments of supremer agony.
And then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro
in the chair where she had nursed his children, wailing, "It's a pity o'
me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"

The boy was in bed, but Janet had watched the scene with a white, scared
face and tearful cries. She crept to her mother's side.

The sympathy of children with those who weep is innocently selfish. The
sight of tears makes them uncomfortable, and they want them to cease, in
the interests of their own happiness. If the outward signs of grief
would only vanish, all would be well. They are not old enough to
appreciate the inward agony.

So Janet tugged at the obscuring apron, and whimpered, "Don't greet,
mother, don't greet. Woman, I dinna like to see ye greetin'."

But Mrs. Gourlay still rocked herself and wailed, "It's a pity o' me,
it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"




CHAPTER XIII.


"Is he in himsell?" asked Gibson the builder, coming into the Emporium.

Mrs. Wilson was alone in the shop. Since trade grew so brisk she had an
assistant to help her, but he was out for his breakfast at present, and
as it happened she was all alone.

"No," she said, "he's no in. We're terribly driven this twelvemonth
back, since trade grew so thrang, and he's aye hunting business in some
corner. He's out the now after a carrying affair. Was it ainything
perticular?"

She looked at Gibson with a speculation in her eyes that almost verged
on hostility. Wives of the lower classes who are active helpers in a
husband's affairs often direct that look upon strangers who approach him
in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them;
come to be done by the husband or to do him--in either case, therefore,
the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either
to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about
it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her
parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's
affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face
be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was
suspicion in the big round stare that Mrs. Wilson directed at the
builder. What was _he_ spiering for "himsell" for? What could he be up
to? Some end of his own, no doubt. Anxious curiosity forced her to
inquire.

"Would I do instead?" she asked.

"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded
round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham
that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"

"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye
had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing
on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty
morning"--and her laugh went skelloching up the street.

"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to
present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."

"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms
akimbo.--"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot
from the back premises.

"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack
wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important
business."

The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him
foremost.

While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly.
Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.

He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as
a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the
jovial gleam, or they may be mean things--little and sly and oily.
Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they
glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with
a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow
teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was more than a
grin--it was a _rictus_, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady
eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He
was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness
(perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and
the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long
ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other
nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to
Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act
against him. They had made advances to each other--birds of a feather,
in short.

The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a
perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when we first saw him in
Barbie, four years ago now.

"Good-morning, Mr. Gibson," he panted. "Is it private that ye wanted to
see me on?"

"Verra private," said the sandy smiler.

"We'll go through to the house, then," said Wilson, and ushered his
guest through the back premises. But the voice of his wife recalled him.
"James!" she cried. "Here for a minute just," and he turned to her,
leaving Gibson in the yard.

"Be careful what you're doing," she whispered in his ear. "It wasna for
nothing they christened Gibson 'Cunning Johnny.' Keep the dirt out your
een."

"There's no fear of that," he assured her pompously. It was a grand
thing to have a wife like that, but her advice nettled him now just a
little, because it seemed to imply a doubt of his efficiency--and that
was quite onnecessar. He knew what he was doing. They would need to rise
very early that got the better o' a man like him!

"You'll take a dram?" said Wilson, when they reached a pokey little room
where the most conspicuous and dreary object was a large bare flowerpot
of red earthenware, on a green woollen mat, in the middle of a round
table. Out of the flowerpot rose gauntly a three-sticked frame, up which
two lonely stalks of a climbing plant tried to scramble, but failed
miserably to reach the top. The round little rickety table with the
family album on one corner (placed at what Mrs. Wilson considered a
beautiful artistic angle to the window), the tawdry cloth, the green
mat, the shiny horsehair sofa, and the stuffy atmosphere, were all in
perfect harmony of ugliness. A sampler on the wall informed the world
that there was no place like home.

Wilson pushed the flowerpot to one side, and "You'll take a dram?" he
said blithely.

"Oh ay," said Gibson with a grin; "I never refuse drink when I'm offered
it for nothing."

"Hi! hi!" laughed Wilson at the little joke, and produced a cut decanter
and a pair of glasses. He filled the glasses so brimming full that the
drink ran over on the table.

"Canny, man, for God's sake canny!" cried Gibson, starting forward in
alarm. "Don't ye see you're spilling the mercies?" He stooped his lips
to the rim of his glass, and sipped, lest a drop of Scotia's nectar
should escape him.

They faced each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said
the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed
glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the little
finger uppermost.

Gibson smacked his lips once and again when the fiery spirit tickled his
uvula.

"Ha!" said he, "that's the stuff to put heart in a man."

"It's no bad whisky," said Wilson complacently.

Gibson wiped the sandy stubble round his mouth with the back of his
hand, and considered for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he tapped
Wilson's knee in whispering importance.

"Have you heard the news?" he murmured, with a watchful glimmer in his
eyes.

"No!" cried Wilson, glowering, eager and alert. "Is't ocht in the
business line? Is there a possibeelity for me in't?"

"Oh, there might," nodded Gibson, playing his man for a while.

"Ay, man!" cried Wilson briskly, and brought his chair an inch or two
forward. Gibson grinned and watched him with his beady eyes. "What green
teeth he has!" thought Wilson, who was not fastidious.

"The Coal Company are meaning to erect a village for five hundred miners
a mile out the Fleckie Road, and they're running a branch line up the
Lintie's Burn that'll need the building of a dozen brigs. I'm happy to
say I have nabbed the contract for the building."

"Man, Mr. Gibson, d'ye tell me that! I'm proud to hear it, sir; I am
that!" Wilson was hotching in his chair with eagerness. For what could
Gibson be wanting with _him_ if it wasna to arrange about the carting?
"Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're
drinking nothing at all. Let _me_ help you."

"Ay, but I havena the contract for the carting," said Gibson. "That's
not mine to dispose of. They mean to keep it in their own hand."

Wilson's mouth forgot to shut, and his eyes were big and round as his
mouth in staring disappointment. Was it this he was wasting his drink
for?

"Where do I come in?" he asked blankly.

Gibson tossed off another glassful of the burning heartener of men, and
leaned forward with his elbows on the table.

"D'ye ken Goudie, the Company's manager? He's worth making up to, I can
tell ye. He has complete control of the business, and can airt you the
road of a good thing. I made a point of helping him in everything, ever
since he came to Barbie, and I'm glad to say that he hasna forgotten't.
Man, it was through him I got the building contract; they never threw't
open to the public. But they mean to contract separate for carting the
material. That means that they'll need the length of a dozen horses on
the road for a twelvemonth to come; for it's no only the
building--they're launching out on a big scale, and there's lots of
other things forbye. Now, Goudie's as close as a whin, and likes to keep
everything dark till the proper time comes for sploring o't. Not a
whisper has been heard so far about this village for the miners--there's
a rumour, to be sure, about a wheen houses going up, but nothing _near_
the reality. And there's not a soul, either, that kens there's a big
contract for carting to be had 'ceptna Goudie and mysell. But or a
month's by they'll be advertising for estimates for a twelvemonth's
carrying. I thocht a hint aforehand would be worth something to you, and
that's the reason of my visit."

"I see," said Wilson briskly. "You're verra good, Mr. Gibson. You mean
you'll give me an inkling in private of the other estimates sent in, and
help to arrange mine according?"

"Na," said Gibson. "Goudie's owre close to let me ken. I'll speak a word
in his ear on your behalf, to be sure, if you agree to the proposal I
mean to put before you. But Gourlay's the man you need to keep your eye
on. It's you or him for the contract--there's nobody else to compete wi'
the two o' ye."

"Imphm, I see," said Wilson, and tugged his moustache in meditation. All
expression died out of his face while his brain churned within. What
Brodie had christened "the considering keek" was in his eyes; they were
far away, and saw the distant village in process of erection; busy with
its chances and occasions. Then an uneasy thought seemed to strike him
and recall him to the man by his side. He stole a shifty glance at the
sandy smiler.

"But I thought _you_ were a friend of Gourlay's," he said slowly.

"Friendship!" said Gibson. "We're speaking of business. And there's
sma-all friendship atween me and Gourlay. He was nebby owre a bill I
sent in the other day; and I'm getting tired of his bluster. Besides,
there's little more to be made of him. Gourlay's bye wi't. But you're a
rising man, Mr. Wilson, and I think that you and me might work thegither
to our own advantage, don't ye see? Yes; just so; to the advantage of us
both. Oom?"

"I hardly see what you're driving at," said Wilson.

"I'm driving at this," said Gibson. "If Gourlay kens you're against him
for the contract, he'll cut his estimate down to a ruinous price, out o'
sheer spite--yes, out o' sheer spite--rather than be licked by _you_ in
public competition. And if he does that, Goudie and I may do what we
like, but we canna help you. For it's the partners that decide the
estimates sent in, d'ye see? Imphm, it's the partners. Goudie has
noathing to do wi' that. And if Gourlay once gets round the partners,
you'll be left out in the cold for a very loang time. Shivering, sir,
shivering! You will that!"

"Dod, you're right. There's a danger of that. But I fail to see how we
can prevent it."

"We can put Gourlay on a wrong scent," said Gibson.

"But how, though?"

Gibson met one question by another.

"What was the charge for a man and a horse and a day's carrying when ye
first came hereaway?" he asked.

"Only four shillings a day," said Wilson promptly. "It has risen to six
now," he added.

"Exactly," said Gibson; "and with the new works coming in about the town
it'll rise to eight yet. I have it for a fact that the Company's willing
to gie that. Now if you and me could procure a job for Gourlay at the
lower rate, before the news o' this new industry gets scattered--a job
that would require the whole of his plant, you understand, and prevent
his competing for the Company's business--we would clear"--he clawed his
chin to help his arithmetic--"we would clear three hundred and
seventy-four pounds o' difference on the twelvemonth. At least _you_
would make that," he added, "but you would allow me a handsome
commission of course--the odd hundred and seventy, say--for bringing the
scheme before ye. I don't think there's ocht unreasonable in tha-at. For
it's not the mere twelvemonth's work that's at stake, you understand;
it's the valuable connection for the fee-yuture. Now, I have influence
wi' Goudie; I can help you there. But if Gourlay gets in there's just a
chance that you'll never be able to oust him."

"I see," said Wilson. "Before he knows what's coming, we're to provide
work for Gourlay at the lower rate, both to put money in our own pocket
and prevent him competing for the better business."

"You've summed it to the nines," said Gibson.

"Yes," said Wilson blankly, "but how on earth are _we_ to provide work
for him?"

Gibson leaned forward a second time and tapped Wilson on the knee.

"Have you never considered what a chance for building there's in that
holm of yours?" he asked. "You've a fortune there, lying undeveloped."

That was the point to which Cunning Johnny had been leading all the
time. He cared as little for Wilson as for Gourlay; all he wanted was a
contract for covering Wilson's holm with jerry-built houses, and a good
commission on the year's carrying. It was for this he evolved the
conspiracy to cripple Gourlay.

Wilson's thoughts went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He
blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his
comrade. He tugged his moustache and said "Imphm" many times. Then his
eyes went off in their long preoccupied stare, and the sound of the
breath, coming heavy through his nostrils, was audible in the quiet
room. Wilson was one of the men whom you hear thinking.

"I see," he said slowly. "You mean to bind Gourlay to cart building
material to my holm at the present price of work. You'll bind him in
general terms so that he canna suspect, till the time comes, who in
particular he's to work for. In the meantime I'll be free to offer for
the Company's business at the higher price."

"That's the size o't," said Gibson.

Wilson was staggered by the rapid combinations of the scheme. But
Cunning Johnny had him in the toils. The plan he proposed stole about
the grocer's every weakness, and tugged his inclinations to consent. It
was very important, he considered, that he, and no other, should obtain
this contract, which was both valuable in itself and an earnest of other
business in the future. And Gibson's scheme got Gourlay, the only
possible rival, out of the way. For it was not possible for Gourlay to
put more than twelve horses on the road, and if he thought he had
secured a good contract already, he would never dream of applying for
another. Then, Wilson's malice was gratified by the thought that
Gourlay, who hated him, should have to serve, as helper and underling,
in a scheme for his aggrandizement. That would take down his pride for
him! And the commercial imagination, so strong in Wilson, was inflamed
by the vision of himself as a wealthy houseowner which Gibson put before
him. Cunning Johnny knew all this when he broached the scheme--he
foresaw the pull of it on Wilson's nature. Yet Wilson hesitated. He did
not like to give himself to Gibson quite so rapidly.

"You go fast, Mr. Gibson," said he. "Faith, you go fast. This is a big
affair, and needs to be looked at for a while."

"Fast!" cried Gibson. "Damn it, we have no time to waste. We maun act on
the spur of the moment."

"I'll have to borrow money," said Wilson slowly; "and it's verra dear at
the present time."

"It was never worth more in Barbie than it is at the present time. Man,
don't ye see the chance you're neglecting? Don't ye see what it means?
There's thousands lying at your back door if ye'll only reach to pick
them up. Yes, thousands. Thousands, I'm telling ye--thousands!"

Wilson saw himself provost and plutocrat. Yet was he cautious.

"_You_'ll do well by the scheme," he said tartly, "if you get the sole
contract for building these premises of mine, and a fat commission on
the carrying forbye."

"Can you carry the scheme without me?" said Gibson. "A word from me to
Goudie means a heap." There was a veiled threat in the remark.

"Oh, we'll come to terms," said the other. "But how will you manage
Gourlay?"

"Aha!" said Gibson, "I'll come in handy for that, you'll discover.
There's been a backset in Barbie for the last year--things went owre
quick at the start and were followed by a wee lull; but it's only for a
time, sir--it's only for a time. Hows'ever, it and you thegither have
damaged Gourlay: he's both short o' work and scarce o' cash, as I found
to my cost when I asked him for my siller! So when I offer him a big
contract for carting stones atween the quarry and the town foot, he'll
swallow it without question. I'll insert a clause that he must deliver
the stuff at such places as I direct within four hundred yards of the
Cross, in ainy direction--for I've several jobs near the Cross, doan't
ye see, and how's he to know that yours is one o' them? Man, it's easy
to bamboozle an ass like Gourlay! Besides, he'll think my principals
have trusted me to let the carrying to ainy one I like, and, as I let it
to him, he'll fancy I'm on his side, doan't ye see? He'll never jalouse
that I mean to diddle him. In the meantime we'll spread the news that
you're meaning to build on a big scale upon your own land; we'll have
the ground levelled, the foundations dug, and the drains and everything
seen to. Now, it'll never occur to Gourlay, in the present slackness o'
trade, that you would contract wi' another man to cart your material,
and go hunting for other work yoursell. That'll throw him off the scent
till the time comes to put his nose on't. When the Company advertise for
estimates he canna compete wi' you, because he's pre-engaged to me; and
he'll think you're out o't too, because you're busy wi' your own woark.
You'll be free to nip the eight shillings. Then we'll force him to
fulfill his bargain and cart for us at six."

"If he refuses?" said Wilson.

"I'll have the contract stamped and signed in the presence of
witnesses," said Gibson. "Not that that's necessary, I believe, but a
double knot's aye the safest."

Wilson looked at him with admiration.

"Gosh, Mr. Gibson," he cried, "you're a warmer! Ye deserve your name. Ye
ken what the folk ca' you?"

"Oh yes," said Gibson complacently. "I'm quite proud o' the
description."

"I've my ain craw to pick wi' Gourlay," he went on. "He was damned
ill-bred yestreen when I asked him to settle my account, and talked
about extortion. But bide a wee, bide a wee! I'll enjoy the look on his
face when he sees himself forced to carry for you, at a rate lower than
the market price."

When Gibson approached Gourlay on the following day he was full of
laments about the poor state of trade.

"Ay," said he, "the grand railway they boasted o' hasna done muckle for
the town!"

"Atwell ay," quoth Gourlay with pompous wisdom; "they'll maybe find, or
a's by, that the auld way wasna the warst way. There was to be a great
boom, as they ca't, but I see few signs o't."

"I see few signs o't either," said Gibson, "it's the slackest time for
the last twa years."

Gourlay grunted his assent.

"But I've a grand job for ye, for a' that," said Gibson, slapping his
hands. "What do ye say to the feck of a year's carting tweesht the
quarry and the town foot?"

"I might consider that," said Gourlay, "if the terms were good."

"Six shillins," said Gibson, and went on in solemn protest: "In the
present state o' trade, doan't ye see, I couldna give a penny more."
Gourlay, who had denounced the present state of trade even now, was
prevented by his own words from asking for a penny more.

"At the town foot, you say?" he asked.

"I've several jobs thereaway," Gibson explained hurriedly, "and you must
agree to deliver stuff ainy place I want it within four hundred yards o'
the Cross. It's all one to you, of course," he went on, "seeing you're
paid by the day."

"Oh, it's all one to me," said Gourlay.

Peter Riney and the new "orra" man were called in to witness the
agreement. Cunning Johnny had made it as cunning as he could.

"We may as well put a stamp on't," said he. "A stamp costs little, and
means a heap."

"You're damned particular the day," cried Gourlay in a sudden heat.

"Oh, nothing more than my usual, nothing more than my usual," said
Gibson blandly. "Good-morning, Mr. Gourlay," and he made for the door,
buttoning the charter of his dear revenge in the inside pocket of his
coat. Gourlay ignored him.

When Gibson got out he turned to the House with the Green Shutters, and
"Curse you!" said he; "you may refuse to answer me the day, but wait
till this day eight weeks. You'll be roaring than."

On that day eight weeks Gourlay received a letter from Gibson requiring
him to hold himself in readiness to deliver stone, lime, baulks of
timber, and iron girders in Mr. Wilson's holm, in terms of his
agreement, and in accordance with the orders to be given him from day to
day. He was apprised that a couple of carts of lime and seven loads of
stone were needed on the morrow.

He went down the street with grinding jaws, the letter crushed to a
white pellet in his hand. It would have gone ill with Gibson had he met
him. Gourlay could not tell why, or to what purpose, he marched on and
on with forward staring eyes. He only knew vaguely that the anger drove
him.

When he came to the Cross a long string of carts was filing from the
Skeighan Road, and passing across to the street leading Fleckie-ward. He
knew them to be Wilson's. The Deacon was there, of course, hobbling on
his thin shanks, and cocking his eye to see everything that happened.

"What does this mean?" Gourlay asked him, though he loathed the Deacon.

"Oh, haven't ye heard?" quoth the Deacon blithely. "That's the stuff for
the new mining village out the Fleckie Road. Wilson has nabbed the
contract for the carting. They're saying it was Gibson's influence wi'
Goudie that helped him to the getting o't."

Amid his storm of anger at the trick, Gourlay was conscious of a sudden
pity for himself, as for a man most unfairly worsted. He realized for a
moment his own inefficiency as a business man, in conflict with
cleverer rivals, and felt sorry to be thus handicapped by nature. Though
wrath was uppermost, the other feeling was revealed, showing itself by a
gulping in the throat and a rapid blinking of the eyes. The Deacon
marked the signs of his chagrin.

"Man!" he reported to the bodies, "but Gourlay was cut to the quick. His
face showed how gunkit he was. Oh, but he was chawed. I saw his breist
give the great heave."

"Were ye no sorry?" cried the baker.

"Thorry, hi!" laughed the Deacon. "Oh, I was thorry, to be sure," he
lisped, "but I didna thyow't. I'm glad to thay I've a grand control of
my emotionth. Not like thum folk we know of," he added slyly, giving the
baker a "good one."

All next day Gibson's masons waited for their building material in
Wilson's holm. But none came. And all day seven of Gourlay's horses
champed idly in their stalls.

Barbie had a weekly market now, and, as it happened, that was the day it
fell on. At two in the afternoon Gourlay was standing on the gravel
outside the Red Lion, trying to look wise over a sample of grain which a
farmer had poured upon his great palm. Gibson approached with false
voice and smile.

"Gosh, Mr. Gourlay!" he cried protestingly, "have ye forgotten whatna
day it is? Ye havena gi'en my men a ton o' stuff to gang on wi'."

To the farmer's dismay his fine sample of grain was scattered on the
gravel by a convulsive movement of Gourlay's arm. As Gourlay turned on
his enemy, his face was frightfully distorted; all his brow seemed
gathered in a knot above his nose, and he gaped on his words, yet ground
them out like a labouring mill, each word solid as plug shot.

"I'll see Wil-son ... and Gib-son ... and every other man's son ...
frying in hell," he said slowly, "ere a horse o' mine draws a stane o'
Wilson's property. Be damned to ye, but there's your answer!"

Gibson's cunning deserted him for once. He put his hand on Gourlay's
shoulder in pretended friendly remonstrance.

"Take your hand off my shouther!" said Gourlay, in a voice the tense
quietness of which should have warned Gibson to forbear.

But he actually shook Gourlay with a feigned playfulness.

Next instant he was high in air; for a moment the hobnails in the soles
of his boots gleamed vivid to the sun; then Gourlay sent him flying
through the big window of the Red Lion, right on to the middle of the
great table where the market-folk were drinking.

For a minute he lay stunned and bleeding among the broken crockery, in a
circle of white faces and startled cries.

Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to
fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his
black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game
John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."

Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window,
his grin a _rictus_ of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.

"By God, Gourlay," he screamed, "I'll make you pay for this; I'll fight
you through a' the law courts in Breetain, but you'll implement your
bond."

"Damn you for a measled swine! would you grunt at me?" cried Gourlay,
and made to go at him through the window. Though he could not reach him,
Gibson quailed at his look. He shook his fist in impotent wrath, and
spat threats of justice through his green teeth.

"To hell wi' your law-wers!" cried Gourlay. "I'd throttle ye like the
dog you are on the floor o' the House o' Lords."

But that day was to cost him dear. Ere six months passed he was cast in
damages and costs for a breach of contract aggravated by assault. He
appealed, of course. He was not to be done; he would show the dogs what
he thought of them.




CHAPTER XIV.


In those days it came to pass that Wilson sent his son to the High
School of Skeighan--even James, the red-haired one, with the squint in
his eye. Whereupon Gourlay sent _his_ son to the High School of Skeighan
too, of course, to be upsides with Wilson. If Wilson could afford to
send his boy to a distant and expensive school, then, by the Lord, so
could he! And it also came to pass that James, the son of James the
grocer, took many prizes; but John, the son of John, took no prizes.
Whereat there were ructions in the House of Gourlay.

Gourlay's resolve to be equal to Wilson in everything he did was his
main reason for sending his son to the High School of Skeighan. That he
saw his business decreasing daily was a reason too. Young Gourlay was a
lad of fifteen now, undersized for his age at that time, though he soon
shot up to be a swaggering youngster. He had been looking forward with
delight to helping his father in the business--how grand it would be to
drive about the country and see things!--and he had irked at being kept
for so long under the tawse of old Bleach-the-boys. But if the business
went on at this rate there would be little in it for the boy. Gourlay
was not without a thought of his son's welfare when he packed him off to
Skeighan. He would give him some book-lear, he said; let him make a kirk
or a mill o't.

But John shrank, chicken-hearted, from the prospect. Was he still to
drudge at books? Was he to go out among strangers whom he feared? His
imagination set to work on what he heard of the High School of
Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what could
_he_ do wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in
public; how could _he_ stand up and spout, before a whole jing-bang o'
them?

"I don't want to gang," he whined.

"Want?" flamed his father. "What does it matter what _you_ want? Go you
shall."

"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.

"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine help _you_ would be in
business."

"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in
support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the
opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise
to be a minister."

Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a
different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he
growled.

So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and
forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been
opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as
he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he
was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he
was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow
important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he
was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew
upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now,
and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and
assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool
mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better
still was the home-coming--to board the empty train at Skeighan when
the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat
cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was
a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to
get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions.
Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his
lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of
nights--his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real
ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of
the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their
school days--and are fools for the remainder of their lives.

The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated
over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every
youngster in their ken.

"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle,
musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.

"To no good--you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a
regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the
train the other day he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And
he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he
swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him
from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young
Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't--he shook like a dog in a wet
sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past
your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz--it would blind ye
by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were
his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening
before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was
obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with the dizziness,'
said he, and he actually bocked himsell."

Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though
his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he
fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it
was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his
classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at
Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping
from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing
off at such times--it was easy to slip out--and playing truant in the
byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in
the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his
mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.

For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a
cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a
congenital horror of eerie sounds--he was his mother's son for that--and
he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June
afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on
the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place
oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel
and forgot the world.

He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it
was only the baker--the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes,
the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which
wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a
wonderful hearty manner with a boy.

"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time. The
storm's at the burstin'!"

"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his
birth.

"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna
see't?"

They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The
thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and
roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked
close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in
vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the
cowering earth. The rain came--a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath
to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a
white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window,
open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He
started violently--that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.

The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire.
Gourlay screamed in terror.

The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.

"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye
know. You ought to be a hardy man."

"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I
just let on to be."

But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was
vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.

"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay.
"Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his
hands.

A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a
dagger!" stared Gourlay.

"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash--then jerked
to the side--then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the
coulter of a plough."

Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its
centre.

"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace
door."

"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.

"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too
much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like
to think them over when they're by."

Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and
the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to
explain.

"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger.
"But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"--he
nodded to the warring heavens.

The baker did not understand. "Have you seen your faither?" he asked.

"My faither!" John gasped in terror. If his father should find him
playing truant!

"Yes; did ye no ken he was in Skeighan? We come up thegither by the ten
train, and are meaning to gang hame by this. I expect him every moment."

John turned to escape. In the doorway stood his father.

When Gourlay was in wrath he had a widening glower that enveloped the
offender; yet his eye seemed to stab--a flash shot from its centre to
transfix and pierce. Gaze at a tiger through the bars of his cage, and
you will see the look. It widens and concentrates at once.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, with the wild-beast glower on his
son.

"I--I--I----" John stammered and choked.

"What are you doing here?" said his father.

John's fingers worked before him; his eyes were large and aghast on his
father; though his mouth hung open no words would come.

"How lang has he been here, baker?"

There was a curious regard between Gourlay and the baker. Gourlay spoke
with a firm civility.

"Oh, just a wee whilie," said the baker.

"I see. You want to shield him.--You have been playing the truant, have
'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on _you_ for this to be the end o't?"

"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy.
Dinna thrash him."

"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to
thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I
don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."

He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down
High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as
you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. John was black in the
face; time and again in his wrath Gourlay swung him off the ground.
Grocers coming to their doors, to scatter fresh yellow sawdust on the
old, now trampled black and wet on the sills, stared sideways, chins up
and mouths open, after the strange spectacle. But Gourlay splashed on
amid the staring crowd, never looking to the right or left.

Opposite the Fiddler's Inn whom should they meet but Wilson! A snigger
shot to his features at the sight. Gourlay swung the boy up; for a
moment a wild impulse surged within him to club his rival with his own
son.

He marched into the vestibule of the High School, the boy dangling from
his great hand.

"Where's your gaffer?" he roared at the janitor.

"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.

"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him--the fellow that runs
the business."

"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.

"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the
janitor down a long wooden corridor. A door was flung open showing a
classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.

The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his
fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat,
brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer
world.

"I believe I pay _you_ to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is
this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son
spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet,
huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the
master.

"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.

"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay _you_ to teach that boy, and you allow
him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"

"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of
deprecating hands.

The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.

"Do--do? Damn it, sir, am _I_ to be _your_ dominie? Am _I_ to teach
_you_ your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him
hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word
to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"

He was gone--they heard him go clumping along the corridor.

Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the
forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them.
However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine
to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green
Shutters.

He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train
was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the
last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the
smoke down his nostrils--his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the
great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window,
he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was
Templandmuir who was speaking.

"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his,"
said the Templar.

"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then--"Gosh, he must have
lost infernal!"

"Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been
enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to
settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the
hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye.
Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the
need o' that."

Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House
with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never
entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening
doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays
were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as
a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.

"Mother, are _we_ ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that
evening.

She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow
fondly. He was as tall as herself now.

"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a
grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."

"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the
times!"




CHAPTER XV.


Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he
was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days--only a
few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in
between--the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality,
and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now
all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of
telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a
distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At
first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was
too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the
wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had
lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with
Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had
increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the
buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that
security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.

"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed
him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched
the cash.

He was meaning to drive, of course; Gourlay was proud of his gig, and
always kept a spanking roadster. "What a fine figure of a man!" you
thought, as you saw him coming swiftly towards you, seated high on his
driving cushion. That driving cushion was Gourlay's pedestal from which
he looked down on Barbie for many a day.

A quick step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as
of one gathering heart for a venture; then a clumsy knock on the door.

"Come in," snapped Gourlay.

Peter Riney's queer little old face edged timorously into the room. He
only opened the door the width of his face, and looked ready to bolt at
a word.

"Tam's deid!" he blurted.

Gourlay gashed himself frightfully with his razor, and a big red blob
stood out on his cheek.

"Deid!" he stared.

"Yes," stammered Peter. "He was right enough when Elshie gae him his
feed this morning; but when I went in enow to put the harness on, he was
lying deid in the loose-box. The batts--it's like."

For a moment Gourlay stared with the open mouth of an angry surprise,
forgetting to take down his razor.

"Aweel, Peter," he said at last, and Peter went away.

The loss of his pony touched Gourlay to the quick. He had been stolid
and dour in his other misfortunes, had taken them as they came, calmly;
he was not the man to whine and cry out against the angry heavens. He
had neither the weakness nor the width of nature to indulge in the
luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his
proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of
quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other
calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister,
prompting the question if misfortune would never have an end.

"Damn it, I have enough to thole," Gourlay muttered; "surely there was
no need for this to happen." And when he looked in the mirror to fasten
his stock, and saw the dark, strong, clean-shaven face, he stared at it
for a moment, with a curious compassion for the man before him, as for
one who was being hardly used. The hard lips could never have framed the
words, but the vague feeling in his heart, as he looked at the dark
vision, was: "It's a pity of you, sir."

He put on his coat rapidly, and went out to the stable. An instinct
prompted him to lock the door.

He entered the loose-box. A shaft of golden light, aswarm with motes,
slanted in the quietness. Tam lay on the straw, his head far out, his
neck unnaturally long, his limbs sprawling, rigid. What a spanker Tam
had been! What gallant drives they had had together! When he first put
Tam between the shafts, five years ago, he had been driving his world
before him, plenty of cash and a big way of doing. Now Tam was dead, and
his master netted in a mesh of care.

"I was always gude to the beasts, at any rate," Gourlay muttered, as if
pleading in his own defence.

For a long time he stared down at the sprawling carcass, musing. "Tam
the powney," he said twice, nodding his head each time he said it; "Tam
the powney," and he turned away.

How was he to get to Skeighan? He plunged at his watch. The ten o'clock
train had already gone, the express did not stop at Barbie; if he waited
till one o'clock he would be late for his appointment. There was a
brake, true, which ran to Skeighan every Tuesday. It was a downcome,
though, for a man who had been proud of driving behind his own
horseflesh to pack in among a crowd of the Barbie sprats. And if he went
by the brake, he would be sure to rub shoulders with his stinging and
detested foes. It was a fine day; like enough the whole jing-bang of
them would be going with the brake to Skeighan. Gourlay, who shrank from
nothing, shrank from the winks that would be sure to pass when they saw
him, the haughty, the aloof, forced to creep among them cheek for jowl.
Then his angry pride rushed towering to his aid. Was John Gourlay to
turn tail for a wheen o' the Barbie dirt? Damn the fear o't! It was a
public conveyance; he had the same right to use it as the rest o' folk!

The place of departure for the brake was the "Black Bull," at the Cross,
nearly opposite to Wilson's. There were winks and stares and
elbow-nudgings when the folk hanging round saw Gourlay coming forward;
but he paid no heed. Gourlay, in spite of his mad violence when roused,
was a man at all other times of a grave and orderly demeanour. He never
splurged. Even his bluster was not bluster, for he never threatened the
thing which he had not it in him to do. He walked quietly into the empty
brake, and took his seat in the right-hand corner at the top, close
below the driver.

As he had expected, the Barbie bodies had mustered in strength for
Skeighan. In a country brake it is the privilege of the important men to
mount beside the driver, in order to take the air and show themselves
off to an admiring world. On the dickey were ex-Provost Connal and Sandy
Toddle, and between them the Deacon, tightly wedged. The Deacon was so
thin (the bodie) that, though he was wedged closely, he could turn and
address himself to Tam Brodie, who was seated next the door.

The fun began when the horses were crawling up the first brae.

The Deacon turned with a wink to Brodie, and dropping a glance on the
crown of Gourlay's hat, "Tummuth," he lisped, "what a dirty place that
ith!" pointing to a hovel by the wayside.

Brodie took the cue at once. His big face flushed with a malicious grin.
"Ay," he bellowed; "the owner o' that maun be married to a dirty wife,
I'm thinking!"

"It must be terrible," said the Deacon, "to be married to a dirty
trollop."

"Terrible," laughed Brodie; "it's enough to give ainy man a gurly
temper."

They had Gourlay on the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him
off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not
their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet
superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the
veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now
the malignants were around him (while he could not get away)--talking
_to_ each other, indeed, but _at_ him, while he must keep quiet in their
midst.

At every brae they came to (and there were many braes) the bodies played
their malicious game, shouting remarks along the brake, to each other's
ears, to his comprehension.

The new house of Templandmuir was seen above the trees.

"What a splendid house Templandmuir has built!" cried the ex-Provost.

"Splendid!" echoed Brodie. "But a laird like the Templar has a right to
a fine mansion such as that! He's no' like some merchants we ken o' who
throw away money on a house for no other end but vanity. Many a man
builds a grand house for a show-off, when he has verra little to support
it. But the Templar's different. He has made a mint of money since he
took the quarry in his own hand."

"He's verra thick wi' Wilson, I notice," piped the Deacon, turning with
a grin and a gleaming droop of the eye on the head of his tormented
enemy. The Deacon's face was alive and quick with the excitement of the
game, his face flushed with an eager grin, his eyes glittering. Decent
folk in the brake behind felt compunctious visitings when they saw him
turn with the flushed grin and the gleaming squint on the head of his
enduring victim. "Now for another stab!" they thought.

"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole
of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new
houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny.--I'm thinking, Mr.
Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"

"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that _you_ should have
been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far
and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built
in two or three years!"

"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some
other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor
welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"

Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of
self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved;
but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of
his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert.
Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath
seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy
said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his
jaw."

But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.

"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the
College at Embro in October?"

"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has
been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole
town."

"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on _him_! It must be a
terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never
got a prize!"

The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all
very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of
danger; but if he provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of
tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the
hedge.

"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired--a civil enough
question surely.

"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."

"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"

"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can!
It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when
it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what
you're doing--especially if you've little money left to come and go on."

"Yeth," lisped the Deacon; "if a man canna afford to College his son, he
had better put him in hith business--if he hath ainy business left to
thpeak o', that ith!"

The brake swung on through merry cornfields where reapers were at work,
past happy brooks flashing to the sun, through the solemn hush of
ancient and mysterious woods, beneath the great white-moving clouds and
blue spaces of the sky. And amid the suave enveloping greatness of the
world the human pismires stung each other and were cruel, and full of
hate and malice and a petty rage.

"Oh, damn it, enough of this!" said the baker at last.

"Enough of what?" blustered Brodie.

"Of you and your gibes," said the baker, with a wry mouth of disgust.
"Damn it, man, leave folk alane!"

Gourlay turned to him quietly. "Thank you, baker," he said slowly. "But
don't interfere on my behalf! John Gourla"--he dwelt on his name in
ringing pride--"John Gourla can fight for his own hand--if so there need
to be. And pay no heed to the thing before ye. The mair ye tramp on a
dirt it spreads the wider!"

"Who was referring to _you_?" bellowed Brodie.

Gourlay looked over at him in the far corner of the brake, with the
wide-open glower that made people blink. Brodie blinked rapidly, trying
to stare fiercely the while.

"Maybe ye werena referring to me," said Gourlay slowly. "But if _I_ had
been in your end o' the brake _ye_ would have been in hell or this!"

He had said enough. There was silence in the brake till it reached
Skeighan. But the evil was done. Enough had been said to influence
Gourlay to the most disastrous resolution of his life.

"Get yourself ready for the College in October," he ordered his son that
evening.

"The College!" cried John aghast.

"Yes! Is there ainything in that to gape at?" snapped his father, in
sudden irritation at the boy's amaze.

"But I don't want to gang!" John whimpered as before.

"Want! what does it matter what _you_ want? You should be damned glad of
the chance! I mean to make ye a minister; they have plenty of money and
little to do--a grand, easy life o't. MacCandlish tells me you're a
stupid ass, but have some little gift of words. You have every
qualification!"

"It's against _my_ will," John bawled angrily.

"_Your_ will!" sneered his father.

To John the command was not only tyrannical, but treacherous. There had
been nothing to warn him of a coming change, for Gourlay was too
contemptuous of his wife and children to inform them how his business
stood. John had been brought up to go into the business, and now, at the
last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered off to a new life, from
which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an
imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he
saw two pictures with uncanny vividness--himself in bleak lodgings
raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home
to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies,
laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They
would be having the fine ploys while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. Must
he leave loved Barbie and the House with the Green Shutters? must he
still drudge at books which he loathed? must he venture on a new life
where everything terrified his mind?

"It's a shame!" he cried. "And I refuse to go. I don't want to leave
Barbie! I'm feared of Edinburgh," and there he stopped in conscious
impotence of speech. How could he explain his forebodings to a rock of a
man like his father?

"No more o't!" roared Gourlay, flinging out his hand--"not another word!
You go to College in October!"

"Ay, man, Johnny," said his mother, "think o' the future that's before
ye!"

"Ay," howled the youth in silly anger, "it's like to be a braw future!"

"It's the best future you can have!" growled his father.

For while rivalry, born of hate, was the propelling influence in
Gourlay's mind, other reasons whispered that the course suggested by
hate was a good one on its merits. His judgment, such as it was,
supported the impulse of his blood. It told him that the old business
would be a poor heritage for his son, and that it would be well to look
for another opening. The boy gave no sign of aggressive smartness to
warrant a belief that he would ever pull the thing together. Better make
him a minister. Surely there was enough money left about the house for
tha-at! It was the best that could befall him.

Mrs. Gourlay, for her part, though sorry to lose her son, was so pleased
at the thought of sending him to college, and making him a minister,
that she ran on in foolish maternal gabble to the wife of Drucken
Webster. Mrs. Webster informed the gossips, and they discussed the
matter at the Cross.

"Dod," said Sandy Toddle, "Gourlay's better off than I supposed!"

"Huts!" said Brodie, "it's just a wheen bluff to blind folk!"

"It would fit him better," said the Doctor, "if he spent some money on
his daughter. She ought to pass the winter in a warmer locality than
Barbie. The lassie has a poor chest! I told Gourlay, but he only gave a
grunt. And 'oh,' said Mrs. Gourlay, 'it would be a daft-like thing to
send _her_ away, when John maun be weel provided for the College.' D'ye
know, I'm beginning to think there's something seriously wrong with yon
woman's health! She seemed anxious to consult me on her own account, but
when I offered to sound her she wouldn't hear of it. 'Na,' she cried,
'I'll keep it to mysell!' and put her arm across her breast as if to
keep me off. I do think she's hiding some complaint! Only a woman whose
mind was weak with disease could have been so callous as yon about her
lassie."

"Oh, her mind's weak enough," said Sandy Toddle. "It was always that!
But it's only because Gourlay has tyraneezed her verra soul. I'm
surprised, however, that _he_ should be careless of the girl. He was aye
said to be browdened upon _her_."

"Men-folk are often like that about lassie-weans," said Johnny Coe.
"They like well enough to pet them when they're wee, but when once
they're big they never look the road they're on! They're a' very fine
when they're pets, but they're no sae fine when they're pretty misses.
And, to tell the truth, Janet Gourlay's ainything but pretty!"

Old Bleach-the-boys, the bitter dominie (who rarely left the studies in
political economy which he found a solace for his thwarted powers),
happened to be at the Cross that evening. A brooding and taciturn man,
he said nothing till others had their say. Then he shook his head.

"They're making a great mistake," he said gravely, "they're making a
great mistake! Yon boy's the last youngster on earth who should go to
College."

"Ay, man, dominie, he's an infernal ass, is he noat?" they cried, and
pressed for his judgment.

At last, partly in real pedantry, partly with humorous intent to puzzle
them, he delivered his astounding mind.

"The fault of young Gourlay," quoth he, "is a sensory perceptiveness in
gross excess of his intellectuality."

They blinked and tried to understand.

"Ay, man, dominie!" said Sandy Toddle. "That means he's an infernal
cuddy, dominie! Does it na, dominie?"

But Bleach-the-boys had said enough. "Ay," he said dryly, "there's a
wheen gey cuddies in Barbie!" and he went back to his stuffy little room
to study "The Wealth of Nations."




CHAPTER XVI.


The scion of the house of Gourlay was a most untravelled sprig when his
father packed him off to the University. Of the world beyond Skeighan he
had no idea. Repression of his children's wishes to see something of the
world was a feature of Gourlay's tyranny, less for the sake of the money
which a trip might cost (though that counted for something in his
refusal) than for the sake of asserting his authority. "Wants to gang to
Fechars, indeed! Let him bide at home," he would growl; and at home the
youngster had to bide. This had been the more irksome to John since most
of his companions in the town were beginning to peer out, with their
mammies and daddies to encourage them. To give their cubs a "cast o' the
world" was a rule with the potentates of Barbie; once or twice a year
young Hopeful was allowed to accompany his sire to Fechars or Poltandie,
or--oh, rare joy!--to the city on the Clyde. To go farther, and get the
length of Edinburgh, was dangerous, because you came back with a halo of
glory round your head which banded your fellows together in a common
attack on your pretensions. It was his lack of pretension to travel,
however, that banded them against young Gourlay. "Gunk" and "chaw" are
the Scots for a bitter and envious disappointment which shows itself in
face and eyes. Young Gourlay could never conceal that envious look when
he heard of a glory which he did not share; and the youngsters noted his
weakness with the unerring precision of the urchin to mark simple
difference of character. Now the boy presses fiendishly on an intimate
discovery in the nature of his friends, both because it gives him a new
and delightful feeling of power over them, and also because he has not
learned charity from a sense of his deficiencies, the brave ruffian
having none. He is always coming back to probe the raw place, and Barbie
boys were always coming back to "do a gunk" and "play a chaw" on young
Gourlay by boasting their knowledge of the world, winking at each other
the while to observe his grinning anger. They were large on the wonders
they had seen and the places they had been to, while he grew small (and
they saw it) in envy of their superiority. Even Swipey Broon had a crow
at him. For Swipey had journeyed in the company of his father to far-off
Fechars, yea even to the groset-fair, and came back with an epic tale of
his adventures. He had been in fifteen taverns, and one hotel (a
temperance hotel, where old Brown bashed the proprietor for refusing to
supply him gin); one Pepper's Ghost; one Wild Beasts' Show; one
Exhibition of the Fattest Woman on the Earth; also in the precincts of
one jail, where Mr. Patrick Brown was cruelly incarcerate for wiping the
floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey
for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home
of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for
the benefit of young Gourlay--for Swipey, though his name was the base
Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the
imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink
home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars,
though my faither 'ull no allow _me_!" "Never mind, dear," she would
soothe him; "when once you're in the business, you'll gang a'where. And
nut wan o' them has sic a business to gang intill!"

But though he longed to go here and there for a day, that he might be
able to boast of it at home, young Gourlay felt that leaving Barbie for
good would be a cutting of his heart-strings. Each feature of it, town
and landward, was a crony of old years. In a land like Barbie, of quick
hill and dale, of tumbled wood and fell, each facet of nature has an
individuality so separate and so strong that if you live with it a
little it becomes your friend, and a memory so dear that you kiss the
thought of it in absence. The fields are not similar as pancakes; they
have their difference; each leaps to the eye with a remembered and
peculiar charm. That is why the heart of the Scot dies in flat southern
lands; he lives in a vacancy; at dawn there is no Ben Agray to nod
recognition through the mists. And that is why, when he gets north of
Carlisle, he shouts with glee as each remembered object sweeps on the
sight: yonder's the Nith with a fisherman hip-deep jigging at his rod,
and yonder's Corsoncon with the mist on his brow. It is less the
totality of the place than the individual feature that pulls at the
heart, and it was the individual feature that pulled at young Gourlay.
With intellect little or none, he had a vast, sensational experience,
and each aspect of Barbie was working in his blood and brain. Was there
ever a Cross like Barbie Cross? Was there ever a burn like the Lintie?
It was blithe and heartsome to go birling to Skeighan in the train; it
was grand to jouk round Barbie on the nichts at e'en! Even people whom
he did not know he could locate with warm sure feelings of superiority.
If a poor workman slouched past him on the road, he set him down in his
heart as one of that rotten crowd from the Weaver's Vennel or the
Tinker's Wynd. Barbie was in subjection to the mind of the son of the
important man. To dash about Barbie in a gig, with a big dog walloping
behind, his coat-collar high about his ears, and the reek of a
meerschaum pipe floating white and blue many yards behind him, jovial
and sordid nonsense about home--that had been his ideal. His father, he
thought angrily, had encouraged the ideal, and now he forbade it, like
the brute he was. From the earth in which he was rooted so deeply his
father tore him, to fling him on a world he had forbidden him to know.
His heart presaged disaster.

Old Gourlay would have scorned the sentimentality of seeing him off from
the station, and Mrs. Gourlay was too feckless to propose it for
herself. Janet had offered to convoy him, but when the afternoon came
she was down with a racking cold. He was alone as he strolled on the
platform--a youth well-groomed and well-supplied, but for once in his
life not a swaggerer, though the chance to swagger was unique. He was
pointed out as "Young Gourlay off to the College." But he had no
pleasure in the rôle, for his heart was in his boots.

He took the slow train to Skeighan, where he boarded the express. Few
sensational experiences were unknown to his too-impressionable mind, and
he knew the animation of railway travelling. Coming back from Skeighan
in an empty compartment on nights of the past, he had sometimes shouted
and stamped and banged the cushions till the dust flew, in mere joy of
his rush through the air; the constant rattle, the quick-repeated noise,
getting at his nerves, as they get at the nerves of savages and
Englishmen on Bank Holidays. But any animation of the kind which he felt
to-day was soon expelled by the slow uneasiness welling through his
blood. He had no eager delight in the unknown country rushing past; it
inspired him with fear. He thought with a feeble smile of what Mysie
Monk said when they took her at the age of sixty (for the first time in
her life) to the top of Milmannoch Hill. "Eh," said Mysie, looking round
her in amaze--"eh, sirs, it's a lairge place the world when you see it
all!" Gourlay smiled because he had the same thought, but feebly,
because he was cowering at the bigness of the world. Folded nooks in
the hills swept past, enclosing their lonely farms; then the open
straths, where autumnal waters gave a pale gleam to the sky. Sodden
moors stretched away in vast patient loneliness. Then a gray smear of
rain blotted the world, penning him in with his dejection. He seemed to
be rushing through unseen space, with no companion but his own
foreboding. "Where are you going to?" asked his mind, and the wheels of
the train repeated the question all the way to Edinburgh, jerking it out
in two short lines and a long one: "Where are you going to? Where are
you going to? Ha, ha, Mr. Gourlay, where are you going to?"

It was the same sensitiveness to physical impression which won him to
Barbie that repelled him from the outer world. The scenes round Barbie,
so vividly impressed, were his friends, because he had known them from
his birth; he was a somebody in their midst and had mastered their
familiarity; they were the ministers of his mind. Those other scenes
were his foes, because, realizing them morbidly in relation to himself,
he was cowed by their big indifference to him, and felt puny, a nobody
before them. And he could not pass them like more manly and more callous
minds; they came burdening in on him whether he would or no. Neither
could he get above them. Except when lording it at Barbie, he had never
a quick reaction of the mind on what he saw; it possessed him, not he
it.

About twilight, when the rain had ceased, his train was brought up with
a jerk between the stations. While the rattle and bang continued it
seemed not unnatural to young Gourlay (though depressing) to be whirling
through the darkening land; it went past like a panorama in a dream. But
in the dead pause following the noise he thought it "queer" to be
sitting here in the intense quietude and looking at a strange and
unfamiliar scene--planted in its midst by a miracle of speed, and
gazing at it closely through a window! Two ploughmen from the farmhouse
near the line were unyoking at the end of the croft; he could hear the
muddy noise ("splorroch" is the Scotch of it) made by the big hoofs on
the squashy head-rig. "Bauldy" was the name of the shorter ploughman, so
yelled to by his mate; and two of the horses were "Prince and Rab"--just
like a pair in Loranogie's stable. In the curtainless window of the
farmhouse shone a leaping flame--not the steady glow of a lamp, but the
tossing brightness of a fire--and thought he to himself, "They're
getting the porridge for the men!" He had a vision of the woman stirring
in the meal, and of the homely interior in the dancing firelight. He
wondered who the folk were, and would have liked to know them. Yes, it
was "queer," he thought, that he who left Barbie only a few hours ago
should be in intimate momentary touch with a place and people he had
never seen before. The train seemed arrested by a spell that he might
get his vivid impression.

When ensconced in his room that evening he had a brighter outlook on the
world. With the curtains drawn, and the lights burning, its shabbiness
was unrevealed. After the whirling strangeness of the day he was glad to
be in a place that was his own; here at least was a corner of earth of
which he was master; it reassured him. The firelight dancing on the tea
things was pleasant and homely, and the enclosing cosiness shut out the
black roaring world that threatened to engulf his personality. His
spirits rose, ever ready to jump at a trifle.

The morrow, however, was the first of his lugubrious time.

If he had been an able man he might have found a place in his classes to
console him. Many youngsters are conscious of a vast depression when
entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to
cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy
alike the smiling sureness of the genial charlatan (to whom professors
are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They
have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of
uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon
forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the
waves you must swim; and to swim through the sea of learning was more
than heavy-headed Gourlay could accomplish. His mind, finding no solace
in work, was left to prey upon itself.

If he had been the ass total and complete he might have loafed in the
comfortable haze which surrounds the average intelligence, and cushions
it against the world. But in Gourlay was a rawness of nerve, a
sensitiveness to physical impression, which kept him fretting and
stewing, and never allowed him to lapse on a sluggish indifference.

Though he could not understand things, he could not escape them; they
thrust themselves forward on his notice. We hear of poor genius cursed
with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with
impressions which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of
thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he
observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly
depressed--the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life,
though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings
which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his
timid mind. There was a greengrocer's shop at the corner of the street
in which he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of
its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning
foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen
fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after
he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and
made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and
manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them
unimportant, like the able; they were always recurring and suggesting
woe. If he fled to his room, he was followed by his morbid sense of an
unpleasant world. He conceived a rankling hatred of the four walls
wherein he had to live. Heavy Biblical pictures, in frames of gleaming
black like the splinters of a hearse, were hung against a dark ground.
Every time Gourlay raised his head he scowled at them with eyes of
gloom. It was curious that, hating his room, he was loath to go to bed.
He got a habit of sitting till three in the morning, staring at the dead
fire in sullen apathy.

He was sitting at nine o'clock one evening, wondering if there was no
means of escape from the wretched life he had to lead, when he received
a letter from Jock Allan, asking him to come and dine.




CHAPTER XVII.


That dinner was a turning-point in young Gourlay's career. It is lucky
that a letter describing it has fallen into the hands of the patient
chronicler. It was sent by young Jimmy Wilson to his mother. As it gives
an idea--which is slightly mistaken--of Jock Allan, and an idea--which
is very unmistakable--of young Wilson, it is here presented in the place
of pride. It were a pity not to give a human document of this kind all
the honour in one's power.

"Dear mother," said the wee sma' Scoatchman--so the hearty Allan dubbed
him--"dear mother, I just write to inform you that I've been out to a
grand dinner at Jock Allan's. He met me on Princes Street, and made a
great how-d'ye-do. 'Come out on Thursday night, and dine with me,' says
he, in his big way. So here I went out to see him. I can tell you he's a
warmer! I never saw a man eat so much in all my born days--but I suppose
he would be having more on his table than usual to show off a bit,
knowing us Barbie boys would be writing home about it all. And drink!
D'ye know, he began with a whole half tumbler of whisky, and how many
more he had I really should _not_ like to say! And he must be used to
it, too, for it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. And then he
smoked and smoked--two great big cigars after we had finished eating,
and then 'Damn it,' says he--he's an awful man to swear--'damn it,' he
says, 'there's no satisfaction in cigars; I must have a pipe,' and he
actually smoked _four_ pipes before I came away! I noticed the cigars
were called 'Estorellas--Best Quality,' and when I was in last Saturday
night getting an ounce of shag at the wee shoppie round the corner, I
asked the price of 'these Estorellas.' 'Ninepence a piece!' said the
bodie. Just imagine Jock Allan smoking eighteen-pence, and not being
satisfied! He's up in the world since he used to shaw turnips at
Loranogie for sixpence a day! But he'll come down as quick if he keeps
on at yon rate. He made a great phrase with me; but though it keeps down
one's weekly bill to get a meal like yon--I declare I wasn't hungry for
two days--for all that I'll go very little about him. He'll be the kind
that borrows money very fast--one of those harum-scarum ones!"

Criticism like that is a boomerang that comes back to hit the emitting
skull with a hint of its kindred woodenness. It reveals the writer more
than the written of. Allan was a bigger man than you would gather from
Wilson's account of his Gargantuan revelry. He had a genius for
mathematics--a gift which crops up, like music, in the most unexpected
corners--and from plough-boy and herd he had become an actuary in Auld
Reekie. Wilson had no need to be afraid, the meagre fool, for his host
could have bought him and sold him.

Allan had been in love with young Gourlay's mother when she herself was
a gay young fliskie at Tenshillingland, but his little romance was soon
ended when Gourlay came and whisked her away. But she remained the one
romance of his life. Now in his gross and jovial middle age he idealized
her in memory (a sentimentalist, of course--he was Scotch); he never saw
her in her scraggy misery to be disillusioned; to him she was still the
wee bit lairdie's dochter, a vision that had dawned on his wretched
boyhood, a pleasant and pathetic memory. And for that reason he had a
curious kindness to her boy. That was why he introduced him to his boon
companions. He thought he was doing him a good turn.

It was true that Allan made a phrase with a withered wisp of humanity
like young Wilson. Not that he failed to see through him, for he
christened him "a dried washing-clout." But Allan, like most
great-hearted Scots far from their native place, saw it through a veil
of sentiment; harsher features that would have been ever-present to his
mind if he had never left it disappeared from view, and left only the
finer qualities bright within his memory. And idealizing the place he
idealized its sons. To him they had a value not their own, just because
they knew the brig and the burn and the brae, and had sat upon the
school benches. He would have welcomed a dog from Barbie. It was from a
like generous emotion that he greeted the bodies so warmly on his visits
home--he thought they were as pleased to see him as he was to see them.
But they imputed false motives to his hearty greetings. Even as they
shook his hand the mean ones would think to themselves: "What does he
mean by this now? What's he up till? No doubt he'll be wanting something
off me!" They could not understand the gusto with which the returned
exile cried, "Ay, man, Jock Tamson, and how are ye?" They thought such
warmth must have a sinister intention.--A Scot revisiting his native
place ought to walk very quietly. For the parish is sizing him up.

There were two things to be said against Allan, and two only--unless, of
course, you consider drink an objection. Wit with him was less the
moment's glittering flash than the anecdotal bang; it was a fine old
crusted blend which he stored in the cellars of his mind to bring forth
on suitable occasions, as cob-webby as his wine. And it tickled his
vanity to have a crowd of admiring youngsters round him to whom he might
retail his anecdotes, and play the brilliant _raconteur_. He had cronies
of his own years, and he was lordly and jovial amongst them--yet he
wanted another _entourage_. He was one of those middle-aged bachelors
who like a train of youngsters behind them, whom they favour in return
for homage. The wealthy man who had been a peasant lad delighted to act
the jovial host to sons of petty magnates from his home. Batch after
batch as they came up to College were drawn around him--partly because
their homage pleased him, and partly because he loved anything whatever
that came out of Barbie. There was no harm in Allan--though when his
face was in repose you saw the look in his eye at times of a man
defrauding his soul. A robustious young fellow of sense and brains would
have found in this lover of books and a bottle not a bad comrade. But he
was the worst of cronies for a weak swaggerer like Gourlay. For Gourlay,
admiring the older man's jovial power, was led on to imitate his faults,
to think them virtues and a credit; and he lacked the clear, cool head
that kept Allan's faults from flying away with him.

At dinner that night there were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water.
There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the
cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan--a guileless and inquiring
mind--and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of
the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair.
Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So they go.

Tarmillan was the last to arrive. He came in sucking his thumb, into
which he had driven a splinter while conducting an experiment.

"I've a morbid horror of lockjaw," he explained. "I never get a jag from
a pin but I see myself in the shape of a hoop, semicircular, with my
head on one end of a table, my heels on the other, and a doctor standing
on my navel trying to reduce the curvature."

"Gosh!" said Partan, who was a literal fool, "is that the treatment they
purshoo?"

"That's the treatment!" said Tarmillan, sizing up his man. "Oh, it's a
queer thing lockjaw! I remember when I was gold-mining in Tibet, one of
our carriers who died of lockjaw had such a circumbendibus in his body
that we froze him and made him the hoop of a bucket to carry our water
in. You see he was a thin bit man, and iron was scarce."

"Ay, man!" cried Partan, "you've been in Tibet?"

"Often," waved Tarmillan, "often! I used to go there every summer."

Partan, who liked to extend his geographical knowledge, would have
talked of Tibet for the rest of the evening--and Tarmie would have told
him news--but Allan broke in.

"How's the book, Tarmillan?" he inquired.

Tarmillan was engaged on a treatise which those who are competent to
judge consider the best thing of its kind ever written.

"Oh, don't ask me," he writhed. "Man, it's an irksome thing to write,
and to be asked about it makes you squirm. It's almost as offensive to
ask a man when his book will be out as to ask a woman when she'll be
delivered. I'm glad you invited me--to get away from the confounded
thing. It's become a blasted tyrant. A big work's a mistake; it's a
monster that devours the brain. I neglect my other work for that fellow
of mine; he bags everything I think. I never light on a new thing, but
'Hullo!' I cry, 'here's an idea for the book!' If you are engaged on a
big subject, all your thinking works into it or out of it."

"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."

"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much
in trying to be small.--Tozer, what do you think?"

"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.

"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.

Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.

"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere
show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run _at_ him and he
runs."

He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage
that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in
young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a
hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from
piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he
equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A
bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and
it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan
give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.

To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk
was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard
ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show
that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.

"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said
Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full
swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the
invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the
"good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on,
"and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a
dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will Overton. I
wasn't aware, by-the-bye, that Will was dead till Bauldy told me. '_He
was a great fellow my friend Will_,' he rang out in yon deep voice of
his. '_The thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him_.' Man,
it made a quiver go down my spine."

"Oh, Bauldy has been a kenned phrase-maker for the last forty year,"
said Tarmillan. "But every other Scots peasant has the gift. To hear
Englishmen talk, you would think Carlyle was unique for the word that
sends the picture home--they give the man the credit of his race. But
I've heard fifty things better than 'willowy man' in the stable a-hame
on a wat day in hairst--fifty things better--from men just sitting on
the corn-kists and chowing beans."

"I know a better one than that," said Allan. Tarmillan had told no
story, you observe, but Allan was so accustomed to saying "I know a
better one than that," that it escaped him before he was aware. "I
remember when Bauldy went off to Paris on the spree. He kept his mouth
shut when he came back, for he was rather ashamed o' the outburst. But
the bodies were keen to hear. 'What's the incense like in Notre Dame?'
said Johnny Coe, with his een big. '_Burning stink!_' said Bauldy."

"I can cap that with a better one still," said Tarmillan, who wasn't to
be done by any man. "I was with Bauldy when he quarrelled Tam Gibb of
Hoochan-doe. Hoochan-doe's a yelling ass, and he threatened Bauldy--oh,
he would do this, and he would do that, and he would do the other thing.
'_Damn ye, would ye threaten me?_' cried Bauldy. '_I'll gar your brains
jaup red to the heavens!_' And I 'clare to God, sirs, a nervous man
looked up to see if the clouds werena spattered with the gore!"

Tozer cleared a sarcastic windpipe.

"Why do you clear your throat like that?" said Tarmillan--"like a craw
with the croup, on a bare branch against a gray sky in November! If I
had a throat like yours, I'd cut it and be done wi't."

"I wonder what's the cause of that extraordinary vividness in the
speech of the Scotch peasantry?" said Allan--more to keep the blades
from bickering than from any wish to know.

"It comes from a power of seeing things vividly inside your mind," said
a voice, timorous and wheezy, away down the table.

What cockerel was this crowing?

They turned, and beheld the blushing Gourlay.

But Tarmillan and Tozer were at it again, and he was snubbed. Jimmy
Wilson sniggered, and the other youngsters enjoyed his discomfiture.
Huh! What right has _he_ to set up his pipe?

His shirt stuck to his back. He would have liked the ground to open and
swallow him.

He gulped a huge swill of whisky to cover his vexation; and oh, the
mighty difference! A sudden courage flooded his veins. He turned with a
scowl on Wilson, and, "What the devil are _you_ sniggering at?" he
growled. Logan, the only senior who marked the byplay, thought him a
hardy young spunkie.

The moment the whisky had warmed the cockles of his heart Gourlay ceased
to care a rap for the sniggerers. Drink deadened his nervous perception
of the critics on his right and left, and set him free to follow his
idea undisturbed. It was an idea he had long cherished--being one of the
few that ever occurred to him. He rarely made phrases himself--though,
curiously enough, his father often did without knowing it--the harsh
grind of his character producing a flash. But Gourlay was aware of his
uncanny gift of visualization--or of "seeing things in the inside of his
head," as he called it--and vanity prompted the inference, that this was
the faculty that sprang the metaphor. His theory was now clear and
eloquent before him. He was realizing for the first time in his life
(with a sudden joy in the discovery) the effect of whisky to unloose the
brain; sentences went hurling through his brain with a fluency that
thrilled. If he had the ear of the company, now he had the drink to
hearten him, he would show Wilson and the rest that he wasn't such a
blasted fool! In a room by himself he would have spouted to the empty
air.

Some such point he had reached in the hurrying jumble of his thoughts
when Allan addressed him.

Allan did not mean his guest to be snubbed. He was a gentleman at heart,
not a cad like Tozer; and this boy was the son of a girl whose laugh he
remembered in the gloamings at Tenshillingland.

"I beg your pardon, John," he said in heavy benevolence--he had reached
that stage--"I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you was interrupted."

Gourlay felt his heart a lump in his throat, but he rushed into speech.

"Metaphor comes from the power of seeing things in the inside of your
head," said the unconscious disciple of Aristotle--"seeing them so vivid
that you see the likeness between them. When Bauldy Johnston said 'the
thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him,' he _saw_ the print
of a thumb in wet clay, and he _saw_ the Almighty making a man out of
mud, the way He used to do in the Garden of Eden lang syne. So Bauldy
flashed the two ideas together, and the metaphor sprang! A man'll never
make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. _I_
can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily--"anything
I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before
me."

"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan.
"I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't."

He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and
panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while
airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. But Gourlay
took it as a tribute to his towering mind. Oh, but he was the proud
mannikin. "Pass the watter!" he said to Jimmy Wilson, and Jimmy passed
it meekly.

Logan took a fancy to Gourlay on the spot. He was a slow, sly, cosy man,
with a sideward laugh in his eye, a humid gleam. And because his blood
was so genial and so slow, he liked to make up to brisk young fellows,
whose wilder outbursts might amuse him. They quickened his sluggish
blood. No bad fellow, and good-natured in his heavy way, he was what the
Scotch call a "slug for the drink." A "slug for the drink" is a man who
soaks and never succumbs. Logan was the more dangerous a crony on that
account. Remaining sober while others grew drunk, he was always ready
for another dram, always ready with an oily chuckle for the sploring
nonsense of his satellites. He would see them home in the small hours,
taking no mean advantage over them, never scorning them because they
"couldn't carry it," only laughing at their daft vagaries. And next day
he would gurgle, "So-and-so was screwed last night, and, man, if you had
heard his talk!" Logan had enjoyed it. He hated to drink by himself, and
liked a splurging youngster with whom to go the rounds.

He was attracted to Gourlay by the manly way he tossed his drink, and by
the false fire it put into him. But he made no immediate advance. He sat
smiling in creeshy benevolence, beaming on Gourlay but saying nothing.
When the party was ended, however, he made up to him going through the
door.

"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Gourlay," said he. "Won't you come round
to the Howff for a while?"

"The Howff?" said Gourlay.

"Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where
some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en. Oh,
nothing to speak of, ye know--just a dram and a joke to pass the time
now and then!"

"Aha!" laughed Gourlay, "there's worse than a drink, by Jove. It puts
smeddum in your blood!"

Logan nipped the guard of his arm in heavy playfulness and led him to
the Howff.




CHAPTER XVIII.


Young Gourlay had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind. By
the beginning of his second session he was as able a toper as a publican
could wish. The somewhat sordid joviality of Allan's ring, their
wit-combats that were somewhat crude, appeared to him the very acme of
social intercourse. To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink
appealed to him in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive
nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to
the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to
sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker. He had acquired a kind of
prestige since the night of Allan's party, and two of the fellows whom
he met there--Armstrong and Gillespie--became his friends at College and
the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both
in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him
over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie--though they saw through
him--let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He
found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave
a free flow to his ideas. Nervous men are often impotent of speech from
very excess of perception; they realize not merely what they mean to
say, but with the nervous antennæ of their minds they feel the attitude
of every auditor. Distracted by lateral perceptions from the point
ahead, they blunder where blunter minds would go forward undismayed.
That was the experience of young Gourlay. If he tried to talk freely
when sober, he always grew confused. But drink deadened the outer rim of
his perception and left it the clearer in the middle for its
concentration. In plainer language, when he was drunk he was less afraid
of being laughed at, and free of that fear he was a better speaker. He
was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As
nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring
stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him
"smeddum."

With his second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to
his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to
solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed
each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years.
But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that
had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the
stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the
gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming,
"Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have
expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was
equally sincere. How sincere is another question.

Curiously, an utterance of "Auld Tam," one of his professors, half
confirmed him in his evil ways.

"I am speaking now," said Tam, "of the comfort of a true philosophy,
less of its higher aspect than its comfort to the mind of man.
Physically, each man is highest on the globe; intellectually, the
philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that
matter--himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man,
whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the
outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is
terrified by the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of
man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry
heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in their
midst."

Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been
through it too!

"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a
thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness
in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material
never seem to feel. Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and
depress."

"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest
because it was "just like him."

"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who
knew--"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its
windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the
world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it
is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens,
being understood. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass
away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know
the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often the
most genial men; unworried by the transient, they can smile and wait,
sure of their eternal aim. The man to whom the infinite beckons is not
to be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of a temporal fear;
there is no fear--it has ceased to exist. That is the comfort of a true
philosophy--if a man accepts it not merely mechanically, from another,
but feels it in breath and blood and every atom of his being. With a
warm surety in his heart, he is undaunted by the outer world. That,
gentlemen, is what thought can do for a man."

"By Jove," thought Gourlay, "that's what whisky does for me!"

And that, on a lower level, was what whisky did. He had no conception
of what Tam really meant; there were people, indeed, who used to think
that Tam never knew what he meant himself. They were as little able as
Gourlay to appreciate the mystic, through the radiant haze of whose mind
thoughts loomed on you sudden and big, like mountain tops in a sunny
mist, the grander for their dimness. But Gourlay, though he could not
understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was somehow akin to the
fortitude described. In the increased vitality it gave he was able to
tread down the world. If he walked on a wretched day in a wretched
street, when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither and yon in a
thousand perceptions and a thousand fears, fastening to (and fastened
to) each squalid thing around. But with whisky humming in his blood he
paced onward in a happy dream. The wretched puddles by the way, the
frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the
street, were passed unheeded by. His distracted powers rallied home; he
was concentrate, his own man again, the hero of his musing mind. For,
like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of
which he was the towering lord. The weakling who never "downed" men in
reality was always "downing" them in thought. His imaginary triumphs
consoled him for his actual rebuffs. As he walked in a tipsy dream, he
was "standing up" to somebody, hurling his father's phrases at him,
making short work of _him_! If imagination paled, the nearest tavern
supplied a remedy, and flushed it to a radiant glow. Whereupon he had
become the master of his world, and not its slave.

"Just imagine," he thought, "whisky doing for me what philosophy seems
to do for Tam. It's a wonderful thing the drink!"

His second session wore on, and when near its close Tam gave out the
subject for the Raeburn.

The Raeburn was a poor enough prize--a few books for an "essay in the
picturesque;" but it had a peculiar interest for the folk of Barbie.
Twenty years ago it was won four years in succession by men from the
valley; and the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter
when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was sure to be
asked very pointedly, "Who won the Raeburn the year?" to rub into him
their perception that he at least had been a failure. A bodie would
dander slowly up, saying, "Ay, man, ye've won hame!" Then, having mused
awhile, would casually ask, "By-the-bye, who won the Raeburn the year?
Oh, it was a Perthshire man! It used to come our airt, but we seem to
have lost the knack o't! Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred writers in those days,
but the breed seems to have decayed." Then he would murmur dreamily, as
if talking to himself, "Jock Goudie was the last that got it hereaway.
But _he_ was a clever chap."

The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing
soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the
"fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give
him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never
met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more
emotional districts of the North, where it pleases them to shed the
tear.

"An Arctic Night" was the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Raeburn.

"A very appropriate subject!" laughed the fellows; "quite in the style
of his own lectures." For Tam, though wise and a humorist, had his prosy
hours. He used to lecture on the fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth
(so he parcelled the unhappy Queen), and he would announce quite
gravely, "We will now approach the discussion of the eleventh feature of
the lady."

Gourlay had a shot at the Raeburn. He could not bring a radiant fullness
of mind to bear upon his task (it was not in him to bring), but his
morbid fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw a lonely little town
far off upon the verge of Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a
darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy
splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his
ears the skirl of the man who went overboard--struck dead by the icy
water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk.

He put his hand to his own brow when he wrote that, and, "Yes," he cried
eagerly, "it would be the _cold_ would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it
would go in!"

A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each
other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments
tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift
the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came
a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet
there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles
of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown
shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at
the helm.

"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it
all--that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an
icicle!"

Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen
small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity
for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.

"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy
me before the whole class for doing so little o't."

The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors),
rated quality higher than quantity.

"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of
the session--"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in
on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"

"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.

"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"

A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls
of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.

"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said
Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a
place to bray in."

The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.

"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of
you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most,
but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman--he
has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam,
and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr.
Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the
island of South Uist--has sent me in no less than a hundred and
fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the
adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and
dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the
MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"--he gloomed at them
humorously--"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of
laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat
there was pandemonium). MacTavish was heard to groan, "Oh, why tid I
leave my home!" to which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, "Why
tid you cross ta teep?" The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.

When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed with a quiver in his
voice, for "ta pold MacTavish" had tickled him too. "Now, gentlemen," he
said, "I don't judge essays by their weight, though I'm told they
sometimes pursue that method in Glasgow!"

(Groans for the rival University, cries of "Oh-oh-oh!" and a weary
voice, "Please, sir, don't mention that place; it makes me feel quite
ill.")

The Professor allayed the tumult with dissuasive palm.

"I believe," he said dryly, "you call that noise of yours 'the College
Tramp;' in the Senatus we speak o't as 'the Cuddies' Trudge.' Now
gentlemen, I'm not unwilling to allow a little noise on the last day of
the session, but really you must behave more quietly.--So little does
that method of judging essays commend itself to me, I may tell you, that
the sketch which I consider the best barely runs to half a dozen short
pages."

Young Gourlay's heart gave a leap within him; he felt it thudding on his
ribs. The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils.
Gillespie wondered why his breast heaved.

"It's a curious sketch," said the Professor. "It contains a serious
blunder in grammar and several mistakes in spelling, but it shows, in
some ways, a wonderful imagination."

"Ho, ho!" thought Gourlay.

"Of course there are various kinds of imagination," said Tam. "In its
lowest form it merely recalls something which the eyes have already
seen, and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form pictures
something which you never saw, but only conceived as a possible
existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees but
hears--actually hears what a man would say on a given occasion, and
entering into his blood, tells you exactly why he does it. The highest
form is both creative and consecrative, if I may use the word, merging
in diviner thought. It irradiates the world. Of that high power there is
no evidence in the essay before me. To be sure there was little occasion
for its use."

Young Gourlay's thermometer went down.

"Indeed," said Aquinas, "there's a curious want of bigness in the
sketch--no large nobility of phrase. It is written in gaspy little
sentences, and each sentence begins 'and'--'and'--'and,' like a
schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the
writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape
him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the
thing--faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The
writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words--lucky if it
glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch
there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It displays, indeed,
too nervous a sense of the external world."

"Name, name!" cried the students, who were being deliberately worked by
Tam to a high pitch of curiosity.

"I would strongly impress on the writer," said the shepherd, heedless of
his bleating sheep--"I would strongly impress on the writer to set
himself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought.
That almost morbid perception, with philosophy to back it, might create
an opulent and vivid mind. Without philosophy it would simply be a
curse. With philosophy it would bring thought the material to work on.
Without philosophy it would simply distract and irritate the mind."

"Name, name!" cried the fellows.

"The winner of the Raeburn," said Thomas Aquinas, "is Mr. John Gourlay."

       *       *       *       *       *

Gourlay and his friends made for the nearest public-house. The
occasion, they thought, justified a drink. The others chaffed Gourlay
about Tam's advice.

"You know, Jack," said Gillespie, mimicking the sage, "what you have got
to do next summer is to set yourself down for a spell of real, hard,
solid, and deliberate thought. That was Tam's advice, you know."

"Him and his advice!" said Gourlay.




CHAPTER XIX.


There were only four other passengers dropped by the eleven o'clock
express at Skeighan station, and, as it happened, young Gourlay knew
them all. They were petty merchants of the neighbourhood whom he had
often seen about Barbie. The sight of their remembered faces as he
stepped on to the platform gave him a delightful sense that he was
nearing home. He had passed from the careless world where he was nobody
at all to the familiar circle where he was a somebody, a mentioned man,
and the son of a mentioned man--young Mr. Gourlay!

He had a feeling of superiority to the others, too, because they were
mere local journeyers, while he had travelled all the way from mighty
Edinburgh by the late express. He was returning from the outer world,
while they were bits of bodies who had only been to Fechars. As
Edinburgh was to Fechars so was he to them. Round him was the halo of
distance and the mystery of night-travelling. He felt big.

"Have you a match, Robert?" he asked very graciously of Robin Gregg, one
of the porters whom he knew. Getting his match, he lit a cigarette; and
when it was lit, after one quick puff, turned it swiftly round to
examine its burning end. "Rotten!" he said, and threw it away to light
another. The porters were watching him, and he knew it. When the
stationmaster appeared yawning from his office, as he was passing
through the gate, and asked who it was, it flattered his vanity to hear
Robin's answer, that it was "young Mr. Gourlay of Barbie, just back from
the Univ-ai-rsity!"

He had been so hot for home that he had left Edinburgh at twilight, too
eager to wait for the morrow. There was no train for Barbie at this hour
of the night; and, of course, there was no gig to meet him. Even if he
had sent word of his coming, "There's no need for travelling so late,"
old Gourlay would have growled; "let him shank it. We're in no hurry to
have him home."

He set off briskly, eager to see his mother and tell her he had won the
Raeburn. The consciousness of his achievement danced in his blood, and
made the road light to his feet. His thoughts were not with the country
round him, but entirely in the moment of his entrance, when he should
proclaim his triumph, with proud enjoyment of his mother's pride. His
fancy swept to his journey's end, and took his body after, so that the
long way was as nothing, annihilate by the leap forward of his mind.

He was too vain, too full of himself and his petty triumph, to have room
for the beauty of the night. The sky was one sea of lit cloud, foamy
ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with
its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one
peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far
away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning
edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a
circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen;
there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next
she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was
alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was
softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit
indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven
dream. He walked beneath a shadowed glory. But he was dead to it all.
One only fact possessed him. He had won the Raeburn--he had won the
Raeburn! The road flew beneath him.

Almost before he was aware, the mean gray streets of Barbie had clipped
him round. He stopped, panting from the hurry of his walk, and looked at
the quiet houses, all still among the gloom. He realized with a sudden
pride that he alone was in conscious possession of the town. Barbie
existed to no other mind. All the others were asleep; while he had a
thrilling consciousness of them and of their future attitude to him,
they did not know that he, the returning great one, was present in their
midst. They all knew of the Raeburn, however, and ere long they would
know that it was his. He was glad to hug his proud secret in presence of
the sleeping town, of which he would be the talk to-morrow. How he would
surprise them! He stood for a little, gloating in his own sensations.
Then a desire to get home tugged him, and he scurried up the long brae.

He stole round the corner of the House with the Green Shutters. Roger,
the collie, came at him with a bow-wow-wow. "Roger!" he whispered, and
cuddled him, and the old loyalist fawned on him and licked his hand. The
very smell of the dog was couthie in his nose.

The window of a bedroom went up with a crash.

"Now, then, who the devil are you?" came the voice of old Gourlay.

"It's me, faither," said John.

"Oh, it's you, is it? This is a fine time o' night to come home."

"Faither, I have--I have won the Raeburn!"

"It'll keep, my mannie, it'll keep"--and the window slammed.

Next moment it was up.

"Did young Wilson get onything?" came the eager cry.

"Nut him!" said John.

"Fine, man! Damned, sir, I'm proud o' ye!"

John went round the corner treading on air. For the first time in his
life his father had praised him.

He peeped through a kink at the side of the kitchen blind, where its
descent was arrested by a flowerpot in the corner of the window-sill. As
he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not
yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her,
on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the
fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering
moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at
the dying embers--the look of one who has gained short respite from a
task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and
the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and
to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and
apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.

She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his
news, and basked in her adoration.

She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper,
big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she
was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.

He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I,
I think we might."

He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he
listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a
fine thing!"

"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another
worshipper.

"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like
one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she
grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And I'm
sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel
ay," she said, and stared at the embers.

It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that
their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as
established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them
to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often
struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To
young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was
almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her
ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined
temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the
purest white.

"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so
many wee clouts for?"

She gasped and started. "They're just a wheen clouts I was sorting out,"
she faltered. "No, no, dear, there's noathing wrong wi' me."

"There's one sticking in your blouse," said he, and pointed to her slack
breast.

She glanced nervously down and pushed it farther in.

"I dare say I put it there when I wasna thinking," she explained.

But she eyed him furtively to see if he were still looking.




CHAPTER XX.


There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong
man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes
it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his
memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable
results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be
higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it;
viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful
thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a
keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a
success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is
unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out.
He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and
expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he
is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he
thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his
meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the
world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves
him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and
carries him heavens-high--till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from
that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the
world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great
position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see."
And then follows a recital of his faded glories--generally ending with
a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.

Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty
as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to
destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the
strength of it.

On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he
was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to
dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette,
he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him
with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom
they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the
conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the
disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were
tributaries to his new importance--somehow their attitude was different
from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious
bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of
his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he
could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new
feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the
Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his
father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already
buzzed about the town.

Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's
daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else.
Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a
whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers;
heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's
aince wud and aye waur[6] wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu'
wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre
browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but----" and
with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.

When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the
Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on
his thin shanks.

"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"

Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all
rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of
tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.

"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that
before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."

"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."

The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht
tho! Imphm. The weed."

Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he
cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been
doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."

"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left
hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling
from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a
little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in
a twinkling."

"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna
work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come
through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not
to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the
easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy
yourself. But there! what need I be telling _you_ that? A College-bred
man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie!
You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun--a dram now
and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"

At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important
manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty
pose for more than five minutes at a time.

"You're _right_, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging
sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back
to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."

"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at
the Black Bull?--I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar
gude--thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a
Highland charge."--It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a
thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the
manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style.--"But no doubt,"
the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice--"but
no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a
favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine
taste in thpirits."

"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air
of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and
so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"

"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan
drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of
him in Embro."

"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I."

"Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.

It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan
was kind to Jean Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to
the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week.
Gourlay was merely boasting--as young blades are apt to do of
acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of
the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John
failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.

"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you
have the great thprees?"

"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I
should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before
I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there--d'ye know, yon's the finest
fellow I ever met in my life!--and Bauldy Logan--he's another great
chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie--great friends of mine, and
damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three
there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the
talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I
remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan
whistled a jig."

Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son
to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to
pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath
John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and
his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft
management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he
felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion.
"Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would
never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"

"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said
the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood
about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns,
that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame--jutht
another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys--Pate Wylie and you
and a wheen mair--having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."

"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased.
Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns!
"I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."

"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.

"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
"Eh--eh--Deacon--I--I'll see you again about the nip."

"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
convenient opportunity."

He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
unpleasant manners.

Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
spoon--which were many--were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble
that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
Importance" was one of his nicknames.

Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance--did
it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate.
Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
Univairsity--the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his
Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses--dear me, ay--of his
courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.

"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
have indeed. Ex-cellently well--ex-cellently well!"

Gourlay blushed and thanked him.

"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
wasting his time!"

Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
years--without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.

"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
application--a strenuous and devoted application--even from the man of
abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have
ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's
doing?"

Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he
answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.

"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best
men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the
Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master
it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty
pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his
ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a
prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I
obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on
German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he
added, with solemn and pondering brows--"perhaps he was a little too
fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too
fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door,
wondered if Hegel was a drink.

"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.

"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity.
And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your
theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"

Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare
to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered,
modestly enough.

"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the
minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a
doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm
of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the
see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only
the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great
good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the
Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great
satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant
promise!"

Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of
Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should
stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on
his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his
eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every
word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical
compliments for _his_ son! The tables were turned at last.

His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had
won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a
sovereign.

"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound
to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded
eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun
spend as much as the rest o' folk."

"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.

That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's
talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness
of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking--that he
had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that
was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to
confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and
hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be
careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought
the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a
fellow to be mean."

Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered
by the minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father,
hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie--Lord, but young Gourlay was the
fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He
had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single
afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he
immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the
ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage,
and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the
student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in
answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he
yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer.
Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning
to his other occupations--plurality of professions, you observe, being
one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the
Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable
phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object,
what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty
misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and
speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That
shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge
on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to
make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well--he took a
paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting
instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he
vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former
neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been
welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity
had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave
his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the
Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now,
however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to
support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a
disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former
coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he
preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every
ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them.
That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did
not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies.
Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and
the like without drinking in every howff you came across.

When the bodies assembled next day for their "morning," the Deacon was
able to inform them that young Gourlay was back from the College, dafter
than ever, and that he had pulled his leg as far as he wanted it. "Oh,"
he said, "I played him like a kitten wi' a cork, and found out ainything
and everything I wished. I dithcovered that he's in wi' Jock Allan and
that crowd--I edged the conversation round on purpoth! Unless he wath
blowing his trump--which I greatly doubt--they're as thick as thieveth.
Ye ken what that meanth. He'll turn hith wee finger to the ceiling
oftener than he puts hith forefinger to the pen, I'm thinking. It
theemth he drinkth enormuth! He took a gey nip last thummer, and this
thummer I wager he takes mair o't. He avowed his plain intention. 'I
mean to kick up a bit of a dust,' thays he. Oh, but he's the splurge!"

"Ay, ay," said Sandy Toddle, "thae students are a gey squad--especially
the young ministers."

"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are
just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties.
They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."

"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already.
I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."

"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."

"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body
solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he
wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.

"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent
hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of--too disgusted
to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing
him up about that prize o' his."

"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.

"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused
the ex-Provost.

"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think
at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a
crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that
hell gapes for. And owre they flap."

But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of _him_,"
said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.

Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland)
young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence
from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater
abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother
(who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed)
often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in
the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're
unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she
utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine
moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was
sometimes tempted to seek the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk
upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he
could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green
quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded
when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at
the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing
beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a
wise quiescence. His success--such as it was--had gained him a
circle--such as it was--and the assertive nature proper to his father's
son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw
through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and
threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind
him.

Among his other follies, he assumed the pose of a man who could an he
would--who had it in him to do great things, if he would only set about
them. In this he was partly playing up to a foolish opinion of his more
ignorant associates; it was they who suggested the pose to him.
"Devilish clever!" he heard them whisper one night as he stood in the
door of a tavern; "he could do it if he liked, only he's too fond o' the
fun." Young Gourlay flushed where he stood in the darkness--flushed with
pleasure at the criticism of his character which was, nevertheless, a
compliment to his wits. He felt that he must play up at once to the
character assigned him. "Ho, ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a
splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree
to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes."
"What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the
nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper
pose--that of a _grand homme manqué_, of a man who would be a genius
were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear
a genius, then he must continue to display that excess which--so he
wished them to believe--alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It
was all a curious, vicious inversion. "You could do great things if you
didn't drink," crooned the fools. "See how I drink," Gourlay seemed to
answer; "that is why I don't do great things. But, mind you, I could do
them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to
hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he
didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made
him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] "_Aince wud and aye waur_," silly for once and silly for always.




CHAPTER XXI.


On a beautiful evening in September, when a new crescent moon was
pointing through the saffron sky like the lit tip of a finger, the City
Fathers had assembled at the corner of the Fleckie Road. Though the moon
was peeping, the dying glory of the day was still upon the town. The
white smoke rose straight and far in the golden mystery of the heavens,
and a line of dark roofs, transfigured against the west, wooed the eye
to musing. But though the bodies felt the fine evening bathe them in a
sensuous content, as they smoked and dawdled, they gave never a thought
to its beauty. For there had been a blitheness in the town that day, and
every other man seemed to have been preeing the demijohn.

Drucken Wabster and Brown the ragman came round the corner, staggering.

"Young Gourlay's drunk!" blurted Wabster--and reeled himself as he
spoke.

"Is he a wee fou?" said the Deacon eagerly.

"Wee be damned," said Wabster; "he's as fou as the Baltic Sea! If you
wait here, you'll be sure to see him! He'll be round the corner
directly."

"De-ar me, is he so bad as that?" said the ex-Provost, raising his hands
in solemn reprobation. He raised his eyes to heaven at the same time, as
if it pained them to look on a world that endured the burden of a young
Gourlay. "In broad daylight, too!" he sighed. "De-ar me, has he come to
this?"

"Yis, Pravast," hiccupped Brown, "he has! He's as phull of drink as a
whelk-shell's phull of whelk. He's nearly as phull as meself--and
begorra, that's mighty phull." He stared suddenly, scratching his head
solemnly as if the fact had just occurred to him. Then he winked.

"You could set fire to his braith!" cried Wabster. "A match to his mouth
would send him in a lowe."

"A living gas jet!" said Brown.

They staggered away, sometimes rubbing shoulders as they lurched
together, sometimes with the road between them.

"I kenned young Gourlay was on the fuddle when I saw him swinging off
this morning in his greatcoat," cried Sandy Toddle. "There was debauch
in the flap o' the tails o't."

"Man, have you noticed that too!" cried another eagerly. "He's aye warst
wi' the coat on!"

"Clothes undoubtedly affect the character," said Johnny Coe. "It takes a
gentleman to wear a lordly coat without swaggering."

"There's not a doubt o' tha-at!" approved the baker, who was merry with
his day's carousal; "there's not a doubt o' tha-at! Claes affect the
disposeetion. I mind when I was a young chap I had a grand pair o'
breeks--Wull I ca'ed them--unco decent breeks they were, I mind, lang
and swankie like a ploughman; and I aye thocht I was a tremendous honest
and hamely fallow when I had them on! And I had a verra disreputable
hat," he added--"Rab I christened him, for he was a perfect devil--and I
never cocked him owre my lug on nichts at e'en but 'Baker!' he seemed to
whisper, 'Baker! Let us go out and do a bash!' And we generally went."

"You're a wonderful man!" piped the Deacon.

"We may as well wait and see young Gourlay going by," said the
ex-Provost. "He'll likely be a sad spectacle."

"Ith auld Gourlay on the thtreet the nicht?" cried the Deacon eagerly.
"I wonder will he thee the youngster afore he gets hame! Eh, man"--he
bent his knees with staring delight--"eh, man, if they would only meet
forenenst uth! Hoo!"

"He's a regular waster," said Brodie. "When a silly young blood takes a
fancy to a girl in a public-house he's always done for; I've observed it
times without number. At first he lets on that he merely gangs in for a
drink; what he really wants, however, is to see the girl. Even if he's
no great toper to begin with, he must show himself fond o' the dram, as
a means of getting to his jo. Then, before he kens where he is, the
habit has gripped him. That's a gate mony a ane gangs."

"That's verra true, now that ye mention't," gravely assented the
ex-Provost. His opinion of Brodie's sagacity, high already, was enhanced
by the remark. "Indeed, that's verra true. But how does't apply to young
Gourlay in particular, Thomas? Is _he_ after some damsel o' the
gill-stoup?"

"Ou ay--he's ta'en a fancy to yon bit shilp in the bar-room o' the Red
Lion. He's always hinging owre the counter talking till her, a cigarette
dropping from his face, and a half-fu' tumbler at his elbow. When a
young chap takes to hinging round bars, ae elbow on the counter and a
hand on his other hip, I have verra bad brows o' him always--verra bad
brows, indeed. Oh--oh, young Gourlay's just a goner! a goner, sirs--a
goner!"

"Have ye heard about him at the Skeighan Fair?" said Sandy Toddle.

"No, man," said Brodie, bowing down and keeking at Toddle in his
interest; "I hadna heard about tha-at! Is this a _new_ thing?"

"Oh, just at the fair; the other day, ye know!"

"Ay, man, Sandy!" said big Brodie, stooping down to Toddle to get near
the news; "and what was it, Sandy?"

"Ou, just drinking, ye know, wi'--wi' Swipey Broon--and, eh, and that
M'Craw, ye know--and Sandy Hull--and a wheen mair o' that kind--ye ken
the kind; a verra bad lot!" said Sandy, and wagged a disapproving pow.
"Here they all got as drunk as drunk could be, and started fighting wi'
the colliers! Young Gourlay got a bloodied nose! Then nothing would
serve him but he must drive back wi' young Pin-oe, who was even drunker
than himsell. They drave at sic a rate that when they dashed from this
side o' Skeighan Drone the stour o' their career was rising at the far
end. They roared and sang till it was a perfect affront to God's day,
and frae sidie to sidie they swung till the splash-brods were skreighing
on the wheels. At a quick turn o' the road they wintled owre; and there
they were, sitting on their doups in the atoms o' the gig, and glowering
frae them! When young Gourlay slid hame at dark he was in such a state
that his mother had to hide him frae the auld man. She had that, puir
body! The twa women were obliged to carry the drunk lump to his
bedroom--and yon lassie far ga'en in consumption, too, they tell me! Ou,
he was in a perfectly awful condition--perfectly awful!"

"Ay, man," nodded Brodie. "I hadna heard o't. Curious that I didna hear
o' that!"

"It was Drucken Wabster's wife that telled it. There's not a haet that
happens at the Gourlays but she clypes. I speired her mysell, and she
says young Gourlay has a black eye."

"Ay, ay; there'th thmall hope for the Gourlayth in _him_!" said the
Deacon.

"How do _you_ ken?" cried the baker. "He's no the first youngster I've
seen the wiseacres o' the world wagging their sagacious pows owre; and,
eh, but he was _this_ waster!--according to their way of it--and, oh,
but he was the _other_ waster! and, ochonee, but he was the _wild_
fellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be his doormat; for it was
only the fire in the ruffian made him seem sae daft."

"True!" said the ex-Provost, "true! Still there's a decency in daftness.
And there's no decency in young Gourlay. He's just a mouth! 'Start
canny, and you'll steer weel,' my mother used to say; but he has started
unco ill, and he'll steer to ruin."

"Dinna spae ill-fortune!" said the baker, "dinna spae ill-fortune! And
never despise a youngster for a random start. It's the blood makes a
breenge."

"Well, I like young men to be quiet," said Sandy Toddle. "I would rather
have them a wee soft than rollickers."

"Not I!" said the baker. "If I had a son, I would rather an ill deil sat
forenenst me at the table than parratch in a poke. Burns (God rest his
banes!) struck the he'rt o't. Ye mind what he said o' Prince Geordie:


     'Yet mony a ragged cowte's been known
       To mak a noble aiver;
     And ye may doucely fill a throne,
       For a' their clishmaclaver.
     There him at Agincourt wha shone.
       Few better were or braver;
     And yet wi' funny queer Sir John
       He was an unco shaver
             For mony a day.'


Dam't, but Burns is gude."

"Huts, man, dinna sweer sae muckle!" frowned the old Provost.

"Ou, there's waur than an oath now and than," said the baker. "Like
spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner
wi't. The Deacon there couldna let blatter wi' a hearty oath to save his
withered sowl. I kenned a trifle o' a fellow that got in among a jovial
gang lang syne that used to sweer tremendous, and he bude to do the same
the bit bodie; so he used to say '_Dim it!_' in a wee, sma voice that
was clean rideec'lous. He was a lauchable dirt, that."

"What was his name?" said Sandy Toddle.

"Your ain," said the baker. (To tell the truth, he was gey fou.)
"Alexander Toddle was his name: '_Dim it!_' he used to squeak, for he
had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and whiles he used the English.
'_Dim it!_' said he. I like a man that says '_Dahm't._'"

"Ay; but then, you thee, _you_'re an artitht in wordth," said the
Deacon.

"Ye're an artist in spite," said the baker.

"Ah, well," said the ex-Provost, "Burns proved to be wrang in the end
o't, and you'll maybe be the same. George the Fort' didna fill the
throne verra doucely for a' their clishmaclaver, and I don't think young
Gourlay'll fill the pulpit verra doucely for a' ours. For he's saftie
and daftie baith, and that's the deidly combination. At least, that's my
opinion," quoth he, and smacked his lips, the important man.

"Tyuts," said the baker, "folk should be kind to folk. There may be a
possibeelity for the Gourlays in the youngster yet!"

He would have said more, but at that moment his sonsy big wife came out,
with oh, such a roguish and kindly smile, and, "Tom, Tom," said she,
"what are ye havering here for? C'way in, man, and have a dish o' tea
wi' me!"

He glanced up at her with comic shrewdness from where he sat on his
hunkers--for fine he saw through her--and "Ou ay," said he, "ye great
muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye--I'll gang in and have a dish o'
tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.

"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She
kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."

"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un
went thae lamb-like!"

"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been drinking too. "He's
the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."

"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a
gentleman!"

"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute,
if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a
dacent wife, and a bigger field--oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the
possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his
neck till't."

"It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon.--"Here comes his
son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."

Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as
they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him.
Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their
fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything
they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady
on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the
road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter
went.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to
feel the slight, blatant to resent it.

"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.

With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.

"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."




CHAPTER XXII.


"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon
between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled
cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay--just down for a flying visit to see my
little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again--Barbie's too quiet
for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"

The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried,
as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the
bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat
reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind,
in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering
to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side
by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was
letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a
fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left
coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the
Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear
remembrance!"

The Deacon fed on the sight. The richness of his satiric perception was
too great to permit of speech. He could only gloat and be dumb.

"Waiting for Jack Gourlay," Aird rattled again. "He's off to College
again, and we're driving in his father's trap to meet the express at
Skeighan Station. Wonder what's keeping the fellow. I like a man to be
punctual. Business training, you see; yes, by Gad, two thousand parcels
a week go out of our place, and all of 'em up to time! Ah, there he is,"
he added, as the harsh grind of wheels was heard on the gravel at the
door. "Thank God, we'll soon be in civilization."

Young Gourlay entered, greatcoated and lordly, through the two halves of
that easy-swinging door.

"Good!" he cried. "Just a minute, Aird, till I get my flask filled."

"My weapon's primed and ready," Aird ha-haed, and slapped the breast
pocket of his coat.

John birled a bright sovereign on the counter, one of twenty old Gourlay
had battered his brains to get together for the boy's expenses. The
young fellow rattled the change into his trouser pocket like a master of
millions.

The Deacon and another idler or two gathered about the steps in the
darkness, to see that royal going off. Peter Riney's bunched-up little
old figure could be seen on the front seat of the gig; Aird was already
mounted behind. The mare (a worthy successor to Spanking Tam) pawed the
gravel and fretted in impatience; her sharp ears, seen pricked against
the gloom, worked to and fro. A widening cone of light shone out from
the leftward lamp of the gig, full on a glistering laurel, which Simpson
had growing by his porch. Each smooth leaf of the green bush gave back a
separate gleam, vivid to the eye in that pouring yellowness. Gourlay
stared at the bright evergreen, and forget for a moment where he was.
His lips parted, and--as they saw in the light from the door--his look
grew dreamy and far-away.

The truth was that all the impressions of a last day at home were bitten
in on his brain as by acid, in the very middle of his swaggering gusto.
That gusto was largely real, true, for it seemed a fine thing to go
splurging off to College in a gig; but it was still more largely
assumed, to combat the sorrow of departure. His heart was in his boots
at the thought of going back to accursed Edinburgh--to those lodgings,
those dreary, damnable lodgings. Thus his nature was reduced to its real
elements in the hour of leaving home; it was only for a swift moment he
forgot to splurge, but for that moment the cloak of his swaggering
dropped away, and he was his naked self, morbidly alive to the
impressions of the world, afraid of life, clinging to the familiar and
the known. That was why he gazed with wistful eyes at that laurel clump,
so vivid in the pouring rays. So vivid there, it stood for all the dear
country round which was now hidden by the darkness; it centred his world
among its leaves. It was a last picture of loved Barbie that was
fastening on his mind. There would be fine gardens in Edinburgh, no
doubt; but oh, that couthie laurel by the Red Lion door! It was his
friend; he had known it always.

The spell lasted but a moment, one of those moments searching a man's
nature to its depths, yet flitting like a lonely shadow on the autumn
wheat. But Aird was already fidgeting. "Hurry up, Jack," he cried;
"we'll need to pelt if we mean to get the train."

Gourlay started. In a moment he had slipped from one self to another,
and was the blusterer once more. "Right!" he splurged. "Hover a blink
till I light my cigar."

He was not in the habit of smoking cigars, but he had bought a packet on
purpose, that he might light one before his admiring onlookers ere he
went away. Nothing like cutting a dash.

He was seen puffing for a moment with indrawn cheeks, his head to one
side, the flame of the flickering vesta lighting up his face, his hat
pushed back till it rested on his collar, his fair hair hanging down his
brow. Then he sprang to the driving seat and gathered up the reins.
"Ta-ta, Deacon; see and behave yourself!" he flung across his shoulder,
and they were off with a bound.

"Im-pidenth!" said the outraged Deacon.

Peter Riney was quite proud to have the honour of driving two such bucks
to the station. It lent him a consequence; he would be able to say when
he came back that he had been "awa wi' the young mester"--for Peter said
"mester," and was laughed at by the Barbie wits who knew that "maister"
was the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out
in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him
tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the
withered little man.

That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last
session at the University.

       *       *       *       *       *

All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only
Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal
simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He
had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while
there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green
Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his
surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and
was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with
a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised
about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man
of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble
clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say,
sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young
mester; and hardy, too--infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.

But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged. It was on the day
after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on
with.

It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day--a day
when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy,
and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit
of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and
tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw--which seemed strange and
unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness,
beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in
among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons
were gurgling and _rookety-cooing_, mating for the coming year. He fell
to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap
aside--"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating
softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he
waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he
moistened his lips, and cleared his throat, and frowned, as one who
would broach unpleasant news. It was not like him to hesitate. But the
old man, encased in senility, was ill to disturb; he was intent on
nothing but the work before him; it was mechanical and soothing, and
occupied his whole mind. Gourlay, so often the trampling brute without
knowing it, felt it brutal to wound the faithful old creature dreaming
at his toil. He would have found it much easier to discharge a younger
and a keener man.

"Stop, Peter," he said at last; "I don't need you ainy more."

Peter rose stiffly from his knees and shook the mould with a pitiful
gesture from his hands. His mouth was fallen slack, and showed a few
yellow tusks.

"Eh?" he asked vaguely. The thought that he must leave the Gourlays
could not penetrate his mind.

"I don't need you ainy more," said Gourlay again, and met his eye
steadily.

"I'm gey auld," said Peter, still shaking his hands with that pitiful
gesture, "but I only need a bite and a sup. Man, I'm willin' to tak
onything."

"It's no that," said Gourlay sourly--"it's no that. But I'm giving up
the business."

Peter said nothing, but gazed away down the garden, his sunken mouth
forgetting to munch its straw, which dangled by his chin. "I'm an auld
servant," he said at last, "and, mind ye," he flashed in pride, "I'm a
true ane."

"Oh, you're a' that," Gourlay grunted; "you have been a good servant."

"It'll be the poorhouse, it's like," mused Peter. "Man, have ye noathing
for us to do?" he asked pleadingly.

Gourlay's jaw clamped. "Noathing, Peter," he said sullenly, "noathing;"
and slipped some money into Peter's heedless palm.

Peter stared stupidly down at the coins. He seemed dazed. "Ay, weel," he
said; "I'll feenish the tatties, at ony rate."

"No, no, Peter," and Gourlay gripped him by the shoulder as he turned
back to his work--"no, no; I have no right to keep you. Never mind about
the money; you deserve something, going so suddenly after sic a long
service. It's just a bit present to mind you o'--to mind you o'----" he
broke suddenly and scowled across the garden.

Some men, when a feeling touches them, express their emotion in tears;
others by an angry scowl--hating themselves inwardly, perhaps, for their
weakness in being moved, hating, too, the occasion that has probed their
weakness. It was because he felt parting with Peter so keenly that
Gourlay behaved more sullenly than usual. Peter had been with Gourlay's
father in his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and
submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any
other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever
deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More--the
going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the
quick. Therefore he scowled.

Without a word of thanks for the money, Peter knocked the mould off his
heavy boots, striking one against the other clumsily, and shuffled away
across the bare soil. But when he had gone twenty yards he stopped, and
came back slowly. "Good-bye, sir," he said with a rueful smile, and held
out his hand.

Gourlay gripped it. "Good-bye, Peter! good-bye; damn ye, man, good-bye!"

Peter wondered vaguely why he was sworn at. But he felt that it was not
in anger. He still clung to his master's hand. "I've been fifty year wi'
the Gourlays," said he. "Ay, ay; and this, it seems, is the end o't."

"Oh, gang away!" cried Gourlay, "gang away, man!" And Peter went away.

Gourlay went out to the big green gate where he had often stood in his
pride, and watched his old servant going down the street. Peter was so
bowed that the back of his velveteen coat was halfway up his spine, and
the bulging pockets at the corners were midway down his thighs. Gourlay
had seen the fact a thousand times, but it never gripped him before. He
stared till Peter disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae.

"Ay, ay," said he, "ay, ay. There goes the last o' them."

It was a final run of ill-luck that brought Gourlay to this desperate
pass. When everything seemed to go against him he tried several
speculations, with a gambler's hope that they might do well, and
retrieve the situation. He abandoned the sensible direction of affairs,
that is, and trusted entirely to chance, as men are apt to do when
despairing. And chance betrayed him. He found himself of a sudden at the
end of his resources.

Through all his troubles his one consolation was the fact that he had
sent John to the University. That was something saved from the wreck, at
any rate. More and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay
attached himself to the future of his son. It became the sheet-anchor of
his hopes. If he had remained a prosperous man, John's success would
have been merely incidental, something to disconsider in speech, at
least, however pleased he might have been at heart. But now it was the
whole of life to him. For one thing, the son's success would justify the
father's past and prevent it being quite useless; it would have produced
a minister, a successful man, one of an esteemed profession. Again, that
success would be a salve to Gourlay's wounded pride; the Gourlays would
show Barbie they could flourish yet, in spite of their present downcome.
Thus, in the collapse of his fortunes, the son grew all-important in the
father's eyes. Nor did his own poverty seem to him a just bar to his
son's prosperity. "I have put him through his Arts," thought Gourlay;
"surely he can do the rest himsell. Lots of young chaps, when they
warstle through their Arts, teach the sons of swells to get a little
money to gang through Diveenity. My boy can surely do the like!" Again
and again, as Gourlay felt himself slipping under in the world of
Barbie, his hopes turned to John in Edinburgh. If that boy would only
hurry up and get through, to make a hame for the lassie and the auld
wife!




CHAPTER XXIII.


Young Gourlay spent that winter in Edinburgh pretty much as he had spent
the last. Last winter, however, it was simply a weak need for
companionship that drew him to the Howff. This winter it was more: it
was the need of a formed habit that must have its wonted satisfaction.
He had a further impulse to conviviality now. It had become a habit that
compelled him.

The diversions of some men are merely subsidiary to their lives,
externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp
a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other
occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an
irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always
visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness of will, never
gripping to the work before him, to make him hate his lonely studies and
long for the jolly company of his friends. He never opened his books of
an evening but he thought to himself, "I wonder what they're doing at
the Howff to-night?" At once he visualized the scene, imagined every
detail, saw them in their jovial hours. And, seeing them so happy, he
longed to be with them. On that night, long ago, when his father ordered
him to College, his cowardly and too vivid mind thought of the ploys the
fellows would be having along the Barbie roads, while he was mewed up in
Edinburgh. He saw the Barbie rollickers in his mind's eye, and the
student in his lonely rooms, and contrasted them mournfully. So now,
every night, he saw the cosy companions in their Howff, and shivered at
his own isolation. He felt a tugging at his heart to be off and join
them. And his will was so weak that, nine times out of ten, he made no
resistance to the impulse.

He had always a feeling of depression when he must sit down to his
books. It was the start that gravelled him. He would look round his room
and hate it, mutter "Damn it, I must work;" and then, with a heavy sigh,
would seat himself before an outspread volume on the table, tugging the
hair on a puckered forehead. Sometimes the depression left him, when he
buckled to his work; as his mind became occupied with other things the
vision of the Howff was expelled. Usually, however, the stiffness of his
brains made the reading drag heavily, and he rarely attained the
sufficing happiness of a student eager and engrossed. At the end of ten
minutes he would be gaping across the table, and wondering what they
were doing at the Howff. "Will Logan be singing 'Tam Glen'? Or is
Gillespie fiddling Highland tunes, by Jing, with his elbow going it
merrily? Lord! I would like to hear 'Miss Drummond o' Perth' or 'Gray
Daylicht'--they might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip out for ten
minutes, to see what they're doing, and be back directly." He came back
at two in the morning, staggering.

On a bleak spring evening, near the end of February, young Gourlay had
gone to the Howff, to escape the shuddering misery of the streets. It
was that treacherous spring weather which blights. Only two days ago the
air had been sluggish and balmy; now an easterly wind nipped the gray
city, naked and bare. There was light enough, with the lengthening days,
to see plainly the rawness of the world. There were cold yellow gleams
in windows fronting a lonely west. Uncertain little puffs of wind came
swirling round corners, and made dust and pieces of dirty white paper
gyrate on the roads. Prosperous old gentlemen pacing home, rotund in
their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses.
Sometimes they stopped--their trousers legs flapping behind them--and
trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the
streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower.

By eight o'clock, however, he was merry with the barley-bree, and making
a butt of himself to amuse the company. He was not quick-witted enough
to banter a comrade readily, nor hardy enough to essay it unprovoked; on
the other hand, his swaggering love of notice impelled him to some form
of talk that would attract attention. So he made a point of always
coming with daft stories of things comic that befell him--at least, he
said they did. But if his efforts were greeted with too loud a roar,
implying not only appreciation of the stories, but also a contempt for
the man who could tell them of himself, his sensitive vanity was
immediately wounded, and he swelled with sulky anger. And the moment
after he would splurge and bluster to reassert his dignity.

"I remember when I was a boy," he hiccupped, "I had a pet goose at
home."

There was a titter at the queer beginning.

"I was to get the price of it for myself, and so when Christmas drew
near I went to old MacFarlane, the poulterer in Skeighan. 'Will you buy
a goose?' said I. 'Are ye for sale, my man?' was his answer."

Armstrong flung back his head and roared, prolonging the loud _ho-ho!_
through his big nose and open mouth long after the impulse to honest
laughter was exhausted. He always laughed with false loudness, to
indicate his own superiority, when he thought a man had been guilty of a
public silliness. The laugh was meant to show the company how far above
such folly was Mr. Armstrong.

Gourlay scowled. "Damn Armstrong!" he thought, "what did he yell like
that for? Does he think I didn't see the point of the joke against
myself? Would I have told it if I hadn't? This is what comes of being
sensitive. I'm always too sensitive! I felt there was an awkward
silence, and I told a story against myself to dispel it in fun, and this
is what I get for't. Curse the big brute! he thinks I have given myself
away. But I'll show him!"

He was already mellow, but he took another swig to hearten him, as was
his habit.

"There's a damned sight too much yell about your laugh, Armstrong," he
said, truly enough, getting a courage from his anger and the drink. "No
gentleman laughs like that."

"'_Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est_,'" said Tarmillan, who was on one
of his rare visits to the Howff. He was too busy and too wise a man to
frequent it greatly.

Armstrong blushed; and Gourlay grew big and brave, in the backing of the
great Tarmillan. He took another swig on the strength of it. But his
resentment was still surging. When Tarmillan went, and the three
students were left by themselves, Gourlay continued to nag and bluster,
for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in his mind.

"I saw Hepburn in the street to-day," said Gillespie, by way of a
diversion.

"Who's Hepburn?" snapped Gourlay.

"Oh, don't you remember? He's the big Border chap who got into a row
with auld Tam on the day you won your prize essay." (That should surely
appease the fool, thought Gillespie.) "It was only for the fun of the
thing Hepburn was at College, for he has lots of money; and, here, he
never apologized to Tam! He said he would go down first."

"He was damned right," spluttered Gourlay. "Some of these profs. think
too much of themselves. They wouldn't bully _me_! There's good stuff in
the Gourlays," he went on with a meaning look at Armstrong; "they're not
to be scoffed at. I would stand insolence from no man."

"Ay, man," said Armstrong, "would you face up to a professor?"

"Wouldn't I?" said the tipsy youth; "and to you, too, if you went too
far."

He became so quarrelsome as the night went on that his comrades filled
him up with drink, in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities.
It was, "Yes, yes, Jack; but never mind about that! Have another drink,
just to show there's no ill-feeling among friends."

When they left the Howff they went to Gillespie's and drank more, and
after that they roamed about the town. At two in the morning the other
two brought Gourlay to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not a
gentleman.

When he went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to
monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him?
The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was
fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future,
in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of
Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought,
what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into
Armstrong's character. He noted every weakness in the rushing whirl of
his thoughts, set them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the
man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten
the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let
him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk
of his dirty soul to him!

The drink was dying in him now, for the trio had walked for more than an
hour through the open air when they left Gillespie's rooms. The
stupefaction of alcohol was gone, leaving his brain morbidly alive. He
was anxious to sleep, but drowsy dullness kept away. His mind began to
visualize of its own accord, independent of his will; and, one after
another, a crowd of pictures rose vivid in the darkness of his brain. He
saw them as plainly as you see this page, but with a different
clearness--for they seemed unnatural, belonging to a morbid world. Nor
did one suggest the other; there was no connection between them; each
came vivid of its own accord.

First it was an old pit-frame on a barren moor, gaunt, against the
yellow west. Gourlay saw bars of iron, left when the pit was abandoned,
reddened by the rain; and the mounds of rubbish, and the scattered
bricks, and the rusty clinkers from the furnace, and the melancholy
shining pools. A four-wheeled old trolley had lost two of its wheels,
and was tilted at a slant, one square end of it resting on the ground.

"Why do I think of an old pit?" he thought angrily; "curse it! why can't
I sleep?"

Next moment he was gazing at a ruined castle, its mouldering walls
mounded atop with decaying rubble; from a loose crumb of mortar a long,
thin film of the spider's weaving stretched bellying away to a tall weed
waving on the crazy brink. Gourlay saw its glisten in the wind. He saw
each crack in the wall, each stain of lichen; a myriad details stamped
themselves together on his raw mind. Then a constant procession of
figures passed across the inner curtain of his closed eyes. Each figure
was cowled; but when it came directly opposite, it turned and looked at
him with a white face. "Stop, stop!" cried his mind; "I don't want to
think of you, I don't want to think of you, I don't want to think of
you! Go away!" But as they came of themselves, so they went of
themselves. He could not banish them.

He turned on his side, but a hundred other pictures pursued him. From
an inland hollow he saw the great dawn flooding up from the sea, over a
sharp line of cliff, wave after wave of brilliance surging up the
heavens. The landward slope of the cliff was gray with dew. The inland
hollow was full of little fields, divided by stone walls, and he could
not have recalled the fields round Barbie with half their distinctness.
For a moment they possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose on his
vision. He was gazing down a vista of yellow leaves; a long, deep
slanting cleft, framed in lit foliage. Leaves, leaves; everywhere yellow
leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them falling through the lucid air.
The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness.
Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the
boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they
moved.

He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror. Could this be the delirium
of drink? But no; he had often had an experience like this when he was
sleepless; he had the learned description of it pat and ready; it was
only automatic visualization.

Damn! Why couldn't he sleep? He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with
his teeth, tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness.
Ha! that was better.

His room was already gray with the coming dawn. He went to the window
and opened it. The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep.
Somewhere in the distance a train was shunting; _clank, clank, clank_
went the wagons. What an accursed sound! A dray went past the end of his
street rumbling hollowly, and the rumble died drearily away. Then the
footsteps of an early workman going to his toil were heard in the
deserted thoroughfare. Gourlay looked down and saw him pass far beneath
him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why did the fool
whistle? What had he got to whistle about? It was unnatural that one
man should go whistling to his work, when another had not been able to
sleep the whole night long.

He took another vast glut of whisky, and the moment after was dead to
the world.

He was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on his door.
By the excessive loudness of the first knock he heard on returning to
consciousness, he knew that his landlady had lost her temper in trying
to get him up. Ere he could shout she had thumped again. He stared at
the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue was as dry as
bark.

For his breakfast there were thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top
of which two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold
gravy. His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of dry bread and
drained the teapot; then shouldering into his greatcoat, he tramped off
to the University.

It was a wretched morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold
drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the
street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to
an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his
last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of
sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a
fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I
trudging through mud and misery to the University? What has it all got
to do with me? Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool!

"Drown dull care," said the devil in his ear.

He took a sixpence from his trousers pocket, and looked down at the
white bit of money in his hand till it was wet with the falling rain.
Then he went into a flashy tavern, and, standing by a sloppy bar, drank
sixpenny-worth of cheap whisky. It went to his head at once, owing to
his want of food, and with a dull warm feeling in his body he lurched
off to his first lecture for the day. His outlook on the world had
changed. The fog was now a comfortable yellowness. "Freedom and whisky
gang thegither: tak aff your dram," he quoted to his own mind. "That
stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you."

He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom. It was a bear
garden. The most moral individual has his days of perversity when a
malign fate compels him to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish
university class--which is many most moral individuals--has a similar
eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It
will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when
nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer,
who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the
condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly
every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most
portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, with a last
triumphant snort sent his handkerchief across the room. When called to
account for his conduct, "Really, sir," he said, "er-er-oom--bad cold!"
Uprose a universal sneeze. Then the "roughing" began, to the tune of
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"--which no man seemed
to sing, but every man could hear. They were playing the tune with their
feet.

The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors.

Young Gourlay flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting. It
was partly from his usual love of showing off, partly from the drink
still seething within him, but largely, also, as a reaction from his
morning's misery. This was another way of drowning reflection. The
morbidly gloomy one moment often shout madly on the next.

At last the lecturer plunged wildly at the door and flung it open.
"Go!" he shrieked, and pointed in superb dismissal.

A hundred and fifty barbarians sat where they were, and laughed at him;
and he must needs come back to the platform, with a baffled and
vindictive glower.

He was just turning, as it chanced, when young Gourlay put his hands to
his mouth and bellowed "_Cock-a-doodle-do_!"

Ere the roar could swell, the lecturer had leapt to the front of the
rostrum with flaming eyes. "Mr. Gourlay," he screamed furiously--"you
there, sir; you will apologize humbly to me for this outrage at the end
of the hour."

There was a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria on the
stretch, that (contrasted with his big threat) might have provoked them
at other times to a roar of laughter. But there was a sincerity in his
rage to-day that rose above its faults of manner; and an immediate
silence took the room--the more impressive for the former noise. Every
eye turned to Gourlay. He sat gaping at the lecturer.

If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then, he would have been
cowed by the suddenness of his own change, from a loud tormentor in the
company of others, to a silent culprit in a room alone. And apologies
would have been ready to tumble out, while he was thus loosened by
surprise and fear.

Unluckily he had time to think, and the longer he thought the more
sullen he became. It was only an accident that led to his discovery,
while the rest escaped; and that the others should escape, when they
were just as much to blame as he was, was an injustice that made him
furious. His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance
itself, the teacher who had "jumped" on him so suddenly, and the other
rowdies who had escaped to laugh at his discomfiture; he had the same
burning resentment to them all. When he thought of his chuckling
fellow-students, they seemed to engross his rage; when he thought of the
mishap, he damned it and nothing else; when he thought of the lecturer,
he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others--the Snuffler took it
all. As his mind shot backwards and forwards in an angry gloom, it
suddenly encountered the image of his father. Not a professor of the
lot, he reflected, could stand the look of black Gourlay. And he
wouldn't knuckle under, either, so he wouldn't. He came of a hardy
stock. He would show them! He wasn't going to lick dirt for any man. Let
him punish all or none, for they had all been kicking up a row--why, big
Cunningham had been braying like an ass only a minute before.

He spied Armstrong and Gillespie glinting across at him with a curious
look: they were wondering whether he had courage enough to stand to his
guns with a professor. He knew the meaning of the look, and resented it.
He was on his mettle before them, it seemed. The fellow who had
swaggered at the Howff last night about "what _he_ would do if a
professor jumped on _him_," mustn't prove wanting in the present trial,
beneath the eyes of those on whom he had imposed his blatancy.

When we think of what Gourlay did that day, we must remember that he was
soaked in alcohol--not merely with his morning's potation, but with the
dregs of previous carousals. And the dregs of drink, a thorough toper
will tell you, never leave him. He is drunk on Monday with his
Saturday's debauch. As "Drucken Wabster" of Barbie put it once, "When a
body's hard up, his braith's a consolation." If that be so--and Wabster,
remember, was an expert whose opinion on this matter is entitled to the
highest credence--if that be so, it proves the strength and persistence
of a thorough alcoholic impregnation, or, as Wabster called it, of "a
good soak." In young Gourlay's case, at any rate, the impregnation was
enduring and complete. He was like a rag steeped in fusel oil.

As the end of the hour drew near, he sank deeper in his dogged
sullenness. When the class streamed from the large door on the right, he
turned aside to the little anteroom on the left, with an insolent swing
of the shoulders. He knew the fellows were watching him curiously--he
felt their eyes upon his back. And, therefore, as he went through the
little door, he stood for a moment on his right foot, and waggled his
left, on a level with his hip behind, in a vulgar derision of them, the
professor, and the whole situation. That was a fine taunt flung back at
them!

There is nothing on earth more vindictive than a weakling. When he gets
a chance he takes revenge for everything his past cowardice forced him
to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on
the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the
wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had
no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet
shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at
once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty
than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of
superiority. The class was his master, but here was one of them he could
cow at any rate.

"Well?" he asked, bringing his thin finger-tips together, and flinging
one thigh across the other.

Gourlay shuffled his feet uneasily.

"Yes?" inquired the other, enjoying his discomfiture.

Gourlay lowered. "Whatna gate was this to gang on? Why couldn't he let a
blatter out of his thin mouth, and ha' done wi't?"

"I'm waiting!" said the lecturer.

The words "I apologize" rose in Gourlay, but refused to pass his throat.
No, he wouldn't, so he wouldn't! He would see the lecturer far enough,
ere he gave an apology before it was expressly required.

"Oh, that's the line you go on, is it?" said the lecturer, nodding his
head as if he had sized up a curious animal. "I see, I see! You add
contumacy to insolence, do you?... Imphm."

Gourlay was not quite sure what contumacy meant, and the uncertainty
added to his anger.

"There were others making a noise besides me," he blurted. "I don't see
why _I_ should be blamed for it all."

"Oh, you don't see why _you_ should be had up, indeed? I think we'll
bring you to a different conclusion. Yes, I think so."

Gourlay, being forced to stand always on the one spot, felt himself
swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the lecturer like an angry
owl--the blinking regard of a sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful
rage. His wrath was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would have
liked one moment to give a rein to the Gourlay temper, and let the
lecturer have it hot and strong; the next, he was quivering in a
cowardly horror of the desperate attempt he had so nearly made. Curse
his tormentor! Why did he keep him here, when his head was aching so
badly? Another taunt was enough to spring his drunken rage.

"I wonder what you think you came to College for?" said the lecturer. "I
have been looking at your records in the class. They're the worst I ever
saw. And you're not content with that, it seems. You add misbehaviour to
gross stupidity."

"To hell wi' ye!" said Gourlay.

There was a feeling in the room as if the air was stunned. The silence
throbbed.

The lecturer, who had risen, sat down suddenly as if going at the knees,
and went white about the gills. Some men would have swept the ruffian
with a burst of generous wrath, a few might have pitied in their anger;
but this young Solomon was thin and acid, a vindictive rat. Unable to
cow the insolent in present and full-blooded rage, he fell to thinking
of the great machine he might set in motion to destroy him. As he sat
there in silence, his eyes grew ferrety, and a sleek revenge peeped from
the corners of his mouth. "I'll show him what I'll do to him for this!"
is a translation of his thought. He was thinking, with great
satisfaction to himself, of how the Senatus would deal with young
Gourlay.

Gourlay grew weak with fear the moment the words escaped him. They had
been a thunderclap to his own ears. He had been thinking them, but--as
he pleaded far within him now--had never meant to utter them; they had
been mere spume off the surge of cowardly wrath seething up within him,
longing to burst, but afraid. It was the taunt of stupidity that fired
his drunken vanity to blurt them forth.

The lecturer eyed him sideways where he shrank in fear. "You may go," he
said at last. "I will report your conduct to the University."

       *       *       *       *       *

Gourlay was sitting alone in his room when he heard that he had been
expelled. For many days he had drunk to deaden fear, but he was sober
now, being newly out of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the
window, and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in the grate. As Gourlay
sat, his eyes fixed dully on the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid
his character bare to him. He read himself ruthlessly. It was not by
conscious effort; insight was uncanny and apart from will. He saw that
blatancy had joined with weakness, morbidity with want of brains; and
that the results of these, converging to a point, had produced the
present issue, his expulsion. His mind recognized how logical the issue
was, assenting wearily as to a problem proved. Given those qualities, in
those circumstances, what else could have happened? And such a weakling
as he knew himself to be could never--he thought--make effort sufficient
to alter his qualities. A sense of fatalism came over him, as of one
doomed. He bowed his head, and let his arms fall by the sides of his
chair, dropping them like a spent swimmer ready to sink. The sudden
revelation of himself to himself had taken the heart out of him. "I'm a
waster!" he said aghast. And then, at the sound of his own voice, a fear
came over him, a fear of his own nature; and he started to his feet and
strode feverishly, as if by mere locomotion, to escape from his clinging
and inherent ill. It was as if he were trying to run away from himself.

He faced round at the mirror on his mantel, and looked at his own image
with staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming hard
through his nostrils. "You're a gey ill ane," he said; "you're a gey ill
ane! My God, where have you landed yourself?"

He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively he turned to the
Howff for consolation.

With the panic despair of the weak, he abandoned hope of his character
at its first collapse, and plunged into a wild debauch, to avoid
reflecting where it would lead him in the end. But he had a more
definite reason for prolonging his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to
go home and meet his father. He shrank, in visioning fear, before the
dour face, loaded with scorn, that would swing round to meet him as he
entered through the door. Though he swore every night in his cups that
he would "square up to the Governor the morn, so he would!" always, when
the cold light came, fear of the interview drove him to his cups again.
His courage zigzagged, as it always did; one moment he towered in
imagination, the next he grovelled in fear.

Sometimes, when he was fired with whisky, another element entered into
his mood, no less big with destruction. It was all his father's fault
for sending him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would
serve the old fellow right! He had a kind of fierce satisfaction in his
own ruin, because his ruin would show them at home what a mistake they
had made in sending him to College. It was the old man's tyranny, in
forcing him to College, that had brought all this on his miserable head.
Well, he was damned glad, so he was, that they should be punished at
home by their own foolish scheme--it had punished _him_ enough, for one.
And then he would set his mouth insolent and hard, and drink the more
fiercely, finding a consolation in the thought that his tyrannical
father would suffer through his degradation too.

At last he must go home. He drifted to the station aimlessly; he had
ceased to be self-determined. His compartment happened to be empty; so,
free to behave as he liked, he yelled music-hall snatches in a tuneless
voice, hammering with his feet on the wooden floor. The noise pleased
his sodden mind, which had narrowed to a comfortable stupor--outside of
which his troubles seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him but to
somebody else. With the same sodden interest he was staring through the
window, at one of the little stations on the line, when a boy, pointing,
said, "_Flat white nose!_" and Gourlay laughed uproariously, adding at
the end, "He's a clever chield, that; my nose _would_ look flat and
white against the pane." But this outbreak of mirth seemed to break in
on his comfortable vagueness; it roused him by a kind of reaction to
think of home, and of what his father would say. A minute after he had
been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly in front of him. Well,
it didn't matter; it was all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going
to stand any of his jaw. "None of your jaw, John Gourlay!" he said,
nodding his head viciously, and thrusting out his clenched fist--"none
of your jaw; d'ye hear?"

He crept into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market-day, and
knots of people were still about the streets. Gourlay stole softly
through the shadows, and turned his coat-collar high about his ears. He
nearly ran into two men who were talking apart, and his heart stopped
dead at their words.

"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said one of them; "it's quite impossible. I'm not
unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."

John heard the mumble of his father's voice.

"Well," said the other reluctantly, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie
for security? I'll be on the street for another half-hour."

"Another half-hour!" thought John with relief. He would not have to face
his father the moment he went in. He would be able to get home before
him. He crept on through the gloaming to the House with the Green
Shutters.




CHAPTER XXIV.


There had been fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away
from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and
Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused
the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried,
"this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy
fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their
dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but,
over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for
the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple
expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest--of suspense, yet
certainty--that had them in its grip. "He's _bound_ to come down," said
Certainty. "Yes; but _when_, though?" cried Curiosity, all the more
eager because of its instinct for the coming crash. And so they waited
for the great catastrophe which they felt to be so near. It was as if
they were watching the tragedy near at hand, and noting with keen
interest every step in it that must lead to inevitable ruin. That
invariably happens when a family tragedy is played out in the midst of a
small community. Each step in it is discussed with a prying interest
that is neither malevolent nor sympathetic, but simply curious. In this
case it was chiefly malevolent--only because Gourlay had been such a
brute to Barbie.

Though there were thus two reasons for public interest, the result was
one and the same--a constant tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a
more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every
tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with
the Green Shutters been so much talked of.

"Pride _will_ have a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack
of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common
proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener
spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff
he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes
are coming. How do I ken? say ye! How do I ken, indeed? Oh-ooh, I ken
perfectly. Perfectly! It was Postie himsell that telled me."

Yet all this was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away
from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could
only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the
gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of
retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in his business. This offhand
and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.

"Hi-hi!" said the old Provost, with a cruel laugh, when he heard of
Gourlay's remark--"drawing in his business, ay! It's like Lang Jean
Lingleton's waist, I'm thinking. It's thin eneugh drawn a'readys!"

On the morning of the last market-day he was ever to see in Barbie, old
Gourlay was standing at the green gate, when the postman came up with a
smirk, and put a letter in his hand. He betrayed a wish to hover in
gossip, while Gourlay opened his letter, but "Less lip!" said surly
John, and the fellow went away.

Ere he had reached the corner, a gowl of anger and grief struck his ear,
and he wheeled eagerly.

Gourlay was standing with open mouth and outstretched arm, staring at
the letter in his clenched fist with a look of horror, as if it had
stung him.

"My God!" he cried, "had _I_ not enough to thole?"

"Aha!" thought Postie, "yon letter Wilson got this morning was correct,
then! His son had sent the true story. That letter o' Gourlay's had the
Edinburgh postmark; somebody has sent him word about his son.--Lord!
what a tit-bit for my rounds."

Mrs. Gourlay, who was washing dishes, looked up to see her husband
standing in the kitchen door. His face frightened her. She had often
seen the blaze in his eye, and often the dark scowl, but never this
bloodless pallor in his cheek. Yet his eyes were flaming.

"Ay, ay," he birred, "a fine job you have made of him!"

"Oh, what is it?" she quavered, and the dish she was wiping clashed on
the floor.

"That's it!" said he, "that's it! Breck the dishes next; breck the
dishes! Everything seems gaun to smash. If ye keep on lang eneugh, ye'll
put a bonny end till't or ye're bye wi't--the lot o' ye."

The taunt passed in the anxiety that stormed her.

"Tell me, see!" she cried, imperious in stress of appeal. "Oh, what is
it, John?" She stretched out her thin, red hands, and clasped them
tightly before her. "Is it from Embro? Is there ainything the matter
with _my_ boy? Is there ainything the matter with _my_ boy?"

The hard eye surveyed her a while in grim contempt of her weakness. She
was a fluttering thing in his grip.

"_Every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy," he sneered slowly,
"_every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy. And it's your fault too,
damn you, for you always spoiled him!"

With sudden wrath he strode over to the famous range and threw the
letter within the great fender.

"What is it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so
wild about sending to College has been flung in disgrace from its door!
That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman.

Mrs. Gourlay sank into her old nursing chair and wailed, "Oh, my wean,
my wean; my dear, my poor dear!" She drew the letter from the ashes, but
could not read it for her tears. The words "drunkenness" and "expulsion"
swam before her eyes. The manner of his disgrace she did not care to
hear; she only knew her first-born was in sorrow.

"Oh, my son, my son," she cried; "my laddie, my wee laddie!" She was
thinking of the time when he trotted at her petticoat.

It was market-day, and Gourlay must face the town. There was interest
due on a mortgage which he could not pay; he must swallow his pride and
try to borrow it in Barbie. He thought of trying Johnny Coe, for Johnny
was of yielding nature, and had never been unfriendly.

He turned, twenty yards from his gate, and looked at the House with the
Green Shutters. He had often turned to look back with pride at the
gawcey building on its terrace, but never as he looked to-day. All that
his life meant was bound up in that house--it had been the pride of the
Gourlays; now it was no longer his, and the Gourlays' pride was in the
dust--their name a by-word. As Gourlay looked, a robin was perched on
the quiet roof-tree, its breast vivid in the sun. One of his metaphors
flashed at the sight. "Shame is sitting there too," he muttered, and
added with a proud, angry snarl, "on the riggin' o' _my_ hoose!"

He had a triple wrath to his son. He had not only ruined his own life;
he had destroyed his father's hope that by entering the ministry he
might restore the Gourlay reputation. Above all, he had disgraced the
House with the Green Shutters. That was the crown of his offending.
Gourlay felt for the house of his pride even more than for
himself--rather the house was himself; there was no division between
them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his
character in stone and lime. He clung to it, as the dull, fierce mind,
unable to live in thought, clings to a material source of pride. And
John had disgraced it. Even if fortune took a turn for the better, Green
Shutters would be laughed at the country over, as the home of a
prodigal.

As he went by the Cross, Wilson (Provost this long while) broke off a
conversation with Templandmuir, to yell, "It's gra-and weather, Mr.
Gourlay!" The men had not spoken for years. So to shout at poor Gourlay
in his black hour, from the pinnacle of civic greatness, was a fine
stroke: it was gloating, it was rubbing in the contrast. The words were
innocent, but that was nothing; whatever the remark, for a declared
enemy to address Gourlay in his shame was an insult: that was why Wilson
addressed him. There was something in the very loudness of his tones
that cried plainly, "Aha, Gourlay! Your son has disgraced you, my man!"
Gourlay glowered at the animal and plodded dourly. Ere he had gone ten
yards a coarse laugh came bellowing behind him. They saw the colour
surge up the back of his neck, to the roots of his hair.

He stopped. Was his son's disgrace known in Barbie already? He had hoped
to get through the market-day without anybody knowing. But Wilson had a
son in Edinburgh; he had written, it was like. The salutation,
therefore, and the laugh, had both been uttered in derision. He wheeled,
his face black with the passionate blood. His mouth yawed with anger.
His voice had a moan of intensity.

"What are 'e laughing at?" he said, with a mastering quietness....
"Eh?... Just tell me, please, what you're laughing at."

He was crouching for the grip, his hands out like a gorilla's. The quiet
voice, from the yawing mouth, beneath the steady, flaming eyes, was
deadly. There is something inhuman in a rage so still.

"Eh?" he said slowly, and the moan seemed to come from the midst of a
vast intensity rather than a human being. It was the question that must
grind an answer.

Wilson was wishing to all his gods that he had not insulted this awful
man. He remembered what had happened to Gibson. This, he had heard, was
the very voice with which Gourlay moaned, "Take your hand off _my_
shouther!" ere he hurled Gibson through the window of the Red Lion.
Barbie might soon want a new Provost, if he ran in now.

But there is always one way of evading punishment for a veiled insult,
and of adding to its sting by your evasion. Repudiate the remotest
thought of the protester. Thus you enjoy your previous gibe, with the
additional pleasure of making your victim seem a fool for thinking you
referred to him. You not only insult him on the first count, but send
him off with an additional hint that he isn't worth your notice. Wilson
was an adept in the art.

"Man," he lied blandly, but his voice was quivering--"ma-a-an, I wasn't
so much as giving ye a thoat! It's verra strange if I cannot pass a joke
with my o-old friend Templandmuir without _you_ calling me to book. It's
a free country, I shuppose! Ye weren't in my mind at a-all. I have more
important matters to think of," he ventured to add, seeing he had
baffled Gourlay.

For Gourlay was baffled. For a directer insult, an offensive gesture,
one fierce word, he would have hammered the road with the Provost. But
he was helpless before the bland, quivering lie. Maybe they werena
referring to him; maybe they knew nothing of John in Edinburgh; maybe he
had been foolishly suspeecious. A subtle yet baffling check was put upon
his anger. Madman as he was in wrath, he never struck without direct
provocation; there was none in this pulpy gentleness. And he was too
dull of wit to get round the common ruse and find a means of getting at
them.

He let loose a great breath through his nostrils, as if releasing a
deadly force which he had pent within him, ready should he need to
spring. His mouth opened again, and he gaped at them with a great,
round, unseeing stare. Then he swung on his heel.

But wrath clung round him like a garment. His anger fed on its
uncertainties. For that is the beauty of the Wilson method of insult:
you leave the poison in your victim's blood, and he torments himself.
"Was Wilson referring to _me_, after all?" he pondered slowly; and his
body surged at the thought. "If he was, I have let him get away
unkilled," and he clutched the hands whence Wilson had escaped. Suddenly
a flashing thought stopped him dead in the middle of his walk, staring
hornily before him. He had seen the point at last that a quicker man
would have seized on at the first. Why had Wilson thrust his damned
voice on him on this particular morning of all days in the year, if he
was not gloating over some news which he had just heard about the
Gourlays? It was as plain as daylight: his son had sent word from
Edinburgh. That was why he brayed and ho-ho-hoed when Gourlay went by.
Gourlay felt a great flutter of pulses against his collar; there was a
pain in his throat, an ache of madness in his breast. He turned once
more. But Wilson and the Templar had withdrawn discreetly to the Black
Bull; the street wasna canny. Gourlay resumed his way, his being a dumb
gowl of rage. His angry thought swept to John. Each insult, and fancied
insult, he endured that day was another item in the long account of
vengeance with his son. It was John who had brought all this flaming
round his ears--John whose colleging he had lippened to so muckle. The
staff on which he leaned had pierced him. By the eternal heavens he
would tramp it into atoms. His legs felt John beneath them.

As the market grew busy, Gourlay was the aim of innumerable eyes. He
would turn his head to find himself the object of a queer, considering
look; then the eyes of the starer would flutter abashed, as though
detected spying the forbidden. The most innocent look at him was poison.
"Do they know?" was his constant thought; "have they heard the news?
What's Loranogie looking at me like that for?"

Not a man ventured to address him about John--he had cowed them too
long. One man, however, showed a wish to try. A pretended sympathy, from
behind the veil of which you probe a man's anguish at your ease, is a
favourite weapon of human beasts anxious to wound. The Deacon longed to
try it on Gourlay. But his courage failed him. It was the only time he
was ever worsted in malignity. Never a man went forth, bowed down with a
recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old
rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me,
neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a _terrible_ affair! It'th on
everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have
tha-at--my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the shifty eyes above
the lying mouth would peer and probe, to see if the soul within the
other was writhing at his words.

Now, though everybody was spying at Gourlay in the market, all were
giving him a wide berth; for they knew that he was dangerous. He was no
longer the man whom they had baited on the way to Skeighan; then he had
some control, now three years' calamities had fretted his temper to a
raw wound. To flick it was perilous. Great was the surprise of the
starers, therefore, when the idle old Deacon was seen to detach himself
and hail the grain merchant. Gourlay wheeled, and waited with a levelled
eye. All were agog at the sight--something would be sure to come o'
this--here would be an encounter worth the speaking o'. But the Deacon,
having toddled forward a bittock on his thin shanks, stopped half-roads,
took snuff, trumpeted into his big red handkerchief, and then, feebly
waving, "I'll thee ye again, Dyohn," clean turned tail and toddled back
to his cronies.

A roar went up at his expense.

"God!" said Tam Wylie, "did ye see yon? Gourlay stopped him wi' a
glower."

But the laugh was maddening to Gourlay. Its readiness, its volume,
showed him that scores of folk had him in their minds, were watching
him, considering his position, cognizant of where he stood. "They ken,"
he thought. "They were a' waiting to see what would happen. They wanted
to watch how Gourlay tholed the mention o' his son's disgrace. I'm a
kind o' show to them."

Johnny Coe, idle and well-to-pass, though he had no business of his own
to attend to, was always present where business men assembled. It was a
gra-and way of getting news. To-day, however, Gourlay could not find
him. He went into the cattle mart to see if he was there. For two years
now Barbie had a market for cattle, on the first Tuesday of the month.

The auctioneer, a jovial dog, was in the middle of his roaring game. A
big red bullock, the coat of which made a rich colour in the ring, came
bounding in, scared at its surroundings--staring one moment and the next
careering.

"There's meat for you," said he of the hammer; "see how it runs! How
much am I offered for _this_ fine bullock?" He sing-songed, always
saying "_this_ fine bullock" in exactly the same tone of voice.
"Thirteen pounds for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-five; thirteen-ten;
thirteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-ten; any further bids on
thirteen-ten? why, it's worth that for the colour o't; thank ye,
sir--thirteen-fifteen; fourteen pounds; fourteen pounds for _this_ fine
bullock; see how the stot stots[7] about the ring; that joke should
raise him another half-sovereign; ah, I knew it would--fourteen-five;
fourteen-five for _this_ fine bullock; fourteen-ten; no more than
fourteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; going at fourteen-ten;
gone--Irrendavie."

Now that he was in the circle, however, the mad, big, handsome beast
refused to go out again. When the cattlemen would drive him to the yard,
he snorted and galloped round, till he had to be driven from the ring
with blows. When at last he bounded through the door, he flung up his
heels with a bellow, and sent the sand of his arena showering on the
people round.

"I seh!" roared Brodie in his coarsest voice, from the side of the ring
opposite to Gourlay. "I seh, owctioner! That maun be a College-bred
stot, from the way he behaves. He flung dirt at his masters, and had to
be expelled."

"Put Brodie in the ring and rowp him!" cried Irrendavie. "He roars like
a bill, at ony rate."

There was a laugh at Brodie, true; but it was at Gourlay that a hundred
big red faces turned to look. He did not look at them, though. He sent
his eyes across the ring at Brodie.

"Lord!" said Irrendavie, "it's weel for Brodie that the ring's acqueesh
them! Gourlay'll murder somebody yet. Red hell lap out o' his e'en when
he looked at Brodie."

Gourlay's suspicion that his son's disgrace was a matter of common
knowledge had now become a certainty. Brodie's taunt showed that
everybody knew it. He walked out of the building very quietly, pale but
resolute; no meanness in his carriage, no cowering. He was an arresting
figure of a man as he stood for a moment in the door and looked round
for the man whom he was seeking. "Weel, weel," he was thinking, "I maun
thole, I suppose. They were under _my_ feet for many a day, and they're
taking their advantage now."

But though he could thole, his anger against John was none the less. It
was because they had been under his feet for many a day that John's
conduct was the more heinous. It was his son's conduct that gave
Gourlay's enemies their first opportunity against him, that enabled them
to turn the tables. They might sneer at his trollop of a wife, they
might sneer at his want of mere cleverness; still he held his head high
amongst them. They might suspect his poverty; but so far, for anything
they knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in
Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The
selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the
completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was
invulnerable--so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the
men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against
him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the
conduct of all the prodigals that ever lived. It had enabled his foes to
get their knife into him at last, and they were turning the dagger in
the wound. All owing to the boy on whom he had staked such hopes of
keeping up the Gourlay name! His account with John was lengthening
steadily.

Coe was nowhere to be seen. At last Gourlay made up his mind to go out
and make inquiries at his house, out the Fleckie Road. It was a quiet,
big house, standing by itself, and Gourlay was glad there was nobody to
see him.

It was Miss Coe herself who answered his knock at the door.

She was a withered old shrew, with fifty times the spunk of Johnny. On
her thin wrists and long hands there was always a pair of bright red
mittens, only her finger-tips showing. Her far-sunken and toothless
mouth was always working, with a sucking motion of the lips; and her
round little knob of a sticking-out chin munched up and down when she
spoke, a long, stiff whitish hair slanting out its middle. However much
you wished to avoid doing so, you could not keep your eyes from staring
at that solitary hair while she was addressing you. It worked up and
down so, keeping time to every word she spoke.

"Is your brother in?" said Gourlay. He was too near reality in this sad
pass of his to think of "mistering." "Is your brother in?" said he.

"No-a!" she shrilled--for Miss Coe answered questions with an
old-maidish scream, as if the news she was giving must be a great
surprise both to you and her. "No-a!" she skirled; "he's no-a in-a. Was
it ainything particular?"

"No," said Gourlay heavily. "I--I just wanted to see him," and he
trudged away.

Miss Coe looked after him for a moment ere she closed the door. "He's
wanting to barrow money," she cried; "I'm nearly sure o't! I maun
caution Johnny when he comes back frae Fleckie, afore he gangs east the
toon. Gourlay could get him to do ocht! He always admired the brute--I'm
sure I kenna why. Because he's siccan a silly body himsell, I suppose!"

It was after dark when Gourlay met Coe on the street. He drew him aside
in the shadows, and asked for a loan of eighty pounds.

Johnny stammered a refusal. "Hauf the bawbees is mine," his sister had
skirled, "and I daur ye to do ony siccan thing, John Coe!"

"It's only for a time," pleaded Gourlay; "and, by God," he flashed,
"it's hell in _my_ throat to ask from any man."

"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said Johnny, "it's quite impossible. I've always
looked up to ye, and I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take
the risk."

"Risk!" said Gourlay, and stared at the darkness. By hook or by crook
he must raise the money to save the House with the Green Shutters. It
was no use trying the bank; he had a letter from the banker in his desk,
to tell him that his account was overdrawn. And yet if the interest were
not paid at once, the lawyers in Glasgow would foreclose, and the
Gourlays would be flung upon the street. His proud soul must eat dirt,
if need be, for the sake of eighty pounds.

"If I get the baker or Tam Wylie to stand security," he asked, "would ye
not oblige me? I think they would do it. I have always felt they
respected me."

"Well," said Johnny slowly, fearing his sister's anger, "if ye get the
baker and Tam Wylie for security. I'll be on the street for another
half-hour."

A figure, muffled in a greatcoat, was seen stealing off through the
shadows.

"God's curse on whoever that is," snarled Gourlay, "creeping up to
listen to our talk!"

"I don't think so," said Johnny; "it seemed a young chap trying to hide
himself."

Gourlay failed to get his securities. The baker, though a poor man,
would have stood for him, if Tam Wylie would have joined; but Tam would
not budge. He was as clean as gray granite, and as hard.

So Gourlay trudged home through the darkness, beaten at last, mad with
shame and anger and foreboding.

The first thing he saw on entering the kitchen was his son--sitting
muffled in his coat by the great fender.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Stot_, a bullock; _to stot_, to bound.




CHAPTER XXV.


Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and
glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and
significance, filling the doorway in his silence.

The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers,
his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil
his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return
for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out
of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden
sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap
on him at once and glut his rage--a madness which only a will like his
could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.

To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out
of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it
is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a
violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and
again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking
beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness.
Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him,
till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye.
Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its
contrasting colour showed the white face of the coward--and a coward
had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as
he slunk away. "_Ha!_" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and
the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a
man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he
lives, send him slinking away _animo castrato_--for that is what it
comes to--is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape
of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost--derives from
it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his
son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less
than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a
loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man
like a wriggling urchin on the floor.

As he stood glowering from the door Mrs. Gourlay rose, with an appealing
cry of "_John!_" But Gourlay put his eye on her, and she sank into her
chair, staring up at him in terror. The strings of the tawdry cap she
wore seemed to choke her, and she unfastened them with nervous fingers,
fumbling long beneath her lifted chin to get them loose. She did not
remove the cap, but let the strings dangle by her jaw. The silly bits of
cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son
to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and
inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "_God have
mercy!_"

For a length of time there was a loaded silence.

Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at
hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat. A reek of alcohol rose from
around him. Janet whimpered.

But when Gourlay spoke it was with deadly quietude. The moan was in his
voice. So great was his controlled wrath that he drew in great,
shivering breastfuls of air between the words, as if for strength to
utter them; and they quavered forth on it again. He seemed weakened by
his own rage.

"Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe!... Dee-ee-ar
me!... Im-phm!"

The contrast between the lowness of his voice and his steady, breathing
anger that possessed the air (they felt it coming as on waves) was
demoniac, appalling.

John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast
hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his
father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going
to do? The jamb of the fireplace cut his right shoulder as he cowered
into it, to get away as far as he could.

"I'm saying ... ye've won hame!" quivered Gourlay in a deadly slowness,
and his eyes never left his son.

And still the son made no reply. In the silence the ticking of the big
clock seemed to fill their world. They were conscious of nothing else.
It smote the ear.

"Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer
seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence.

"Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He
heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled.

He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his
hands. Through the open door Janet and her mother--looking at each other
with affrighted eyes--could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay,
man!"... "Just that, now!"... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay!...
Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony.

When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in
a suspended agony.

"Ay, woman, Jenny, ye're there!" he said, and nipped her ear as he
passed over to his chair. "Were ye in Skeighan the day?"

"Ay, faither," she answered.

"And what did the Skeighan doctor say?"

She raised her large pale eyes to his with a strange look. Then her head
sank low on her breast.

"Nothing!" she said at last.

"Nothing!" said he. "Nothing for nothing, then. I hope you didna pay
him?"

"No, faither," she answered. "I hadna the bawbees."

"When did ye get back?" he asked.

"Just after--just after----" Her eyes flickered over to John, as if she
were afraid of mentioning his name.

"Oh, just after this gentleman! But there's noathing strange in tha-at;
you were always after him. You were born after him, and considered after
him; he aye had the best o't.--I howp _you_ are in good health?" he
sneered, turning to his son. "It would never do for a man to break down
at the outset o' a great career!... For ye _are_ at the outset o' a
great career; are ye na?"

His speech was as soft as the foot of a tiger, and sheathed as rending a
cruelty. There was no escaping the crouching stealth of it. If he had
leapt with a roar, John's drunken fury might have lashed itself to rage.
But the younger and weaker man was fascinated and helpless before the
creeping approach of so monstrous a wrath.

"Eh?" asked Gourlay softly, when John made no reply; "I'm saying you're
at the outset o' a great career; are ye no? Eh?"

Soft as his "Eh" was in utterance, it was insinuating, pursuing; it had
to be answered.

"No," whimpered John.

"Well, well; you're maybe at the end o't! Have ye been studying hard?"

"Yes," lied John.

"That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my
brave fellow! Noathing like studying!... And no doubt"--he leaned over
suavely--"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as
usual? Eh?"

There was no answer.

"Eh?"

"No," gulped the cowerer.

"_Nae_ prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended
surprise. "_Nae-ae_ prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?"

Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who,
when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at
her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks--"No," he pants; and "Are
you sorry for being a bad boy?"--"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good
boy now, then?"--"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one
with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own
nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not
asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay
cared--when once he had bye with him.

Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice,
Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be
such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt
at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand
talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the
brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung
mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John
Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of _my_ life I've made--that auld trollop
for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my
dochter! Was it I that bred him? _That!_"

He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.

"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and
I must have a drink together--to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he
sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to
celebrate the occeesion!"

The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort
to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of
the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he
was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious
constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression.
They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in
a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and
checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface.
Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter,
a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond
himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the
escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was
that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his
disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a
desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would
spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim
which he would not kill.

"Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear.
"What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits--just to shelebrate the
joyful occeesion, ye know--ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful
occeesion!"

Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the
rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her
trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.

Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle
for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the
jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this
gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a
night o't--we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"

"Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.

"No," wheezed John.

"No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College!
Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or _this_
nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."

Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy.
Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt
at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins
of his listeners with a start of fear--it leapt so suddenly.

"Ha'e, sir!" he cried.

John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which
his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go
and take it.

"Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait
on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn!
The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the
storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but
_he_ wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "_he_ wasna feared; no,
by God, for he never met what scaured him!... Ay, ay," he birred softly
again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra
appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name!... Eh?...
Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just
as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye
know--a splurge to attract folk's attention!"

John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.

"Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye;
"take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something
about that--some poetry or other. Who was it?"

"I dinna ken," whimpered John.

"Don't tell lies now. You do ken. I heard you mention it to Loranogie.
Come on now--who was it?"

"It was Burns," said John.

"Oh, it was Burns, was it? And what had Mr. Burns to say on the subject?
Eh?"

"'Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram,'" stammered
John.

"A verra wise remark," said Gourlay gravely. "'Freedom and whisky gang
thegither;'" he turned the quotation on his tongue, as if he were
savouring a tit-bit. "That's verra good," he approved. "You're a great
admirer of Burns, I hear. Eh?"

"Yes," said John.

"Do what he bids ye, then. Take off your dram! It'll show what a fine
free fellow you are!"

It was a big, old-fashioned Scotch drinking-glass, containing more than
half a gill of whisky, and John drained it to the bottom. To him it had
been a deadly thing at first, coming thus from his father's hand. He had
taken it into his own with a feeling of aversion that was strangely
blended of disgust and fear. But the moment it touched his lips, desire
leapt in his throat to get at it.

"Good!" roared his father in mock admiration. "God, ye have the
thrapple! When I was your age that would have choked me. I must have a
look at that throat o' yours. Stand up!... _Stand up when I tall 'ee!_"

John rose swaying to his feet. Months of constant tippling, culminating
in a wild debauch, had shattered him. He stood in a reeling world. And
the fear weakening his limbs changed his drunken stupor to a
heart-heaving sickness. He swayed to and fro, with a cold sweat oozing
from his chalky face.

"What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a
saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"

John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries.
The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he
went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment,
to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was
enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.

He turned his son round with a finger and thumb on his shoulder, in
insolent inspection, as you turn an urchin round to see him in his new
suit of clothes. Then he crouched before him, his face thrust close to
the other, and peered into his eyes, his mouth distent with an infernal
smile. "My boy, Johnny," he said sweetly, "my boy, Johnny," and patted
him gently on the cheek. John raised dull eyes and looked into his
father's. Far within him a great wrath was gathering through his fear.
Another voice, another self, seemed to whimper, with dull iteration,
"I'll _kill_ him; I'll _kill_ him; by God, I'll _kill_ him--if he doesna
stop this--if he keeps on like this at me!" But his present and material
self was paralyzed with fear.

"Open your mouth!" came the snarl--"_wider, damn ye! wider!_"

"Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about
to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's
the Latin for throat?"

"Guttur," said John.

"Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like
a cesspool! What have you been doing till't? I'm afraid ye aren't in
very good health, after a-all.... Eh?... Mrs. Gourla', Mrs. Gourla'!
He's in very bad case, this son of yours, Mrs. Gourla'! Fine I ken what
he needs, though.--Set out the brandy, Jenny, set out the brandy," he
roared; "whisky's not worth a damn for him! Stop; it was you gaed the
last time--it's _your_ turn now, auld wife, it's _your_ turn now! Gang
for the brandy to your twa John Gourla's. We're a pair for a woman to be
proud of!"

He gazed after his wife as she tottered to the pantry.

"Your skirt's on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the
gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that;
and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy--though I never
got them. However, I maunna compleen when ye bore sic a braw son to my
name. He's a great consolation! Imphm, he is that--a great consolation!"

The brandy bottle slipped from the quivering fingers and was smashed to
pieces on the floor.

"Hurrah!" yelled Gourlay.

He seemed rapt and carried by his own devilry. The wreck and ruin strewn
about the floor consorted with the ruin of his fortunes; let all go
smash--what was the use of caring? Now in his frenzy, he, ordinarily so
careful, seemed to delight in the smashings and the breakings; they
suited his despair.

He saw that his spirit of destruction frightened them, too, and that was
another reason to indulge it.

"To hell with everything," he yelled, like a mock-bacchanal. "_We_'re
the hearty fellows! We'll make a red night now we're at it!" And with
that he took the heel of a bottle on his toe and sent it flying among
the dishes on the dresser. A great plate fell, split in two.

"Poor fellow!" he whined, turning to his son; "poo-oor fellow! I fear he
has lost his pheesic. For that was the last bottle o' brandy in my
aucht; the last John Gourlay had, the last he'll ever buy. What am I to
do wi' ye now?... Eh?... I must do something; it's coming to the bit
now, sir."

As he stood in a heaving silence the sobbing of the two women was heard
through the room. John was still swaying on the floor.

Sometimes Gourlay would run the full length of the kitchen, and stand
there glowering on a stoop; then he would come crouching up to his son
on a vicious little trot, pattering in rage, the broken glass crunching
and grinding beneath his feet. At any moment he might spring.

"What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?" he moaned.... "Eh?... What
do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?"

As he came grinning in rage his lips ran out to their full width, and
the tense slit showed his teeth to their roots. The gums were white. The
stricture of the lips had squeezed them bloodless.

He went back to the dresser once more and bent low beside it, glancing
at his son across his left shoulder, with his head flung back sideways,
his right fist clenched low and ready from a curve of the elbow. It
swung heavy as a mallet by his thigh. Janet got to her knees and came
shuffling across the floor on them, though her dress was tripping her,
clasping her outstretched hands, and sobbing in appeal, "Faither,
faither; O faither; for God's sake, faither!" She clung to him. He
unclenched his fist and lifted her away. Then he came crouching and
quivering across the floor slowly, a gleaming devilry in the eyes that
devoured his son. His hands were like outstretched claws, and shivered
with each shiver of the voice that moaned, through set teeth, "What do
ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?... What do ye think I mean to do wi'
ye now?... Ye damned sorrow and disgrace that ye are, what do ye think I
mean to do wi' ye now?"

"Run, John!" screamed Mrs. Gourlay, leaping to her feet. With a hunted
cry young Gourlay sprang to the door. So great had been the fixity of
Gourlay's wrath, so tense had he been in one direction, as he moved
slowly on his prey, that he could not leap to prevent him. As John
plunged into the cool, soft darkness, his mother's "Thank God!" rang
past him on the night.

His immediate feeling was of coolness and width and spaciousness, in
contrast with the hot grinding hostility that had bored so closely in on
him for the last hour. He felt the benignness of the darkened heavens. A
tag of some forgotten poem he had read came back to his mind, and,
"Come, kindly night, and cover me," he muttered, with shaking lips; and
felt how true it was. My God, what a relief to be free of his father's
eyes! They had held him till his mother's voice broke the spell. They
seemed to burn him now.

What a fool he had been to face his father when empty both of food and
drink! Every man was down-hearted when he was empty. If his mother had
had time to get the tea, it would have been different; but the fire had
been out when he went in. "He wouldn't have downed me so easy if I had
had anything in me," he muttered, and his anger grew as he thought of
all he had been made to suffer. For he was still the swaggerer. Now that
the incubus of his father's tyranny no longer pressed on him directly, a
great hate rose within him for the tyrant. He would go back and have it
out when he was primed. "It's the only hame I have," he sobbed angrily
to the darkness; "I have no other place to gang till! Yes, I'll go back
and have it out with him when once I get something in me, so I will." It
was no disgrace to suck courage from the bottle for that encounter with
his father, for nobody could stand up to black Gourlay--nobody. Young
Gourlay was yielding to a peculiar fatalism of minds diseased: all that
affects them seems different from all that affects everybody else; they
are even proud of their separate and peculiar doom. Young Gourlay not
thought but felt it--he was different from everybody else. The heavens
had cursed nobody else with such a terrible sire. It was no cowardice to
fill yourself with drink before you faced him.

A drunkard will howl you an obscene chorus the moment after he has wept
about his dead child. For a mind in the delirium of drink is no longer a
coherent whole, but a heap of shattered bits, which it shows one after
the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that
semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them
now. His had always been a wandering mind, deficient in application and
control, and as he neared his final collapse it became more and more
variable, the prey of each momentary thought. In a short five minutes of
time he had been alive to the beauty of the darkness, cowering before
the memory of his father's eyes, sobbing in self-pity and angry resolve,
shaking in terror--indeed he was shaking now. But his vanity came
uppermost. As he neared the Red Lion he stopped suddenly, and the
darkness seemed on fire against his cheeks. He would have to face
curious eyes, he reflected. It was from the Red Lion he and Aird had
started so grandly in the autumn. It would never do to come slinking
back like a whipped cur; he must carry it off bravely in case the usual
busybodies should be gathered round the bar. So with his coat flapping
lordly on either side of him, his hands deep in his trousers pockets,
and his hat on the back of his head, he drove at the swing-doors with an
outshot chest, and entered with a "breenge." But for all his swagger he
must have had a face like death, for there was a cry among the idlers. A
man breathed, "My God! What's the matter?" With shaking knees Gourlay
advanced to the bar, and, "For God's sake, Aggie," he whispered, "give
me a Kinblythmont!"

It went at a gulp.

"Another!" he gasped, like a man dying of thirst, whom his first sip
maddens for more. "Another! Another!"

He had tossed the other down his burning throat when Deacon Allardyce
came in.

He knew his man the moment he set eyes on him, but, standing at the
door, he arched his hand above his brow, as you do in gazing at a dear
unexpected friend, whom you pretend not to be quite sure of, so
surprised and pleased are you to see him there.

"Ith it Dyohn?" he cried. "It _ith_ Dyohn!" And he toddled forward with
outstretched hand. "Man Dyohn!" he said again, as if he could scarce
believe the good news, and he waggled the other's hand up and down, with
both his own clasped over it. "I'm proud to thee you, thir; I am that.
And tho you're won hame, ay! Im-phm! And how are ye tummin on?"

"Oh, _I_'m all right, Deacon," said Gourlay with a silly laugh. "Have a
wet?" The whisky had begun to warm him.

"A wha-at?" said the Deacon, blinking in a puzzled fashion with his
bleary old eyes.

"A dram--a drink--a drop o' the Auld Kirk," said Gourlay, with a
stertorous laugh down through his nostrils.

"Hi! hi!" laughed the Deacon in his best falsetto. "Ith that what ye
call it up in Embro? A wet, ay! Ah, well, maybe I will take a little
drope, theeing you're tho ready wi' your offer."

They drank together.

"Aggie, fill me a mutchkin when you're at it," said Gourlay to the
pretty barmaid with the curly hair. He had spent many an hour with her
last summer in the bar. The four big whiskies he had swallowed in the
last half-hour were singing in him now, and he blinked at her drunkenly.

There was a scarlet ribbon on her dark curls, coquettish, vivid, and
Gourlay stared at it dreamily, partly in a drunken daze, and partly
because a striking colour always brought a musing and self-forgetting
look within his eyes. All his life he used to stare at things dreamily,
and come to himself with a start when spoken to. He forgot himself now.

"Aggie," he said, and put his hand out to hers clumsily where it rested
on the counter--"Aggie, that ribbon's infernal bonny on your dark hair!"

She tossed her head, and perked away from him on her little high heels.
Him, indeed!--the drunkard! She wanted none of his compliments!

There were half a dozen in the place by this time, and they all stared
with greedy eyes. "That's young Gourlay--him that was _expelled_," was
heard, the last an emphatic whisper, with round eyes of awe at the
offence that must have merited such punishment. "_Expelled_, mind
ye!"--with a round shake of the head. "Watch Allardyce. We'll see fun."

"What's this 'expelled' is, now?" said John Toodle, with a very
considering look and tone in his uplifted face--"properly speaking, that
is," he added, implying that of course he knew the word in its ordinary
sense, but was not sure of it "properly speaking."

"Flung oot," said Drucken Wabster, speaking from the fullness of his own
experience.

"Whisht!" said a third. "Here's Tam Brodie. Watch what _he_ does."

The entrance of Brodie spoiled sport for the Deacon. He had nothing of
that malicious _finesse_ that made Allardyce a genius at nicking men on
the raw. He went straight to his work, stabbing like an awl.

"Hal-lo!" he cried, pausing with contempt in the middle of the word,
when he saw young Gourlay. "Hal-lo! _You_ here!--Brig o' the Mains,
miss, if _you_ please.--Ay, man! God, you've been making a name up in
Embro. I hear you stood up till him gey weel," and he winked openly to
those around.

Young Gourlay's maddened nature broke at the insult. "Damn you," he
screamed, "leave _me_ alone, will you? I have done nothing to _you_,
have I?"

Brodie stared at him across his suspended whisky glass, an easy and
assured contempt curling his lip. "Don't greet owre't, my bairn," said
he, and even as he spoke John's glass shivered on his grinning teeth.
Brodie leapt on him, lifted him, and sent him flying.

"That's a game of your father's, you damned dog," he roared. "But
there's mair than him can play the game!"

"Canny, my freendth, canny!" piped Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine
chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of
handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had the fine
stroke.

Gourlay picked himself bleeding from the floor, and holding a
handkerchief to his mouth, plunged headlong from the room. He heard the
derisive roar that came after him stop, strangled by the sharp swing-to
of the door. But it seemed to echo in his burning ears as he strode
madly on through the darkness. He uncorked his mutchkin and drank it
like water. His swollen lip smarted at first, but he drank till it was a
mere dead lump to his tongue, and he could not feel the whisky on the
wound.

His mind at first was a burning whirl through drink and rage, with
nothing determined and nothing definite. But thought began to shape
itself. In a vast vague circle of consciousness his mind seemed to sit
in the centre and think with preternatural clearness. Though all around
was whirling and confused, drink had endowed some inner eye of the brain
with unnatural swift vividness. Far within the humming circle of his
mind he saw an instant and terrible revenge on Brodie, acted it, and
lived it now. His desires were murderers, and he let them slip, gloating
in the cruelties that hot fancy wreaked upon his enemy. Then he suddenly
remembered his father. A rush of fiery blood seemed to drench all his
body as he thought of what had passed between them. "But, by Heaven," he
swore, as he threw away his empty bottle, "he won't use me like that
another time; I have blood in me now." His maddened fancy began building
a new scene, with the same actors, the same conditions, as the other,
but an issue gloriously diverse. With vicious delight he heard his
father use the same sneers, the same gibes, the same brutalities; then
he turned suddenly and had him under foot, kicking, bludgeoning,
stamping the life out. He would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The
memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing
darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and
he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed
fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he
was so weak. Let his father try it on now; he was ready for him!

And his father was ready for him, for he knew what had happened at the
inn. Mrs. Webster, on her nightly hunt for the man she had sworn to
honour and obey, having drawn several public-houses blank, ran him to
earth at last in the bar-room of the Red Lion. "Yes, yes, Kirsty," he
cried, eager to prevent her tongue, "I know I'm a blagyird; but oh, the
terrible thing that has happened!" He so possessed her with his graphic
tale that he was allowed to go chuckling back to his potations, while
she ran hot-foot to the Green Shutters.

"Eh, poo-oor Mrs. Gourlay; and oh, your poo-oor boy, too; and eh, that
brute Tam Brodie----" Even as she came through the door the voluble
clatter was shrilling out the big tidings, before she was aware of
Gourlay's presence. She faltered beneath his black glower.

"Go on!" he said, and ground it out of her.

"The damned sumph!" he growled, "to let Brodie hammer him!" For a
moment, it is true, his anger was divided, stood in equipoise, even
dipped "Brodie-ward." "I've an account to sattle wi' _him_!" he thought
grimly. "When _I_ get my claw on his neck, I'll teach him better than to
hit a Gourlay! I wonder," he mused, with a pride in which was neither
doubt nor wonder--"I wonder will he fling the father as he flang the
son!" But that was the instinct of his blood, not enough to make him
pardon John. On the contrary, here was a new offence of his offspring.
On the morrow Barbie would be burning with another affront which he had
put upon the name of Gourlay. He would waste no time when he came back,
be he drunk or be he sober; he would strip the flesh off him.

"Jenny," he said, "bring me the step-ladder."

He would pass the time till the prodigal came back--and he was almost
certain to come back, for where could he go in Barbie?--he would pass
the time by trying to improve the appearance of the house. He had spent
money on his house till the last, and even now had the instinct to
embellish it. Not that it mattered to him now; still he could carry out
a small improvement he had planned before. The kitchen was ceiled in
dark timber, and on the rich brown rafters there were wooden pegs and
bars, for the hanging of Gourlay's sticks and fishing-rods. His gun was
up there, too, just above the hearth. It had occurred to him about a
month ago, however, that a pair of curving steel rests, that would catch
the glint from the fire, would look better beneath his gun than the dull
pegs, where it now lay against a joist. He might as well pass the time
by putting them up.

The bringing of the steps, light though they were, was too much for
Janet's weak frame, and she stopped in a fit of coughing, clutching the
ladder for support, while it shook to her spasms.

"Tuts, Jenny, this'll never do," said Gourlay, not unkindly. He took
the ladder away from her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Away to
your bed, lass. You maunna sit so late."

But Janet was anxious for her brother, and wanted to sit up till he came
home. She answered, "Yes," to her father, but idled discreetly, to
consume the time.

"Where's my hammer?" snarled Gourlay.

"Is it no by the clock?" said his wife wearily. "Oh, I remember, I
remember! I gied it to Mrs. Webster to break some brie-stone, to rub the
front doorstep wi'. It'll be lying in the porch."

"Oh, ay, as usual," said Gourlay--"as usual."

"John!" she cried in alarm, "you don't mean to take down the gun, do
ye?"

"Huts, you auld fule, what are you skirling for? D'ye think I mean to
shoot the dog? Set back on your creepie and make less noise, will ye?"

Ere he had driven a nail in the rafter John came in, and sat down by the
fire, taking up the great poker, as if to cover his nervousness. If
Gourlay had been on the floor he would have grappled with him there and
then. But the temptation to gloat over his victim from his present
height was irresistible. He went up another step, and sat down on the
very summit of the ladder, his feet resting on one of the lower rounds.
The hammer he had been using was lying on his thigh, his hand clutched
about its haft.

"Ay, man, you've been taking a bit walk, I hear."

John made no reply, but played with the poker. It was so huge, owing to
Gourlay's whim, that when it slid through his fingers it came down on
the muffled hearthstone with a thud like a pavior's hammer.

"I'm told you saw the Deacon on your rounds? Did he compliment you on
your return?"

At the quiet sneer a lightning-flash showed John that Allardyce had
quizzed him too. For a moment he was conscious of a vast self-pity.
"Damn them, they're all down on me," he thought. Then a vindictive rage
against them all took hold of him, tense, quivering.

"Did you see Thomas Brodie when ye were out?" came the suave inquiry.

"I saw him," said John, raising fierce eyes to his father's. He was
proud of the sudden firmness in his voice. There was no fear in it, no
quivering. He was beyond caring what happened to the world or him.

"Oh, you saw him," roared Gourlay, as his anger leapt to meet the anger
of his son. "And what did he say to you, may I speir?... Or maybe I
should speir what he did.... Eh?" he grinned.

"By God, I'll kill ye," screamed John, springing to his feet, with the
poker in his hand. The hammer went whizzing past his ear. Mrs. Gourlay
screamed and tried to rise from her chair, her eyes goggling in terror.
As Gourlay leapt, John brought the huge poker with a crash on the
descending brow. The fiercest joy of his life was the dirl that went up
his arm as the steel thrilled to its own hard impact on the bone.
Gourlay thudded on the fender, his brow crashing on the rim.

At the blow there had been a cry as of animals from the two women. There
followed an eternity of silence, it seemed, and a haze about the place;
yet not a haze, for everything was intensely clear; only it belonged to
another world. One terrible fact had changed the Universe. The air was
different now--it was full of murder. Everything in the room had a new
significance, a sinister meaning. The effect was that of an unholy
spell.

As through a dream Mrs. Gourlay's voice was heard crying on her God.

John stood there, suddenly weak in his limbs, and stared, as if
petrified, at the red poker in his hand. A little wisp of grizzled hair
stuck to the square of it, severed, as by scissors, between the sharp
edge and the bone. It was the sight of that bit of hair that roused him
from his stupor--it seemed so monstrous and horrible, sticking all by
itself to the poker. "I didna strike him so hard," he pleaded, staring
vaguely, "I didna strike him so hard." Now that the frenzy had left him,
he failed to realize the force of his own blow. Then with a horrid fear
on him, "Get up, faither," he entreated; "get up, faither! O man, you
micht get up!"

Janet, who had bent above the fallen man, raised an ashen face to her
brother, and whispered hoarsely, "His heart has stopped, John; you have
killed him!"

Steps were heard coming through the scullery. In the fear of discovery
Mrs. Gourlay shook off the apathy that held her paralyzed. She sprang
up, snatched the poker from her son, and thrust it in the embers.

"Run, John; run for the doctor," she screamed.--"O Mrs. Webster, Mrs.
Webster, I'm glad to see ye. Mr. Gourlay fell from the top o' the
ladder, and smashed his brow on the muckle fender."




CHAPTER XXVI.


"Mother!" came the startled whisper, "mother! O woman, waken and speak
to me!"

No comforting answer came from the darkness to tell of a human being
close at hand; the girl, intently listening, was alone with her fear.
All was silent in the room, and the terror deepened. Then the far-off
sound in the house was heard once more.

"Mother--mother, what's that?"

"What is it, Janet?" came a feebly complaining voice; "what's wrong wi'
ye, lassie?"

Janet and her mother were sleeping in the big bedroom, Janet in the
place that had been her father's. He had been buried through the day,
the second day after his murder. Mrs. Gourlay had shown a feverish
anxiety to get the corpse out the house as soon as possible; and there
had been nothing to prevent it. "Oh," said Doctor Dandy to the gossips,
"it would have killed any man to fall from such a height on to the sharp
edge of yon fender. No; he was not quite dead when I got to him. He
opened his eyes on me, once--a terrible look--and then life went out of
him with a great quiver."

Ere Janet could answer her mother she was seized with a racking cough,
and her hoarse bark sounded hollow in the silence. At last she sat up
and gasped fearfully, "I thocht--I thocht I heard something moving!"

"It would be the wind," plained her mother; "it would just be the wind.
John's asleep this strucken hour and mair. I sat by his bed for a lang
while, and he prigged and prayed for a dose o' the whisky ere he won
away. He wouldna let go my hand till he slept, puir fallow. There's an
unco fear on him--an unco fear. But try and fa' owre," she soothed her
daughter. "That would just be the wind ye heard."

"There's nae wind!" said Janet.

The stair creaked. The two women clung to each other, gripping tight
fingers, and their hearts throbbed like big separate beings in their
breasts. There was a rustle, as of something coming; then the door
opened, and John flitted to the bedside with a candle in his hand. Above
his nightshirt his bloodless face looked gray.

"Mother," he panted, "there's something in my room!"

"What is it, John?" said his mother, in surprise and fear.

"I--I thocht it was himsell! O mother, I'm feared, I'm feared! O mother,
I'm _feared_!" He sang the words in a hysterical chant, his voice rising
at the end.

The door of the bedroom clicked. It was not a slamming sound, only the
door went to gently, as if some one closed it. John dropped the candle
from his shaking hand, and was left standing in the living darkness.

"_Save me!_" he screamed, and leaped into the bed, burrowing down
between the women till his head was covered by the bedclothes. He
trembled so violently that the bed shook beneath them.

"Let me bide wi' ye!" he pleaded, with chattering jaws; "oh, let me bide
wi' ye! I daurna gang back to that room by mysell again."

His mother put her thin arm round him. "Yes, dear," she said; "you may
bide wi' us. Janet and me wouldna let anything harm you." She placed her
hand on his brow caressingly. His hair was damp with a cold sweat. He
reeked of alcohol.

Some one went through the Square playing a concertina. That sound of
the careless world came strangely in upon their lonely tragedy. By
contrast the cheerful, silly noise out there seemed to intensify their
darkness and isolation here. Occasional far-off shouts were heard from
roisterers going home.

Mrs. Gourlay lay staring at the darkness with intent eyes. What horror
might assail her she did not know, but she was ready to meet it for the
sake of John. "Ye brought it on yoursell," she breathed once, as if
defying an unseen accuser.

It was hours ere he slept, but at last a heavy sough told her he had
found oblivion. "He's won owre," she murmured thankfully. At times he
muttered in his sleep, and at times Janet coughed hoarsely at his ear.

"Janet, dinna hoast sae loud, woman! You'll waken your brother."

Janet was silent. Then she choked--trying to stifle another cough.

"Woman," said her mother complainingly, "that's surely an unco hoast ye
hae!"

"Ay," said Janet, "it's a gey hoast."

Next morning Postie came clattering through the paved yard in his
tackety boots, and handed in a blue envelope at the back door with a
business-like air, his ferrety eyes searching Mrs. Gourlay's face as she
took the letter from his hand. But she betrayed nothing to his
curiosity, since she knew nothing of her husband's affairs, and had no
fear, therefore, of what the letter might portend. She received the
missive with a vacant unconcern. It was addressed to "John Gourlay,
Esquire." She turned it over in a silly puzzlement, and, "Janet!" she
cried, "what am I to do wi' this?"

She shrank from opening a letter addressed to her dead tyrant, unless
she had Janet by her side. It was so many years since he had allowed her
to take an active interest in their common life (indeed he never had)
that she was as helpless as a child.

"It's to faither," said Janet. "Shall I waken John?"

"No; puir fellow, let him sleep," said his mother. "I stole in to look
at him enow, and his face was unco wan lying down on the pillow. I'll
open the letter mysell; though, as your faither used to tell me, I never
had a heid for business."

She broke the seal, and Janet, looking over her shoulder, read aloud to
her slower mind:--


                                            "GLASGOW, _March 12, 18--._

     "SIR,--We desire once more to call your attention to the fact that
     the arrears of interest on the mortgage of your house have not been
     paid. Our client is unwilling to proceed to extremities, but unless
     you make some arrangement within a week, he will be forced to take
     the necessary steps to safeguard his interests.--Yours faithfully,

                                       BRODIE, GURNEY, & YARROWBY."


Mrs. Gourlay sank into a chair, and the letter slipped from her upturned
palm, lying slack upon her knee.

"Janet," she said, appealingly, "what's this that has come on us? Does
the house we live in, the House with the Green Shutters, not belong to
us ainy more? Tell me, lassie. What does it mean?"

"I don't ken," whispered Janet, with big eyes. "Did faither never tell
ye of the bond?"

"He never telled me about anything," cried Mrs. Gourlay, with a sudden
passion. "I was aye the one to be keepit in the dark--to be keepit in
the dark and sore hadden doon. Oh, are we left destitute, Janet--and us
was aye sae muckle thocht o'! And me, too, that's come of decent folk,
and brought him a gey pickle bawbees--am I to be on the parish in my
auld age? Oh, _my_ faither, _my_ faither!"

Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been
but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should
come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet
was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of
her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For
her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield
the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief--felt but not
considered--at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It
seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly,
deadened now by these quick calamities. But that _she_, that
Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common
charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in
agony.

"It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.

"Waken John," said her mother feverishly--"waken John, and we'll gang
through his faither's desk. There may be something gude amang his
papers. There may be something gude!" she gabbled nervously; "yes, there
may be something gude! In the desk--in the desk--there may be something
gude in the desk!"

John staggered into the kitchen five minutes later. Halfway to the table
where his mother sat he reeled and fell over on a chair, where he lay
with an ashen face, his eyes mere slits in his head, the upturned whites
showing through. They brought him whisky, and he drank and was
recovered. And then they went through to the parlour, and opened the
great desk that stood in the corner. It was the first time they had ever
dared to raise its lid. John took up a letter lying loosely on the top
of the other papers, and after a hasty glance, "This settles it!" said
he. It was the note from Gourlay's banker, warning him that his account
was overdrawn.

"God help us!" cried Mrs. Gourlay, and Janet began to whimper. John
slipped out of the room. He was still in his stocking-feet, and the
women, dazed by this sudden and appalling news, were scarcely aware of
his departure.

He passed through the kitchen, and stood on the step of the back door,
looking out on the quiet little paved yard. Everything there was
remarkably still and bright. It was an early spring that year, and the
hot March sun beat down on him, paining his bleared and puffy eyes. The
contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing,
and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the
heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized,
however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the
surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And
that bright silence was so strange and still; he could have screamed to
escape it.

The slow ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to beat upon his raw brain.
Damn the thing, why didn't it stop--with its monotonous tick-tack,
tick-tack, tick-tack? He could feel it inside his head, where it seemed
to strike innumerable little blows on a strained chord it was bent on
snapping.

He tiptoed back to the kitchen on noiseless feet, and cocking his ear to
listen, he heard the murmur of women's voices in the parlour. There was
a look of slyness and cunning in his face, and his eyes glittered with
desire. The whisky was still on the table. He seized the bottle
greedily, and tilting it up, let the raw liquid gurgle into him like
cooling water. It seemed to flood his parched being with a new vitality.

"Oh, I doubt we'll be gey ill off!" he heard his mother whine, and at
that reminder of her nearness he checked the great, satisfied breath he
had begun to blow. He set the bottle on the table, bringing the glass
noiselessly down upon the wood, with a tense, unnatural precision
possible only to drink-steadied nerves--a steadiness like the humming
top's whirled to its fastest. Then he sped silently through the
courtyard and locked himself into the stable, chuckling in drunken
triumph as he turned the key. He pitched forward on a litter of dirty
straw, and in a moment sleep came over his mind in a huge wave of
darkness.

An hour later he woke from a terrible dream, flinging his arms up to
ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that
had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in
drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting
into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world
seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there
was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes
had actually been here--and were here with him still--where he was
locked up with them alone. He strained his eyeballs in a horrified stare
at vacancy. Then he shut them in terror, for why did he look? If he
looked, the eyes might burn on him out of nothingness. The innocent air
had become his enemy--pregnant with unseen terrors to glare at him. To
breathe it stifled him; each draught of it was full of menace. With a
shrill cry he dashed at the door, and felt in the clutch of his ghostly
enemy when he failed to open it at once, breaking his nails on the
baffling lock. He mowed and chattered and stamped, and tore at the lock,
frustrate in fear. At last he was free! He broke into the kitchen, where
his mother sat weeping. She raised her eyes to see a dishevelled thing,
with bits of straw scattered on his clothes and hair.

"Mother!" he screamed, "mother!" and stopped suddenly, his starting eyes
seeming to follow something in the room.

"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.

"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look,
look!" he cried, clutching her thin wrist; "see, there, there--coming
round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would
ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing
unseen.

The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on
the floor.

Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her
Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and
murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a
child! When will Ye be satisfied?"

Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it
went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and
was throwing tumblers at his mother!

"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite
compassion--"puir body!"

"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to _her_ next,
after killing his faither."

"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you
mean?"

"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the
drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and
felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled
at the sharp question.

"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer
Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy
man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny,
though, it seems uncanny."

"Strange!" murmured another; and they looked at each other in silent
wonder.

"But will this be true, think ye?" said Brodie--"about the horrors, I
mean. _Did_ he throw the tumbler at his mother?"

"Lord, it's true!" said Sandy Toddle. "I gaed into the kitchen on
purpose to make sure o' the matter with my own eyes. I let on I wanted
to borrow auld Gourlay's keyhole saw. I can tell ye he had a' his
orders--his tool-chest's the finest I ever saw in my life! I mean to bid
for some o' yon when the rowp comes. Weel, as I was saying, I let on I
wanted the wee saw, and went into the kitchen one end's errand. The
tumbler (Johnny Coe says it was a bottle, however; but I'm no avised o'
that--I speired Webster's wife, and I think my details are correct)--the
tumbler went flying past his mother, and smashed the face o' the
eight-day. It happened about the mid-hour o' the day. The clock had
stoppit, I observed, at three and a half minutes to the twelve."

"Hi!" cried the Deacon, "it'th a pity auld Gourlay wathna alive thith
day!"

"Faith, ay," cried Wylie. "_He_ would have sorted him; _he_ would have
trimmed the young ruffian!"

"No doubt," said the Deacon gravely--"no doubt. But it wath scarcely
that I wath thinking of. Yah!" he grinned, "thith would have been a
thlap in the face till him!"

Wylie looked at him for a while with a white scunner in his face. He
wore the musing and disgusted look of a man whose wounded mind retires
within itself to brood over a sight of unnatural cruelty. The Deacon
grew uncomfortable beneath his sideward, estimating eye.

"Deacon Allardyce, your heart's black-rotten," he said at last.

The Deacon blinked and was silent. Tam had summed him up. There was no
appeal.

       *       *       *       *       *

"John dear," said his mother that evening, "we'll take the big sofa into
our bedroom, and make up a grand bed for ye, and then we'll be company
to one another. Eh, dear?" she pleaded. "Winna that be a fine way? When
you have Janet and me beside you, you winna be feared o' ainything
coming near you. You should gang to bed early, dear. A sleep would
restore your mind."

"I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with
the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall
in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.

"You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would
calm your mind for ye."

"Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had
detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me--no sleep
for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een,
coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"--he nodded, staring at
her and breathing the word--"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is
the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as
if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness
is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the
lobby," he whispered hoarsely--"in the lobby when it was dark--in the
lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither,
though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because
I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so
feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered--"they're red--they're
red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.

He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in
his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld
against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He
was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was
no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.

"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's
een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."

"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me!
And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, _my_
faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could
throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at _me_
frae beyond the grave."

Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a
snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So
colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully
across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him
to save.

"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the
drink gars you think sae."

"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing,
drink--it helps a body."

"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in
you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen
nonsense!"

"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the
House with the Green Shutters."

"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"

She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures
gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen
of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the
murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's
feet, his head resting on her knee.

They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead
from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the
town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking
in the street.

Gradually all other sounds died away.

"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my
neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."

"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.

Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift--a
gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own
sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped
a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw,
and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.

"I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring
at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark
of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert
Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"

"No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't
it?--Oh, what's that?"

It was John talking in his sleep.

"I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every
phrase--"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's
foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the
voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if
the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's
foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist--and een
like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ...
they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite
distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.

The dog was barking in the street. A cry of the night came from far
away.

That voice was as if a corpse opened its lips and told of horrors beyond
the grave. It brought the other world into the homely room, and made it
all demoniac. The women felt the presence of the unknown. It was their
own flesh and blood that spoke the words, and by their own quiet hearth.
But hell seemed with them in the room.

Mrs. Gourlay drew back from John's head on her lap, as from something
monstrous and unholy. But he moaned in deprivation, craving her support,
and she edged nearer to supply his need. Possessed with a devil or no,
he was her son.

"Mother!" gasped Janet suddenly, the white circles of her eyes staring
from the red flannel, her voice hoarse with a new fear--"mother,
suppose--suppose he said that before anybody else!"

"Don't mention't," cried her mother with sudden passion. "How daur ye?
how daur ye? My God!" she broke down and wept, "they would hang him, so
they would! They would hang _my_ boy--they would take and hang _my_
boy!"

They stared at each other wildly. John slept, his head twisted over on
his mother's knee, his eyes sunken, his mouth wide open.

"Mother," Janet whispered, "you must send him away."

"I have only three pounds in the world," said Mrs. Gourlay; and she put
her hand to her breast where it was, but winced as if a pain had bitten
her.

"Send him away wi't," said Janet. "The furniture may bring something.
And you and me can aye thole."

In the morning Mrs. Gourlay brought two greasy notes to the table, and
placed them in her son's slack hand. He was saner now; he had slept off
his drunken madness through the night.

"John," she said, in pitiful appeal, "you maunna stay here, laddie.
Ye'll gie up the drink when you're away--will ye na?--and then thae een
ye're sae feared of'll no trouble you ony mair. Gang to Glasgow and see
the lawyer folk about the bond. And, John dear," she pleaded, "if
there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will
ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a
teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye
wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of
Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk
would stand in their doors to look at me, man--they would that--they
would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun
slinkin' doon the brae. Doon the brae it would be," she repeated, "doon
the brae it would be"--and her mind drifted away on the sorrowful future
which her fear made so vivid and real. It was only John's going that
roused her.

Thomas Brodie, glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his
leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat,
as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his
bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to the station.

"Where's _he_ off to now?" he muttered. "There's something at the boddom
o' this, if a body could find it out!"




CHAPTER XXVII.


When John had gone his mother roused herself to a feverish industry.
Even in the early days of her strength she had never been so busy in her
home. But her work was aimless and to no purpose. When tidying she would
take a cup without its saucer from the table, and set off with it
through the room, but stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor,
would fall into a muse with the dish in her hand; coming to herself long
afterwards to ask vaguely, "What's this cup for?... Janet, lassie, what
was it I was doing?" Her energy, and its frustration, had the same
reason. The burden on her mind constantly impelled her to do something
to escape from it, and the same burden paralyzed her mind in everything
she did. So with another of her vacant whims. Every morning she rose at
an unearthly hour, to fish out of old closets rag-bags bellied big with
the odds and ends of thirty years' assemblage. "I'll make a patchwork
quilt o' thir!" she explained, with a foolish, eager smile; and she
spent hours snatching up rags and vainly trying to match them. But the
quilt made no progress. She would look at a patch for a while, with her
head on one side, and pat it all over with restless hands; then she
would turn it round, to see if it would look better that way, only to
tear it off when it was half sewn, to try another and yet another. Often
she would forget the work on her lap, and stare across the room,
open-mouthed, her fingers plucking at her withered throat. Janet became
afraid of her mother.

Once she saw her smiling to herself, when she thought nobody was
watching her--an uncanny smile as of one who hugged a secret to her
breast--a secret that, eluding others, would enable its holder to elude
them too.

"What can _she_ have to laugh at?" Janet wondered.

At times the haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would
be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her
son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that
was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in
a restless vacancy.

She was sitting with the rags scattered round her when John walked in on
the evening of the third day. There were rags everywhere--on the table,
and all about the kitchen; she sat in their midst like a witch among the
autumn leaves. When she looked towards his entrance the smell of drink
was wafted from the door.

"John!" she panted, in surprise--"John, did ye not go to Glasgow, boy?"

"Ay," he said slowly, "I gaed to Glasgow."

"And the bond, John--did ye speir about the bond?"

"Ay," he said, "I speired about the bond. The whole house is sunk in't."

"Oh!" she gasped, and the whole world seemed to go from beneath her, so
weak did she feel through her limbs.

"John," she said, after a while, "did ye no try to get something to do,
that you might help me and Janet now we're helpless?"

"No," he said; "for the een wouldna let me. Nicht and day they follow me
a'where--nicht and day."

"Are they following ye yet, John?" she whispered, leaning forward
seriously. She did not try to disabuse him now; she accepted what he
said. Her mind was on a level with his own. "Are they following ye yet?"
she asked, with large eyes of sympathy and awe.

"Ay, and waur than ever too. They're getting redder and redder. It's
not a dull red," he said, with a faint return of his old interest in the
curious physical; "it's a gleaming red. They lowe. A' last nicht they
wouldna let me sleep. There was nae gas in my room, and when the candle
went out I could see them everywhere. When I looked to one corner o' the
room, they were there; and when I looked to another corner, they were
there too--glowering at me; glowering at me in the darkness; glowering
at me. Ye mind what a glower he had! I hid from them ablow the claes;
but they followed me--they were burning in my brain. So I gaed oot and
stood by a lamp-post for company. But a constable moved me on; he said I
was drunk because I muttered to mysell. But I wasna drunk then, mother;
I wa-as _not_. So I walkit on, and on, and on the whole nicht; but I aye
keepit to the lamp-posts for company. And than when the public-houses
opened I gaed in and drank and drank. I didna like the drink, for whisky
has no taste to me now. But it helps ye to forget.

"Mother," he went on complainingly, "is it no queer that a pair of een
should follow a man? Just a pair of een! It never happened to onybody
but me," he said dully--"never to onybody but me."

His mother was panting open-mouthed, as if she choked for air, both
hands clutching at her bosom. "Ay," she whispered, "it's queer;" and
kept on gasping at intervals with staring eyes, "It's gey queer; it's
gey queer; it's gey queer."

She took up the needle once more and tried to sew; but her hand was
trembling so violently that she pricked the left forefinger which upheld
her work. She was content thereafter to make loose stabs at the cloth,
with a result that she made great stitches which drew her seam together
in a pucker. Vacantly she tried to smooth them out, stroking them over
with her hand, constantly stroking and to no purpose. John watched the
aimless work with dull and heavy eyes.

For a while there was silence in the kitchen. Janet was coughing in the
room above.

"There's just ae thing'll end it!" said John. "Mother, give me three
shillings."

It was not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a
need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of
his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this
was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him
greater than himself.

"There's the money!" she said, clinking it down on the table, and
flashed a resentful smile at him, close upon the brink of tears.

She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the
fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was,
"Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a
flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last
few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of
it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling
flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.

John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she
sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did
not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was
callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was
ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and
older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them
apart to dree a separate weird.

In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their
dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end;
they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall
asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of
herself rather than of him. She was stunned by fate--as was he--and
could think of nothing.

Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of
whisky.

It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and
dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance.
There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the
earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence.
John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a
tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like
a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At
word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads,
keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste,
not waiting till he passed ere they peeped--which was their usual way.
Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him
advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind
him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not
see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and
through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining softly round
him. Every eye followed till he disappeared through his own door.

He went through the kitchen, where his mother sat, carrying the bottle
openly, and entered the parlour without speaking. He came back and asked
her for the corkscrew, but when she said "Eh?" with a vague wildness in
her manner, and did not seem to understand, he went and got it for
himself. She continued making stabs at her cloth and smoothing out the
puckers in her seam.

John was heard moving in the parlour. There was the sharp _plunk_ of a
cork being drawn, followed by a clink of glass. And then came a heavy
thud like a fall.

To Mrs. Gourlay the sounds meant nothing; she heard them with her ear,
not her mind. The world around her had retreated to a hazy distance, so
that it had no meaning. She would have gazed vaguely at a shell about to
burst beside her.

In the evening, Janet, who had been in bed all the afternoon, came down
and lit the lamp for her mother. It was a large lamp which Gourlay had
bought, and it shed a rich light through the room.

"I heard John come in," she said, turning wearily round; "but I was too
ill to come down and ask what had happened. Where is he?"

"John?" questioned her mother--"John?... Ou ay," she panted, vaguely
recalling, "ou ay. I think--I think ... he gaed ben the parlour."

"The parlour!" cried Janet; "but he must be in the dark! And he canna
thole the darkness!"

"John!" she cried, going to the parlour door, "John!"

There was a silence of the grave.

She lit a candle, and went into the room. And then she gave a squeal
like a rabbit in a dog's jaws.

Mrs. Gourlay dragged her gaunt limbs wearily across the floor. By the
wavering light, which shook in Janet's hand, she saw her son lying dead
across the sofa. The whisky-bottle on the table was half empty, and of a
smaller bottle beside it he had drunk a third. He had taken all that
whisky that he might deaden his mind to the horror of swallowing the
poison. His legs had slipped to the floor when he died, but his body was
lying back across the couch, his mouth open, his eyes staring horridly
up. They were not the eyes of the quiet dead, but bulged in frozen fear,
as if his father's eyes had watched him from aloft while he died.

"There's twa thirds of the poison left," commented Mrs. Gourlay.

"Mother!" Janet screamed, and shook her. "Mother, John's deid! John's
deid! Don't ye see John's deid?"

"Ay, he's deid," said Mrs. Gourlay, staring. "He winna be hanged now!"

"Mother!" cried Janet, desperate before this apathy, "what shall we do?
what shall we do? Shall I run and bring the neebours?"

"The neebours!" said Mrs. Gourlay, rousing herself wildly--"the
neebours! What have _we_ to do with the neebours? We are by
ourselves--the Gourlays whom God has cursed; we can have no neebours.
Come ben the house, and I'll tell ye something," she whispered wildly.
"Ay," she nodded, smiling with mad significance, "I'll tell ye something
... I'll tell ye something," and she dragged Janet to the kitchen.

Janet's heart was rent for her brother, but the frenzy on her mother
killed sorrow with a new fear.

"Janet!" smiled Mrs. Gourlay, with insane soft interest, "Janet! D'ye
mind yon nicht langsyne when your faither came in wi' a terrible look in
his een and struck me in the breist? Ay," she whispered hoarsely,
staring at the fire, "he struck me in the breist. But I didna ken what
it was for, Janet.... No," she shook her head, "he never telled me what
it was for."

"Ay, mother," whispered Janet, "I have mind o't."

"Weel, an abscess o' some kind formed--I kenna weel what it was, but it
gathered and broke, and gathered and broke, till my breist's near eaten
awa wi't. Look!" she cried, tearing open her bosom, and Janet's head
flung back in horror and disgust.

"O mother!" she panted, "was it that that the wee clouts were for?"

"Ay, it was that," said her mother. "Mony a clout I had to wash, and
mony a nicht I sat lonely by mysell, plaistering my withered breist. But
I never let onybody ken," she added with pride; "na-a-a, I never let
onybody ken. When your faither nipped me wi' his tongue it nipped me wi'
its pain, and, woman, it consoled me. 'Ay, ay,' I used to think; 'gibe
awa, gibe awa; but I hae a freend in my breist that'll end it some day.'
I likit to keep it to mysell. When it bit me it seemed to whisper I had
a freend that nane o' them kenned o'--a freend that would deliver me!
The mair he badgered me, the closer I hugged it; and when my he'rt was
br'akin I enjoyed the pain o't."

"O my poor, poor mother!" cried Janet with a bursting sob, her eyes
raining hot tears. Her very body seemed to feel compassion; it quivered
and crept near, as though it would brood over her mother and protect
her. She raised the poor hand and kissed it, and fondled it between her
own.

But her mother had forgotten the world in one of her wild lapses, and
was staring fixedly.

"I'll no lang be a burden to onybody," she said to herself. "It should
sune be wearing to a heid now. But I thought of something the day John
gaed away; ay, I thought of something," she said vaguely. "Janet, what
was it I was thinking of?"

"I dinna ken," whispered Janet.

"I was thinking of something," her mother mused. Her voice all through
was a far-off voice, remote from understanding. "Yes, I remember. Ye're
young, Jenny, and you learned the dressmaking; do ye think ye could sew,
or something, to keep a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was
that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now--eh, Jenny?
I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she
said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss
Richmond o' Tenshillingland."

She had no interest in her own suggestion. It was an idea that had
flitted through her mind before, which came back to her now in feeble
recollection. She seemed not to wait for an answer, to have forgotten
what she said.

"O mother," cried Janet, "there's a curse on us all! I would work my
fingers raw for ye if I could, but I canna," she screamed, "I canna, I
canna! My lungs are bye wi't. On Tuesday in Skeighan the doctor telled
me I would soon be deid; he didna say't, but fine I saw what he was
hinting. He advised me to gang to Ventnor in the Isle o' Wight," she
added wanly; "as if I could gang to the Isle of Wight. I cam hame
trembling, and wanted to tell ye; but when I cam in ye were ta'en up wi'
John, and, 'O lassie,' said you, 'dinna bother me wi' your complaints
enow.' I was hurt at that, and 'Well, well,' I thocht, 'if she doesna
want to hear, I'll no tell her.' I was huffed at ye. And then my faither
came in, and ye ken what happened. I hadna the heart to speak o't after
that; I didna seem to care. I ken what it is to nurse daith in my breist
wi' pride, too, mother," she went on. "Ye never cared verra much for me;
it was John was your favourite. I used to be angry because you neglected
my illness, and I never telled you how heavily I hoasted blood. 'She'll
be sorry for this when I'm deid,' I used to think; and I hoped you would
be. I had a kind of pride in saying nothing. But, O mother, I didna ken
_you_ were just the same; I didna ken _you_ were just the same." She
looked. Her mother was not listening.

Suddenly Mrs. Gourlay screamed with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed
with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was
regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o'
the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays!"

There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs.
Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac--the skirl of a
human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet
stared at her in speechless fear.

"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"

"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.

"Mother!" cried Janet.

"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife
never will. _You_ may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the
poorhouse, but _I_'ll follow my boy."

The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers,
when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet
that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be
left alone.

"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"

"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.

She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First
Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from
the pulpit, "the thirteent'--o' the First Corinthians:"--

"_'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal._

"_'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.'_"

Mrs. Gourlay's manner had changed: she was in the high exaltation of
madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom
that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no
more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become
one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function
to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her
feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded
entirely to the fate that swept her on, she was imbued with its demoniac
power.

"_'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,_

"_'Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
provoked, thinketh no evil;_

"_'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;_

"_'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things._

"_'Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall
fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
knowledge, it shall vanish away._

"_'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part._

"_'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
shall be done away.'_"

Her voice rose high and shrill as she read the great verses. Her large
blue eyes shone with ecstasy. Janet looked at her in fear. This was more
than her mother speaking; it was more than human; it was a voice from
beyond the world. Alone, the timid girl would have shrunk from death,
but her mother's inspiration held her.

"_'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest
of these is charity.'_"

Janet had been listening with such strained attention that the "Amen"
rang out of her loud and involuntary, like an answer to a compelling
Deity. She had clung to this reading as the one thing left to her before
death, and out of her nature thus strained to listen the "Amen" came, as
sped by an inner will. She scarcely knew that she said it.

They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed
it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was
her mood. They stood with their hands on their chair backs, and looked
at each other, in a curious palsy of the will. The first step to the
parlour door would commit them to the deed; to take it was to take the
poison, and they paused, feeling its significance. To move was to give
themselves to the irrevocable. When they stirred at length they felt as
if the ultimate crisis had been passed; there could be no return. Mrs.
Gourlay had Janet by the wrist.

She turned and looked at her daughter, and for one fleeting moment she
ceased to be above humanity.

"Janet," she said wistfully, "_I_ have had a heap to thole! Maybe the
Lord Jesus Christ'll no' be owre sair on me."

"O mother!" Janet screamed, yielding to her terror when her mother
weakened. "O mother, I'm feared! I'm feared! O mother, I'm feared!"

"Come!" said her mother; "come!" and drew her by the wrist. They went
into the parlour.

       *       *       *       *       *

The post was a square-built, bandy-legged little man, with a bristle of
grizzled hair about his twisted mouth, perpetually cocking up an
ill-bred face in the sight of Heaven. Physically and morally he had in
him something both of the Scotch terrier and the London sparrow--the
shagginess of the one, the cocked eye of the other; the one's snarling
temper, the other's assured impudence. In Gourlay's day he had never got
by the gateway of the yard, much as he had wanted to come further.
Gourlay had an eye for a thing like him. "Damn the gurly brute!" Postie
complained once; "when I passed a pleasand remark about the weather the
other morning, he just looked at me and blew the reek of his pipe in my
face. And that was his only answer!"

Now that Gourlay was gone, however, Postie clattered through the yard
every morning, right up to the back door.

"A heap o' correspondence _thir_ mornin's!" he would simper, his greedy
little eye trying to glean revelations from the women's faces as they
took the letters from his hand.

On the morning after young Gourlay came home for the last time, Postie
was pelting along with his quick thudding step near the head of the
Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and
yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except
where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling
off to his work, first twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and
left at the sky, to forecast the weather for the day.

From the chimneys the fair white spirlies of reek were rising in the
pure air. The Gourlays did not seem to be stirring yet; there was no
smoke above their roof-tree to show that there was life within.

Postie jerked his thumb across his shoulder at the House with the Green
Shutters.

"There'll be chynges there the day," he said, chirruping.

"Wha-at!" Toddle breathed in a hoarse whisper of astonishment,
"sequesteration?" and he stared, big-eyed, with his brows arched.

"Something o' that kind," said the post carelessly. "I'm no' weel
acquaint wi' the law-wers' lingo."

"Will't be true, think ye?" said Sandy.

"God, it's true," said the post. "I had it frae Jock Hutchison, the
clerk in Skeighan Goudie's. He got fou yestreen on the road to Barbie
and blabbed it--he'll lose his job, yon chap, if he doesna keep his
mouth shut. True! ay, it's true! There's damn the doubt o' that."

Toddle corrugated his mouth to whistle. He turned and stared at the
House with the Green Shutters, gawcey and substantial on its terrace,
beneath the tremulous beauty of the dawn. There was a glorious sunrise.

"God!" he said, "what a downcome for that hoose!"

"Is it no'?" chuckled Postie.

"Whose account is it on?" said Toddle.

"Oh, I don't ken," said Postie carelessly. "He had creditors a' owre the
country. I was ay bringing the big blue envelopes from different airts.
Don't mention this, now," he added, his finger up, his eye significant;
"it shouldn't be known at a-all." He was unwilling that Toddle should
get an unfair start, and spoil his own market for the news.

"_Nut_ me!" Toddle assured him grandly, shaking his head as who should
conduct of that kind a thousand miles off--"_nut_ me, Post! I'll no
breathe it to a living soul."

The post clattered in to Mrs. Gourlay's back door. He had a heavy
under-stamped letter on which there was threepence to pay. He might pick
up an item or two while she was getting him the bawbees.

He knocked, but there was no answer.

"The sluts!" said he, with a humph of disgust; "they're still on their
backs, it seems."

He knocked again. The sound of his knuckles on the door rang out
hollowly, as if there was nothing but emptiness within. While he waited
he turned on the step and looked idly at the courtyard. The inwalled
little place was curiously still.

At last in his impatience he turned the handle, when to his surprise the
door opened, and let him enter.

The leaves of a Bible fluttered in the fresh wind from the door. A large
lamp was burning on the table. Its big yellow flame was unnatural in the
sunshine.

"H'mph!" said Postie, tossing his chin in disgust, "little wonder
everything gaed to wreck and ruin in this house! The slovens have left
the lamp burning the whole nicht lang. But less licht'll serve them now,
I'm thinking!"

A few dead ashes were sticking from the lower bars of the range. Postie
crossed to the fireplace and looked down at the fender. That bright spot
would be the place, now, where auld Gourlay killed himself. The women
must have rubbed it so bright in trying to get out the blood. It was an
uncanny thing to keep in the house that. He stared at the fatal spot
till he grew eerie in the strange stillness.

"Guidwife!" he cried, "Jennet! Don't ye hear?"

They did not hear, it seemed.

"God!" said he, "they sleep sound after all their misfortunes!"

At last--partly in impatience, and partly from a wish to pry--he opened
the door of the parlour. "_Oh, my God!_" he screamed, leaping back, and
with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his desperate hurry
to be gone.

He ran round to the Square in front, and down to Sandy Toddle, who was
informing a bunch of unshaven bodies that the Gourlays were
"sequestered."

"Oh, my God, Post, what have you seen, to bring that look to your eyes?
What have you seen, man? Speak, for God's sake! What is it?"

The post gasped and stammered; then "Ooh!" he shivered in horror, and
covered his eyes, at a sudden picture in his brain.

"Speak!" said a man solemnly.

"They have--they have--they have a' killed themselves," stammered the
postman, pointing to the Gourlays.

Their loins were loosened beneath them. The scrape of their feet on the
road, as they turned to stare, sounded monstrous in the silence. No man
dared to speak. They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the
Green Shutters, sitting dark there and terrible beneath the radiant arch
of the dawn.


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