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 isinnocently 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!"
"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 washespiering 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 wasmore than a grin—it was arictus, 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 redearthenware, 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 withhimif it wasna to arrange about the carting? "Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're drinking nothing at all. Letmehelp 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 saythat 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 nothingnearthe 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 thoughtyouwere 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 byyouin 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 atthe 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 leastyouwould 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 areweto 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 hismoustache 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 gofast. 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 tobamboozle 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 owninefficiency 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 everyother 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 arictusof 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'dthrottle 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.
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 senthisson 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 imaginationset to work on what he heard of the High School of Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what couldhedo wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in public; how couldhestand 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 whatyouwant? Go you shall."
"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.
"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine helpyouwould 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 atSkeighan 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 withthe 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 onyoufor 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 woodencorridor. 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 payyouto 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 payyouto 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, amIto beyourdominie? AmIto teachyouyour 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" hecalled 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, areweever 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!"
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 yousaw 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 creepamong 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)—talkingtoeach other, indeed, butathim, 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, "thatyoushould 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 onhim! 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 heprovoked 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 toyou?" 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 ifIhad been in your end o' the brakeyewould 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 whatyouwant? 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 againstmywill," John bawled angrily.
"Yourwill!" 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 infoolish 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 sendheraway, 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, thatheshould be careless of the girl. He was aye said to be browdened uponher."
"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 asolace 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."