"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 Professorof 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 forhisson! 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 ofhim," 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 seekthe 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 agrand 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, thenhe 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.
FOOTNOTE:[6]"Aince wud and aye waur," silly for once and silly for always.
[6]"Aince wud and aye waur," silly for once and silly for always.
[6]"Aince wud and aye waur," silly for once and silly for always.
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? Isheafter 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 anewthing?"
"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 inhim!" said the Deacon.
"How doyouken?" 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 wasthiswaster!—according to their way of it—and, oh, but he was theotherwaster! and, ochonee, but he was thewildfellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be hisdoormat; 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 knownTo 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 JohnHe was an unco shaverFor mony a day.'
'Yet mony a ragged cowte's been knownTo 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 JohnHe was an unco shaverFor mony a day.'
'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 beendrinking 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."
"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 gosplurging 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 gatheredup 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 androokety-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 inhis 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 areapt 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!
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, andmade 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 loudho-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. Theywouldn't bullyme! 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 airwhen 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 picturespursued 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, clankwent 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? Whathad 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 feelingin 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 sameburning 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 "whathewould do if a professor jumped onhim," 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 whyIshould be blamed for it all."
"Oh, you don't see whyyoushould 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 couldhave 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 withdestruction. 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 punishedhimenough, 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 nosewouldlook 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?"