I am losing Jim Jackson. The battle for his soul is unequal. Macdonald
has him all the day, while I only see him at intervals. He came up to
the farm to-night, and he was morose in manner. His face is gradually
assuming a sneering expression, and his repartee is less spontaneous and
more biting. I managed to bring back his better self to-night, but I
fear that a day will soon come when he will sink his better self for
ever. His father and mother are people after Macdonald's own heart. They
are typical village folk, stupid and aggressive. Oh, I loathe the
village; it reminds me of George Douglas's Barbie in _The House with the
Green Shutters_; it is full of envy and malice and smallness. There are
too many "friends" in the village. Mrs. Bell is Mrs. Webster's sister,
and they have lived next door to each other for twenty-five years,
during which time they have not exchanged a single word. They quarrelled
over the division of their mother's goods. When the father dies they
will meet and weep together over his coffin; they will be inseparable
for a few days ... then they will have a row over the old grandfather
clock, and they won't speak to each other again.
Peter Jackson is a loud-mouthed fool, and his wife is a warrior. She has
the jaw of a prize-fighter. Jim was dissecting the front wheel of his
old bicycle the other night at the door, and I stopped to give him a
hand with the balls. His mother came to the door.
"Jim!" she rasped, "come away to yer bed!"
"Wait till Aw get thae balls in, mother," he pleaded.
"Come away to yer bed this meenute!" she bawled, "or Aw'll gie ye the
biggest thrashin' ye ever got in yer life!" And the poor boy had to
leave his cycle and obey.
"What about this?" I said to the mother, and I pointed to the cycle.
"He'd no business takin' it to bits," she shouted and she slammed the
door.
Poor lad! Between Macdonald and a mother like that he will live hardly.
Each will break his will; each will insist on perfect obedience to
arbitrary orders. I am honestly amazed at the small success I had with
Jim. He was leaving my free school every night to go home to an
atmosphere of anger and brutal stupidity. Now he is leaving his poor
home every morning to go to the prison of Macdonald. No wonder the lad
is lapsing. In a few years he will be a typical villager; he will stand
at the brig of an evening and make caustic comments on the passers-by;
he will sneer at everything and everybody. Macdonald is thinking about
the answering Jim will do when the inspector comes; I was thinking of
the Jim that would one day stand at the brig among his acquaintances. I
didn't care a brass farthing what he learned or how much he attended;
all I tried to do was to help him to be a fine man, a kindly man, a free
man.