All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the
sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings
and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the
sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an
anvil.
John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed
unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar
look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their
silent faces.
A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it
a lonely smell, and ran to get away.
"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in
through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"
"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and
simple expression of his wish.
"What for, my sweet?"
"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."
His mother saw his cut mouth.
"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear?
Has ainybody been meddling ye?"
"It was Swipey Broon," he said.
"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when
decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on
them! But what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be!
It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"
In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair,
on which she sank exhausted by her rage.
"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the
fleas off him. The other boys were on _his_ side, or I would have
walloped him."
"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy,
Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's
not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step
intil."
"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"
"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If _he_ saw ye!"
"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."
She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
up. He could hear the pigeons _rooketty-cooing_ on the roof, and every
now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!
If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets
live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess--good
jade!--stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and
the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat
roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath
she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face
glaring from the pool.--Perhaps he was not so far from being the right
kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that _he_ liked. He
wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals
were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved
waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a
somewhat too florid sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through
a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the
beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze
slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid
gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment
they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them
and their love!" quoth he.
To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from
something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things
to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of
the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed,
or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves
vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was
hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his
mottled nose--John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw
the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The
varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs.
Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself--to all
these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the
impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he
was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that
was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate
it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge,
among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended
beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall
suddenly down, and creep patiently again--this he would watch with
curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once,
"what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"
"They're queer," he said musingly.
Even if he _was_ a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come
to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.
But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was
moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the
numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the
story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer
world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while
wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the
rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back
from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's
voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and
then--oh, horror!--his father came up the stair. Would he come into the
garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud
against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the
bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another
room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.
The heavy steps came back to the landing.
"Whaur's _my_ gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.
"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his
mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer."
"_Hah!_" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he
should come in!
But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his
pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the
kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch
them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by
himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole
drearily; "_oo-woo-oo_," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague
depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the
fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had
never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red
clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white
paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it
a thin silt of black dust had gathered--the light showed it plainly. All
these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their
unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But
it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at
all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as
his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing
his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.
At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He
crept down the stair.
"_You_ were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in
accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."
"If ye wud----" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She
shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.
The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing
it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs.
Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a
faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the
grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the
men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy
range.
"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye
get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"
"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the
train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he
added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."
The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a
little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright,
sharp edges.
"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of
the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I
happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as
the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says
he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?'
says I. 'How do _you_ ken what _I_ want?' I made short work o' _him!_
The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."
Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a
poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in
Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.
The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's
an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man
wi't."
"Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."
The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to
the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking
up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John,
with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father
laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too
heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle.
Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that,"
he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet
stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim,
fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.
"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look
here! It's exactly the same size!"
"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie.
"You'll be killing folk next."