There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong
man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes
it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his
memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable
results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be
higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it;
viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful
thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a
keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a
success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is
unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out.
He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and
expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he
is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he
thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his
meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the
world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves
him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and
carries him heavens-high--till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from
that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the
world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great
position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see."
And then follows a recital of his faded glories--generally ending with
a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.
Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty
as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to
destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the
strength of it.
On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he
was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to
dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette,
he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him
with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom
they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the
conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the
disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were
tributaries to his new importance--somehow their attitude was different
from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious
bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of
his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he
could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new
feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the
Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his
father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already
buzzed about the town.
Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's
daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else.
Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a
whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers;
heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's
aince wud and aye waur[6] wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu'
wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre
browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but----" and
with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.
When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the
Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on
his thin shanks.
"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"
Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all
rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of
tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.
"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that
before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."
"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."
The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht
tho! Imphm. The weed."
Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he
cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been
doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."
"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left
hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling
from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a
little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in
a twinkling."
"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna
work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come
through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not
to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the
easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy
yourself. But there! what need I be telling _you_ that? A College-bred
man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie!
You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun--a dram now
and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"
At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important
manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty
pose for more than five minutes at a time.
"You're _right_, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging
sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back
to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."
"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at
the Black Bull?--I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar
gude--thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a
Highland charge."--It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a
thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the
manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style.--"But no doubt,"
the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice--"but
no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a
favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine
taste in thpirits."
"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air
of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and
so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"
"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan
drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of
him in Embro."
"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I."
"Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.
It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan
was kind to Jean Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to
the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week.
Gourlay was merely boasting--as young blades are apt to do of
acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of
the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John
failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.
"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you
have the great thprees?"
"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I
should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before
I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there--d'ye know, yon's the finest
fellow I ever met in my life!--and Bauldy Logan--he's another great
chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie--great friends of mine, and
damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three
there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the
talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I
remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan
whistled a jig."
Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son
to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to
pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath
John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and
his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft
management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he
felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion.
"Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would
never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"
"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said
the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood
about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns,
that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame--jutht
another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys--Pate Wylie and you
and a wheen mair--having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."
"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased.
Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns!
"I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."
"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.
"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
"Eh--eh--Deacon--I--I'll see you again about the nip."
"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
convenient opportunity."
He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
unpleasant manners.
Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
spoon--which were many--were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble
that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
Importance" was one of his nicknames.
Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance--did
it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate.
Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
Univairsity--the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his
Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses--dear me, ay--of his
courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.
"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
have indeed. Ex-cellently well--ex-cellently well!"
Gourlay blushed and thanked him.
"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
wasting his time!"
Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
years--without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.
"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
application--a strenuous and devoted application--even from the man of
abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have
ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's
doing?"
Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he
answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.
"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best
men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the
Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master
it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty
pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his
ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a
prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I
obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on
German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he
added, with solemn and pondering brows--"perhaps he was a little too
fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too
fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door,
wondered if Hegel was a drink.
"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.
"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity.
And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your
theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"
Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare
to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered,
modestly enough.
"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the
minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a
doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm
of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the
see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only
the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great
good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the
Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great
satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant
promise!"
Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of
Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should
stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on
his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his
eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every
word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical
compliments for _his_ son! The tables were turned at last.
His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had
won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a
sovereign.
"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound
to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded
eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun
spend as much as the rest o' folk."
"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.
That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's
talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness
of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking--that he
had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that
was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to
confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and
hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be
careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought
the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a
fellow to be mean."
Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered
by the minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father,
hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie--Lord, but young Gourlay was the
fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He
had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single
afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he
immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the
ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage,
and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the
student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in
answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he
yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer.
Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning
to his other occupations--plurality of professions, you observe, being
one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the
Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable
phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object,
what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty
misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and
speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That
shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge
on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to
make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well--he took a
paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting
instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he
vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former
neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been
welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity
had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave
his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the
Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now,
however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to
support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a
disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former
coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he
preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every
ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them.
That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did
not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies.
Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and
the like without drinking in every howff you came across.
When the bodies assembled next day for their "morning," the Deacon was
able to inform them that young Gourlay was back from the College, dafter
than ever, and that he had pulled his leg as far as he wanted it. "Oh,"
he said, "I played him like a kitten wi' a cork, and found out ainything
and everything I wished. I dithcovered that he's in wi' Jock Allan and
that crowd--I edged the conversation round on purpoth! Unless he wath
blowing his trump--which I greatly doubt--they're as thick as thieveth.
Ye ken what that meanth. He'll turn hith wee finger to the ceiling
oftener than he puts hith forefinger to the pen, I'm thinking. It
theemth he drinkth enormuth! He took a gey nip last thummer, and this
thummer I wager he takes mair o't. He avowed his plain intention. 'I
mean to kick up a bit of a dust,' thays he. Oh, but he's the splurge!"
"Ay, ay," said Sandy Toddle, "thae students are a gey squad--especially
the young ministers."
"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are
just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties.
They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."
"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already.
I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."
"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."
"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body
solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he
wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.
"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent
hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of--too disgusted
to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing
him up about that prize o' his."
"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.
"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused
the ex-Provost.
"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think
at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a
crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that
hell gapes for. And owre they flap."
But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of _him_,"
said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.
Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland)
young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence
from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater
abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother
(who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed)
often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in
the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're
unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she
utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine
moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was
sometimes tempted to seek the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk
upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he
could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green
quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded
when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at
the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing
beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a
wise quiescence. His success--such as it was--had gained him a
circle--such as it was--and the assertive nature proper to his father's
son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw
through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and
threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind
him.
Among his other follies, he assumed the pose of a man who could an he
would--who had it in him to do great things, if he would only set about
them. In this he was partly playing up to a foolish opinion of his more
ignorant associates; it was they who suggested the pose to him.
"Devilish clever!" he heard them whisper one night as he stood in the
door of a tavern; "he could do it if he liked, only he's too fond o' the
fun." Young Gourlay flushed where he stood in the darkness--flushed with
pleasure at the criticism of his character which was, nevertheless, a
compliment to his wits. He felt that he must play up at once to the
character assigned him. "Ho, ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a
splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree
to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes."
"What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the
nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper
pose--that of a _grand homme manque_, of a man who would be a genius
were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear
a genius, then he must continue to display that excess which--so he
wished them to believe--alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It
was all a curious, vicious inversion. "You could do great things if you
didn't drink," crooned the fools. "See how I drink," Gourlay seemed to
answer; "that is why I don't do great things. But, mind you, I could do
them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to
hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he
didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made
him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] "_Aince wud and aye waur_," silly for once and silly for always.