"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 go
splurging 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 gathered up 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 and _rookety-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 in his 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 are apt 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!