After what the Provost described "as a few preliminary remarks"—they lasted half an hour—he called on Mr. Wilson to address the meeting. Wilson descanted on the benefits that would accrue to Barbie if it got the railway, and on the needcessity for a "long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together"—a phrase which he repeated many times in the course of his address. He sat down at last amid thunders of applause.
"There's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech," said the Provost.
"Hear, hear!" said Gourlay, and the meeting was unkind enough to laugh.
"Order, order!" cried Wilson perkily.
"As I was saying when I was grossly interrupted," fumed the Provost, "there's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech. I had thoat we were a-all agreed on the desirabeelity of the rileway coming in our direction. I had thoat, after the able—I must say the very able—speech of Mr. Wilson, that there wasn't a man in this room so shtupid as to utter a word of dishapproval. I had thoat we might prosheed at woance to elect a deputation. I had thoat we would get the name of everybody here for the great petition we mean to send the Pow-ers. I had thoat it was all, so to shpeak, a foregone conclusion. But it seems I was mistaken, ladies and gentlemen—or rather, I oat to say gentlemen, for I believe there are no ladies present. Yass, it seems I was mistaken. It may be there are some who would like to keep Barbie going on in the oald way which they found so much to their advantage. It may be there are some who regret a change that will put an end to their chances of tyraneezin'. It may be there are some who know themselves so shtupid that they fear the new condeetions of trade the railway's bound to bring."—Here Wilson rose and whispered in his ear, and the people watched them, wondering what hint J. W. was passing to the Provost. The Provost leaned with pompous gravity toward his monitor, hand at ear to catch the treasured words. He nodded and resumed.—"Now, gentlemen, as Mr. Wilson said, this is a case that needs a loang pull, and a stroang pull, and a pull all together. We must be unanimous. It will noat do to show ourselves divided among ourselves. Therefore I think we oat to have expressions of opinion from some of our leading townsmen. That will show how far we are unanimous. I had thoat there could be only one opinion, and that we might prosheed at once with the petition. But it seems I was wroang. It is best to inquire first exactly where we stand. So I call upon Mr. John Gourlay, who has been the foremost man in the town for mainy years—at least he used to be that—I call upon Mr. Gourlay as the first to express an opinion on the subjeck."
Wilson's hint to the Provost placed Gourlay in a fine dilemma. Stupid as he was, he was not so stupid as not to perceive the general advantage of the railway. If he approved it, however, he would seem to support Wilson and the Provost, whom he loathed. If he disapproved, his opposition would be set down to a selfish consideration for his own trade, and he would incur the anger of the meeting, which was all for the coming of the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public, and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give himself away.
Gourlay evaded the question.
"It would be better to convene a meeting," he bawled to the Provost, "to consider the state of some folk's back doors."—That was a nipper to Wilson!—"There's a stink at the Cross that's enough to kill a cuddy!"
"Evidently not," yelled Wilson, "since you're still alive!"
A roar went up against Gourlay. All he could do was to scowl before him, with hard-set mouth and gleaming eyes, while they bellowed him to scorn.
"I would like to hear what Templandmuir has to say on the subject," said Wilson, getting up. "But no doubt he'll follow his friend Mr. Gourlay."
"No, I don't follow Mr. Gourlay," bawled Templandmuir with unnecessary loudness. The reason of his vehemence was twofold. He was nettled (as Wilson meant he should) by the suggestion that he was nothing but Gourlay's henchman. And being eager to oppose Gourlay, yet a coward, he yelled to supply in noise what he lacked in resolution.
"I don't follow Mr. Gourlay at all," he roared; "I follow nobody but myself! Every man in the district's in support of this petition. It would be absurd to suppose anything else. I'll be glad to sign't among the first, and do everything I can in its support."
"Verra well," said the Provost; "it seems we're agreed after all. We'll get some of our foremost men to sign the petition at this end of the hall, and then it'll be placed in the anteroom for the rest to sign as they go out."
"Take it across to Gourlay," whispered Wilson to the two men who were carrying the enormous tome. They took it over to the grain merchant, and one of them handed him an inkhorn. He dashed it to the ground.
The meeting hissed like a cellarful of snakes. But Gourlay turned and glowered at them, and somehow the hisses died away. His was the high courage that feeds on hate, and welcomes rather than shrinks from its expression. He was smiling as he faced them.
"Let me pass," he said, and shouldered his way to the door, the bystanders falling back to make room. Templandmuir followed him out.
"I'll walk to the head o' the brae," said the Templar.
He must have it out with Gourlay at once, or else go home to meet the anger of his wife. Having opposed Gourlay already, he felt that now was the time to break with him for good. Only a little was needed to complete the rupture. And he was the more impelled to declare himself to-night because he had just seen Gourlay discomfited, and was beginning to despise the man he had formerly admired. Why, the whole meeting had laughed at his expense! In quarrelling with Gourlay, moreover, he would have the whole locality behind him. He would range himself on the popular side. Every impulse of mind and body pushed him forward to the brink of speech; he would never get a better occasion to bring out his grievance.
They trudged together in a burning silence. Though nothing was said between them, each was in wrathful contact with the other's mind. Gourlay blamed everything that had happened on Templandmuir, who had dragged him to the meeting and deserted him. And Templandmuir was longing to begin about the quarry, but afraid to start.
That was why he began at last with false, unnecessary loudness. It was partly to encourage himself (as a bull bellows to increase his rage), and partly because his spite had been so long controlled. It burst the louder for its pent fury.
"Mr. Gourlay!" he bawled suddenly, when they came opposite the House with the Green Shutters, "I've had a crow to pick with you for more than a year."
It came on Gourlay with a flash that Templandmuir was slipping away from him. But he must answer him civilly for the sake of the quarry.
"Ay, man," he said quietly, "and what may that be?"
"I'll damned soon tell you what it is," said the Templar. "Yon was a monstrous overcharge for bringing my ironwork from Fleckie. I'll be damned if I put up with that!"
And yet it was only a trifle. He had put up with fifty worse impositions and never said a word. But when a man is bent on a quarrel any spark will do for an explosion.
"How do ye make that out?" said Gourlay, still very quietly, lest he should alienate the quarry laird.
"Damned fine do I make that out," yelled Templandmuir, and louder than ever was the yell. He was the brave man now, with his bellow to hearten him. "Damned fine do I make that out. You charged me for a whole day, though half o't was spent upon your own concerns. I'm tired o' you and your cheatry. You've made a braw penny out o' me in your time. But curse me if I endure it loanger. I give you notice this verra night that your tack o' the quarry must end at Martinmas."
He was off, glad to have it out and glad to escape the consequence, leaving Gourlay a cauldron of wrath in the darkness. It was not merely the material loss that maddened him. But for the first time in his life he had taken a rebuff without a word or a blow in return. In his desire to conciliate he had let Templandmuir get away unscathed. His blood rocked him where he stood.
He walked blindly to the kitchen door, never knowing how he reached it. It was locked—at this early hour!—and the simple incon
venience let loose the fury of his wrath. He struck the door with his clenched fist till the blood streamed on his knuckles.
It was Mrs. Gourlay who opened the door to him. She started back before his awful eyes.
"John!" she cried, "what's wrong wi' ye?"
The sight of the she-tatterdemalion there before him, whom he had endured so long and must endure for ever, was the crowning burden of his night. Damn her, why didn't she get out of the way? why did she stand there in her dirt and ask silly questions? He struck her on the bosom with his great fist, and sent her spinning on the dirty table.
She rose from among the broken dishes and came towards him, with slack lips and great startled eyes. "John," she panted, like a pitiful frightened child, "what have I been doing?... Man, what did you hit me for?"
He gaped at her with hanging jaw. He knew he was a brute—knew she had done nothing to-night more than she had ever done—knew he had vented on her a wrath that should have burst on others. But his mind was at a stick; how could he explain—to her? He gaped and glowered for a speechless moment, then turned on his heel and went into the parlour, slamming the door till the windows rattled in their frames.
She stared after him a while in large-eyed stupor, then flung herself in her old nursing-chair by the fire, and spat blood in the ribs, hawking it up coarsely—we forget to be delicate in moments of supremer agony. And then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro in the chair where she had nursed his children, wailing, "It's a pity o' me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
The boy was in bed, but Janet had watched the scene with a white, scared face and tearful cries. She crept to her mother's side.
The sympathy of children with those who weep is innocently selfish. The sight of tears makes them uncomfortable, and they want them to cease, in the interests of their own happiness. If the outward signs of grief would only vanish, all would be well. They are not old enough to appreciate the inward agony.
So Janet tugged at the obscuring apron, and whimpered, "Don't greet, mother, don't greet. Woman, I dinna like to see ye greetin'."
But Mrs. Gourlay still rocked herself and wailed, "It's a pity o' me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
Chapter XIII
*
"Is he in himsell?" asked Gibson the builder, coming into the Emporium.
Mrs. Wilson was alone in the shop. Since trade grew so brisk she had an assistant to help her, but he was out for his breakfast at present, and as it happened she was all alone.
"No," she said, "he's no in. We're terribly driven this twelvemonth back, since trade grew so thrang, and he's aye hunting business in some corner. He's out the now after a carrying affair. Was it ainything perticular?"
She looked at Gibson with a speculation in her eyes that almost verged on hostility. Wives of the lower classes who are active helpers in a husband's affairs often direct that look upon strangers who approach him in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them; come to be done by the husband or to do him—in either case, therefore, the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was suspicion in the big round stare that Mrs. Wilson directed at the builder. What was he spiering for "himsell" for? What could he be up to? Some end of his own, no doubt. Anxious curiosity forced her to inquire.
"Would I do instead?" she asked.
"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"
"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty morning"—and her laugh went skelloching up the street.
"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."
"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms akimbo.—"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot from the back premises.
"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important business."
The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him foremost.
While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly. Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.
He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the jovial gleam, or they may be mean things—little and sly and oily. Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was more than a grin—it was a rictus, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness (perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act against him. They had made advances to each other—birds of a feather, in short.
The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when we first saw him in Barbie, four years ago now.
"Good-morning, Mr. Gibson," he panted. "Is it private that ye wanted to see me on?"
"Verra private," said the sandy smiler.
"We'll go through to the house, then," said Wilson, and ushered his guest through the back premises. But the voice of his wife recalled him. "James!" she cried. "Here for a minute just," and he turned to her, leaving Gibson in the yard.
"Be careful what you're doing," she whispered in his ear. "It wasna for nothing they christened Gibson 'Cunning Johnny.' Keep the dirt out your een."
"There's no fear of that," he assured her pompously. It was a grand thing to have a wife like that, but her advice nettled him now just a little, because it seemed to imply a doubt of his efficiency—and that was quite onnecessar. He knew what he was doing. They would need to rise very early that got the better o' a man like him!
"You'll take a dram?" said Wilson, when they reached a pokey little room where the most conspicuous and dreary object was a large bare flowerpot of red earthenware, on a green woollen mat, in the middle of a round table. Out of the flowerpot rose gauntly a three-sticked frame, up which two lonely stalks of a climbing plant tried to scramble, but failed miserably to reach the top. The round little rickety table with the family album on one corner (placed at what Mrs. Wilson considered a beautiful artistic angle to the window), the tawdry cloth, the green mat, the shiny horsehair sofa, and the stuffy atmosphere, were all in perfect harmony of ugliness. A sampler on the wall informed the world that there was no place like home.
Wilson pushed the flowerpot to one side, and "You'll take a dram?" he said blithely.
"Oh ay," said Gibson with a grin; "I never refuse drink when I'm offered it for nothing."
"Hi! hi!" laughed Wilson at the little joke, and produced a cut decanter and a pair of glasses. He filled the glasses so brimming full that the drink ran over on the table.
"Canny, man, for God's sake canny!" cried Gibson, starting forward in alarm. "Don't ye see you're spilling the
mercies?" He stooped his lips to the rim of his glass, and sipped, lest a drop of Scotia's nectar should escape him.
They faced each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the little finger uppermost.
Gibson smacked his lips once and again when the fiery spirit tickled his uvula.
"Ha!" said he, "that's the stuff to put heart in a man."
"It's no bad whisky," said Wilson complacently.
Gibson wiped the sandy stubble round his mouth with the back of his hand, and considered for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he tapped Wilson's knee in whispering importance.
"Have you heard the news?" he murmured, with a watchful glimmer in his eyes.
"No!" cried Wilson, glowering, eager and alert. "Is't ocht in the business line? Is there a possibeelity for me in't?"
"Oh, there might," nodded Gibson, playing his man for a while.
"Ay, man!" cried Wilson briskly, and brought his chair an inch or two forward. Gibson grinned and watched him with his beady eyes. "What green teeth he has!" thought Wilson, who was not fastidious.
"The Coal Company are meaning to erect a village for five hundred miners a mile out the Fleckie Road, and they're running a branch line up the Lintie's Burn that'll need the building of a dozen brigs. I'm happy to say I have nabbed the contract for the building."
"Man, Mr. Gibson, d'ye tell me that! I'm proud to hear it, sir; I am that!" Wilson was hotching in his chair with eagerness. For what could Gibson be wanting with him if it wasna to arrange about the carting? "Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're drinking nothing at all. Let me help you."
"Ay, but I havena the contract for the carting," said Gibson. "That's not mine to dispose of. They mean to keep it in their own hand."
The House With the Green Shutters Page 10