said: ‘Well, all that I can do at present is to give him a powder. But make it clear to your mother that he should go into hospital for observation.’
When Mansie returned Tom was already feeling a little better; he took the powder obediently and was soon asleep. Standing by the bedside Mrs Manson turned to Mansie and said gravely: ‘I’m afraid this is a serious matter, Mansie.’ Why did she look at him like that again? What had he done? Still it was good, in a way, that she should take it seriously; it would make the doctor’s suggestion less of a shock. And after standing out for a time she agreed at last to Tom’s going into the Western Infirmary.
A week later Tom was taken there, and a suspended calm, the calm that follows an inconclusive crisis, descended on the house. Tom was in good and secure hands, Mansie reflected; that was one comfort at any rate. But when one evening, while they were alone in the kitchen, Jean turned to him and said: ‘Mansie, what if it’s a tumour on the brain?’ he burst out angrily, ‘Don’t talk such nonsense!’ It was indecent to say such things. He got up abruptly, stuck on his hat, and left the house.
FOURTEEN
AFTER LEAVING THE office Mansie parted from Gibson, saying: ‘I’m going along to the Reformers’ Bookstall.’ He would put off the journey for a little while at least. But instead of making for the bookstall he wandered down Hope Street. It was deserted, for all the law offices were already closed. A belated message-boy, a sheaf of blue envelopes in one hand, hurried past him with the anxious look of one who has fallen so far behind in a race that he has lost all his companions. Mansie’s own anxiety stirred somewhere, threatened to awaken, then sank again.
He walked on in the chasm of shadow between the tall buildings; but when he came to the corner of West George Street he stepped into a level drive of light; the roofs and smokeless chimney-pots glittered, and looking down the hill he saw a yellow tramcar floating past amid a hurrying crowd of men and girls in bright dresses. And anxiety came over him again. He would have to take that tramcar some time; he couldn’t put it off indefinitely! Nevertheless he continued on his way, went into the Central Station and stood at the bookstall, his head half-turned to look at the crowds hurrying to their separate platforms. They seemed all to be flying to one point, like filings drawn by an enormous magnet. After the morning dispersion which had scattered them to their distant outposts, evening was gathering them together again, and on the faces that passed him there was a look: ‘We are coming.’ Yes, it was all very well for them. He thought of Tom and stood staring at a book on the stall which he had noticed there months before, and its persistent futile presence filled him with discouragement. ‘You and me,’ it seemed to be saying.
He bought an evening paper and walked out through the side entrance, crossed Union Street, climbed on to the open top of a yellow tramcar, and sat down in the back seat. Now that he felt himself being irrevocably borne home, he tried to banish from his mind what he would find there; for the twenty minutes that were still left seemed an invisible suit of mail which, if he refrained altogether from thinking, might soundlessly close round him, encasing him for the encounter. But it was of no use, for already he saw himself standing unprepared on the stair-head with the latch-key in his hand, and the same feeling that he would have then swept over him, a sensation of simultaneous collapse, as if everything within him were loosened and falling, and he himself were being precipitated through the solid stone landing where he stood. He was awakened by a sudden brilliance; the passengers looked like a glorified company dizzily charging through seas of light: the tramcar was crossing the Jamaica Bridge and the rays of the westering sun showered over it. He looked at the Clyde winding eastwards in radiance, and saw down in the river a fantastically elongated shadow car with a cargo of spectral and aqueous passengers. Beyond the moving shadow ran the little suspension bridge where the noseless beggar had stood. ‘Eaten away,’ the words came into Mansie’s head. For the wide gaping nose cavity had actually looked as if it were being devoured by incredibly tiny indefatigable armies, and it was against them that the look in the man’s face was protesting, and not against the people, all of them with complete faces of every variety of shape, who passed him daily. And his voice! A subterranean snuffle rising to a soft hoot as of swirling wind in a chimney; but never any intelligible sound. The poor beggar had stood there in hard frost too. Mansie had always given him a few coppers, though he had had to overcome a physical repulsion first; and now sitting on the tramcar he remembered that he had been offended at the man for not seeming to be aware of it. Well, a man who had lost his nose couldn’t always remember to behave like a man who had lost his nose. Maybe put up his hands sometimes to scratch it, and it wasn’t there! A dashed unpleasant shock. But he had looked in a funny accusing way at you sometimes; made you feel uncomfortable. Then he had gone and never appeared again. What could have become of him?
Mansie twisted his shoulders to shake off such disagreeable thoughts. He would fix his mind on something more cheerful; but instead it flew forward to Tom waiting at home, as though the beggar had been cunningly leading him there. Well, there was no good in burking the fact; Tom was out of the hospital now and waiting for him. These fellows sitting here on the top of the tramcar weren’t returning to a brother with a tumour on his brain! Idiotic the way Jean’s silly words kept running in one’s head. He felt all at once violently exasperated with Tom. What need had the silly fool to go and get a tumour on the brain? That was where he landed himself with his dashed recklessness. The tramcar was rolling up through Eglinton Street, and Mansie’s eyes fell on the fish-and-chip shop with its door-posts rotten and oozing with rancid grease. He looked to see if the great red-haired woman was standing in the next close as usual, with her arms wrapped round her over-flowing breasts. Yes, she was there, talking to a laughing ring of young girls in shawls, still holding them in; but they would escape some day, and then there would be a fine flop! Nice thoughts to have when your brother was. But all the same she would always be there, nothing could shift her, just like something you had to walk round every morning and evening, forced you out of your way, until at last you got used to your new road and it seemed the natural one. He remembered Gibson’s words again: ‘And what about the poor bloody little children?’ A blackened steel railway-bridge rushed smoothly towards him and passed over his head. The tramcar stopped at Eglinton Toll and turned up Victoria Road. Suddenly like a gaseous fluid dread pumped itself into him, filling him up so tightly that there seemed no room left for the air he tried to draw into his lungs. Four stops, and he would have to get off.
He descended and walked very slowly up Garvin Street. Dashed nonsense! Tom was getting better. At the close mouth he stopped again. Half of him was still out in the street, and to draw it back to him from its freedom, which he shared as a poor man, standing at the lodge gates, shares a fine estate, – to force this half of him to coalesce with the other which was about to walk resolutely into the close and up the stairs, was a task for which he had to summon all his strength as for the pulling in of a heavy weight. With a jerk he turned and climbed the stairs to the first floor. There he was, standing with the key in his hand; but the sensation of sinking through the floor did not come; he had paid that debt in the tramcar; and now his mind was strangely clear, so that when he inserted the key in the lock and turned it his act seemed a purely intellectual one, faintly suggesting the shining revolutions of the stars. As he hung up his hat in the lobby he felt quite indifferent to his brother. ‘What must be, must,’ he thought, and walked into the kitchen: ‘Well, Tom? Feeling better?’
Tom was sitting at the table eating ham and eggs and drinking tea, and at that prosaic sight Mansie’s mind fell through octave after octave until it rested on something like reassurance.
‘Yes, I think I am,’ Tom answered with his mouth full.
Mansie took his place at the other side of the table and glanced at his brother. He was astonished. He had expected some change, but this was a clean knock-out. Tom had grown fat. His thin face with the daring line of the cheek-bone and jaw was round and soft now, and the skin seemed darker and coarser, as if there were an admixture of infinitesimal specks of mud in the grain.
Mrs Manson set a cup of tea and a plate of ham and eggs before Mansie.
‘Isna’ he changed, Mansie?’ she asked. ‘Isna’ he looking weel?’
Tom made a movement with his hand as if he were warding off something.
‘But