other day to despise. I think you are worse than a coward. I think you are a cad.”
His fellow-passengers on the top of the car saw an absorbed middle-aged gentleman who seemed to have something the matter with his bronchial tubes. They could not guess at the tortured soul. The decision was coming nearer, the alternatives loomed up dark and inevitable. On one side was submission to ignominy, on the other a return to that place which he detested, and yet loathed himself for detesting. “It seems I’m not likely to have much peace either way,” he reflected dismally.
How the conflict would have ended had it continued on these lines I cannot say. The soul of Mr. McCunn was being assailed by moral and metaphysical adversaries with which he had not been trained to deal. But suddenly it leapt from negatives to positives. He saw the face of the girl in the shuttered House, so fair and young and yet so haggard. It seemed to be appealing to him to rescue it from a great loneliness and fear. Yes, he had been right, it had a strange look of his Janet—the wide-open eyes, the solemn mouth. What was to become of that child if he failed her in her need?
Now Dickson was a practical man, and this view of the case brought him into a world which he understood. “It’s fair ridiculous,” he reflected. “Nobody there to take a grip of things. Just a wheen Gorbals keelies and the lad Heritage. Not a business man among the lot.”
The alternatives, which hove before him like two great banks of cloud, were altering their appearance. One was becoming faint and tenuous; the other, solid as ever, was just a shade less black. He lifted his eyes and saw in the near distance the corner of the road which led to his home. “I must decide before I reach that corner,” he told himself.
Then his mind became apathetic. He began to whistle dismally through his teeth, watching the corner as it came nearer. The car stopped with a jerk. “I’ll go back,” he said aloud, clambering down the steps. The truth was he had decided five minutes before when he first saw Janet’s face.
He walked briskly to his house, entirely refusing to waste any more energy on reflection. “This is a business proposition,” he told himself, “and I’m going to handle it as sich.” Tibby was surprised to see him and offered him tea in vain. “I’m just back for a few minutes. Let’s see the letters.”
There was one from his wife. She proposed to stay another week at the Neuk Hydropathic and suggested that he might join her and bring her home. He sat down and wrote a long affectionate reply, declining, but expressing his delight that she was soon returning. “That’s very likely the last time Mamma will hear from me,” he reflected, but—oddly enough—without any great fluttering of the heart.
Then he proceeded to be furiously busy. He sent out Tibby to buy another knapsack and to order a cab and to cash a considerable cheque. In the knapsack he packed a fresh change of clothing and the new safety razor, but no books, for he was past the need of them. That done, he drove to his solicitors.
“What like a firm are Glendonan and Speirs in Edinburgh?” he asked the senior partner.
“Oh, very respectable. Very respectable indeed. Regular Edinburgh W.S. Lot. Do a lot of factoring.”
“I want you to telephone through to them and inquire about a place in Carrick called Huntingtower, near the village of Dalquharter. I understand it’s to let, and I’m thinking of taking a lease of it.”
The senior partner after some delay got through to Edinburgh, and was presently engaged in the feverish dialectic which the long-distance telephone involves. “I want to speak to Mr. Glendonan himself… Yes, yes, Mr. Caw of Paton and Linklater… Good afternoon… Huntingtower. Yes, in Carrick. Not to let? But I understand it’s been in the market for some months. You say you’ve an idea it has just been let. But my client is positive that you’re mistaken, unless the agreement was made this morning… You’ll inquire? Ah, I see. The actual factoring is done by your local agent, Mr. James Loudon, in Auchenlochan. You think my client had better get into touch with him at once. Just wait a minute, please.”
He put his hand over the receiver. “Usual Edinburgh way of doing business,” he observed caustically. “What do you want done?”
“I’ll run down and see this Loudon. Tell Glendonan and Spiers to advise him to expect me, for I’ll go this very day.”
Mr. Caw resumed his conversation. “My client would like a telegram sent at once to Mr. Loudon introducing him. He’s Mr. Dickson McCunn of Mearns Street—the great provision merchant, you know. Oh, yes! Good for any rent. Refer if you like to the Strathclyde Bank, but you can take my word for it. Thank you. Then that’s settled. Good-bye.”
Dickson’s next visit was to a gunmaker who was a fellow-elder with him in the Guthrie Memorial Kirk.
“I want a pistol and a lot of cartridges,” he announced. “I’m not caring what kind it is, so long as it is a good one and not too big.”
“For yourself?” the gunmaker asked. “You must have a license, I doubt, and there’s a lot of new regulations.”
“I can’t wait on a license. It’s for a cousin of mine who’s off to Mexico at once. You’ve got to find some way of obliging an old friend, Mr. McNair.”
Mr. McNair scratched his head. “I don’t see how I can sell you one. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll lend you one. It belongs to my nephew, Peter Tait, and has been lying in a drawer ever since he came back from the front. He has no use for it now that he’s a placed minister.”
So Dickson bestowed in the pockets of his water-proof a service revolver and fifty cartridges, and bade his cab take him to the shop in Mearns Street. For a moment the sight of the familiar place struck a pang to his breast, but he choked down unavailing regrets. He ordered a great hamper of foodstuffs—the most delicate kind of tinned goods, two perfect hams, tongues, Strassburg pies, chocolate, cakes, biscuits, and, as a last thought, half a dozen bottles of old liqueur brandy. It was to be carefully packed, addressed to Mrs. Morran, Dalquharter Station, and delivered in time for him to take down by the 7.33 train. Then he drove to the terminus and dined with something like a desperate peace in his heart.
On this occasion he took a first-class ticket, for he wanted to be alone. As the lights began to be lit in the wayside stations and the clear April dusk darkened into night, his thoughts were sombre yet resigned. He opened the window and let the sharp air of the Renfrewshire uplands fill the carriage. It was fine weather again after the rain, and a bright constellation—perhaps Dougal’s friend O’Brien—hung in the western sky. How happy he would have been a week ago had he been starting thus for a country holiday! He could sniff the faint scent of moor-burn and ploughed earth which had always been his first reminder of Spring. But he had been pitchforked out of that old happy world and could never enter it again. Alas! for the roadside fire, the cosy inn, the Compleat Angler, the Chavender or Chub!
And yet—and yet! He had done the right thing, though the Lord alone knew how it would end. He began to pluck courage from his very melancholy, and hope from his reflections upon the transitoriness of life. He was austerely following Romance as he conceived it, and if that capricious lady had taken one dream from him she might yet reward him with a better. Tags of poetry came into his head which seemed to favour this philosophy—particularly some lines of Browning on which he used to discourse to his Kirk Literary Society. Uncommon silly, he considered, these homilies of his must have been, mere twitterings of the unfledged. But now he saw more in the lines, a deeper interpretation which he had earned the right to make.
“Oh world, where all things change and nought abides, Oh life, the long mutation—is it so? Is it with life as with the body’s change?— Where, e’en tho’ better follow, good must pass.”
That was as far as he could get, though he cudgelled his memory to continue. Moralizing thus, he became drowsy, and was almost asleep when the train drew up at the station of Kirkmichael.
CHAPTER 7
SUNDRY DOINGS IN THE MIRK