Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan John

had stimulated his literary fervour. He would dip into his old favourites again to confirm his faith. To-morrow he would go for a jaunt somewhere—perhaps down the Clyde, or to the South of England, which he had heard was a pleasant, thickly peopled country. No more lonely inns and deserted villages for him; henceforth he would make certain of comfort and peace.

      The rain had stopped, and, as the car moved down the dreary vista of Eglinton street, the sky opened into fields of blue and the April sun silvered the puddles. It was in such place and under such weather that Dickson suffered an overwhelming experience.

      It is beyond my skill, being all unlearned in the game of psycho-analysis, to explain how this thing happened. I concern myself only with facts. Suddenly the pretty veil of self-satisfaction was rent from top to bottom, and Dickson saw a figure of himself within, a smug leaden little figure which simpered and preened itself and was hollow as a rotten nut. And he hated it.

      The horrid truth burst on him that Heritage had been right. He only played with life. That imbecile image was a mere spectator, content to applaud, but shrinking from the contact of reality. It had been all right as a provision merchant, but when it fancied itself capable of higher things it had deceived itself. Foolish little image with its brave dreams and its swelling words from Browning! All make-believe of the feeblest. He was a coward, running away at the first threat of danger. It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarrassed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet the pitiless showman was himself too—himself as he wanted to be, cheerful, brave, resourceful, indomitable.

      Dickson suffered a spasm of mortal agony. “Oh, I’m surely not so bad as all that,” he groaned. But the hurt was not only in his pride. He saw himself being forced to new decisions, and each alternative was of the blackest. He fairly shivered with the horror of it. The car slipped past a suburban station from which passengers were emerging—comfortable black-coated men such as he had once been. He was bitterly angry with Providence for picking him out of the great crowd of sedentary folk for this sore ordeal. “Why was I tethered to sich a conscience?” was his moan. But there was that stern inquisitor with his pointer exploring his soul. “You flatter yourself you have done your share,” he was saying. “You will make pretty stories about it to yourself, and some day you may tell your friends, modestly disclaiming any special credit. But you will be a liar, for you know you are afraid. You are running away when the work is scarcely begun, and leaving it to a few boys and a poet whom you had the impudence the 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