George Douglas Brown

“ Young Gourlay not thought but felt it—he was different from everybody else. The heavens had cursed nobody else with such a terrible sire. It was no cowardice to fill yourself with drink before you faced him.
A drunkard will howl you an obscene chorus the moment after he has wept about his dead child. For a mind in the delirium of drink is no longer a coherent whole, but a heap of shattered bits, which it shows one after the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them now. ”

“ A house that challenges regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did. ”

“ For they knew he was lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything. ”

“ But Gourlay, though he could not understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was somehow akin to the fortitude described. In the increased vitality it gave he was able to tread down the world. If he walked on a wretched day in a wretched street, when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither and yon in a thousand perceptions and a thousand fears, fastening to (and fastened to) each squalid thing around. But with whisky humming in his blood he paced onward in a happy dream. ”

“ A bodie would dander slowly up, saying, "Ay, man, ye've won hame!" Then, having mused awhile, would casually ask, "By-the-bye, who won the Raeburn the year? Oh, it was a Perthshire man! It used to come our airt, but we seem to have lost the knack o't! Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred writers in those days, but the breed seems to have decayed." Then he would murmur dreamily, as if talking to himself, "Jock Goudie was the last that got it hereaway. But he was a clever chap."
The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing soul. ”

“ The man to whom the infinite beckons is not to be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of a temporal fear; there is no fear—it has ceased to exist. That is the comfort of a true philosophy—if a man accepts it not merely mechanically, from another, but feels it in breath and blood and every atom of his being. With a warm surety in his heart, he is undaunted by the outer world. That, gentlemen, is what thought can do for a man."
"By Jove," thought Gourlay, "that's what whisky does for me!" ”

“ They usurp a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness of will, never gripping to the work before him, to make him hate his lonely studies and long for the jolly company of his friends. ”

“ We hear of poor genius cursed with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with impressions which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly depressed—the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life, though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his timid mind. ”

“ Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and depress."
"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest because it was "just like him."
"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who knew—"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens, being understood. ”

“ There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs. Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac—the skirl of a human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet stared at her in speechless fear.
"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"
"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.
"Mother!" cried Janet.
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"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife never will. You may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the poorhouse, but I'll follow my boy." ”

“ A man'll never make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. I can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily—"anything I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before me."
"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan. "I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't."
He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. ”

“ Young Gourlay had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind. By the beginning of his second session he was as able a toper as a publican could wish. The somewhat sordid joviality of Allan's ring, their wit-combats that were somewhat crude, appeared to him the very acme of social intercourse. To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink appealed to him in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker. ”

“ The reflections of the street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I trudging through mud and misery to the University? ”

“ Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."
Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window, his grin a rictus of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger. ”

“ He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay cared—when once he had bye with him.
Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice, Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John Gourla'! ”

“ He is always coming back to probe the raw place, and Barbie boys were always coming back to "do a gunk" and "play a chaw" on young Gourlay by boasting their knowledge of the world, winking at each other the while to observe his grinning anger. They were large on the wonders they had seen and the places they had been to, while he grew small (and they saw it) in envy of their superiority. Even Swipey Broon had a crow at him. For Swipey had journeyed in the company of his father to far-off Fechars, yea even to the groset-fair, and came back with an epic tale of his adventures. ”

“ The influence of a wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance—did it not take them ten years to understand it? ”

“ It is less the totality of the place than the individual feature that pulls at the heart, and it was the individual feature that pulled at young Gourlay. With intellect little or none, he had a vast, sensational experience, and each aspect of Barbie was working in his blood and brain. Was there ever a Cross like Barbie Cross? Was there ever a burn like the Lintie? It was blithe and heartsome to go birling to Skeighan in the train; it was grand to jouk round Barbie on the nichts at e'en! Even people whom he did not know he could locate with warm sure feelings of superiority. ”

“ Finer natures often experience a keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out. He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he thinks of it ”

“ 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. ”

“ A great blob shot in through the window, open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He started violently—that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.
The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire. Gourlay screamed in terror.
The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.
"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye know. You ought to be a hardy man."
"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I just let on to be." ”

“ But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven, even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with crude, brief irony.
Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked the brute in him. ”

“ They would be having the fine ploys while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. Must he leave loved Barbie and the House with the Green Shutters? must he still drudge at books which he loathed? must he venture on a new life where everything terrified his mind?
"It's a shame!" he cried. "And I refuse to go. I don't want to leave Barbie! I'm feared of Edinburgh," and there he stopped in conscious impotence of speech. How could he explain his forebodings to a rock of a man like his father?
"No more o't!" roared Gourlay, flinging out his hand—"not another word! You go to College in October!" ”

“ In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end; they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of herself rather than of him. She [Pg 278] was stunned by fate—as was he—and could think of nothing.
Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of whisky.
It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.
Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't. ”