outer door. Jamie shook hands with him too. "I'm
coming to work here," he said. "Yes, sir," said the
porter. "I'm very pleased, sir." "Pleased? I am
CATEATON'S BANK 159
that," cried Jamie, and "Losh!" he said to himself,
"there'll be no stopping me now."
Then he remembered the mention of Donald Greig,
and how easy and full life had become since his meet-
ing with Hubert. O! Hubert was the kindest man. It
must have been Hubert, to think of such a thing; dull,
heavy Donald could not have thought of it by himself.
It was amazing how Hubert illuminated everything he
touched so that it became comprehensible and ceased to
be oppressive. Hubert's rooms were only just round the
corner. Jamie rushed up, burst in on his cousin, roaring,
"I'm a banker. I'm a banker, I'm " "You'll turn
into a parrot if you don't calm down," said Hubert. "A
banker is one who borrows or lends money for a con-
sideration. I'm not sure that it isn't a disgraceful trade
which would much better have been left to the Jews."
"Well," said Jamie, "I'm in a bank, and my immortal
soul is saved : a bank, in Morley Street, and I have you
to thank for it." "Not at all," said Hubert. "If you
have anybody to thank, it is your mother." "My
mother?" "Yes. Are you always going to let her fight
your battles for you?" "My mother? Do you mean
she went to Donald?" "I only mean what I say."
Hubert had begun to enjoy the mistake and Jamie's con-
fusion. He said : "My only suggestion to you is one
that she would not approve. How would you like to
write on The Critic?" 'Truly the heavens had burst
upon the earth that day. "We don't want love poems,*
said Hubert. "No-o-o." "Nor epic poems, nor dra-
matic poems, nor descriptive poems. 'Bosky' and 'lush'
are barred. Nor religious poems, nor poems about your
emotions in your more solitary moments. Solitary mo-
ments are a man's own fault, his private particular hell,
and the less said about them the better. If you can't
160 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
write anything but those different kinds of poems, try
prose." "I'd write myself to death," cried Jamie, "if I
thought I could do a thing would please you." "O!
I'm easily pleased," said Hubert. "I'm only an amateur.
It's the professional Currie Bigge you have to please,
not me. I'm busy now. Run home with your news.
Don't say you've seen me. I have an idea your mother
has the usual Keith view of my character." "But I'll
tell her what you are." "She knows what I am ; at least
she knows how I look in the world according to her,
and she is not going to alter that." "I say she shall. I
say the world that condemns you must be brought to its
senses." Hubert smiled : "My dear James," he said,
"if you can bring yourself to your senses it will be as
much as you can accomplish." And at once the stream
of ecstasy in Jamie rushed through him, with his mind
labouring after it, seeing the dim promise of blinding
visions and crying to his soul : "There, there lies the
summit of thy well-being!" Hubert bundled him out
and was sorry in a moment when he heard the young
man leaping down the stairs. He should have let him
stay until he had found some emotional satisfaction. It
was too late now, though. Jamie must be let go with
his dangerous exaltation, which, on the whole, though
he admired it, Hubert disliked. It was too delicate a
thing for him to find amusement in it. If only Jamie
had been a woman! He roused his cousin's chivalry,
only to have it done to death with mockery. "It only
needed that," mused Hubert, "to put the cap on the
comedy of our invasion of England. I am tired of it all,
an' 'twere not for Jamie Lawrie, I would lay me doon
an' die."
On his way home Jamie had to pass the theatre. He
stopped outside it and studied the bills. The play that
CATEATON'S BANK 161
night was to be Richard II., with Mr. Gaylor from a
London theatre in the principal part. Another bill set
forth Mr. Gaylor's achievements, and various printed
opinions on them. "I'll take Tibby," thought Jamie.
"I'll go to see a play. I'll see Mr. Wilcox." He looked
to see if Mr. Wilcox was in the bill. Yes. '"I'll cele-
brate the occasion. I must celebrate it; and I'll take
Tibby." He walked in and bought two seats in the
stalls, and as he came out again looked to right and left
to make sure he had not been seen. Then he thought
he had made a fool of himself, but he was getting used
to that and was no longer inclined to despair over it.
He was worried when he thought that Tibby might not
be able to come out, and he would have wasted all those
shillings. At a furious pace he walked home, working
off his excitement, half sorry to let it go, half dreading
lest it should still be apparent when he got home. It
would never do to be excited in front of Tom, who
would be ready with one of his sneers, though, he
thought, it would be pleasant if he could let his mother
see how glad he was about it. He felt so tender towards
them all, even to Tom, who was, after all, reliable. You
could always depend on Tom, as, of course, old Andrew
had found. That brought Andrew into Jamie's mood
and him he did not regret. He certainly had made
himself a big man, and his pride must have suffered
terribly when his wife left him. And Hubert! Jamie
was astonished to find that there was room for both
Andrew and Hubert in the same mental circle. He had
always kept them rigidly apart. Now thinking of them
together, he found that each had gained something, while
his own excitement was eased and he felt that he had
made a discovery, though what the exact nature of it
was he did not know. He was suddenly pleased with
162 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
everything he saw and with everyone. He smiled on an
old woman coming out of a gin-shop with a bottle under
her apron, and she said a fine young man like him ought
not to be without a sweetheart. "Will you find me
one ?" he asked. "Open your mouth and shut your eyes
and see what God'll send you." She gave him a leer
and an ogle and said that sweethearts did not want
finding, not for a fine young man like him. That en-
counter made Jamie feel still more pleased with him-
self and he began to look for sweethearts and was
amazed at the number available, all ready and willing.
"Dear me," he thought, "and I have always been so
terribly afraid of them." Bright eyes of girls and
women made him very happy, and he remembered Green
grow the rashes, O! and for the first time perceived the
full-throated chuckle that comes up through the verses:
"The sweetest hours that e'er I spent,
Were spent among the lasses, O!"
When he reached home there was no one in the
house but Tibby. Her ugliness resisted his delight in
bright eyes and he felt immensely sorry for her. He
remembered how he had kissed her on the road outside
Kirkcudbright. The years had not been kind to her.
Her face was more rugged for its thinness and pallor.
Her body was thin too, though strong: but a bad man
or a boy would laugh at her. Her hair at the back
would rouse interest: a man might hurry to catch her
up in the street: when he saw her face he would walk
faster than ever. She had the air as she stood there in
her kitchen of being huddled over herself, of withdraw-
ing, of taking advantage of her repellent face to live
within herself, to live and watch and pray. Bird-like
CATEATON'S BANK 163
she was, like a strong wild bird. She made Jamie feel
weak and almost ashamed of his pleasure in bright eyes.
She made him feel for a moment that his Self was un-
important and not a thing to be pleased with or despond-
ent about. Then into her strange rugged face, as though
she had seen into him and divined his young folly, there
crept a little tender pitying smile. Jamie said : "I'm
glad you're alone, Tibby." "I'm used to it," said she.
"I've news for you. I've got an appointment in a bank."
"That's news indeed, and good." "I'll no have to
rise from my bed s6 early." "You'll relish that. You
love your bed." "I do that. Tibby, do you ever go
out?" "For the marketing, and a breath of air some-
times, not that there's much air in this place." '"Aye,
it is not like home." "It is not." "Will you will
you come out with me to-night, to the play?" "To the
play?" Tibby's eyes sparkled. "Have you never seen
a play?" "Never. My father would tell me of plays
he saw in Edinburgh, with murders and ghosts, and poor
women nearly rattled out of their wits with the wicked-
ness of men." '"Men aren't so wicked, Tibby."
"They're a conceited lot." "But, Tibby, will you?"
"And leave the house empty?" "John will be in soon."
She turned and faced him. "It will be deceiving
Mrs. Lawrie." "Aye," said Jamie, "for a little pleas-
ure." '"Then you'll deceive her for the big ones."
"Not I." Tibby thought of Margaret having Jamie's
pockets turned out, and, as she really wanted to go,
and would not for the world miss an opportunity of
being with Jamie, she satisfied her conscience with that
tit-for-tat. They had tea together in the kitchen, washed
up after it, and stole out by the back door as John came
in by the front.
It was a great adventure for both of them. Jamie
164 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
had a shock. As they walked he began to explain the
play to Tibby, only to find that she had read it. Then
he discovered that she had read most of his books, tak-
ing them up as he laid them down and only reading
those which, by the marks, he had finished. "She ought
not to be a servant," he thought, and Tibby at the same
time was thinking "He's too good for a bank."- -"It's
a shame," said he, "that you should be so much alone."
"Mrs. Lawrie is vera good to me and lets me talk
when I want to talk. She's no talker herself and is
glad to hear a word now and then when you're all away
and the house is so still." That came home to Jamie
too. He had never before thought what the house must
be like with himself and his brothers out of it all day
long. He imagined an impossible desolation. '"When
I'm at the bank," he said, "I'll be home by five."
"You'll have time then to be your own man awhile."-
"Yes, I'm going to write." "I knew that," said she,
and he became rather afraid of her. What was there
that she didn't know ? He sounded her as to her knowl-
edge of the family and she had it all pat, even the rami-
fications of Greig and Allison-Greig. He tried another
tack : "Tibby, sometimes this place gives me a sense
of appalling disaster. I feel as though God must visit
it with an earthquake as He did Lisbon." -"No," re-
plied she, "if He were going to do that He would have
given it more blessings." She seemed almost wonderful
to Jamie then, but as she worked in the kitchen of his
house, and, according to the faith of his upbringing, had
no right to be alive at all, being a bastard, he could not
admit her wonder and regarded her, instead, with
amused indulgence, and unconsciously borrowed from
Hubert the attitude which that kindly tease had for him-
self.
CATEATON'S BANK 165
They entered the play-house and took their seats.
In those days star-actors from London visited the
provinces for a day or two at a time and gave the
familiar performances to which the stock company had
with very few rehearsals to adapt themselves as best
they could. Mr. Gaylor was a bad actor but a fine elo-
cutionist; however, for Jamie and Tibby, it being their
first visit to a play-house, all was wonderful. They
gazed into another brilliant world, where superhuman,
brilliant figures moved, and spoke from their hearts the
grief, the sorrow, the anger, the pride, the despair, the
baseness, and the rare, wise tenderness that were in
them. Mr. Wilcox was the gardener, but it was only
towards the end of his scene with the Queen that Jamie
recognised him and then he was distressed by this in-
trusion of an ordinary human being whom he had known
at a desk in an office, eating and drinking, even drunk.
But soon he was flattered too. It gave him a human,
sentimental share in that marvellous world, but his
pleasure in it was not so keen as when it had been a
miraculous, living and changing creation, remote from
himself, as remote as a true poem, like Endymion, or a
beautiful woman, like Agnes of the lake. He was dis-
appointed and began to criticise, to notice defects in the
scenery, which was shabby, and in the dresses, which
were tawdry. The face of a girl in attendance on the
Queen was familiar though he could not recognise it.
In the interval before the fifth act, its association came
back to him. It was Selina Leslie. Selina on the stage !
He had heard nothing of it. Did Tibby know ? "That's
two months ago, now. It has been a sore grief to Mrs.
Leslie, who is a good body." "That she is," said Jamie.
"It was Miss Selina's good looks. There was this
man and that man telling her how pretty she was and
i66 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
then nothing was good enough for her at home : though
I must say a family as large as that is a trial. One fine
morning she was gone. They found her, but nothing
would induce her to come back. She'd been taken to
the theatre a good deal and it turned her head. There
were queans on the stage more beautiful than herself."
"She was more beautiful than that Queen," said
Jamie. "And is Mrs. Leslie ? She can't be unfor-
giving." "Oh! no. I think Mrs. Leslie sees her, but
Mr. Leslie will not have her name spoken in his pres-
ence." "I knew Mrs. Leslie would not be hard," said
Jamie. The curtain went up and a man in front of them
who had a book in his hand turned and said testily:
"Will you be silent, sir?"
Mr. Wilcox had seen Jamie in the auditorium and
had dressed quickly and was waiting outside for him.
"You've come at last, my boy," he said. "Yes," said
Jamie, "at last, and I am sorry it was not sooner."- -"It
is all prejudice," said Mr. Wilcox, "about the theatre
being wicked, isn't it? It's a lovely part, the gardener."
"And you did it very well, didn't he, Tibby?"- -"Very
well indeed," said Tibby shyly. Mr. Wilcox 'had glanced
at her .but had taken no further interest. "You must
come again, my boy," he said, "and we'll have that pro-
logue out of you yet." "I don't know about that,"
replied Jamie, "but I'll come again, and I'd like to see
you in your lodgings." "Oh! I'm moved from there.
The flesh-pots ran dry and a poor player must live
where he may." He gave his address, sighted another
friend in the thin stream of people coming from the
house and was off. "That's one of the best friends I
ever had," said Jamie. Tibby replied rather spitefully :
"It is nice of you to own to him. There's not many
CATEATON'S BANK 167
who would." "Why not?" he asked and she would
not give any answer.
She had enjoyed the play, though it had not con-
tained enough murders for her and she thought that
John o' Gaunt had talked a deal too much for a dying
man. It had been to her nothing but mummery and
Jamie, to whom it had been an experience, was rather
annoyed with her. He relapsed into silence and harked
back to the amazing pleasure the first acts had been to
him before he had recognised Mr. Wilcox and been
brought down to earth. "Would you like to go again?"
he asked. "In six months' time," said she. And that
annoyed him too for he would have liked her to want
it all over again at once. "It was not so good," said
Tibby, "as my father's telling of plays." "Do you
measure everything by your father?" asked Jamie.
"Aye, everything."
They had reached Murray Street and arranged that
Tibby should go in at once by the back door while he
should wait for a quarter of an hour and then go in
by the front door. The stratagem succeeded. Margaret
swallowed Tibby's fiction and did not question her son,
for she had been schooled by Tom into not inquiring
into his ways of spending the evenings when he was out.
Jamie said: "I've news for you, Mother." "News?
What news? Good, I hope." "The best I've had yet.
Will you guess?" "I will not. It's late." "Then
I've been offered a post in Cateaton's Bank, and I've ac-
cepted it" "Leave the mill?" "Aye." "After all
your uncle has done for you?" "There's thousands
could do my work at the mill." "And thousands could
do what you'll have to do at the bank." "You're not
displeased, Mother? Why, I thought " He was
168 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
puzzled. He had thought she had waited up to be alone
with him, to see how glad he was of what she had done
for him. "I thought you knew," he said. '"How
should I know?" "It was Donald Greig got me in."
"I think you should have consulted me before you ac-
cepted." "It's a better salary and it's safe. I can give
you ten pounds at once for the fund." Margaret was
mollified. It was the first time Jamie had acknowledged
her ambition to pay back all she had had in charity.
Truth to tell he could neither understand nor sympathise
with her desire. He was free with his money and knew
nothing of borrowing or lending. When there was
need he would give and had he been in need himself
would have accepted. And having made his offer, he re-
gretted it, for it seemed to him almost like buying her
approval. "I do not think," she said, "the Greigs will
be able to do "more for you than the Keiths. After all,
you are a Keith and owe some loyalty to the family."-
"I'm a Lawrie first," said he, "and that I'll never for-
get." "Your uncle will be very hurt." -"Not he. He
has his Tom, and I think John was right when he said
there was only room for Tom. There are times when
I think there's only room for Tom in the whole wide
world. And I'm sure he thinks so." Margaret said
tartly: "Tom is the only good Keith among you."
And with that she went to her bed where she lay awake
shaken with hatred of a world which would not be
shaped to her ends or her liking.
When Tom heard the news in the morning from his
mother's lips he said: "Dang me. I'll have to move
my account. I won't have it made up by my own
brother." "Is it really a good position?" "To be in a
bank," said Tom, "is to be near money, and if a man
CATEATON'S BANK 169
can't turn it in his own direction he's a fool." He
gulped down his breakfast of porridge and honey and
rushed away to the office. That very afternoon he trans-
ferred his account to the Thrigsby and District.
CHAPTER XVII
SELINA LESLIE
NCE installed at the bank, Jamie felt, as Tibby had
foretold, his own man. Banking was a gentle-
manly and a cloistered business. Its hours of work
were regular and short; once a month there was a late
night and twice a year there was "balancing," which
meant working into the small hours, but there were no
sudden inflations or depressions. Thrigsby might be and
generally was feverish and excited, but the bank was
calm and dignified. It could and did break quite impor-
tant people with the remorselessness of a machine; a
man without credit did not exist for it. Like a church it
had powers of excommunication. It was very like a
church and men like Mr. Rigby Blair came to it in a
religious spirit, and this had its effect upon Jamie, who
began to regard Sunday as a day of rest and relaxation
rather than as a day of worship, though he still accom-
panied his mother to church and regularly placed a
shilling in the bag passed round by Peter Leslie. Yet
the ceremony of offering the money so collected to God
seemed to him inappropriate. The God of that church
was not the God of the bank. This was the beginning
of his perception that there are Gods and Gods and that
men make them in their image as they go. He was
made rather unhappy at first and was left rather sadly
170
SELINA LESLIE 171
envious of his mother, whose God was perfectly definite
and was able to provide for every contingency except
free, spontaneous human desire, for which no provision
whatever was made. It was easy enough for Margaret,
who had no life except in her sons and no traffic with
the world outside, but while the God of her church was
served with righteous conduct and the support of mar-
riage and the family thieving and murder being out of
the question for respectable people the God of the bank
was served with lies. In business Jamie never met a
man who did not begin by lying and then allowing him-
self reluctantly to be brought back to such truth as was
necessary for the transaction in hand, so that though
there was always an air of importance, there was, in
fact, very little done. Indeed all the responsible persons
he knew worked as long and as little as possible, while
the rest had punctuality both in coming and in leaving
for almost their only virtue. However, Jamie supposed
it was all right and did not look closely into the matter,
but, being 1 forced to admit his own discomfort, he sought
the means of relieving it in literary and mental activity
and in the company of people who really were interested
in what they were doing, with no consideration for what
they might get out of it. Pressure at home had much
to do with this desire of his. Tom and his mother were
magnificently virtuous. They were Keiths ; they had re-
mained true to the family; they were rewarded; they
had kept the family intact ; James and John had strayed
from the fold, they had sold themselves into bondage
and were the servants of strangers; in short, Tom's
salary was doubled and he was in charge of a depart-
ment, he had put down a hundred pounds for the fund,
when he heard that Jamie had contributed ten ; Thrigsby
had begun to hear of Tom, who was a member of two
172 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
clubs. Jamie joined the Literary and Philosophical
Society, through Hubert, and discovered that there were
brains also in Thrigsby ; an illustrious chemist, a famous
musician, and a queer little man who had measured the
velocity of a particle of hydrogen. Through this asso-
ciation he discovered that Newton had other claims to
fame and the gratitude of mankind than the possession
of a dog called Diamond. But the philosophers were too
disinterested for Jamie; they were an intolerant and
inconsiderate set and they might as well have lived on
a mountain as in Thrigsby for all they cared about it;
and Thrigsby had become fascinating and absorbing to
him in the security and freedom he found in his new
gentlemanly occupation. However, from contact with
these great minds he learned that problems and questions
which teased and tickled his mind were realities to them.
He also learned that nothing was settled, that very little
was known, that there might be other more plausible
theories concerning the origin of the world than that set
forth with such beautiful simplicity in Genesis. Jamie
could not accept the fact of human ignorance from Hu-
bert, but when he was confronted with the austere
probity of these men he could not rid his mind of it and
was obsessed by it, for he argued that if men really
had divinely inspired knowledge they had made singu-
larly little use of it if they could not rise above the
brutality of Thrigsby. Life in Thrigsby was brutal;
there was no getting away from that. Machines were
carefully and lovingly tended, but no one looked after
the men and women, who came pouring into the place
from the country, and, apparently, from all parts of
the world, for in the streets could be heard almost every
European language, and there were churches, syna-
gogues, basilicas, mosques, chapels, English, Welsh and
SELINA LESLIE 173
Scotch, and everywhere there were houses being built,
on marshes, on slap-heaps, and on filled-in brooks and
little rivers, over graveyards and places that for gen-
erations had been avoided as containing plague-pits.
Thrigsby absorbed them all ; grew immense factories for
them to work in and little houses for them to live in,
blotting out gardens, fields, woods, spinneys, leaving
nowhere any open space, not even in the centre of the
town, until Thrigsby in its municipal pride decided that
it needed a new town hall and discovered that it had
nowhere to put it. Andrew Keith had a say in that
matter and won a brief and unpleasant notoriety by in-
triguing for the selection of a plot of land which meant
pulling down one of his warehouses for which he was
most generously compensated. "We will have," said
Thrigsby, "the biggest Town Hall in the North of
England." And in the course of a year or two Thrigsby
had its desire in a vast Gothic structure with an im-
mense tower, with a four-faced clock, a bell which would
be heard on the wind for at least five miles, and a spiked
golden ball on top. The Town Hall was opened by a
Great Personage: the mayor was knighted. A day or
two later a sea-gull spiked itself on the golden ball and
created through the town a sensation greater than had