made no allowance for failure in her plans: even when
her sons had crossed them they had prospered. Almost
she persuaded herself that the failure of Murdoch's was
a direct intervention from above to punish her for some
sin that, for all her admirable intentions, she had com-
mitted. The discovery of the sin became with her an
engrossing labour, an obsession. She had not properly
NEWS FROM JOHN 331
dedicated her offspring to the Lord : she had taken too
wordly a delight in them. Every day she wrote long
letters not only to Tom and John but also to Agnes and
Sophia, exhorting them not to allow their children to
depart from the way of the Lord as laid down by
Andrew Keith and Angus Greig, who had accepted their
worldly goods humbly as the due reward of just ser-
vants. She imagined that Tom and herself had achieved
their measure of success more by works than by faith
and therefore she was punished.
Every night she made Jamie read the Bible to her,
more particularly the Mosaic prohibitions. She was a
good Old Testament woman heeding Thou Shalt Not
more than Thou Shalt. The reading of each night
provided her with material for the writing of each day.
Jamie had to post her letters with his own. He was
conscious of a strain between his mother and himself
and fancied that her letters were her means of relief
from it. She was absorbed in her own conscience-
stricken thoughts, and he took this absorption to be an
instinctive withdrawal from himself. He suffered be-
cause he was conscious of failure. The house, with
Tom gone from it, seemed too big, even pretentious.
His clearest and dearest idea of Margaret was in the
little house in Kirkcudbright. There she was in her
right setting, struggling, fighting, filling all that place
with her spirit. But now there was no fight in her. She
resented the disaster to John, she was bitter and venge-
ful, and she avenged herself on both Jamie and Tibby.
They had dreadful days but neither let the other suspect
the pain they were suffering. Neither could help Mar-
garet. All her thought was for Tom. He must repair
the disaster, must send for John and take him into the
firm.
332 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
When Tom returned from his honeymoon, which
business extended from London to Lille with a journey
through the north of France, she went to see him, then
to stay with him, and every night he had to listen to
his mother's argument. He must send John money.
He pointed out that Sophia had money. "Then she can
put that into the firm for John." "But, my good mother,
I have my partners to think of and business is not what
it was for the old firm." "But trade does not stand
still." "No. The markets grow as new people come
into the trade, and new people mean new methods."
"Then what is John to do?" "That is John's affair.
He knows better than we do the openings out there."
"Then you refuse to help your own brother?" "It
is not a question of refusing, it is a question of inability.
Business is not what it was. The old personal relations
are gone and there is no longer room for a man merely
because he is your brother or your friend." "But you
can make room. Your family comes first." '"No, my
dear mother, the firm comes first. As a public-spirited
man, the firm comes first. If it is a matter of helping
John over a difficult period, well and good, though you
should remember that he has brought his misfortunes
upon himself. We all had equal chances. I am sorry
that he has not used his better."
Margaret returned home and did not again ask Jamie
to read the Bible. She sat, lost in thought, with an
expression of bewilderment upon her face. She was not
hurt, but simply puzzled. Her innocent faith in her
original plan was shocked but by no means destroyed.
She was still unaware of the lack of faith in Tom. It
was true, what he had said, that John had brought his
misfortunes upon himself and she had failed in not
asserting her authority. But that was not altogether
NEWS FROM JOHN 333
her fault, but was due in part to her tragedy and her
presumption in dreaming that, once in Thrigsby, An-
drew Keith, that great man, would be a father to her
sons. She had been blind, and lacking in common-sense.
Of course Andrew could not acknowledge them or help
them until they had proved themselves. Tom had
proved himself. The others had been headstrong. They
had failed. She looked sullenly upon Jamie. He had
been a bad example for John.
As for Jamie, he had taken refuge, as so many times
before, behind the written word, discovering a new liter-
ary delight in the Bible, and, saturating himself in it,
he had passed on to Paradise Lost, which he had never
before been able to read. Now he perceived its beauty,
the nobility of its architecture, and it contained for him
the truth of the life against which he was in revolt.
The God of the poem seemed to him abominable, but
he recognised him as the God of his mother. He was
by now a thorough-going evolutionist and saw (not
very clearly for he was an undisciplined thinker, depend-
ent upon fierce and often blasting flashes of light)
that the Gods also are evolved by man and perish as
from man they grow more remote. The God of the
poem was an egoist without grace, whereas Adam and
one or two of the angels were in grace. It seemed to
him then that Milton had penetrated in the mystery of
human nature only to the angelic sphere, and had not
touched the Godhead, and there he fell behind Shake-
speare whose very thieves, pimps and bawds were in
their motions God-like, with dignity and laughter.
There was more God in Falstaff than in Milton's Je-
hovah whose greatness was too much asserted, too little
revealed, and yet how moving and how beautiful was
334
the wedded love of Adam and the Mother of Mankind,
how noble and how sweet the love of the angels:
"Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint or limb, exclusive bars.
Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul."
The angelic, he saw, was but a condition of the spirit
of man, yet lower than the highest, lacking the true grace
without which the fullness of love is not. That only
could be known to the human spirit in its highest flight
whose pure and serene joy man had mistakenly called
God. God must be beyond that joy which is in the
approach to Him, the all-living and unceasing creator
and destroyer, the supreme Being in whom all is.
In such thoughts Jamie had his highest joy. When
he turned from them to life he was shocked by the
discrepancy, and enraged by his inability to confirm
his thoughts. By his daily life they seemed to be de-
nied. No word did he ever hear spoken that could en-
dorse them, and against his will he was driven into
isolation. The real solitude of his soul he could accept,
but apparent solitude, lack of cohesion with his fellows
was a denial, was an infringement of it. Yet he lacked
the strength to save himself, for he had no power to
concentrate and clarify his vision. His weakness lay
in that, if he was amused, he was content. If he was
not amused then he would take refuge in some game,
mental or emotional, or, in his worst condition, he would
NEWS FROM JOHN 335
resort to the trick of letting his thoughts and emotions
play hide and seek with each other. He would often
marvel at the apparent simplicity of those about him,
and wonder why, if they were spared, as they seemed
to be, the tortures through which he struggled, they were
not more amiable, and why there appeared such a lack
of purpose in all their doings. They were all busy in
the creation of Thrigsby. Why, then, if they were so
simple, and straightforward, did they not create it bet-
ter? Why did they accept the making of money as good
evidence that they were doing well enough ?
His mind, it is to be observed, had become, for better
or worse, critical. Those processes of the intelligence
which he had acquired in the theatre he had begun to
exercise upon life and upon himself. He was unusual
only in that he had more humour for the contemplation
of himself than for his consideration of life, which he
was apt to regard as though it were a play, a creation by
familiar and discoverable machinery. Forced by his de-
velopment and the spirit of his time to discard the cur-
rent forms of religion, as representing a metaphysic no
longer valid, he performed the act of rejection so vio-
lently as to leave himself exhausted and almost unaware
of his need for a religion. And he looked for it in
the acts and practices of everyday life, and, naturally,
he looked in vain. Though he could understand per-
fectly his mother's anxiety over John, and even her self-
castigation, he could not help being impatient with her,
and, helplessly, he saw the gulf between himself and
her widening. His high hopes of a greater freedom
in Tom's absence were dashed to the ground. Margaret
became Tommish and assumed the headship of the
household, dictating the time for bed in the evening and
336 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
claiming the first sight of the newspaper in the morn-
ing.
At length, in exasperation, and by way of asserting
himself, Jamie brought down from the landing the por-
traits of Goethe and Jean Paul and hung them in the
dining-room on either side of the portrait of his father.
He did this one night after his mother had gone to bed.
When he came down in the morning the pictures were
removed. He could not let it pass and said : "I thought
now that Tom is gone that I would use the dining-room
for my study." "If I am to eat in this room," answered
Margaret, "it will not be beneath those heathen Ger-
mans."
There were other differences, over food, over the
place of the lamp in the drawing-room at night, over
his intolerance of an antimacassar on his chair, but, in
spite of these, perhaps because of them, he discerned
slowly and over many days a new beauty in his mother.
She seemed definitely shaped and fixed in type Milton-
ian he called her, having amused himself with dividing
his friends and acquaintances into Miltonians, Shake-
speareans and neuters. Her costume had become fixed,
black with white collar and bands, with soft linen cuffs
at her wrists. Her skirts were full, her bodice tight
and unadorned. Upon her grey hair she wore a spot-
less white mutch with wings that swung out behind her
as she walked. With a rare dignity she walked, very
erect, with her head a little bowed as though she were
continually acknowledging herself to be the servant of
powers greater than herself. Very silent was her tread
so that it was almost terrifying when she came into a
room. Not even a rustle of her wide skirts announced
her coming. The whole personality of the woman was
immediately there to be faced and reckoned with. Jamie
NEWS FROM JOHN 337
could neither face nor reckon with her. For him she
had gained most awfully in power. This it was that
forced him to see her beauty and behind it her hostility.
Often he endeavoured to assert himself. Sometimes
he would try to win her support for what he most
cherished in her doings, but his attempts were futile.
That he held a good position in the bank was her sole
satisfaction in him. All else that he did, every friend-
ship that he made, she ignored. He felt that she was
alarmed for him. She watched over him and deep in
her inmost tenderness she was fearful and hungry for
him. He had already betrayed the family in his en-
couragement of John. What next would he do? She
did not see that Tom also had betrayed the family to
industrialism. How then could she see that her eldest
son, partly because of this betrayal, but most because
of his hatred of all tyranny and his passionate but still
unconscious desire to reconcile the responsibility of
human love with freedom, was, in his turn, revolted
against industrialism and bent upon betraying it ? She
was unhappy, knew not the cause, and was hardened in
her pride.
Sometimes for days together she would hardly speak
and would be busy in the household or with charitable
works. Her shadow filled all the house. Jamie and
Tibby would creep together in the dining-room or the
kitchen, and whisper strangely, hardly knowing what
they said, each imploring the other to invent some way
to distract Margaret from her brooding. Neither could
think of any way. Tibby would excel herself in cook-
ing, Jamie would bring home flowers, but they could
win neither gracious word nor smile. "You'd think all
her heart was out with John," said Tibby one night.
'"Oh! Tibby, I sometimes think her heart must be in
338 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
the grave." "She's a living woman. '' - "But never
meant to live in a place like this," said Jamie, "or in
times like this." "Is there ought wrong with the times ?"
"Aye," said he, "men have seen themselves as mon-
keys." Tibby whispered: "Not you, Jamie." - Then
he found her hands in his and himself gazing down into
her gaunt ugly face. "I see your hair's grown well
again, Tibby. She took that off your head." "It was
for Maggie," said she, "and I owed more than that to
the family." She smiled up at him and they felt rather
foolish, she in her soiled cooking-apron with the grime
of the kitchen still on her cheeks, and he in his fine
broadcloth. And behind them suddenly appeared Mar-
garet holding a letter in her hand and crying: "Jamie!
Jamie! There's word from John. He's coming home!"
Tibby slipped away. Margaret came to her son and
took his face in her hands and kissed him. Her cheeks
were flushed, her breathing came heavily. She had
been weeping. "Oh! Jamie," she said, "my prayers
have been answered. He is coming home ! He is rich!"
Jamie read the letter. It was a song of triumph from
John. Immediately on receipt of the news from Mur-
doch's, he had bought the Australian stock. There had
been a gold rush. He had had a share in a corner in
corrugated iron, was now realising the profits which
would amount to many thousands of pounds. As soon
as he had put his affairs in order he proposed to return
home there to enter politics, or, if his health made that
impossible, to study the principles of political economy
and to prepare his sons for the career which had been
denied himself. And he remained his mother's affec-
tionate and obedient son.
Jamie folded the letter up: "That's Tom and John,
NEWS FROM JOHN 339
mother. You should be a proud woman." "I am that,"
said she. "Then bide your time for me," he said, and
to his astonishment she touched his arm affectionately
and replied. 1 "No. You mustn't go yet awhile."
"I'll wait till John comes home with his riches," said
he. "We'll see what riches and a travelled mind will
do for us. If a letter from John can bring back the
spirit in us, think what John himself might do. John
standing there, where Tom used to stand, by the fire-
place, and talking canny wisdom. Ech! If John had
kept his pair of lungs he would have talked his way until
he'd go before the Queen next but one to the Archbishop
of Canterbury." Margaret smiled reprovingly :
"We're not a talking family," she said. "Will you come
now and read John's letter aloud to me? I want to
hear it."
He followed her to the drawing-room where she sat
in her chair by the fireplace and he read aloud John's
letter. When he had finished he had to begin all over
again. Then he promised that the next day she should
come and fetch him from the bank and they would
both go out to tell Tom the news. "I don't think," said
Jamie, "that I should tell Tom that John is rich until
we know how rich. It would worry him." Margaret
saw the fun of the remark and replied: "But we will
tell him." And she added, folding her hands: "Do
you know, I feel like the mother of Tobias in the Apo-
crypha." "My dear mother," said Jamie, "I often feel
that you are like all the mothers in the Bible." "There
are very few," said she, and Jamie, who had begun to
be a little sentimental about the mothers in the Bible,
was shocked into an appreciation of his mother's sense
of fact. She liked success because it was a goodly fact,
340 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
whereas he disliked facts whenever they loomed so large
as to obscure reality. This success of John's had in
truth rather distressed him and the best way to be rid
of it would be to present it to Tom.
CHAPTER XXX
MORLEY STREET TRANSFIGURED
THE patient and careful reader, if patient and care-
ful writing have led him so far, will remember a
panegyric, which like a peal of trumpets hailed the ar-
rival of James Lawrie in Morley Street, that noble ex-
pression of Thrigsby's early dignity when merchants had
the air of diplomatists and bankers cherished the future
of England as impressively as statesmen guard her
present. Magnificent though that expression was it
failed to satisfy a younger generation possessed by the
idea that nothing could express importance but size.
Factories and warehouses no longer expanded economi-
cally to meet needs. They must be enlarged by the
thousand thousand cubic feet. The boundless expansion
of trade would fill them. Thrigsby possessed in the
John Bright Hall the largest place of public assembly
in the north of England. The Town Hall had been
added to. The Cotton Exchange had been rebuilt. A
great house in Morley Street had been converted into
an art gallery. The German colony had caused the
erection in the Derby Road of a Gentleman's Concert
Hall where could be heard the sweetest music in all Eng-
land. The Thrigsbeians did not go to hear it but they
boasted of it. They liked brass bands and they got
them in the Victoria Gardens and Zoological Collection.
If there was to be a noise, let there be much noise;
341
THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
if money, then much money; if bricks and mortar, then
much bricks and mortar. Happy Thrigsby, to desire
only that which can be easily expressed, to aim only at
that which can be lightly won, to have so constant a
stream of success that there shall never be the shadow
of a thought of the cost of it! Happy, happy Thrigsby
to call in from the country-side new, abundant and eager
life and to have, when that is used up, coming in from
the country-side, life eager, new and abundant! To
use up human life in the creation of trade, to be able in
so doing to destroy beauty, to ignore love, and the joy
of little children! Thrigsbeians were very happy then
in the erection of enormous buildings, with every two
miles or so a little church just to assure themselves that,
though they really preferred the places in which they
spent their weekdays, they had not forgotten the God of
their fathers. Yet, somehow, their churches all looked
rather casual, for they were built on plots of land which
had been forgotten, or through some close-fisted dealing
had been left until they were useless for any other pur-
pose, or by some evil proximity had been made cheap.
The Low Churches had the best of it because they had
most adherents and the few High Churches had to be
built on slag-heaps or marches. Chapels seemed to be
much more at home among the warehouses and in the
streets of little houses, for those who frequented them
assumed (or so their frankness would lead one to sup-
pose) that God did not mind a little ugliness more or
less. But the massive banks could redeem the poorness
of the churches. There are High and Low in banks
also, and the Thrigsby and District was distinctly Low.
Cateaton's was the bank of Thrigsby's representative
men : the T. & D. that of the Thrigsby which they rep-
resented, and the representative men were puzzled that
MORLEY STREET TRANSFIGURED 343
Thrigsby should need a bank. The city was their crea-
tion, it existed in order to be represented by them. It
ought not to develop institutions without consulting
them. They were broad-minded. Did they not believe
in laissez fairef They could admit the right of disrepu-
table things, such as anarchy, Roman Catholicism, and
Irish Nationalism to exist and find public expression, but
they could not admit of any other respectability and
prosperity than that for which they stood. When there-
fore the T. & D. built itself an enormous Florentine pal-
ace with little windows strongly barred and a vast door
wide enough and tall enough to admit the train of ele-
phants of an Indian rajah, Cateaton's went one better,
bought a whole row of houses opposite their premises
in Morley Street, pulled them down and put up a Gre-
cian structure, with fluted pillars and enormous plate-
glass windows, as to show that the power of Cateaton's
lay in something more than the mere hoarding of cash,
and the door was made so that, but for the steps leading
up to it, it could have admitted the Lord Mayor's coach.
This pile was severe and, in intention, dignified, a re-
proach to the vulgarity of the T. & D. It was the last
triumph of Mr. Rigby Blair, for before the glass was
put into the windows, and the brass fittings were sup-
plied for the great general office, he was laid low with
a stroke, and was never the same man again. He re-
covered and struggled back to his work but the general
feeling was that he must retire, and Jamie, who had been
for some years his chief lieutenant, became his captain,
consulting him after instead of before the event.
At the top of Cateaton's new building was a house for
the manager where Mr. Rigby Blair hoped seraphically
to dwell. He was a hospitable little creature and all
the thought he could spare from the circulation of cash
344 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
and credit and the behaviour of the money market was
devoted to the house-warming, or rather the house-
warmings he would give; one for men and potations,
and one for ladies and polite entertainment. When he
was stricken and Jamie had to go and see him every
day he would talk of little but the new building and his
house-warming and he wondered whether it would be
beneath the dignity of Cateaton's to have something
really convivial, and he even hinted that Jamie should
introduce some of "the Bohemians," beings who, to Mr.
Blair, lived in another and a nether world. They de-
cided that if it was to be "staff," then the Bohemians
could be admitted, but that, if the Directors were to be
invited, then the Bohemians could not come unless it
were professionally, to sing, recite and make music.
Clearly the little man was hoping for some dedication
with delight of the crown of his life work. He had
given the bank an entity, whereas in the old days it had
been merely the instrument of Elias Cateaton, to whom
it had been nothing compared with his own reputation.
To Jamie on the other hand it was merely the means of
getting his bread and butter and as he sat talking to his
chief he wondered how far the little man suspected him,
deciding finally that Mr. Blair was incapable of imagin-
ing any such thing. It would have been blasphemy to
him and that being so there was an irony, which Jamie
did not fail to appreciate, in his being marked out to
succeed to the managership and the house above the
new head office.
When Margaret called for him on the day after the
receipt of John's news he took her to see the new prem-
ises, where a horde of workpeople were hurrying to
catch up the time lost by the contractors. They en-
tered through the vast doors, and pushed open the new
MORLEY STREET TRANSFIGURED 345
swing doors leading to the vestibule by the counter. Be-
hind this were rows upon rows of desks, each with a
brass rail and a green lamp. "It is enormous," said
Margaret; "you'll feel lost in it." "I do," said Jamie.
"It's so impressive that I shrivel up in it. It frightens
me to think that I might one day be manager of all this,
seeing to it that not a penny goes through the place
without earning its little bit of interest." That was
beyond Margaret to whom money was still a miracle be-
yond the understanding of man.
He took her to see the Board-room and the Man-
ager's parlour where he would one day sit and advise
shrewd men and anxious ladies about their investments
and agree to loans on good tangible security, honesty
being no longer security enough, or rather the bank,
unlike Elias Cateaton, being no judge of honesty. He
showed her the drawers where the gold would be kept,
and the labyrinth of strong-rooms, some of them al-
ready in use. In one there were many bags of gold and
Margaret was tremendously impressed, and put on the
expression she wore in church, so that Jamie felt con-
firmed in his old notion that there was some kind of