fish !" Ostentatiously every five minutes Tom drew from
his waistcoat pocket a new gold watch, which when he
left Murray Street that morning he had not possessed.
"I'll have a gold watch by I'm twenty-one," said John
to himself. "I am tired, Margaret," said Andrew at
last. "May I keep Tom here to-night ?" ''Yes, An-
drew," replied she sadly and with all the spirit let out of
her. "Yes, Andrew, you may. He was brave with the
crowd, wasn't he?" Tom smiled. "They've spoiled my
evening for me," growled Andrew and still not a word
did he speak to John. Tom nodded good-night to him.
Oh! he was pleased with himself, was Tom!
As she rose to go Margaret murmured that perhaps the
omnibus would not be running. Andrew growled out
that she could hire a fly at his expense as far as the
Town Hall, and he asked Tom to tell John to go and
fetch one. "I'll bring it to the gate, mother, if you'll
walk down there," said John, for he was resolved never
to enter his uncle's house again.
The omnibus was standing derelict in the road as he
ran out. Every pane of glass in it was shattered and
the shafts were broken. John said to himself: ''They
should have brought down the house about his ears. I
would : indeed I would." His mortification got the bet-
ter of him and his eyes filled with tears, and later on he
was clattering back in the fly over the cobbles and his
mother said to him : "See ! what trouble you have caused
and how good your uncle is to Tom. He has given him
a gold watch/' He could not keep back his tears and
CLIBRAN HALL 131
his mother consoling him stroked his hands and told him
that all would come right in the end when he was a man
and understood the world better. She said: "Tom
will put things right with your uncle and explain to him
that you did not mean to hurt his feelings, but were only
anxious to do your share in advancing the family." The
last half of her observation touched John to the quick,
explained to him what he had not properly understood
himself, but his gratitude for such sympathy was at once
wiped out by her insistence on Andrew's feelings and
ignorance of his own. He gulped down his tears and his
little chin stiffened and he stoked up his personal ambi-
tion so that it burned away his desire to serve the family.
At the Town Hall they discharged the fly and drove
home in silence to Murray Street. Neither said a word
to Jamie of what had happened. Jamie looked in as John
was getting into bed. "Is it Murdoch's?" he asked.
"Murdoch's it is," replied John.
CHAPTER XIV
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG
MAGGIE was a marvel with her needle. At the age
of twelve she had astonished Kirkcudbright with
her sampler done in single stitch on silk canvas, birds,
dogs, flowers, lettering all done amazingly: a work of
art. She could darn linen so that it almost needed a
magnify ing-glass to detect the repair: she could em-
broider: she could make lace: she would work shawls
for her mother which it was hard to tell from the best
Indian work : she would knit socks and singlets for her
brothers. She could draw too and earned thirty shillings
by doing fifteen pictures of Jerusalem from different
aspects to illustrate a lecture given by a missionary home
for his holidays from Madras. She could also carve in
wood, and she was continually adding to her accomplish-
ments : illuminated lettering : painting on china : crysto-
leum painting: and, although she could hardly tell one
note from another, she taught herself to play hymn tunes
on the harmonium. Her misfortune had left her so shy
that she was almost inarticulate and only Tom was able
to get more than four consecutive words out of her. For
all that she had many friends, possessing, like her mother,
the Scots talent for making the English take her at her
own valuation.
The Greigs were Scotch but they had been so easily
132
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG 133
successful and had married so well that they had never
needed to employ this talent. From being left in abey-
ance it had withered away and they had become Eng-
lish. One Angus Greig had invented a standard pattern
for printed calico and also a kind of thin cotton stuff of
which India demanded millions of bales yearly. So suc-
cessful was this family that they did not live in Thrigsby
but far north among the fells and lakes of Westmoreland.
However, they were Scotch enough to be aware of all
their relations and curious about them. They admitted
Andrew's authority as head of the English branch of
the Clan Keith, though they were not altogether in fa-
vour with him because they continued to know the
Allison-Greigs after Hubert of that family had run
away with his (Andrew's) wife.
When in town Mrs. Donald Greig called on Mrs. Nicol
Lawrie and subsequently Maggie was invited to stay at
Lowrigg. The invitation was accepted. Maggie went
and never returned except for an occasional visit. The
change was never officially acknowledged. Murray Street
was home to Maggie, though she was not there above six
weeks in the year. She had seen her chance and taken
it, and was governess, housekeeper, confidante, religious
adviser, moral sweetener, and buffer against her husband
to Mrs. Donald.
In Murray Street her absence was hardly noticed. She
was always referred to in the family as though she were
on the point of returning or indeed in the house. Only
Margaret fidgeted if a week passed without a letter from
her, as she never did if Mary omitted to write. And
Maggie served the family by opening up the Greig man-
sions as a holiday ground for her brothers, who were
glad enough to escape from their offices to the company
of these people who were rich enough to bear their
134 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
wealth easily and cultured enough to have charming peo-
ple and even, occasionally, distinguished people staying in
their houses. A week among them would help Jamie to
hold his head up. He could forget his mill and sit drink-
ing in the talk to which he dared never contribute, so
busy was he turning over in his mind the ideas thrown
out. He was so happy in it that his happiness seemed to
him contribution enough. The women were so sweet,
so elegant, so graceful that he felt unworthy to speak
to them and when they spoke to him, as they must, be-
cause he was so handsome, he would blush and stam-
mer. In vain did Maggie convey to him the compli-
mentary remarks they made about him. These did but
increase his ecstasy and his bashfulness. A cluster of
beauties were these ladies, married and maiden, to him.
They did not exist for him but rather hovered in the
enchanted world which was his holiday. And slowly
one of them became, for him, disengaged from the group,
Agnes Allison-Greig, though he was hardly sensible of
her name. She took shape for him and he had for her
an adoration so tyrannical over his emotions that had
she ever become aware of it he must have died. He did
not even want her to know of it; it was his ecstasy, a
swooning bliss of which he dared hardly become aware
himself. Had he become aware of it, had he admitted
it, the idea must have been ridiculous for him, for this
was the quality of his mind that an idea in becoming
clear had but its moment of beauty and then faded into
absurdity. Therefore Miss Agnes remained shadowy
to him and excepted from the thoughts and emotions
of his everyday life. She was a part of the scene, as
essential to it as the light of the sun. When she was
away the lake, the beck, the fall, the green and grey
fells lost half their beauty, though not their enchant-
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG 135
inent. He would spend hours sitting at the window and
resented the activities of the rest of the company who
were always forcing him to go riding or walking or
sailing on the lake or to take part in a game of croquet
or Badminton. He could enjoy those too, but not with
the sweet torment of his contemplation.
After a week of such happiness he could return to
Thrigsby and the mill without resentment. The squalor,
the blind fury of work, even the human misery that
hemmed him in there seemed to be almost a necessary
complement of the severe dignity of the fells. His
humour which in the northern beauty vanished, came
rushing back upon him as soon as he set foot in the
streets of the dirty town. He was never at the Greigs'
with his brothers. The place where they lived became
his sanctuary, the image of his most secret activity,
which, faintly though he was aware of it, he regarded
as peculiar to himself. He wrote many verses, some of
which were published in The Thrigsby Post over the
signature, Quintus Flumen.
He began to discover beauty in Thrigsby, more es-
pecially on windy wet days when clouds were blown
through the rising smoke and the pale sunlight would
gleam down upon the tall chimneys, and the men and
women in the streets would look pinched and shrunken
and the sprawling mass of the town had only an obscure
and menacing significance. Thrigsby only hurt and of-
fended him when the light was clear and it stood out
harsh, confident and blatant. This did not often hap-
pen, and it was for the most part covered in the ob-
scurity of its own creation, an obscurity which, it seemed
to Jamie, crept into and darkened the minds of all who
lived in it. He had gusts of an aimless passion which
set him aching and throbbing and left him with a fine
136 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
poetic melancholy, which would so disturb his mother
that she would secretly give him Epsom salts in the
morning and she would talk him over with Tibby who
would say: "He's no ordinary man." Margaret's chief
concern was that, whereas Tom and John were always
talking of their success in business and bringing home
tales of commendation passed by their superiors, Jamie
never breathed a word of what passed at the mill. She
was horrified and scared when she heard from Mrs.
Leslie, her most devoted admirer, that Jamie was often
to be seen in the company of the "wicked" Hubert Alli-
son-Greig, who had had the effrontery several years
before, after the death of Andrew Keith's wife, to re-
turn to Thrigsby and start a weekly paper in which he
criticised the city fathers, the church, the political
parties, the architecture, the local school of painters,
everything in the town from its music to its scavenging.
"He! He! Mrs. Lawrie," said Mrs. Leslie. "You
can't always tell a man by the company he keeps, can
you? Birds that flock together aren't always of the
same feather, are they? Yet I couldn't be fonder of
James, not if he were my own son." "My sons," said
Margaret, "would never do anything of which they
were ashamed to tell me." "And yet he was seen with
that Allison-Greig." "I don't believe it," said Margaret.
Yet she did believe it, and locked it up in her breast,
and used it to account for Jamie's reticence. She said
nothing to him but told herself that the scoundrel Hu-
bert was preying on her son's innocence in a base at-
tempt to worm his way back into the family. In time
Jamie would see through this transparent villainy and
would discard the schemer. Her dread, however, was
lest Andrew should hear of it.
Jamie had no such thought. He liked Hubert be-
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG 137
cause he was a nice man and amusing and Jamie was
as incapable of suspecting others of intrigue as of deal-
ing in it himself. Mrs. Andrew was dead, her story was,
for him, dead with her. Hubert had a portrait of her
in his rooms. Very beautiful she was, but he never
spoke of her, though in speaking of women generally
he was chivalrous and tender, caustic and vitriolic in
his references to the virtuous and oppressive husbands
of Thrigsby. Besides, he knew amusing men, good
talkers and good livers, who liked their Thrigsby for
the entertainment it provided and the strange characters
it harboured, and never took it seriously. They had
admired the verses of Quintus Flumen and accepted
Jamie on the strength of them though they could never
get a word out of him. He was much too frightened
of them.
Hubert's view was that a man must oblige the world
to get his living, but that, having got it, it was his own
affair. This suited Jamie's feelings until he found that
Hubert was an atheist. Then he was alarmed. God
had made Scotland, the lakes and fells of Westmore-
land, and Agnes. To doubt or to deny God was offen-
sively ungrateful. Everything that was not Scotland,
Westmoreland or Agnes was to be endured. Hubert,
however, said it was to be enjoyed and would not hear
of any cleavages between the human and the divine.
He made his young cousin read a book called The Ves-
tiges of Creation. It merely had the effect of freezing
his idealism and made him so uncomfortable that to
save himself he denied science altogether, and, to his
mother's delight, had a violent religious phase, in which
she imagined him to be praying for strength to resist
temptation. The result of this was that Jamie, in his
agony, begot a clear idea of the God of the Anglican
138 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
Church, which met the usual fate of his ideas, when
clarified. He was not and could not be an atheist, that
is, a sceptic, but he was now able to appreciate Hubert's
criticisms of things Thrigsbeian, and to understand that
things as they appear are not always things as they are,
which again are not necessarily what they should be.
He took this revelation much to heart, was very uncom-
fortable about it and puzzled to find Hubert taking it
so good-humouredly. How could a man believe The
Vestiges of Creation and live? Hubert squeezed him
into an utterance of this sentiment and countered with :
"How can a man believe in the Bible and live? No,
my dear James, what people believe is what they do.
Which comes first? Believing or doing? Ah! There
you have me. And why, if people must do what they
believe, should I waste energy in criticising them? Be-
cause I can tolerate everything except hypocrisy. And
why not hypocrisy? People believe in that too." Jamie
was aware of the circuitous ways of other people's
minds, but had not connected them with hypocrisy. He
was generally benevolent in his use of words, and hypo-
crite meant to him something so detestable that he could
never apply it to anyone he knew. On the other hand,
he knew very little of those with whom he associated.
Those he loved he never dreamed of criticising or ana-
lysing and he loved anyone who was amiable to him.
Those whom he did not love were only the furniture of
his world, necessary but uninteresting. No one had ever
occupied his thoughts so much as Hubert did now and
from Hubert, with his lively wit, his deep experience,
his genial mockery, there came a current of feeling,
pure and cold, which braced Jamie's emotions and made
him begin to realise that life was not going to be the
simple affair he had imagined. And why not? It was
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG 139
simple enough for Tom and John : or it seemed so : they
got what they wanted or they wanted what they got.
Both were doing well in their respective firms. Tom
was already a buyer ; John was travelling for Murdoch's ;
while he remained at the mill. To be sure he was mak-
ing as much money as either, but why did he stay while
they moved on, and went from one kind of work to
another? He propounded the problem to Hubert who
said : "Either you are later in maturing' than they are,
or you are fundamentally not interested." "But I am"
cried Jamie, "I am interested. I came here to make a
career for myself and I mean to succeed. It would
break my mother's heart if any of us were to fail. I've
done well at the mill. I found the manager who was
there when I went out in a fraud. There was a fore-
man and a buyer in it too. I expected to be promoted
for it, but I was not. Another manager was appointed
and I stayed on." "Did you ask to be promoted?" said
Hubert. "I did not. I expected it." "Then you don't
know either your Thrigsby or your Andrew. You can't
expect the world to see your extraordinary merit with-
out its being pointed out and Andrew certainly won't
perceive your virtues unless you make it plain to him
that you are fully aware of his." "But I don't lick his
or any other man's boots." '"That," said Hubert, "is
not what your Andrew requires. What he wants is an
admission that he is in the strong position, a position to
have his boots licked by anyone who is mean enough
to do it. Acknowledge his position, my dear James,
make it clear to him that you have too much respect
for yourself to lick his boots and he will regard you as
worthy of consideration." "I never thought for a mo-
ment of his position. He is my mother's brother."
"He is a rich Englishman," said Hubert, "at a time when
140 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
it is generally believed that a rich Englishman is the
noblest work of God." "That," replied Jamie, "is not
my belief. My belief is that the noblest work of God
is a good woman." "God save us!" cried Hubert.
"You're a pilgrim, a-looking for the phoenix. And if
you act on your belief you will be left in the wilderness.
It is a faith entirely unsuited to these islands, where the
pirates of all nations come to settle. You'll walk the
plank, my James." Jamie felt extremely miserable, as
though he were damned from the beginning. "God help
me," he thought, "perhaps I'm only a fool." He looked
so woebegone that Hubert took pity on him and com-
forted him, saying: "No, no, you know better than
the rest, that is all, even if you don't do better or as
well, and you are worth fifty Andrews, for you have
something of the artist in you and good can come of
your harm, whereas from Andrew's good only harm
can come. He is a trader, a skilful trader, but because
he claims authority for his trade all his works are mis-
chievous." Jamie's emotions got the better of him and
he said: "You must have hated him. ; ' "Once upon a
time," said Hubert. "Yes, But that's all done. I found
the marks he had left on a good woman: the mark of
the beast." He laughed. "By their women ye may
know them. It all comes down to flesh and blood at
last, though they have their Gods, and their money, and
their ideas." "Ideas!" says Jamie. "Do you scoff at
ideas?" He had imagined Hubert to be a philosopher.
"I'll scoff at anything that feeds the conceit of a
man," said Hubert. "Aye, even at youth and chivalry
if they be so debased." 'Jamie winced. Hubert was
not being encouraging. If a man was to have no God,
no ideas, no money to speak of, how was he to com-
municate with his fellow-men who believed in all these
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG 141
things ? And yet Hubert was amazingly nice, so human,
so quick to respond, quicker than anyone else. And
surely if that were so, it did not matter much if his
words were bewildering. Jamie tried to say so. He was
deeply moved. Hubert said : "Have you no nice vulgar
friends you can go with? Religion is really very bad
for a young man. God is for people who are fit for
Him, like Spinoza." "Who?" asked Jamie. "An old
Dutch Jew who polished lenses and really did under-
stand the God of his tribe. But then he took some
trouble about it. I should try human beings if I were
you, even if you are Scotch. That is not always in-
curable. The Greigs were cured by marrying decent
Englishwomen, and learning how to be lovers and hus-
bands. To be sure they had a genius in the family
which the Keiths never had, though they all think a
successful man must be a genius. That's young of
course. A young man mistakes the conceit with which
he is bursting, for genius, or, at any rate, overpowering
talent. It takes an honest man to acknowledge the mis-
take." Jamie felt his bowels turn to water. He had
been touched on the raw. Suppose he had made that
mistake, and suppose he should not be honest enough
to admit it ! To make sure he admitted it then and there
and mentally recorded the fact that he was not a genius.
Of course he made a reservation in favour of over-
powering talent, which might or might not show itself
in the future, if t>ut he was modest about this it had
not already done so. He was not at all sure that he
liked Hubert setting the Greigs above the Keiths. After
all, the Keiths had come first. It was they who had
opened up the way for the Greigs: and genius was an
accident for which no family was entitled to take credit
to itself as it surely might for adherence to virtue, in-
142 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
dustry and right-living. No: there was stuff in the
Keiths, and then, Hubert knew nothing at all about
the Lawries, who had yet to prove themselves, and
would! It was to this loyalty that Jamie always re-
turned from his perplexities and with the hope it gave
him he went on at his mill confident that he would one
day emerge to astonish both the Keiths and the Greigs.
By force of habit he became rather attached to the mill ;
"Cat Oil," as the hands called it because it had a hole
in the door by which the night watchman's cat went in
and out. He was quite fond of the hands too, perpetu-
ally astonished at their good humour, their easy ways
with each other, their stubborn assertive independence.
There were rich men at Hyde Bridge who had been mill
hands in their youth. Their brothers, their nephews
were still mill hands, but they all met at chapel on Sun-
days and that equality was not forgotten during the
week. As he penetrated more deeply into their lives
Jamie sometimes felt obscurely ashamed of the feeling
of superiority which he could not bring himself to relin-
quish. And he could not help contrasting some of the
mill-owners with his uncle. They took their profits
even as he did, but they did not do it with the air of be-
ing divinely inspired so to do. They thanked God for
it on Sundays even as Andrew did, but they were humble
about it, and not so sure of being heard. When he
thought so Jamie found the figure of Hubert looming
large in his mind, and thinking it over, he would come
to envy of his young brother John who had defied An-
drew and made the first assertion of the Lawriean prin-
ciple of the universe, denying both the egoism of the
Keiths and the luck of the Greigs. Attempting to de-
fine the Lawriean principle he fumbled about with the
words good sense intelligence honesty human for-
GREIG AND ALLISON-GREIG 143
bearance; but none of them satisfied his desire. He sat
at his desk in the mill looking down into the dirty yard
where the lorries were loaded and unloaded. The light
he loved was over the rectangular buildings and the tall
chimneys, the pale light coming and going through the
heavy torn clouds and the pall of smoke. These words
might do very well in business but beyond that lay so
much 'life love warmth order. That last was the
word. It implied something created and to his imagina-
tion there appeared two shadowy women : Agnes of the
lake, and Elizabeth who had married Andrew Keith and
loved Hubert Allison-Greig. Through women, he
thought, or rather dreamed, for he was beyond thought,
would the Lawriean principle be asserted. When he re-
turned to his sober senses he felt that he had got the
better of Tom and John, of Hubert and Andrew and was
his own man again. As for the mill the mill could
go to the devil for all he cared, if it should prove to be
not the way to his desire. He worked no more that day
but wrote a letter of eight pages to his sister Mary, tell-
ing her of the revelation that had come upon him.
When he had written it he tore it up, thinking that
Mary was living among clever men and would despise
his thoughts. Before he went home he had written a
poem to Agnes, but it was rather fleshly, so he altered
it and addressed it to Elizabeth.
CHAPTER XV
MARGARET DISSATISFIED
AFTER her defeat at the hands of her youngest son
and her humiliation by her brother Margaret be-
gan to have a contempt for Thrigsby and showed it by
taking a keener interest in Mary than in any other mem-
ber of her family. She began to talk of "My daughter
in Edinburgh Christopher North she lodges in the
same house as that occupied by De Quincey, and all her
friends are literary men and so intellectual, though not
above having their joke, if my daughter writes truly."
She was disappointed and keenly anxious about Jamie.
Tom she knew was saving money and John still gave
her every week a fourth of his earnings, a few shillings
of which were regularly put by towards that fund which
should enable her one day to do without her pension and
pay back every penny she had ever had. Jamie paid
the bills but kept secret as to what he did with the rest.
It was very little, but Margaret could not know that.
So she was unhappy, poor woman, though not so