The House With the Green Shutters (21 page)

Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been
through it too!

"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a
thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness
in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material
never seem to feel. 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. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass
away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know
the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often the
most genial men; unworried by the transient, they can smile and wait,
sure of their eternal aim. 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!"

And that, on a lower level, was what whisky did. He had no conception
of what Tam really meant; there were people, indeed, who used to think
that Tam never knew what he meant himself. They were as little able as
Gourlay to appreciate the mystic, through the radiant haze of whose mind
thoughts loomed on you sudden and big, like mountain tops in a sunny
mist, the grander for their dimness. 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. The wretched puddles by the way, the
frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the
street, were passed unheeded by. His distracted powers rallied home; he
was concentrate, his own man again, the hero of his musing mind. For,
like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of
which he was the towering lord. The weakling who never "downed" men in
reality was always "downing" them in thought. His imaginary triumphs
consoled him for his actual rebuffs. As he walked in a tipsy dream, he
was "standing up" to somebody, hurling his father's phrases at him,
making short work of
him
! If imagination paled, the nearest tavern
supplied a remedy, and flushed it to a radiant glow. Whereupon he had
become the master of his world, and not its slave.

"Just imagine," he thought, "whisky doing for me what philosophy seems
to do for Tam. It's a wonderful thing the drink!"

His second session wore on, and when near its close Tam gave out the
subject for the Raeburn.

The Raeburn was a poor enough prize—a few books for an "essay in the
picturesque;" but it had a peculiar interest for the folk of Barbie.
Twenty years ago it was won four years in succession by men from the
valley; and the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter
when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was sure to be
asked very pointedly, "Who won the Raeburn the year?" to rub into him
their perception that he at least had been a failure. 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. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the
"fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give
him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never
met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more
emotional districts of the North, where it pleases them to shed the
tear.

"An Arctic Night" was the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Raeburn.

"A very appropriate subject!" laughed the fellows; "quite in the style
of his own lectures." For Tam, though wise and a humorist, had his prosy
hours. He used to lecture on the fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth
(so he parcelled the unhappy Queen), and he would announce quite
gravely, "We will now approach the discussion of the eleventh feature of
the lady."

Gourlay had a shot at the Raeburn. He could not bring a radiant fullness
of mind to bear upon his task (it was not in him to bring), but his
morbid fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw a lonely little town
far off upon the verge of Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a
darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy
splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his
ears the skirl of the man who went overboard—struck dead by the icy
water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk.

He put his hand to his own brow when he wrote that, and, "Yes," he cried
eagerly, "it would be the
cold
would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it
would go in!"

A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each
other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments
tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift
the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came
a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet
there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles
of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown
shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at
the helm.

"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it
all—that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an
icicle!"

Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen
small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them
in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity
for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.

"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy
me before the whole class for doing so little o't."

The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors),
rated quality higher than quantity.

"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of
the session—"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in
on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"

"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.

"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"

A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls
of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.

"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said
Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a
place to bray in."

The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.

"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of
you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most,
but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman—he
has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam,
and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr.
Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the
island of South Uist—has sent me in no less than a hundred and
fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the
adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and
dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the
MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"—he gloomed at them
humorously—"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of
laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat
there was pandemonium). MacTavish was heard to groan, "Oh, why tid I
leave my home!" to which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, "Why
tid you cross ta teep?" The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.

When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed with a quiver in his
voice, for "ta pold MacTavish" had tickled him too. "Now, gentlemen," he
said, "I don't judge essays by their weight, though I'm told they
sometimes pursue that method in Glasgow!"

(Groans for the rival University, cries of "Oh-oh-oh!" and a weary
voice, "Please, sir, don't mention that place; it makes me feel quite
ill.")

The Professor allayed the tumult with dissuasive palm.

"I believe," he said dryly, "you call that noise of yours 'the College
Tramp;' in the Senatus we speak o't as 'the Cuddies' Trudge.' Now
gentlemen, I'm not unwilling to allow a little noise on the last day of
the session, but really you must behave more quietly.—So little does
that method of judging essays commend itself to me, I may tell you, that
the sketch which I consider the best barely runs to half a dozen short
pages."

Young Gourlay's heart gave a leap within him; he felt it thudding on his
ribs. The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils.
Gillespie wondered why his breast heaved.

"It's a curious sketch," said the Professor. "It contains a serious
blunder in grammar and several mistakes in spelling, but it shows, in
some ways, a wonderful imagination."

"Ho, ho!" thought Gourlay.

"Of course there are various kinds of imagination," said Tam. "In its
lowest form it merely recalls something which the eyes have already
seen, and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form pictures
something which you never saw, but only conceived as a possible
existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees but
hears—actually hears what a man would say on a given occasion, and
entering into his blood, tells you exactly why he does it. The highest
form is both creative and consecrative, if I may use the word, merging
in diviner thought. It irradiates the world. Of that high power there is
no evidence in the essay before me. To be sure there was little occasion
for its use."

Young Gourlay's thermometer went down.

"Indeed," said Aquinas, "there's a curious want of bigness in the
sketch—no large nobility of phrase. It is written in gaspy little
sentences, and each sentence begins 'and'—'and'—'and,' like a
schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the
writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape
him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the
thing—faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The
writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words—lucky if it
glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch
there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It displays, indeed,
too nervous a sense of the external world."

"Name, name!" cried the students, who were being deliberately worked by
Tam to a high pitch of curiosity.

"I would strongly impress on the writer," said the shepherd, heedless of
his bleating sheep—"I would strongly impress on the writer to set
himself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought.
That almost morbid perception, with philosophy to back it, might create
an opulent and vivid mind. Without philosophy it would simply be a
curse. With philosophy it would bring thought the material to work on.
Without philosophy it would simply distract and irritate the mind."

"Name, name!" cried the fellows.

"The winner of the Raeburn," said Thomas Aquinas, "is Mr. John Gourlay."

Gourlay and his friends made for the nearest public-house. The
occasion, they thought, justified a drink. The others chaffed Gourlay
about Tam's advice.

"You know, Jack," said Gillespie, mimicking the sage, "what you have got
to do next summer is to set yourself down for a spell of real, hard,
solid, and deliberate thought. That was Tam's advice, you know."

"Him and his advice!" said Gourlay.

There were only four other passengers dropped by the eleven o'clock
express at Skeighan station, and, as it happened, young Gourlay knew
them all. They were petty merchants of the neighbourhood whom he had
often seen about Barbie. The sight of their remembered faces as he
stepped on to the platform gave him a delightful sense that he was
nearing home. He had passed from the careless world where he was nobody
at all to the familiar circle where he was a somebody, a mentioned man,
and the son of a mentioned man—young Mr. Gourlay!

He had a feeling of superiority to the others, too, because they were
mere local journeyers, while he had travelled all the way from mighty
Edinburgh by the late express. He was returning from the outer world,
while they were bits of bodies who had only been to Fechars. As
Edinburgh was to Fechars so was he to them. Round him was the halo of
distance and the mystery of night-travelling. He felt big.