VI BARBIE

From Thrums and Drumtochty the blest to Barbie, which is also in Scotland, may be fairly described as a far cry. In the beautiful communities conceived by Drs. Barrie and Maclaren the milk of human nature flows like a river; everybody lives, not for his or her foolish self, but for somebody else; everybody dies for somebody else; all bachelors are faithful to the sweethearts of their youth “for forty year and more”; all the women make the best butter in Galloway; all the girls are pretty and angelic of temperament, and, in short, Thrums and Drumtochty are little bits of heaven dropped on to the map of Scotland. But Barbie is not of heavenly origin in the least. The chronicles of Barbie[93] have been put into print for us by Mr. George Douglas, and he calls his book The House with the Green Shutters. If he had wanted a just title for it, he might very well have called it “The Unspeakable Scot.” Nowhere in letters does there exist such an unsophisticated revelation of the minds and habits of a savage and barbarous people as is to be found in this book. It is fiction, of course; but it is that kind of fiction which has been written from observation, and is practically a human document. The Barbie crowd do not waste any time on little acts of kindness; there is not a man among them who cannot fairly be termed mean. If meanness were the only fault one might be able to put up with Barbie; but the inhabitants have graver failings. They are all dour; they are all bitter-hearted; they are all greedy; they are all merciless and full of the wickedest guile. Gourlay, who is the hero of the piece, counts among the most unpleasant persons one has ever met in a book. He has “the black glower in his een,” and all the[94] Scotch qualities of envy, hatred, overweening pride, and tyranny find full expression in him. For years he has trampled the rest of Barbie under his feet, and all Barbie hates him. “He had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen—oh, yes—he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab, and could never be provost, or bailie, or elder, or even chairman of the gasworks! ‘Oh, verra well, verra well, let Connal and Brodie and Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town’s affairs’ (he was damned if they should manage his!); he, for his part, preferred the substantial reality.” So that he treated Barbie with contempt; he had a civil word for nobody, and his manners were as bad as only Scotch manners can be. It was these very manners, however, that helped to bring about his downfall. One fine morning a stranger walked into Barbie; he was a Scotchman, and in his appearance there was “an air of dirty and pretentious well-to-doness,” which is the Scotch way.[95] Well, this stranger ran up against Mr. Gourlay.

“‘It’s a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay!’ simpered the stranger. His air was that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on the weather with his laird.

“Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.

“‘Is that your opinion?’ said he. ‘I fail to see ’t mysel’.…’

“The stranger laughed, a little deprecating giggle. ‘I meant it was fine weather for the fields,’ he explained.…

“‘Are you a farmer, then?’ Gourlay nipped in, with his eye on the white waistcoat.

“‘Oh—oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi—hi! I’m not a farmer. I daresay, now, you have no mind of me!’

“‘No,’ said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his dark eyes. ‘I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering you!’

“‘Man, I’m a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee!’

[96]

“‘Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!’ said contemptuous Gourlay. ‘What’s this they christened him now? “Toddling Johnnie,” was it noat?’

“Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the awkwardness of the remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure might provoke.

“But, though Wilson was not a handy man, it was not timidity only that caused his tame submission to Gourlay.…”

Here you have the two types of Scotchmen presented in speaking likenesses, namely, the bully, primed with “repressiveness” and “force of character,” and the giggling lickspittle who does not know how to fight and consequently falls back on livid revenges.

Later, Wilson ventures on a remark about business. Gourlay retorts:

“‘Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny’s son[97] know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him setting up his face there and asking the best merchant in the town whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place, the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!’

“For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson’s manner that offended Gourlay—as if mole-catcher’s son and monopolist were discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.

“‘Business!’ he said, gravely. ‘Well, I’m not well acquainted with your line, but I believe mole-traps are cheap—if ye have any idea of taking up the oald trade!’

“Wilson’s eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth opened—then shut—then he decided to speak after all. ‘Oh, I was thinking Barbie would be very quiet,’ said he, ‘compared wi’ places where they have the railway! I was thinking it would need stirring up a bit.’

“‘Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?’[98] birred Gourlay, with a stupid man’s repetition of his jibe. ‘Well, I believe there’s a grand opening in the moleskin line, so there’s a chance for ye! My quarrymen wear out their breeks in no time!’

“Wilson’s face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white. ‘Good morning!’ he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of his stick upon the wet road.

“Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!’ Gourlay birred after him; ‘goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!’ He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put the branks on Wilson!”

In spite of his smallness and rattiness, Wilson is not without his Scotch feelings, so that he goes away and schemes. And the end of his scheming is that he becomes a trade rival of Gourlay’s in Barbie. Perhaps man never had a more unscrupulous or fiendishly cunning trade rival. The end of it is that Gourlay is brought to the verge of bankruptcy and dies miserably, while Barbie is left to go on its wicked way rejoicing. This[99] fight between two ugly natures is watched by the population of Barbie with great zest; the combatants are continually egged on by the sarcastic comments of the neebors, who practically hate them both as they hate one another. And the result is a picture which rivals in hideousness anything of the kind which has hitherto been attempted. From The House with the Green Shutters one is able to gather what life in a Scotch township really means. One understands, too, how it comes to pass that the Scotchmen one meets in London are so wanting in the qualities which render communication between men possible and tolerable. Persons who have spent their youth in such a township as Barbie must of necessity have altogether wrong views about life and the reason for it. Their hand is against every man; to get and to keep by fair means or foul is their sole ambition, and of the finer feelings which keep existence sweet they know absolutely nothing. It is a squalid picture, and not in the least flattering to Scotland. Yet the Scotch[100] critics have not ventured to deny its authenticity; indeed, they admit that there is a great deal in it. Mr. Douglas, the author of The House with the Green Shutters, is himself a Scotchman, and to malign his country is about the last thing you may expect from a Scotch writer; his tendency usually is the other way. To put Thrums, Drumtochty, and Barbie into one vessel, as it were, to mix them and make a blend of them is probably to get at the truth about the Scot as he lives and moves in his native element. And when one has done this, one can only imagine that the average Scotchman is a compound of two things,—to wit, the knave and the fool.