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Updated: May 1, 2025
"Now that's interesting," said Mr. Heritage. "You're obsessed by a particular type of landscape. Ever read Freud?" Dickson shook his head. "Well, you've got an odd complex somewhere. I wonder where the key lies. Cape woods two rivers moor behind. Ever been in love, Dogson?" Mr. McCunn was startled.
Dickson had come to the conclusion that he was on the wrong road, when he was summoned by a voice which seemed to arise out of the ground. "Who goes there?" "What's that you say?" "Who goes there?" The point of a pole was held firmly against his chest. "I'm Mr. McCunn, a friend of Dougal's." "Stand, friend." The shadow before him whistled and another shadow appeared.
"I've always said there's no longer head in the city of Glasgow than McCunn. An old-fashioned firm, but it has aye managed to keep up with the times. He's just retired, they tell me, and in my opinion it's a big loss to the provision trade...." Dickson's heart glowed within him. Here was Romance; to be praised incognito; to enter a casual inn and find that fame had preceded him.
He had been three times chairman at Burns Anniversary dinners, and had delivered orations in eulogy of the national Bard; not because he greatly admired him he thought him rather vulgar but because he took Burns as an emblem of the un-Burns-like literature which he loved. Mr. McCunn was no scholar and was sublimely unconscious of background.
McCunn, having delivered his defence of the bourgeoisie, rose abruptly and went to bed. He felt jarred and irritated. His innocent little private domain had been badly trampled by this stray bull of a poet.
As it chanced he had been talking about him that very morning to a gentleman from London. "The strength of this city," he had said, tapping his eyeglasses on his knuckles, "does not lie in its dozen very rich men, but in the hundred or two homely folk who make no parade of wealth. Men like Dickson McCunn, for example, who live all their life in a semi-detached villa and die worth half a million."
A solitary bagman shared the meal, who revealed the fact that he was in the grocery line. There followed a well-informed and most technical conversation. He was drawn to speak of the United Supply Stores, Limited, of their prospects and of their predecessor, Mr. McCunn, whom he knew well by repute but had never met. "Yon's the clever one." he observed.
McCunn had no gift of nursing anger, and was very susceptible to apologies. "That's all right," he murmured. "Don't mention it. I'm wondering what brought you down here, for it's off the road." "Caprice. Pure caprice. I liked the look of this butt-end of nowhere." "Same here. I've aye thought there was something terrible nice about a wee cape with a village at the neck of it and a burn each side."
The candid grey eyes were looking straight at Dickson, who managed to bring his own shy orbs to meet them. He thought that he detected a shade of hesitation. Then Mr. Loudon got up from his chair and stood on the hearthrug looking down at his visitor. He laughed, with some embarrassment, but ever so pleasantly. "I really don't know what you will think of me, Mr. McCunn.
As he gazed at his simulacrum he stopped whistling "Roy's Wife" and let his countenance harden into a noble sternness. Then he laughed, and observed in the language of his youth that there was "life in the auld dowg yet." In that moment the soul of Mr. McCunn conceived the Great Plan. The first sign of it was that he swept all his business garments unceremoniously on to the floor.
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