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Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay cared when once he had bye with him. Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice, Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be such a coward.
He was, indeed, one of those few noblemen whose virtues gave to the aristocratic spirit, true grace and appropriate dignity, instead of degrading it, as too many of his caste do, by pride, arrogance, and selfishness. Sir Thomas Gourlay, on entering the magnificent library to which he was conducted, found his lordship in the act of attaching his signature to some papers.
He was a gentleman at heart, not a cad like Tozer; and this boy was the son of a girl whose laugh he remembered in the gloamings at Tenshillingland. "I beg your pardon, John," he said in heavy benevolence he had reached that stage "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you was interrupted." Gourlay felt his heart a lump in his throat, but he rushed into speech.
He cared as little for Wilson as for Gourlay; all he wanted was a contract for covering Wilson's holm with jerry-built houses, and a good commission on the year's carrying. It was for this he evolved the conspiracy to cripple Gourlay. Wilson's thoughts went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his comrade.
"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise to be a minister." Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he growled.
The silly bits of cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "God have mercy!" For a length of time there was a loaded silence. Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat.
Since his marriage there was a great change in the rubicund squireen. Hitherto he had lived in sluttish comfort on his own land, content with the little it brought in, and proud to be the friend of Gourlay, whom everybody feared. If it ever dawned on his befuddled mind that Gourlay turned the friendship to his own account, his vanity was flattered by the prestige he acquired because of it.
Oh, there are times when Gourlay makes little or noathing from the carrying; but then, ye see, it gies him a fine chance to annoy folk! If you ask him to bring ye ocht, 'Oh, he growls, 'I'll see if it suits my own convenience. And ye have to be content. He has made so much money of late that the pride of him's not to be endured."
I find it mentioned in the articles of distay against Ailsie Gourlay for it is some comfort to know that the old hag was tried, condemned, and burned on the top of North Berwick Law, by sentence of a commission from the privy council I find, I say, it was charged against her, among other offences, that she had, by the aid and delusions of Satan, shown to a young person of quality, in a mirror glass, a gentleman then abroad, to whom the said young person was betrothed, and who appeared in the vision to be in the act of bestowing his hand upon another lady.
Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you." Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window, his grin a rictus of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.
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