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. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of my life I've made—that auld trollop for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my dochter! Was it I that bred him? That!"
He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.
"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and I must have a drink together—to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to celebrate the occeesion!"
The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression. They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface. Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter, a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim which he would not kill.
"Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear. "What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits—just to shelebrate the joyful occeesion, ye know—ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful occeesion!"
Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.
Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a night o't—we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"
"Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.