"What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"
John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries. The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment, to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.
He turned his son round with a finger and thumb on his shoulder, in insolent inspection, as you turn an urchin round to see him in his new suit of clothes. Then he crouched before him, his face thrust close to the other, and peered into his eyes, his mouth distent with an infernal smile. "My boy, Johnny," he said sweetly, "my boy, Johnny," and patted him gently on the cheek. John raised dull eyes and looked into his father's. Far within him a great wrath was gathering through his fear. Another voice, another self, seemed to whimper, with dull iteration, "I'll kill him; I'll kill him; by God, I'll kill him—if he doesna stop this—if he keeps on like this at me!" But his present and material self was paralyzed with fear.
"Open your mouth!" came the snarl—"wider, damn ye! wider!"
"Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's the Latin for throat?"
"Guttur," said John.
"Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like a cesspool! What have you been doing till't? I'm afraid ye aren't in very good health, after a-all.... Eh?... Mrs. Gourla', Mrs. Gourla'! He's in very bad case, this son of yours, Mrs. Gourla'! Fine I ken what he needs, though.—Set out the brandy, Jenny, set out the brandy," he roared; "whisky's not worth a damn for him! Stop; it was you gaed the last time—it's your turn now, auld wife, it's your turn now! Gang for the brandy to your twa John Gourla's. We're a pair for a woman to be proud of!"
He gazed after his wife as she tottered to the pantry.
"Your skirt's on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that; and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy—though I never got them. However, I maunna compleen when ye bore sic a braw son to my name. He's a great consolation! Imphm, he is that—a great consolation!"
The brandy bottle slipped from the quivering fingers and was smashed to pieces on the floor.