CHAPTER SIX
Circumstance rather than circumspection was accountable for the fact that Macgregor followed the elusive, winding trail of love alone. The tender adventures of our ’teens usually consist in encounters between two boys and two girls; two friends who tacitly admit that they want to meet the girls; two friends who pretend that they do not want to see the boys at any distance; and to sum up, two pairs of young human beings with but a single thought—themselves. Also it may happen, now and then, that for lack of likelier company Prince Charming goes hunting with Master Fathead, while Princess Lilian Rose lays the scent along with Miss Gooseberry, which but adds plausibility to the assumption that neither sex has the courage of its inclinations. For to be honest, there is no cowardice like that of lad’s love; no hypocrisy like that of lass’s. But, surely, you remember! And if so it happened that in your own day you, perforce, fared solitary to the chase, you will sympathise all the more with the unheroic hero of this slight record.
In this respect Macgregor was not fortunate in his male friends. The oldest thereof, Willie Thomson, openly contemned the female sex, not omitting his aunt; the others confined their gallantries to the breezy pastimes of pushing girls off the sidewalk, bawling pleasantries after them, and guffawing largely at their own wit or the feminine repartee. Their finer instincts were doubtless still dormant. The only mortals worthy of respect were sundry more or less prominent personages whose feet or fists were their fortunes. In these days the adoration of the active by the inert is, one hopes, at its zenith of inflation. Again, to put it now in metaphor, Macgregor’s friends could do with a brass band in scarlet uniform all the time, but they had no use for a secret orchestra of muted strings. All of which was perfectly natural—just as natural as Macgregor’s inexplicable preference for the secret orchestra. Spring comes early or late; the calendar neither foretells nor records its coming. A lad and a lass—how and when and why the one first realises that the other is more than a mere human being are questions without answers. Well, it is a mercy that the world still holds something that cannot be explained away.
In one sense this boy was no more refined than his neighbours; in another they were coarser than he. Remains the fact that he followed the trail alone—or thought he did.
Willie Thomson, for one, was interested. He had been interested to the extent of grinning in Macgregor’s early tenderness for little Katie, and to the extent of sniggering in his friend’s bashful pursuit of Jessie Mary. But now the interest was that of the boy who discovers a nest just beyond his hand and wonders what sort of eggs he will get if, somehow, he can reach it. On the whole, Willie resented his swollen nose and cut lip less than the recent ill-disguised attempts to avoid his company. The latter rankled. Truth to tell, without Macgregor he was rather a lonely creature, a kind of derelict. No one really wanted him. He was not without acquaintances, shirkers like himself; but in the congregation of loafers is no true comradeship. Without admitting it even to himself, he still admired the boy who had faithfully championed his cause—not always virtuous—in the past, whose material possessions he had invariably shared, whose stolid sense of honour had so often puzzled his own mischievous mind, whose home he had envied despite a certain furtive dread of the woman who ruled there. Altogether it may be questioned whether Willie’s grudge was directed against his old friend and not against that which had caused his old friend’s defection. At all events, he began to spare Macgregor any necessity for dodging, and took to shadowing him on his solitary strolls.
On the grey Saturday afternoon of the week rendered so eventful by his first real shave, Macgregor was once more standing by the window of M. Tod’s shop. He was endeavouring to prop up his courage with the recollection of the fact that a fortnight ago, at the same hour as the present, there had been no old woman behind the counter, and with the somewhat rash deduction that no old woman was there now.
He was also wondering what he could buy for a penny without making a fool of himself. The spending of a penny when there is absolutely nothing one wants to buy is not quite so simple a transaction as at first thought it may seem—unless, of course, the shop is packed with comestibles; and even then one may hesitate to choose. Besides, Macgregor was obsessed by the memory of the pencil transaction of three nights ago. Had he but kept his head then, and confined his purchase to a single pencil, he might now have had a fair excuse for requiring another. At any rate, he could have met suspicion with the explanation that he had lost the first. But who would believe that he had used, or lost, a whole dozen within the brief space of three days?
A wretched position to be in, for nothing else in the world of stationery was quite so natural and easy to ask for as a pencil—unless a—— Why had he not thought of it before?—a pen! Saved! He would enter boldly, as one who had every right to do so, and demand to be shown some pencils—no, pens, of course. There were many varieties of pens, he knew, even in small shops, so his selection would take time—lots of time! If only he were sure the old woman wasn’t there.