“‘Aboot daybreak she cam’ tae hersel’, and knew oor faces. “A’m deein’,” she said, “an’ A didna keep ma tryst last nicht. It’s ower late noo, an’ A’ll no see him on earth again.
“‘“Tell James Soutar that it wesna ma blame A failed, an’ gie him ma Bible,” an’ a while aifter she said, “A’ll keep the tryst wi’ him some day,” an’ … that’s a’.’”
After that, any child could tell you what Jamie’s “last words” would be.
“‘Menie,’ he cried, suddenly, with a new voice, ‘A’ve keepit oor tryst.’”
Heaven help us!
VI
BARBIE
From Thrums and Drumtochty the blest to Barbie, which is also in Scotland, may be fairly described as a far cry. In the beautiful communities conceived by Drs. Barrie and Maclaren the milk of human nature flows like a river; everybody lives, not for his or her foolish self, but for somebody else; everybody dies for somebody else; all bachelors are faithful to the sweethearts of their youth “for forty year and more”; all the women make the best butter in Galloway; all the girls are pretty and angelic of temperament, and, in short, Thrums and Drumtochty are little bits of heaven dropped on to the map of Scotland. But Barbie is not of heavenly origin in the least. The chronicles of Barbie have been put into print for us by Mr. George Douglas, and he calls his book The House with the Green Shutters. If he had wanted a just title for it, he might very well have called it “The Unspeakable Scot.” Nowhere in letters does there exist such an unsophisticated revelation of the minds and habits of a savage and barbarous people as is to be found in this book. It is fiction, of course; but it is that kind of fiction which has been written from observation, and is practically a human document. The Barbie crowd do not waste any time on little acts of kindness; there is not a man among them who cannot fairly be termed mean. If meanness were the only fault one might be able to put up with Barbie; but the inhabitants have graver failings. They are all dour; they are all bitter-hearted; they are all greedy; they are all merciless and full of the wickedest guile. Gourlay, who is the hero of the piece, counts among the most unpleasant persons one has ever met in a book. He has “the black glower in his een,” and all the Scotch qualities of envy, hatred, overweening pride, and tyranny find full expression in him. For years he has trampled the rest of Barbie under his feet, and all Barbie hates him. “He had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen—oh, yes—he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab, and could never be provost, or bailie, or elder, or even chairman of the gasworks! ‘Oh, verra well, verra well, let Connal and Brodie and Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town’s affairs’ (he was damned if they should manage his!); he, for his part, preferred the substantial reality.” So that he treated Barbie with contempt; he had a civil word for nobody, and his manners were as bad as only Scotch manners can be. It was these very manners, however, that helped to bring about his downfall. One fine morning a stranger walked into Barbie; he was a Scotchman, and in his appearance there was “an air of dirty and pretentious well-to-doness,” which is the Scotch way. Well, this stranger ran up against Mr. Gourlay.