Mr. Standfast
be ill set to get his ham and egg on Sabbath mornin’? That’s the
meaning o’ Labour unrest, as they call it, and it’s a good thing, says
I, for if Labour didna get its leg over the traces now and then, the
spunk o’ the land would be dead in it, and Hindenburg could squeeze it
like a rotten aipple.”
I asked if he spoke for the bulk of the men.
“For ninety per cent in ony ballot. I don’t say that there’s not plenty
of riff-raff—the pint-and-a-dram gentry and the soft-heads that are aye
reading bits of newspapers, and muddlin’ their wits with foreign
whigmaleeries. But the average man on the Clyde, like the average man
in ither places, hates just three things, and that’s the Germans, the
profiteers, as they call them, and the Irish. But he hates the Germans
first.”
“The Irish!” I exclaimed in astonishment.
“Ay, the Irish,” cried the last of the old Border radicals. “Glasgow’s
stinkin’ nowadays with two things, money and Irish. I mind the day when
I followed Mr Gladstone’s Home Rule policy, and used to threep about
the noble, generous, warm-hearted sister nation held in a foreign
bondage. My Goad! I’m not speakin’ about Ulster, which is a dour,
ill-natured den, but our own folk all the same. But the men that will
not do a hand’s turn to help the war and take the chance of our
necessities to set up a bawbee rebellion are hateful to Goad and man.
We treated them like pet lambs and that’s the thanks we get. They’re
coming over here in thousands to tak the jobs of the lads that are
doing their duty. I was speakin’ last week to a widow woman that keeps
a wee dairy down the Dalmarnock Road. She has two sons, and both in the
airmy, one in the Cameronians and one a prisoner in Germany. She was
telling me that she could not keep goin’ any more, lacking the help of
the boys, though she had worked her fingers to the bone. ‘Surely it’s a
crool job, Mr Amos,’ she says, ‘that the Goavernment should tak baith
my laddies, and I’ll maybe never see them again, and let the Irish gang
free and tak the bread frae our mouth. At the gasworks across the road
they took on a hundred Irish last week, and every yin o’ them as young
and well set up as you would ask to see. And my wee Davie, him that’s
in Germany, had aye a weak chest, and Jimmy was troubled wi’ a bowel
complaint. That’s surely no justice!’....”
He broke off and lit a match by drawing it across the seat of his
trousers. “It’s time I got the gas lichtit. There’s some men coming
here at half-ten.”
As the gas squealed and flickered in the lighting, he sketched for me
the coming guests. “There’s Macnab and Niven, two o’ my colleagues. And
there’s Gilkison of the Boiler-fitters, and a lad Wilkie—he’s got
consumption, and writes wee bits in the papers. And there’s a queer
chap o’ the name o’ Tombs—they tell me he comes frae Cambridge, and is
a kind of a professor there—anyway he’s more stuffed wi’ havers than an
egg wi’ meat. He telled me he was here to get at the heart o’ the
workingman, and I said to him that he would hae to look a bit further
than the sleeve o’ the workin’-man’s jaicket. There’s no muckle in his
head, poor soul. Then there’ll be Tam Norie, him that edits our weekly
paper—_Justice for All_. Tam’s a humorist and great on Robert Burns,
but he hasna the balance o’ a dwinin’ teetotum.... Ye’ll understand, Mr
Brand, that I keep my mouth shut in such company, and don’t express my
own views more than is absolutely necessary. I criticise whiles, and
that gives me a name of whunstane common-sense, but I never let my
tongue wag. The feck o’ the lads comin’ the night are not the real
workingman—they’re just the froth on the pot, but it’s the froth that
will be useful to you. Remember they’ve heard tell o’ ye already, and
ye’ve some sort o’ reputation to keep up.”
“Will Mr Abel Gresson be here?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Him and me havena yet got to the point o’
payin’ visits. But the men that come will be Gresson’s friends and
they’ll speak of ye to him. It’s the best kind of introduction ye could
seek.”
The knocker sounded, and Mr Amos hastened to admit the first comers.
These were Macnab and Wilkie: the one a decent middle-aged man with a
fresh-washed face and a celluloid collar, the other a round-shouldered
youth, with lank hair and the large eyes and luminous skin which are
the marks of phthisis. “This is Mr Brand boys, from South Africa,” was
Amos’s presentation. Presently came Niven, a bearded giant, and Mr
Norie, the editor, a fat dirty fellow smoking a rank cigar. Gilkison of
the Boiler-fitters, when he arrived, proved to be a pleasant young man
in spectacles who spoke with an educated voice and clearly belonged to
a slightly different social scale. Last came Tombs, the Cambridge
professor, a lean youth with a sour mouth and eyes that reminded me of
Launcelot Wake.
“Ye’ll no be a mawgnate, Mr Brand, though ye come from South Africa,”
said Mr Norie with a great guffaw.
“Not me. I’m a working engineer,” I said. “My father was from Scotland,
and this is my first visit to my native country, as my friend Mr Amos
was telling you.”
The consumptive looked at me suspiciously. “We’ve got two—three of the
comrades here that the cawpitalist Government expelled from the
Transvaal. If ye’re our way of thinking, ye will maybe ken them.”
I said I would be overjoyed to meet them, but that at the time of the
outrage in question I had been working on a mine a thousand miles
further north.
Then ensued an hour of extraordinary talk. Tombs in his sing-song
namby-pamby University voice was concerned to get information. He asked
endless questions, chiefly of Gilkison, who was the only one who really
understood his language. I thought I had never seen anyone quite so
fluent and so futile, and yet there was a kind of feeble violence in
him like a demented sheep. He was engaged in venting some private
academic spite against society, and I thought that in a revolution he
would be the class of lad I would personally conduct to the nearest
lamp-post. And all the while Amos and Macnab and Niven carried on their
own conversation about the affairs of their society, wholly impervious
to the tornado raging around them.
It was Mr Norie, the editor, who brought me into the discussion.
“Our South African friend is very blate,” he said in his boisterous
way. “Andra, if this place of yours wasn’t so damned teetotal and we
had a dram apiece, we might get his tongue loosened. I want to hear
what he’s got to say about the war. You told me this morning he was
sound in the faith.”
“I said no such thing,” said Mr Amos. “As ye ken well, Tam Norie, I
don’t judge soundness on that matter as you judge it. I’m for the war
myself, subject to certain conditions that I’ve often stated. I know
nothing of Mr Brand’s opinions, except that he’s a good democrat, which
is more than I can say of some o’ your friends.”
“Hear to Andra,” laughed Mr Norie. “He’s thinkin’ the inspector in the
Socialist State would be a waur kind of awristocrat then the Duke of
Buccleuch. Weel, there’s maybe something in that. But about the war
he’s wrong. Ye ken my views, boys. This war was made by the
cawpitalists, and it has been fought by the workers, and it’s the
workers that maun have the ending of it. That day’s comin’ very near.
There are those that want to spin it out till Labour is that weak it
can be pit in chains for the rest o’ time. That’s the manœuvre we’re
out to prevent. We’ve got to beat the Germans, but it’s the workers
that has the right to judge when the enemy’s beaten and not the
cawpitalists. What do you say, Mr Brand?”
Mr Norie had obviously pinned his colours to the fence, but he gave me
the chance I had been looking for. I let them have my views with a
vengeance, and these views were that for the sake of democracy the war
must be ended. I flatter myself I put my case well, for I had got up
every rotten argument and I borrowed largely from Launcelot Wake’s
armoury. But I didn’t put it too well, for I had a very exact notion of
the impression I wanted to produce. I must seem to be honest and in
earnest, just a bit of a fanatic, but principally a hard-headed
businessman who knew when the time had come to make a deal. Tombs kept
interrupting me with imbecile questions, and I had to sit on him. At
the end Mr Norie hammered with his pipe on the table.
“That’ll sort ye, Andra. Ye’re entertain’ an angel unawares. What do ye
say to that, my man?”
Mr Amos shook his head. “I’ll no deny there’s something in it, but I’m
not convinced that the Germans have got enough of a wheepin’.” Macnab
agreed with him; the others were with me. Norie was for getting me to
write an article for his paper, and the consumptive wanted me to
address a meeting.
“Wull ye say a’ that over again the morn’s night down at our hall in
Newmilns Street? We’ve got a lodge meeting o’ the I.W.B., and I’ll make
them pit ye in the programme.” He kept his luminous eyes, like a sick
dog’s, fixed on me, and I saw that I had made one ally. I told him I
had come to Glasgow to learn and not to teach, but I would miss no
chance of testifying to my faith.
“Now, boys, I’m for my bed,” said Amos, shaking the dottle from his
pipe. “Mr Tombs, I’ll conduct ye the morn over the Brigend works, but
I’ve had enough clavers for one evening. I’m a man that wants his eight
hours’ sleep.”
The old fellow saw them to the door, and came back to me with the ghost
of a grin in his face.
“A queer crowd, Mr Brand! Macnab didna like what ye said. He had a
laddie killed in Gallypoly, and he’s no lookin’ for peace this side the
grave. He’s my best friend in Glasgow. He’s an elder in the Gaelic kirk
in the Cowcaddens, and I’m what ye call a free-thinker, but we’re
wonderful agreed on the fundamentals. Ye spoke your bit verra well, I
must admit. Gresson will hear tell of ye as a promising recruit.”
“It’s a rotten job,” I said.
“Ay, it’s a rotten job. I often feel like vomiting over it mysel’. But
it’s no for us to complain. There’s waur jobs oot in France for better
men.... A word in your ear, Mr Brand. Could ye not look a bit more
sheepish? Ye stare folk ower straight in the een, like a Hieland
sergeant-major up at Maryhill Barracks.” And he winked slowly and
grotesquely with his left eye.
He marched to a cupboard and produced a black bottle and glass. “I’m
blue-ribbon myself, but ye’ll be the better of something to tak the
taste out of your mouth. There’s Loch Katrine water at the pipe
there.... As I was saying, there’s not much ill in that lot. Tombs is a
black offence, but a dominie’s a dominie all the world over. They may
crack about their Industrial Workers and the braw things they’re going
to do, but there’s a wholesome dampness about the tinder on Clydeside.
They should try Ireland.”
“Supposing,” I said, “there was a really clever man who wanted to help
the enemy. You think he could do little good by stirring up trouble in
the shops here?”
“I’m positive.”
“And if he were a shrewd fellow, he’d soon tumble to that?”
“Ay.”
“Then if he still stayed on here he would be after bigger
game—something really dangerous and damnable?”
Amos drew down his brows and looked me in the face. “I see what ye’re
ettlin’ at. Ay! That would be my conclusion. I came to it weeks syne
about the man ye’ll maybe meet the morn’s night.”
Then from below the bed he pulled a box from which he drew a handsome
flute. “Ye’ll forgive me, Mr Brand, but I aye like a tune before I go
to my bed. Macnab says his prayers, and I have a tune on the flute, and
the principle is just the same.”
So that singular evening closed with music—very sweet and true
renderings of old Border melodies like “My Peggy is a young thing”, and
“When the kye come hame”. I fell asleep with a vision of Amos, his face