Mr. Standfast
You’ve got to wise up about Gresson with the whole forces of the
British State arrayed officially against you. I guess it’s a steep
proposition, but you’re man enough to make good.”
As we shook hands, he added a last word. “You must take your own time,
but it’s not a case for slouching. Every day that passes Ivery is
sending out the worst kind of poison. The Boche is blowing up for a big
campaign in the field, and a big effort to shake the nerve and confuse
the judgement of our civilians. The whole earth’s war-weary, and we’ve
about reached the danger-point. There’s pretty big stakes hang on you,
Dick, for things are getting mighty delicate.”
I purchased a new novel in the shop and reached St Pancras in time to
have a cup of tea at the buffet. Ivery was at the bookstall buying an
evening paper. When we got into the carriage he seized my _Punch_ and
kept laughing and calling my attention to the pictures. As I looked at
him, I thought that he made a perfect picture of the citizen turned
countryman, going back of an evening to his innocent home. Everything
was right—his neat tweeds, his light spats, his spotted neckcloth, and
his aquascutum.
Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned made me eager to
search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had
always been a little off-hand with him, for I had never much liked him,
so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of
chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I
had brought off that morning to read in the train—the second volume of
Hazlitt’s _Essays_, the last of my English classics—and discoursed so
wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his company
at Biggleswick.
“Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,” he said. “He is always
lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has
never encountered in person. Men who are up against the real thing save
their breath for action.”
That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North. I said I
had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial life
at close quarters. “Otherwise I might become like Hazlitt,” I said.
He was very interested and encouraging. “That’s the right way to set
about it,” he said. “Where were you thinking of going?”
I told him that I had half thought of Barrow, but decided to try
Glasgow, since the Clyde seemed to be a warm corner.
“Right,” he said. “I only wish I was coming with you. It’ll take you a
little while to understand the language. You’ll find a good deal of
senseless bellicosity among the workmen, for they’ve got parrot-cries
about the war as they used to have parrot-cries about their labour
politics. But there’s plenty of shrewd brains and sound hearts too. You
must write and tell me your conclusions.”
It was a warm evening and he dozed the last part of the journey. I
looked at him and wished I could see into the mind at the back of that
mask-like face. I counted for nothing in his eyes, not even enough for
him to want to make me a tool, and I was setting out to try to make a
tool of him. It sounded a forlorn enterprise. And all the while I was
puzzled with a persistent sense of recognition. I told myself it was
idiocy, for a man with a face like that must have hints of resemblance
to a thousand people. But the idea kept nagging at me till we reached
our destination.
As we emerged from the station into the golden evening I saw Mary
Lamington again. She was with one of the Weekes girls, and after the
Biggleswick fashion was bareheaded, so that the sun glinted from her
hair. Ivery swept his hat off and made her a pretty speech, while I
faced her steady eyes with the expressionlessness of the stage
conspirator.
“A charming child,” he observed as we passed on. “Not without a touch
of seriousness, too, which may yet be touched to noble issues.”
I considered, as I made my way to my final supper with the Jimsons,
that the said child was likely to prove a sufficiently serious business
for Mr Moxon Ivery before the game was out.
CHAPTER IV
Andrew Amos
I took the train three days later from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. I
went to the Pentland Hotel in Princes Street and left there a suit-case
containing some clean linen and a change of clothes. I had been
thinking the thing out, and had come to the conclusion that I must have
a base somewhere and a fresh outfit. Then in well-worn tweeds and with
no more luggage than a small trench kit-bag, I descended upon the city
of Glasgow.
I walked from the station to the address which Blenkiron had given me.
It was a hot summer evening, and the streets were filled with
bareheaded women and weary-looking artisans. As I made my way down the
Dumbarton Road I was amazed at the number of able-bodied fellows about,
considering that you couldn’t stir a mile on any British front without
bumping up against a Glasgow battalion. Then I realised that there were
such things as munitions and ships, and I wondered no more.
A stout and dishevelled lady at a close-mouth directed me to Mr Amos’s
dwelling. “Twa stairs up. Andra will be in noo, havin’ his tea. He’s no
yin for overtime. He’s generally hame on the chap of six.” I ascended
the stairs with a sinking heart, for like all South Africans I have a
horror of dirt. The place was pretty filthy, but at each landing there
were two doors with well-polished handles and brass plates. On one I
read the name of Andrew Amos.
A man in his shirt-sleeves opened to me, a little man, without a
collar, and with an unbuttoned waistcoat. That was all I saw of him in
the dim light, but he held out a paw like a gorilla’s and drew me in.
The sitting-room, which looked over many chimneys to a pale yellow sky
against which two factory stalks stood out sharply, gave me light
enough to observe him fully. He was about five feet four,
broad-shouldered, and with a great towsy head of grizzled hair. He wore
spectacles, and his face was like some old-fashioned Scots minister’s,
for he had heavy eyebrows and whiskers which joined each other under
his jaw, while his chin and enormous upper lip were clean-shaven. His
eyes were steely grey and very solemn, but full of smouldering energy.
His voice was enormous and would have shaken the walls if he had not
had the habit of speaking with half-closed lips. He had not a sound
tooth in his head.
A saucer full of tea and a plate which had once contained ham and eggs
were on the table. He nodded towards them and asked me if I had fed.
“Ye’ll no eat onything? Well, some would offer ye a dram, but this
house is staunch teetotal. I door ye’ll have to try the nearest public
if ye’re thirsty.”
I disclaimed any bodily wants, and produced my pipe, at which he
started to fill an old clay. “Mr Brand’s your name?” he asked in his
gusty voice. “I was expectin’ ye, but Dod! man ye’re late!”
He extricated from his trousers pocket an ancient silver watch, and
regarded it with disfavour. “The dashed thing has stoppit. What do ye
make the time, Mr Brand?”
He proceeded to prise open the lid of his watch with the knife he had
used to cut his tobacco, and, as he examined the works, he turned the
back of the case towards me. On the inside I saw pasted Mary
Lamington’s purple-and-white wafer.
I held my watch so that he could see the same token. His keen eyes,
raised for a second, noted it, and he shut his own with a snap and
returned it to his pocket. His manner lost its wariness and became
almost genial.
“Ye’ve come up to see Glasgow, Mr Brand? Well, it’s a steerin’ bit, and
there’s honest folk bides in it, and some not so honest. They tell me
ye’re from South Africa. That’s a long gait away, but I ken something
aboot South Africa, for I had a cousin’s son oot there for his lungs.
He was in a shop in Main Street, Bloomfountain. They called him Peter
Dobson. Ye would maybe mind of him.”
Then he discoursed of the Clyde. He was an incomer, he told me, from
the Borders, his native place being the town of Galashiels, or, as he
called it, “Gawly”. “I began as a powerloom tuner in Stavert’s mill.
Then my father dee’d and I took up his trade of jiner. But it’s no
world nowadays for the sma’ independent business, so I cam to the Clyde
and learned a shipwright’s job. I may say I’ve become a leader in the
trade, for though I’m no an official of the Union, and not likely to
be, there’s no man’s word carries more weight than mine. And the
Goavernment kens that, for they’ve sent me on commissions up and down
the land to look at wuds and report on the nature of the timber.
Bribery, they think it is, but Andrew Amos is not to be bribit. He’ll
have his say about any Goavernment on earth, and tell them to their
face what he thinks of them. Ay, and he’ll fight the case of the
workingman against his oppressor, should it be the Goavernment or the
fatted calves they ca’ Labour Members. Ye’ll have heard tell o’ the
shop stewards, Mr Brand?”
I admitted I had, for I had been well coached by Blenkiron in the
current history of industrial disputes.
“Well, I’m a shop steward. We represent the rank and file against
office-bearers that have lost the confidence o’ the workingman. But I’m
no socialist, and I would have ye keep mind of that. I’m yin o’ the old
Border radicals, and I’m not like to change. I’m for individual liberty
and equal rights and chances for all men. I’ll no more bow down before
a Dagon of a Goavernment official than before the Baal of a feckless
Tweedside laird. I’ve to keep my views to mysel’, for thae young lads
are all drucken-daft with their wee books about Cawpital and
Collectivism and a wheen long senseless words I wouldna fyle my tongue
with. Them and their socialism! There’s more gumption in a page of John
Stuart Mill than in all that foreign trash. But, as I say, I’ve got to
keep a quiet sough, for the world is gettin’ socialism now like the
measles. It all comes of a defective eddication.”
“And what does a Border radical say about the war?” I asked.
He took off his spectacles and cocked his shaggy brows at me. “I’ll
tell ye, Mr Brand. All that was bad in all that I’ve ever wrestled with
since I cam to years o’ discretion—Tories and lairds and manufacturers
and publicans and the Auld Kirk—all that was bad, I say, for there were
orra bits of decency, ye’ll find in the Germans full measure pressed
down and running over. When the war started, I considered the subject
calmly for three days, and then I said: ‘Andra Amos, ye’ve found the
enemy at last. The ones ye fought before were in a manner o’ speakin’
just misguided friends. It’s either you or the Kaiser this time, my
man!’”
His eyes had lost their gravity and had taken on a sombre ferocity.
“Ay, and I’ve not wavered. I got a word early in the business as to the
way I could serve my country best. It’s not been an easy job, and
there’s plenty of honest folk the day will give me a bad name. They
think I’m stirrin’ up the men at home and desertin’ the cause o’ the
lads at the front. Man, I’m keepin’ them straight. If I didna fight
their battles on a sound economic isshue, they would take the dorts and
be at the mercy of the first blagyird that preached revolution. Me and
my like are safety-valves, if ye follow me. And dinna you make ony
mistake, Mr Brand. The men that are agitating for a rise in wages are
not for peace. They’re fighting for the lads overseas as much as for
themselves. There’s not yin in a thousand that wouldna sweat himself
blind to beat the Germans. The Goavernment has made mistakes, and maun
be made to pay for them. If it were not so, the men would feel like a
moose in a trap, for they would have no way to make their grievance
felt. What for should the big man double his profits and the small man