you to a strange address, saying, ‘You should go there,’ or ‘You should join them, a nice set of fellows.’ Mansie had felt quite rushed. Yes, it seemed impossible for Bob to say anything at all without making you think that he was lending you a helping hand; even when he told a funny story he seemed to be making you a present of it, so that you might win social credit for yourself by telling it to someone else; well, perhaps a fellow who was so genuinely anxious to help as Bob got into the habit of talking in that way and just couldn’t help it. But later Mansie had stopped thinking about it, and especially after Bob had taken him to that church soirée where all those Boy Scouts were. For they were exactly the same, all eager to help; he couldn’t make them out at first, thought they were dashed forward; but then he saw it was all quite genuine: when you lived in a big place like Glasgow you had to be on the look-out for opportunities to help people, that is if you had any decency in you at all; you might need a helping hand some time yourself. Jean didn’t realise that yet; she was new to Glasgow and didn’t know how hard life might be for a girl there, not to speak of temptations. He didn’t care whether Bob was first rate according to her silly notions or not. She could dash well think what she liked.
But in the ensuing months Jean showed no sign of getting over her aversion; it became more frank, and so it was no wonder if Bob didn’t do himself justice; he hadn’t a dog’s chance. All the same he was a dashed sight too anxious. After all, had he any need to go to such pains to please Jean? He actually seemed to be quite put out because Jean didn’t take to him, and he couldn’t help trying again, getting more and more red in the face every time; no, he didn’t show to advantage then.
Nevertheless when one evening after Bob had left Jean turned to Mansie and said: ‘I object to people making eyes at me because I’m your cousin,’ Mansie flared up and shouted, ‘He’s too dashed good for you!’ He had had no intention of saying such a thing; it just jumped out, and for a moment he felt quite taken aback.
‘Well, you’d better tell him so,’ replied Jean. ‘He bores me stiff.’
‘Everybody else in the house gets on with Bob. Why shouldn’t you?’
‘He doesn’t make eyes at them.’
‘You flatter yourself if you fancy he’s making eyes at you!’ Mansie became angry again. ‘He’s only trying to be humanly decent.’
‘I prefer people to keep their distance.’
There was no use talking to her, that was clear, and when a few evenings later Bob said with a slight catch in his voice, ‘Mansie, I’m afraid I’m making no headway with your cousin; I’ve done my best to be nice to her, but it’s no use,’ Mansie replied, ‘Don’t you bother, Bob. You’ve been too dashed considerate to her. Yes, by gum!’ But then he suddenly felt embarrassed; they walked on without looking at each other; and when Bob broke the silence it was to speak of something quite different.
After this Bob was careful to treat Jean with distant politeness, and the change in fact seemed to take her somewhat aback. Mansie decided that Bob had got the better of the exchanges after all; but that was nothing to be surprised at, for Bob could be quite the man of the world when he chose to take the trouble. And Bob’s superiority remained unchallenged until David Brand appeared. By bad luck Bob happened to drop in that evening after Brand had been holding forth for more than an hour, and the sight of Jean sitting listening with her eyes on Brand’s face seemed to knock him flat. He began to talk to her in his old confidential tone; she stared at him in surprise for a moment and then snubbed him; but he was completely rattled and couldn’t stop until he had been snubbed three or four times. Then he got into an argument with Brand about Socialism; but Brand just played with him, giving Jean a look every now and then; and at last Bob simply turned tail and had to console himself with a long and helpful talk with Mansie in the lobby. Mansie had never seen Bob at such a disadvantage, and was sorry he had ever invited Brand to the house.
He couldn’t understand what Jean saw in Brand anyway. A striking-looking fellow, no doubt about it, with his Roman nose and his yellow hair; but there was something queer and cold about him; you could never think of him as a friend. Mansie had met him first at a YMCA dance. It was in the men’s cloakroom, Mansie was standing before the looking-glass putting the finishing touches to his necktie, and some fellows were discussing the Insurance Act. ‘What do you say to that, Brand?’ someone had asked. Mansie turned round at that moment, and he saw a tall, lanky young man raising his head, which had been bowed over a dancing-pump that he was pulling on. ‘I think it’s claptrap,’ came the reply in a falsetto voice, but Mansie was so astonished by the beauty of the briefly upturned face, which was now bent over the other pump, that he continued to stare in a trance at the smooth flaxen hair presented objectively to him, its fairness and the even masses in which it lay reminding him somehow of butter. Afterwards he saw Brand dancing; he was a very bad dancer and seemed to talk to his partners all the time. It was not until near the end of the dance that Brand strolled up, stood beside him, and made some remark about the heat. ‘Lots of nice girls here,’ Mansie said, not knowing what else to say; but Brand replied, ‘I’m not interested in females, I’m here to make converts.’ Females! thought Mansie, so it must have been Socialism that he was spouting to them! and as a new dance was just beginning he rushed away.
But next Sunday afternoon at the YMCA Brand fastened on to him, seemed in fact to have taken quite a fancy to him, and although Mansie didn’t really care much for the fellow, no doubt about it he was a dashed handsome figure to be seen with. But though Brand was a brilliant success in the Church Literary Society, he didn’t make a really deep impression on Mansie until that evening in late spring when they went to see Arms and the Man. And it wasn’t because Brand laughed at all the right places, looking round him contemptuously, that Mansie was impressed; what struck him was a sentence that Brand dropped carelessly as they were walking to the tramcar; he said, ‘I think I’ll have to write a play too.’ Then Mansie realised all at once that Brand lived in a completely different world from him. For to Mansie the writing of a book or play, even one he could understand, was a mysterious act, he simply didn’t understand how it was done; and yet here was a fellow who after being at a play one could make neither head nor tail of simply said: ‘I’ll have to write a play too!’ Mansie felt excited, yet was resolved not to show it, but to reply in the same tone. ‘You should, Brand,’ he said. ‘I think you really should.’
Brand was in fact very handsome, and that was probably enough to give Jean an immediate respect for him; but what won her final approval was the fact that he carried his handsome looks almost scornfully, as though he ignored them; for that seemed to her the perfection of good taste. And so it might have been had he merely ignored them, magnanimously declining to employ them to his advantage; but it would be nearer the truth to say that he was completely oblivious of them, and that they were thrown away on him and so bereft of all meaning. They were like a thankless gift that he was always trying to forget, that he even did his best to deface; for he had so little respect for his exquisite features that he was continually knitting his brow like a schoolboy and twisting his mouth into peevish lines that deserved to look mean, and would have done so in any face less perfectly formed. When he did this, such treatment of a rare physical miracle gave one a sense of ingratitude, even of desecration; nevertheless it was ineffectual, for no matter how he scowled, the lines instead of disfiguring his face merely fell effortlessly into new patterns of symmetry, one more interesting than the other. No, he could not escape from the beauty that had been so unwelcomely thrust upon him.
But though he could not rid himself of it he could refuse to impregnate it with life. So his face was like the photographed faces of actors which seem to be mutely begging for a rôle to bring them to life and add expression and character, no matter of what tinge, to those unemployed features with their tell-tale vacancy. And Brand’s face sometimes struck one as that of a man waiting for his rôle, a rôle that should have been his life, a rôle that he would never find. His talk, too, was as trite as that of actors or popular preachers who after declaiming as though
