Tom’s anger; such sentiments in Mansie seemed the most open and shameless hypocrisy.
Jean, to Brand’s surprise, always took Tom’s side in those arguments. It was partly an indirect demonstration that she considered Tom ill-used, partly an act of loyalty to the family. And when she joined the ILP she told Brand that Tom must not know about it. But such things cannot be hid; Tom soon came to know, and, although he did not reproach her, he felt that she had betrayed him, and he no longer argued with Brand, but simply ignored him. Mrs Manson too was hurt by Jean’s action, and it was only when Mansie as well as Brand assured her that Socialism was Christianity in practice, and that the Reverend John himself was coming more and more round to it, that she was content to be uneasily reassured.
Nevertheless Jean’s action was to her only another proof of the corrupting influence of Glasgow. In her heart she blamed Glasgow for all the misfortunes that had happened since they had come south, though she did not say this for fear of being laughed at. Yet it was inconceivable to her that had they all stayed in the surroundings she knew and trusted, Mansie should have taken Tom’s girl. It was simply the portion of the corruption of Glasgow allotted to them, their private share of the corruption that was visible in the troubled, dirty atmosphere, the filth and confusion of the streets, the cynical frankness, hitherto unknown to her, with which people here talked of their privatest affairs, their fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. She could not understand them or their ways, and she grew shy of talking about Tom and Mansie even to Jean, and especially after Jean joined the ILP. For with that Jean had identified herself with Glasgow; she had become by deliberate choice a Glasgow girl, and – who could tell? – perhaps she would no longer even understand. And when one evening Mrs Manson found Robert Blatchford’s Britain for the British in a drawer in Mansie’s bedroom, it seemed to her that she no longer understood her family and that Glasgow had taken them and made them almost as strange as itself.
But worse was her fear of all the machinery, machinery she did not understand, and with which Tom was so unavoidably associated. Indeed Tom had now more accidents than ever; his hands were perpetually in bandages. He had always been reckless; he was now indifferent as well; but what exposed him most of all to accidents was the fact that, feeling shut out from everything, he felt shut out too from the very work he was doing every day, and so never penetrated within it to that security which work itself seems to give. He never reached that almost trance-like abstraction which we envy in the workman bowed over his bench, enclosed in his task as in a private Eden where time no longer exists, so remote and calm that even a child will become quiet and hesitate to speak to him. Tom remained outside, and this made him irritated with his tools, and in his irritation he began to treat them disrespectfully, began indeed to acquire an impatient scorn for machinery wherever he encountered it. Nothing, however, punishes disrespect more promptly and ruthlessly than machinery, and when Tom was brought home late one Saturday night with his head bandaged and his blue serge suit covered with mud, it was because he had treated a tramcar with insufficient deference. He had been drinking; yet while descending the stairs to get off he had provocatively kept one hand in his trouser pocket, using only the other as a support. When, after what seemed to him a long time, he found himself lying in dirt and water in the street with a crowd of strange people round him, he naturally enough felt cold and miserable, for it was the middle of November; but he also felt a little frightened. These people standing round meant well, he could see that; yet he was helplessly exposed to them like an exhibit, and the overpowering stream of kindness that they poured down on him was like a threat and filled him with sudden panic; he felt as though he had been lynched in some strange way, lovingly and tenderly lynched by the assembled YMCA. So that he was glad when a young man raised him up, asked his address and led him home. Someone had bound up his head, which felt stiff, tight and wooden, and it was with surprise that he felt under the bandage a quite soft, pulsing trickle.
Next day was Sunday. Sunday morning was always a bad time for him, and he lay in bed gloomily listening to the church bells jangling; there were loud pompous peals with blank intervals which filled him with apprehension, and busy fretful nagging little bells that went on and on; it was like a tin factory gone mad. His head throbbed, and when he rose to draw up the blinds he felt so queer that he walked over to the mirror instead. Christ! he was looking bad with that bandage on his head and the black rings round his eyes; he looked a real waster. And he went back to bed again without troubling even to pull up the blinds: a real waster, and he would never be anything else.
He refused to see a doctor, although for several days his head hummed and rang, and at the back, where the wound was, there clung a lump of pain; it felt like a clod of hardened mud that would not be dislodged. At last the pain went away and his scalp healed. And in spite of his indifference, his relief was so great that he resolved to pull himself together and go straight.
When Mansie first heard of Tom’s accident he was very angry. A fine way to behave, the fool would break his neck some time yet! But when Tom began to go straight, keeping decent company, dressing neatly and taking a drink only now and then, Mansie became ashamed of his annoyance. He expected every day that Tom would suddenly turn to him and say something, for the fellow was completely changed, he had quite a different look about him; and when Tom gave no sign of speaking Mansie felt a little hurt. But on one account he was sincerely relieved by Tom’s reformation; for now he felt there was nothing to prevent his joining the Clarion Scouts. With a brother who was a waster he would never have been quite sure; it might have looked a bit fishy, for lots of people looked upon Socialism as fishy. Pure prejudice, of course; the crowds he had met at Socialist demonstrations were a very decent lot; welcomed you too, no side about them, a friendly set of fellows. So Mansie decided to take the plunge; with Bob joining at the same time one felt better about it. And once his application form was filled in and sent off a surprise awaited him; it was as though the Masonic circle of decent fellows had widened infinitely all at once, and he felt as a visionary democrat feels when he sees everywhere hosts of free and intelligent electors spring up at some great extension of the franchise, hosts of free and intelligent electors where before there had been a dull and slavish mass. The very distinguishing marks of decent fellows were radically altered, the old marks seemed inessential and ridiculous, and it was almost by a whole world of decent fellows that Mansie now delightedly saw himself surrounded. You had only to look below the surface, and even those hooligans in Eglinton Street might turn out to be much better than they seemed.
PART TWO
TEN
THE PROCESSION WAS gathering in George Square. It was a warm still May morning; a few white clouds floated far up in the sky. As Mansie turned the corner of St Vincent Street he saw, far away, the banners languidly waving in the square, waving in silence, for no sound came from those parti-coloured rectangular blocks of human beings, which from here looked as peaceful and dumb as the rectangular buildings frowning above them. Mansie’s footsteps rang sharply in the deserted street. It was the first Sunday in May.
As he drew nearer, and on the motionless rectangles isolated points of movement started out and spread into an imperceptible ripple running along the whole line, he wished that Bob Ryrie had not had to call off at the last moment; but a fellow could not take risks with a bad cold. At last he reached the procession and paused on the pavement, feeling very exposed while he looked around him distractedly for some face he knew. A voice quite near at hand shouted his name; it was like a lifeline thrown out to him where he was standing on the pavement. Why, there were the Clarion Scouts almost under his nose, and he hadn’t seen them! He smiled back and hastily fell in at the rear beside a white-faced pot-bellied man whom he did not know.
And immediately he was enclosed in peace. It was as though he had stepped out of a confused and distracted zone into calm and safety, as though the procession had protectively enfolded him, lifted him up and set him down again on the farther bank of a tranquil river among this multitude who like him had reached the favoured land; and the people who passed on the pavement with averted or hostile or curious eyes, on their way to church or merely out for a walk, had no longer any power over him; for they were still wandering out there in exile, out there on the pavement,
