Travels one evening in Brand’s lodgings, the book fell open at a very queer picture, ‘The King of the Hou—’ something or other, it was called, and it showed a horse sitting on a throne with a crowd of naked shivering people before it. Mansie could not take his eyes off it. The horse’s front hoofs drooped clumsily and helplessly from the legs outstretched like iron bars; but the massive haunches, too heavy for the frail throne on which they rested, were powerful and majestic in spite of the curly and somewhat mean legs in which they ended. A queer picture; if he hadn’t been ashamed of exposing his ignorance he would have asked Brand about it. And later still, when the Reverend John gave a sermon on the Pharaohs, there rose in Mansie’s mind, a little obscenely, a picture of those powerful wrinkled haunches and that long, austere and somewhat stupid skull, so hard that it seemed to be made of granite rather than bone. If that were set on a throne of justice, by gum you would have to sit up! Not much friendliness about justice of that kind. Made a fellow shiver when he thought of it. Seemed to take all the stuffing out of a fellow.
The autumn holiday had come; Tom did not yet show the hoped-for improvement; so there was no possibility of Mansie’s getting away for the week-end. But on Sunday, as Tom said that he intended to remain in the house, Mansie resolved to take a walk in the country. As he shaved he went over in his mind all his acquaintances; every single one of them away, he decided bitterly; of course one could hardly expect them to stay in Glasgow simply because— But still it rather let a fellow down. In morose resignation he took the tramcar to Killermont, pleased that there should be hardly anyone in it but himself; yes, they were all away at Rothesay or Dunoon or Helensburgh, and it was right that the other passengers in the tramcar should look ashamed and furtive; all except the conductor, of course, who had a right to be there. Still, the fellow showed his contempt for them a little too plainly when he shouted jokes from one end of the almost empty tramcar to the other, as if only he and the driver were there. Like these Glasgow keelies.
But when, having walked through Bearsden, Mansie turned into the footpath over the gentle hilly grasslands leading to Strathblane, his spirits began to rise; perhaps after all he would meet some solitary rambler from the Clarion Scouts; somebody would be sure to be on the road. He would have a rest when he came to Craigallion. But when he approached the gate leading into the field where the pretty little sylvan loch lay among its half-ring of trees, he stopped short, for a young horse was standing behind the gate watching him. Everything grew still and bright, the long grasses by the roadside became quite motionless, and the wooden bars of the gate looked all at once so solid that no effort could ever prevail against them; they ran smoothly from side to side of the gate like a goal which one might touch, but never pass. No, he could never go through that gate. And suddenly, staring at the chestnut horse standing behind it Mansie thought, and it was as though an oracle or a Pharaoh had spoken: ‘Tom will die.’ The shock of the thought made him feel a little dizzy; he looked across at the bald crown of Dumgoyne: it was very bare, he had never realised before that it was so bare. So far away too, and this gate and this horse were so near. Why was one thing in one place and another in another? A complete riddle, the way things were scattered about on the face of the earth, hills and houses and rocks and gates and horses. Why shouldn’t the hill be here and the gate and the horse somewhere else, in some peaceful distant place? And what was a hill anyway? A clumsy big thing without conceivable use to anybody. Yes, it was ridiculous that a horse should be standing beside a gate. Things were just dumped down anywhere and anyhow; you had literally to pick your way among them, to walk round them and be very careful even then, for you couldn’t even be sure that they would stay in the same place; lots of them moved, and some of them rushed about at a great speed, tramcars and things like that, and at times, in spite of all the space in the world, they banged straight into one another. If a horse like that were to let fly at you with its hind hoofs you would just curl up.
With a rush of relief he realised that he need not go through that field, need not pass through that gate, for the road he was standing on would take him by a roundabout way to Strathblane: you could get to places after all if you made up your mind! And as he walked on, not once turning his head to look back at the horse, he felt as though he had circumvented Fate and perhaps done Tom a good turn he would never know of. But presently the refrain returned again: ‘Tom will die. Tom will die.’ It was outrageous to be pursued by such thoughts; besides they didn’t seem to be his at all, they didn’t seem real. They were like something you read about; why, maybe this was what people meant by poetry? And once more he felt relieved, for poetry wasn’t real life; it was imagination. Yet it was strange this had never happened to him before, there was something dashed funny about it, and he tentatively tried the words over again; they didn’t commit him to anything. ‘Tom will die. Tom will die’: the refrain beat on, filling his ears as he walked on slowly amid the brightness and silence. Then quite unexpectedly the hills trembled and dissolved; tears were running down his cheeks. Yes, he knew it now! Tom would die! And he gave himself over to his grief, seized upon it as though it were a precious draught he had long been waiting for and must drink to the end lest it might never return again; and he let the tears flow and when they showed signs of stopping started them afresh with the hypnotic beat of the refrain: ‘Tom will die. Tom will die.’ What was he doing? It was almost like an act of treachery to his brother! Yet his tears were not real tears, they didn’t count, they didn’t mean that Tom would really die. What on earth could they mean?
The fit passed. He washed his face in a little wayside stream, washed it shamelessly and matter-of-factly as one might wash one’s hands after a dirty but necessary job. Yet when he thought of Tom now everything seemed more hopeful. He felt better, and he was convinced that Tom was better too, that Tom had at last improved, perhaps since that morning.
Turning the corner he came upon a pale milky-faced little man in rusty blue serge, who was bending over some weeds by the wayside. It was Geordie Henderson, and when he looked up and nodded Mansie was almost sorry for once to meet someone he knew. A nice fellow Geordie, of course, a kind soul in spite of the way he liked to talk about frogs and the survival of the fittest and the freezing-out of the whole human race in a few million years. Still Mansie’s heart sank when he saw the soft pale milky face, a face so pervasively milky that even the blue of the eyes had the opaqueness of soap-suds. And pitilessly ignoring Geordie’s welcoming look he walked on with a curt ‘Nice day.’ Everything seemed to be scattered in confusion again like boulders on a vast plain. That dashed horse! And Henderson with his invertebrates and his amoebas and his protoplasm! What use were such words to a fellow? And Geordie’s milkiness seemed to shrivel into small dry grains, like the new kind of milk that was sold in tins: dried milk, they called it. That was all Henderson was, just dried milk.
And Mansie remembered a Sunday ramble with Geordie. In the middle of a field where cows were grazing they had come upon a huge rock six feet high. The rock looked funny enough there in all conscience, but when Geordie began to talk learnedly of how it could have got there, that was surely making too great a song about it. The rock had been carried there, Geordie decided, by an ice block that slid across Europe at the end of a glacial period. That was science, of course, and Mansie had listened respectfully, but at the same time he couldn’t help thinking: All very well to blether about this rock, but, when it comes to the point, how did anything get where it is? And on the top of this recollection he remembered the feelings he had had when his father removed from the farm in the island to the one near Blackness. Yes, he had felt just the same then looking at the new countryside – though he had clean forgotten about it: that everything was a little out of position, that things needn’t have been as they were at all. The sea needn’t have swept in just there, the hills needn’t have been just that shape; and the same with the farmhouses: they were set down just anywhere, and one of them was planted in a position that it made you uncomfortable even to look at: it was about two-thirds up the side of a hill, when of course it should have been either at the top or the bottom. But then he had got accustomed to all those things, and in time it seemed quite natural that they should be as they were and where they were. They seemed at last even to have a sort of plan; yet if he were to go back now and look at them again he would find that that was pure fancy. Still it was a dashed uncomfortable thought. Made a fellow wonder where he was.
Terrible to
