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TWO

On looking at them one could never have told that Hector and John Shand were half-brothers. John resembled his Highland mother; with his big frame and his reddish fair beard he might have been a viking from the Western Isles. Hector was like the Shands; his wrists and ankles were small and sinewy, his hands and feet small and beautifully shaped; he had a swarthy skin, black hair and dark hazel eyes, so quick in movement and expression that he seemed to be always on the watch. For his size he had uncommonly broad shoulders, and whether it was the shoulders or the nervous hands or the quick, ready eye that endeared him to women he was, at any rate, extremely attractive to them.

His mother, a delicate, submissive woman, had died shortly after he was born, and he was brought up by Janet Shand, who expended upon him in double measure the affection she felt for his father, sharpened at times to a keen edge of anxiety lest he should grow up to resemble his father morally as well as physically. Janet could never rid herself of the knowledge that the Shand men were sexually unbridled; even her own brother had given her a queer feeling; she could not look at him without remembering how often he was reported to lie with women in the town. It was indeed difficult to think of anything but bodily appetites when one met Charlie Shand.

Thus the atmosphere in which Hector Shand grew up was, one might say, heavily charged with sex between the two poles of Janet’s anxious abhorrence of the subject and Charlie Shand’s open devotion to it. Before the boy was twelve his father had become so dissolute that he was a byword in the town. Shamed to the soul, young Hector found little comfort in the thought of his mother, for his Aunt Janet always spoke of her with contemptuous pity as of a poor spiritless thing, who was no wife for Charlie. Hector became convinced that his heredity was tainted; he became fatalistic about it; he persuaded himself that John had escaped the curse only because he had a different kind of mother, and he resented his half-brother’s robust superiority.

Nor did school help him to escape from his fatalistic preoccupation. Examinations made his stomach queasy with nervousness. Everything that he knew ebbed out of his mind when he was ordered to set it down, and his increasing nervous tension in the ordeal invariably discharged itself in a way which made him miserable and strengthened his sense of inborn guilt. In every bodily activity, in every game he played, he had a lightning correspondence between his body and his brain, but the mere sight of ink and paper was enough to paralyse it. A problem in arithmetic, which, given real bricks, he would have solved, became a torturing muddle of cubic feet; rules of grammar, which unconsciously in speaking he adhered to, changed into malignant mnemonics which he could never retain; and the simple recording of facts, even facts that he knew well, such as how best to guddle for trout, was subject to a mysterious standard of appraisal called ‘style’ which was never defined, and for which, apparently, he had no natural gift. He took it for granted that books and all that they stood for were beyond his capacity, and sustained himself against humiliation by his prowess in games, and, in later years, by his success with women. He had found nothing else in life.

Every morning on entering the office of John Shand & Sons he felt a faint recurrence of the old nausea. He would add a column of figures five, six or even seven times before assuming that his answer was correct, and even then he convinced himself only by totting the whole up on his fingers.

‘Is that how you count, man?’ said John, one day. That’s how they used to do it in the Stone Age.’

‘Is there nothing else you can give me to do?’ burst out Hector in a rage. ‘I can’t stick at these damned figures all the time.’

John wheeled round. His manner was curt; he had been irritable for some days past, for he had not yet solved his own problem with Lizzie.

‘I want to see whether you can stick to anything at all once you’ve begun it,’ he said, and went away without waiting for an answer, being in a hurry to get to Tom Mitchell’s.

Hector turned white. John always roused him to defiance. John was always expecting him to make a mistake of some kind, and not only expecting it but waiting for a chance to say: ‘I thought as much.’ By setting his teeth Hector could only just cope with that; here, however, was a new obstacle to overcome, the deadly suggestion that even if he could master anything he lacked steadiness enough to stick to it. It was a deadly suggestion, because in his own experience of himself Hector found nothing to rebut it.

He gritted his teeth, but the figures swam before his gaze. The office window looked into the deep well of the yard, where horses were backing and carts unloading. In spite of the sick distaste he had for the office Hector liked the rest of the mill; even the men who worked in it were better than the clerks, he thought, who were all elderly dried-up machines like John himself.

‘Hell and damnation!’ He clapped the ledger to. In the outer office he paused and said to the head clerk who peered at him enviously over steel-rimmed spectacles: ‘If Mr John asks where I am, Mason, you can tell him I’m taking a turn through the mill.’

He had a child’s delight in watching belts whiz and wheels go round. The impalpable flour that floated in the air sifted over his head and shoulders as he lounged from one corner to another, edging his way between piles of full sacks. He liked the smell of the mill, a compound of machine grease and the fragrance of grain; he liked the regular thud thud of the big dynamo which shook the whole building as if a giant were trying to kick the walls out. He watched the fat golden grains of wheat go sliding down the chute in a lazy mass, and turned up his sleeve to plunge his arm among them.

‘That’s good wheat,’ he yelled to the man in charge.

‘Mains of Invercalder,’ the man yelled back. ‘Best wheat in the haul countryside.’

That was Mabel’s father’s wheat. I should know good wheat when I see it, thought Hector, bitterness overcoming him again. A whole year and a half on that damned Alberta farm. What he didn’t know about wheat wasn’t worth knowing. Horse-feed, too, he knew something about that.

‘Damnation!’ he swore again, emerging into the yard. John’s last remark was still active. He hadn’t been able to stick to farming anyhow. Could he stick to anything?

He nodded to the carters tramping over the mud of the yard with bits of dirty sacking laid over their shoulders. Probably that was the kind of job John thought him fit for. ‘Wouldn’t that jar you?’ he found himself sneering; the Canadian phrase had not occurred to him for a long time. Hell, what a life it had been!

He leaned against a doorway and watched the horses; their haunches were wrinkling, and their great bearded feet were braced against the cobbles. On his farm he had felt something like that, like a brute in blinkers between two shafts. He rememberd his disgust and forlornness at the plough-tail; he had even kicked at the ploughshare with his heavy boots in a senseless frenzy of rage, and sent long imploring letters to Aunt Janet. What maddened him most was the feeling that he had been turned down by the whole lot of them, even by Aunt Janet. And then Aunt Janet had assured him that all was forgotten and forgiven, and on that assurance he had sold up his farm and come home to make good.

It was more than a year since he had come back, but he was still angry when he remembered how John had so high-and- mightily washed his hands of him. It was the affair with Bell Duncan that did it; everybody turned against him when that came out. And what was there in that? The girl was asking for it. Fellows had done much worse than that. His own father had been a damned sight worse. And he was only a boy when the affair began; he was heartily sick of the girl by the time she started slandering him right and left. Glad enough he had been to clear out when they offered him the chance. But in any decent family the whole history of the affair would have been different. As it was, they merely clapped blinkers on him and stuck him between two shafts, the shafts of a plough.

It was a raw afternoon, and to the dull rage he felt was added the discomfort of cold. With an abrupt jerk he turned and marched up to the office again, hurled a ledger on the floor and put on his coat, hat and muffler. Without thinking he then went out through the main gateway facing the dock. It was high tide; the dock-gates were open, and a dirty- looking steamer was warping her way in. A rope came curling on the quay beside him, and was knotted in a trice round an iron post rooted among the worn granite setts that surrounded the little square of deep water. Foreign-looking chaps, thought Hector, as he glanced at the crew leaning over the side, and he strolled away to see where they had come from. Elsa. Kjobenhavn. Copenhagen. Strange, clipped syllables were tossed along the deck, and he listened to them with a vague pleasure in the strangeness. Calderwick wasn’t the only place on God’s earth after all.

He wandered round the dock, peering into the water. One corner, the corner nearest to Dock Street, which led into the heart of the town, always used to be foul with straw and floating rubbish, he remembered, a nasty, stagnant corner which would be damned unpleasant to fall into. It was still as dirty and foul as ever. On a dark night, he reflected, it would be easy to come down to Dock Street and walk right over the edge into that scum. When he was a child that corner had always given him the creeps. He gazed into the murky water. Better to drown in the open sea than in that stagnant muck.

He shivered and turned up his coat collar. Damn it all, he would get even with John yet. There was Elizabeth to back him up. Elizabeth swore that it took a higher kind of courage to come back from Canada than to stick on out there. So he hadn’t been a quitter when he left the farm. He had come back with more money than he started with. Nobody could say he was a quitter. Damn it all, if he was an out-and-out rotter Elizabeth would never have married him, and there was precious little about himself he hadn’t told her.

Elizabeth made a fellow feel he had some guts in him. He would go home and shake it all off. Elizabeth was a wonder, he thought, striding up the street with the sea-wind behind him. Queer that none of the other chaps had had the nerve to make love to her. Of course, she said herself she was too brotherly for them. But she had fallen for him all right, all right.

At the moment he was filled with passionate gratitude towards her. She was the biggest success he had ever had. She was one of those superior people who understood books, and yet she hadn’t turned him down. Far from it. He was the first man she had ever fallen for.

He studied the figure of a girl coming towards him, her head down against the wind. Showed up a girl, that did. Elizabeth was as well made as any of them. God, he was glad to be well out of the time when he couldn’t look at a girl without thinking there was only a skirt between him and her. Elizabeth had saved him from that.

Not consciously in words, not even in half-glimpsed images did he recognize Elizabeth as anything like an anchorage or a haven for his storm-driven life, but the feeling which was swelling his heart as he neared home would have engendered such a conception in a more articulate person. He was only aware that he had never felt like that before about any girl. As he fitted his latchkey in the door he was excited because he was to see his wife immediately, and his disappointment was all the more overwhelming when he found the drawing-room empty. The mistress, said Mary Ann, rushing from the kitchen, had left word she was sorry but she had to go out for tea. ‘With Mrs Doctor Scrimmager,’ added Mary Ann of her own accord; ‘at least they gaed out thegither.’

‘I’ll mak’ you a fly cup for yoursel’,’ she offered.

‘No, no, Mary Ann; you’ll never get a man if you offer him nothing but tea,’ said Hector. ‘Tell the mistress if she comes back before me that I’m away to the Club for something better than tea.’

Mary Ann giggled. A heartsome young man, the master, and with a wee spark of the devil in his eye; just what a man should have.

The wee spark of the devil in Hector’s eye was occasioned by a curious blend of emotions. Because Elizabeth had gone out he was not only disappointed, he was resentful with the same kind of resentment a child feels when it has hurt itself and its mother does not pick it up. He was also irritated because it was Mrs Scrymgeour whose company Elizabeth had preferred to his; he disliked Mrs Scrymgeour and wished that his wife were less intimate with the woman. At the same time he was conscious that he was a man, a swaggering, independent creature, and he was pleased to have an excellent excuse for flourishing his masculinity in despite of Elizabeth. He would go to the Club and have a high old time with the fellows. He was popular in the Club. He might, in fact, make a night of it. It would serve Elizabeth right.

On his way to the Golf Club he passed close by the lighted windows of number seven Balfour Terrace, where Mabel was sitting alone at tea, turning over the new magazine the perusal of which was to lead her imagination to startling conclusions a little later in the evening.

Next day the wind had increased to a storm; the thunder of the breaking grey sea could be heard in the High Street, and a relentless rain stung the faces of the goodwives as they scuttled from one snug shop to another doing their shopping.

Mrs Hector Shand was standing at her drawing-room window gazing at the low clouds racing behind the few leafless trees of her garden. The prospect was bleak, but Elizabeth, being accustomed to unkind weather, was not depressed. She was planning to take a run on the links, for when a strong wind blew she could not help taking to her heels and following it.

But the front-door bell rang, and almost immediately Mary Ann’s voice cried: ‘The mistress is in here, Miss Shand.’

Aunt Janet was breathless; she tumbled rather than walked in, clutching a sodden umbrella and a brown-paper parcel.

‘Oh, my dear!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, my dear!’

‘She’s heard about it,’ said Elizabeth to herself, feeling trapped.

Aunt Janet was brimming over with solicitude; she had obviously come to comfort and to exhort, to investigate and bewail the scandal.

‘What a terrible thing!’ she cried, endeavouring to seize Elizabeth’s hands at the same time as Elizabeth tried to take the parcel and umbrella from her. ‘What a dreadful thing! Oh, I’m so upset. Where is he?’

‘Come and sit by the fire,’ said Elizabeth; ‘let me get your wet things off.’

‘I was sure I should find you in. I said to myself: “The poor child will be mourning her heart out.” Is Hector upstairs?’

No, he’s gone out to the football match.’

‘But, my dear Elizabeth!’

‘It’s dreadful weather for standing about, I know. I shouldn’t spend a wet afternoon like that —’

Aunt Janet’s visibly increasing distress broke off Elizabeth’s sentence.

‘That’s not what I meant at all – not at all.’

Janet put a hand on the younger woman’s knee.

‘My dear, how do you know he won’t go and get drunk again? Why did you let him go? I heard all about this dreadful affair of last night —’

‘How did you hear about it?’

‘But, Elizabeth, it’s the talk of the town. I heard about it from at least three different sources.’

‘Oh, I suppose so. I didn’t think.’

‘And now you say he’s at a football match.’

‘He won’t be tackling people there,’ said Elizabeth, laughing. ‘And he won’t get drunk, Aunt Janet, for he promised me—’

‘I was sure of it. I was sure you would lead the poor boy in the right direction.’

‘Besides, it wasn’t so bad, not so very bad, from what I can make out. They were all rather well on, and Hector was practising Rugger tackles. It was quite an accident that Hutcheon got his collar-bone broken.’

‘But, my dear, I heard that young Hutcheon was brought home in a dreadful state, simply covered with mud and blood.’

‘Then they must have been scrumming in the street. Still, I’m sure it was only a lark. It’s easy to break a man’s collar-bone when you pitch him over; I’ve seen Hector do it before.’

‘Hector doesn’t know his own strength. Well, my dear, it’s a mercy you can take it so calmly; but really, my dear, I am so distressed. I was told that they were swearing and blaspheming in the street in the most dreadful manner, wakening people out of their beds.’

Elizabeth repressed a smile.

‘I don’t believe it’ll happen again,’ she said. ‘Hector’s terribly ashamed of himself.’

‘It mustn’t happen again, Elizabeth. You must do all you can to prevent it.’

‘Well, last time I told Hector I would go down to the Club and drag him out by the hair of the head if he did it again, and this time I have threatened to go down and get drunk beside him—’

‘But, my dear Elizabeth! I know you’re only joking, but really!’

‘Why, what else could I do?’

Aunt Janet was genuinely shocked.

‘My dear, I don’t think you quite realize … Hector isn’t like other young men who can take a drink or leave it. His father literally died of drink, and Hector is so like him. In every way. Whisky is dangerous for him.

‘Aunt Janet,’ said Elizabeth, becoming earnest, ‘I do know all that. Hector has told me everything about himself.’ (Things he wouldn’t tell you, she added silently.) ‘But surely I’m not a kind of policeman keeping guard over him, am I? He’s so ashamed of himself that it wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of him and tie him down with promises. I don’t want to say to him: “You mustn’t do this, or that.” Why should I? It was of his own accord he promised me he wouldn’t get drunk again; I didn’t ask him to promise anything. And that’s much the best way, I’m sure.’

Aunt Janet shook her head. ‘I hope, my dear, I only hope you’re right, but I’m afraid you’re not. We all hoped that marriage would settle Hector, but I know John isn’t at all pleased with his work, and this is the second time already that Hector has been violently drunk since you were married.’

Is it my fault? thought Elizabeth, her temper rising.

‘Hector likes excitement,’ she objected. ‘Perhaps he needs it. He hasn’t been accustomed to office work, and there isn’t much excitement to be got in this town. As for me, I can go for long walks and read, but Hector —’

Nonsense! said Janet Shand to herself angrily. She was angry with Hector too, but Elizabeth had no right to be so slack with him. She had no sense of her duties to her husband.

But her anger lessened as she peered at the girl’s face. In spite of her casual, cheerful air Elizabeth was looking worn. Aunt Janet recovered herself.

‘Well, well, you look as if you hadn’t slept,’ she said as kindly as she could. ‘When did Hector come home, my dear?’

‘Not so very late – about one o’clock. But we didn’t get to sleep till after five.’

Elizabeth stared into the fire and suddenly smiled, reminiscently, it seemed to the watching old woman. She felt a pang of jealousy. Hector had been used to confess his sins and seek absolution in her lap; but now he was in the power of this strange girl.

‘You have a great influence over him, my dear Elizabeth,’ she said solemnly. ‘You must try to use it properly.’

‘He has a great influence over me, Aunt Janet.’

Janet Shand asked the question she had been longing to ask for months:

‘Why did you marry him, Elizabeth?’

Elizabeth’s blush mounted as usual till her ears were burning. She hated it; she wished she could control her blood.

‘Because I was madly in love with him – and I still am, and I shall be always.’

Her answer was almost defiant.

The short winter afternoon was rapidly waning, and Elizabeth still stared into the glow of the fire, the shadows darkening around her. She saw there the glow in her own heart.

‘I know what you mean,’ she added in an abrupt voice. ‘Lots of people have said it to me. I’m supposed to have brains, and Hector has none, not the academic kind, at any rate. I have the knack of passing examinations; Hector hasn’t. I like to read all kinds of books; Hector never opens a book if he can help it. What can we have in common, people wonder. That’s the superficial point of view. What do these things matter? They’re all second-hand. What we read or don’t read makes no difference to ourselves. The real me, ‘she struck her bosom, ‘is made of the same stuff as Hector —’

She broke off as abruptly as she had begun. She could not explain it to Aunt Janet. They were both wild and passionate; they wanted the whole of life at one draught; they would sink or swim together. Images flowed through her mind: in the air or under the sea or rooted in the earth she saw herself and Hector living, growing, swimming, breasting the wind together. She thought of his wide shoulders, his strong neck, his swift and lovely feet….

‘What have brains to do with it?’ she asked, looking up. ‘It’s a miracle, Aunt Janet; a miracle that sometimes takes my breath away. Whatever made him fall in love with me, I often wonder….’

She smiled suddenly, and touched Aunt Janet.

‘You can’t explain away a miracle, can you? A miracle swept us off our feet, and we got married because we couldn’t help it. That’s the answer.’

Much of what Elizabeth had refrained from trying to express was none the less transmitted to the old woman on the other side of the fire. She had lived so long on vicarious emotion that it had become her one solace, and she was grateful to Elizabeth for the thrill she now experienced. Her gratitude submerged her resentment.

‘I love him, too, Elizabeth,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘But you have the greater influence over him, I am sure. If you would only use it!’

‘When you are driven by a strong wind you can’t use it, Aunt Janet!

‘But, my dear Elizabeth —’

A note of helplessness sounded in Aunt Janet’s voice.

Elizabeth suddenly felt exasperated. She sprang to her feet.

‘You don’t believe in us! You don’t believe it has any meaning! You’re only thinking of the little things, like keeping house and coming home at ten o’clock —’

‘But surely you want Hector to get on in the world,’ protested Aunt Janet, whose head was whirling. ‘I only want the best for both of you.’ She was crying.

Elizabeth’s emotion transformed itself again.

‘My dear, my dear,’ she coaxed, kneeling before Aunt Janet, ‘don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll be all right. There’s something in both of us.’

She petted the old woman for some minutes. Then, still, kneeling, she went on: ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t like Hector’s getting drunk any more than you do. But I think I understand it. I might do the same myself, if I had been accustomed to it as he has. What good could it do to coerce him? He’d only be angry with me. It would destroy the unity between us. Give us time, that’s all. We’ll both grow in grace. Don’t you see? I feel that so strongly that I know I must be right.’

She went on soothing Janet, who was wiping her eyes again.

They were both startled by the ringing of the front-door bell. It was now almost dark.

‘Whoever can that be?’ Elizabeth started to her feet.

Mary Ann, mindful of her manners before the minister, ceremoniously announced:

‘Mr Murray.’

William Murray came in eagerly, carrying a small book, but hesitated when he found he could barely discern his hostess by the flickering light of the fire.

‘Hello!’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’m afraid we’re rather in the dark here. Wait a minute and I’ll light the gas.’

‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you.’ The minister hung back.

‘Not a bit,’ said Elizabeth, striking matches. ‘I’m very glad to see you.’

The gaslight flooded the room with brightness, submerging along with the shadows Elizabeth’s glowing sentiments. The minister sat down. Elizabeth looked gay.

‘We’ve been having an argument. Should one coerce other people for their good? Which side do you take, Mr Murray?’

The minister smiled because Elizabeth was smiling at him. Mrs Hector stimulated him pleasantly.

‘I should need to know something about the circumstances,’ he said.

‘Oh, Miss Shand says: yes, one should force other people to do things, and I say: no, one shouldn’t. Tell us what you think.’

‘Well,’ said the minister, ‘do you know, I should never force anybody in anything. But surely one person can influence another? In fact, I think we all influence each other, whether we ought to or not, and perhaps whether we know it or not.’

‘Ah, but that’s a different thing’ and ‘That’s just what I say’ broke simultaneously from Elizabeth and Janet.

‘To force ideas or conduct on another,’ went on the minister, ‘is egoism; but to influence another, if it’s done in – in love,’ he stumbled over the word, ‘is surely the highest altruism?’

‘Altruism my hat!’ retorted Elizabeth, to Aunt Janet’s horror. ‘How can it be altruism if we influence other people without knowing it.’

‘I should have said rather that we influence other people more than we know.’

‘Then we can’t take much credit for it, can we?’

‘Perhaps there’s something in that.’ The minister was thoughtful. ‘We all transmit rays of which we know very little. Or, rather, they are transmitted through us.’

‘I agree with you there,’ said Elizabeth unexpectedly. ‘And that’s just why we shouldn’t interfere with them.’

‘But if there were no interference, if we allowed the unknown influences free play, would you not agree that the world might be flooded with – with love?’

Again the minister stumbled over the word.

‘In that case, I should look out for a Noah’s Ark.’

Aunt Janet looked from one to the other in bewilderment.

Elizabeth laughed.

‘I feel contradictious,’ she said. ‘I think we might dilute our arguments with tea.’

She wondered, with an inward chuckle, as she pulled the old-fashioned handle which jangled a bell in the kitchen, whether the minister too had come to condole. But that wasn’t like him, she decided; and in that she did him justice.

Mabel Shand, however, who was then on her way towards number twenty-six High Street, was coming expressly to gloat – which is another form of condolence. She thought that Hector would certainly be at home, and that she would have an opportunity to pay off old scores. She promised herself she would not leave him a leg to stand on.

‘Where’s Hector?’ was her first question when she was shown in. She was surprised to see the minister; he seemed to be very chummy with Elizabeth, she noted. Aunt Janet there too, of course, waiting to enfold the sinner in her benevolent arms. Elizabeth was almost indecently gay; she did not seem to care a rap.

‘Hector? Oh, he’s out at the football match.’

‘Is it safe, do you think, to let him go out to football matches?’

‘He won’t scrag anybody, if that’s what you mean.’

Mabel’s dislike of Elizabeth was beginning to be returned.

‘But that, it seems, is just what he does do,’ murmured Mabel.

‘My husband nearly killed a man last night,’ said Elizabeth gravely addressing the minister. ‘At least, that’s what people seem to think. Should I keep him forcibly in the house to prevent him from committing murder in the high streets?’

The minister was embarrassed. He recollected that Sarah had spoken to him of some scandal concerning Hector Shand. But Mrs Hector, for all her gravity, still had a twinkle in her eye; she was obviously dangling bait in front of him. Yet he could not rise to it with the lightheartedness he had felt before Mrs John Shand came in.

He murmured something about his argument in favour of influence.

Mabel laughed a little.

Elizabeth turned her back on her sister-in-law.

‘I was only teasing,’ she said. ‘It’s not so bad as that. Will you have some more tea? Is that my Maeterlinck you’ve brought back? What do you think of Wisdom and Destiny? I had an idea it would appeal to you.’

‘Yes, yes.’ His embarrassment still persisted. ‘I like some of it very much.’

He could not discuss the book just then.

The real reason of his embarrassment was that the presence of any lady member of his congregation reminded him that he was the minister. In speaking to Elizabeth he quite forgot the minister in the man, an experience so unusual that he found it delightful. But his present constraint brought back his formal vocabulary and he said:

‘I really came to ask you to take a stall at the Christmas sale of work, which is run by the ladies of the congregation.’

‘What?’ said Elizabeth, open-mouthed. ‘Me?’

Mabel laughed again. ‘You’re one of the ladies of the congregation, Elizabeth, although you don’t seem to know it.’

‘Yes,’ said the minister. ‘Mrs John Shand is kindly taking over the sweet stall, and I thought – I imagined a gift-book stall would be very suitable for you.’

‘That’s the very thing for her, Mr Murray,’ said Aunt Janet heartily. She was glad to see that Elizabeth’s pertness had not offended the minister, and it pleased her to think of Hector’s wife taking a dignified place at a church function.

‘Oh, Aunt Janet,’ interrupted Mabel, ‘that reminds me, you’ll give me some jam for my stall, won’t you?’

Mabel and Janet began a lively exchange of confidences about jam and marzipan sweets, under cover of which Elizabeth said to the minister in a low tone:

‘I couldn’t possibly do it. I wish you wouldn’t ask me. I’m no good at things of that kind.’

William Murray got up to put his teacup on the table, and remained standing beside her. His constraint vanished.

‘I wish you would try,’ he urged, bending down.

‘I don’t feel like a lady of the congregation.’

‘It’s not really in that sense that I ask you to come; it would be a great pleasure to me to have you there.’

The yearly sale of work made him feel nervous and distracted. Elizabeth’s presence would in some way be a support to him. ‘I’m no good at things of that kind either,’ he added, ‘and we should help each other out.’

Elizabeth smiled up to him as he bent confidentially nearer to make this confession.

‘If you put it like that,’ she said.

It was at this moment that Hector Shand, having let himself in, walked into the drawing-room.

In spite of the fresh air with which Calderwick was liberally supplied he did not feel much the better of his afternoon’s outing. He was already dissatisfied with himself when he went out to the football match, and neither the weather nor the bad play of the local team had relieved his dissatisfaction.

At the close of play, mindful of his promise to Elizabeth, he had refused the invitation of several friends to ‘have one’ at the Clubhouse, and as the men of Calderwick were as self-conscious about their drinks as about their women there had been a considerable amount of chaffing when he said with attempted heartiness: ‘No, I promised the wife.’

All the way home his grievances harassed him. John had jumped down his throat that morning. Calderwick was a one-horse town where a man couldn’t enjoy himself without everybody kicking up a fuss. Damn it all, a fellow had to go on the loose sometimes. A fellow couldn’t be mollycoddling about his own fireside all the time. All very well for Elizabeth; she had her books; but it gave him a pain in the neck when he tried to read a book.

His head ached and there was an evil taste on the back of his tongue. As his physical misery increased his dissatisfaction with himself, his sense of failure threatened to overwhelm him completely. The one thing he needed was to lay his head on Elizabeth’s bosom, as he had done to his comfort in the small hours of the morning. He hurried on, and almost burst into the drawing-room.

His quick eye at once caught the picture of Elizabeth and the minister smiling intimately to each other, while Aunt Janet and Mabel were talking in a corner. Half of him seemed to rise inside and choke in his throat, while the other half sank clean through the pit of his stomach, leaving him hollow and sick. The figures in the room changed their positions like puppets while he stood there glaring.

The look in his eyes made Mabel forget her intention of teasing him. Better go at once, her social sense warned her. She hastily put on her furs.

‘Glad to see you enjoying yourselves,’ said Hector at last, removing his eye from Elizabeth but making no attempt to come farther into the room.

Elizabeth felt and looked bewildered.

‘We’re only having tea,’ she said. ‘Here’s your cup.’

‘I’m afraid I must go now,’ put in Mabel quickly. ‘Good-bye, Elizabeth; good-bye, everybody. It’s good- afternoon and good-bye in the same breath to you, Hector, I’m sorry to say.’

Hector had moved his lips once or twice as if swallowing, and he now turned to Mabel with exaggerated camaraderie.

‘Not a bit of it, Mabel. I only looked in to say I wasn’t having any tea. I’ll come with you.’

‘Why, where are you going, Hector?’ cried Elizabeth.

‘To the Club,’ said Hector, without looking at her. ‘So long, Aunt Janet,’ he went on. ‘See you another time. Sorry I can’t stop. Come along, Mabel.’

The door shut upon them. Elizabeth found herself filling a cup with hot water instead of tea.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said in a flat voice.

Then she suddenly burst into tears.

‘Go away!’ she sobbed. ‘Go away! Both of you.’

With another sob she rose and rushed out of the room.

To his own amazement the minister’s first impulse was to rush out after her. He was literally upset; everything within him felt topsy-turvy. Little enough had been said, but Elizabeth’s agitation seemed to him natural and his own not less so. Something evil had struck into the very heart of the room like an invisible thunderbolt and had scattered the peace of all the people in it. Yet he was amazed to find himself involuntarily springing to the door.

Janet Shand caught him by the sleeve. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but her voice was harsh and angry. ‘Let her go!’ she said. ‘You can’t do anything with her. Nobody can do anything with her. She’ll be the ruin of him yet.’

William shook his arm free but stood irresolutely shifting his feet while Janet Shand sank into a chair crying: ‘My poor boy! My poor, poor boy!’

William Murray could not bear to see anyone in tears; and it was not only because he was a minister that he felt obliged to comfort those in disress. On this occasion, however, his own distress was so immediate and unexpected that his instinctive attempt to comfort the old woman was awkward and perfunctory.

He found himself outside on the pavement with some confused idea in his head that Miss Shand had sent him out to find Hector and bring him back. He started off mechanically with long strides, but the street was so thickly crowded with Saturday-nighters that his impatience drove him into the roadway. He ejaculated irrelevant words as he walked. ‘No, no,’ he said, and ‘Evil, evil.’ The rain had stopped, but the storm was not yet spent; high above the blue arc-lamps of the High Street a wild scud of clouds was flying over the waning moon, and, as if driven by the same force, the minister flew along the street below.

Blindly he turned out of the High Street. He wanted to get hold of the man. Had Janet Shand asked him to catch Hector Shand, or had she not? Anything might happen, she had said, with Hector in that mood. His fists clenched and unclenched as they swung. His heart was pounding; little pulses hammered in his eyes. ‘Evil, evil.’

In the side-street where he now was, a dark street indifferently lit by gas-lamps that flung yellow rings upon the wet pavement, the minister suddenly came to himself, and leaned against a wall. He was possessed by evil, his body was shaking with anger, his fists were thinking of hitting Hector Shand, of hitting him and hitting him until he crumpled up. The last time he had been so invaded by anger was as a boy of fourteen when he had seized a bully at the school and pounded his head against a window until the window smashed in. His remorse afterwards, and his terror of the murderous fury that had thrilled him, had converted him to that contemplation of the eternal love of God in which he had found serenity. Not until this day had the devil entered into him again.

He walked to and fro between the two gas-lamps, filled with an anguish of shame. He a minister of the Gospel, a servant of Christ! He stood on the edge of the pavement and stared at the wall, a high, well-built wall enclosing a garden. Its regularly cut stones were so smoothly fitted together that there was neither handhold nor foothold all the way up to the top, although the stones were greenish with age. The minister stared at it as if obsessed.

Smooth, blank, and yet frowning, the wall stared back at him. The minister shut his eyes as if the sight of the wall had become intolerable. ‘O God,’ he prayed, and again, and again: ‘O God,’ the simple incantation with which the soul seeks to recover a communion it has lost.

When he began to walk again it was at a more sober pace. He had sinned. He had met evil with evil. One should overcome evil with good. One should be sorry for a man like Hector Shand, not murderously angry with him. At any rate, he was in no fit state to pursue the man; he could do nothing spiritually effective; he felt spent.

But young Mrs Hector was sobbing her heart out. He shivered a little as the remembrance of her tears called up the scene again. It was dreadful to live with evil in one’s own household. She had in her husband the same kind of problem that he had in Ned. They needed all their strength, both of them…. They must help each other…. And for her sake something ought to be done at once. Something had to be done if only to relieve the oppression round his own heart…. The minister decided to ask John Shand to go himself and fetch his brother home.

‘Is Mr Shand in?’ he asked the maid, wearily supporting himself by the iron railing. ‘Can I see him privately for a few moments?’

The girl hesitated.

‘Is it Mr John Shand or Mr Hector?’ she said.

‘Are they both here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The minister swayed a little.

‘Oh, then it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled, and turned down the steps again.

The sound of a gramophone followed him, as the astonished maid peered after him.

‘Losh keep’s a’!’ she said to herself as she shut the door.

Sarah Murray observed her brother’s dejection when he came into the sitting-room, where she was knitting by the fire.

‘What’s the matter, William? Didn’t you see Mrs Hector?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she going to take a stall, then?’

‘I think so; yes, I believe she will.’

Sarah knitted on in silence. If William wouldn’t tell her she wasn’t going to ask.

‘Supper’s nearly ready,’ she said finally.

‘Was Ned all right at tea-time?’ asked William, without lifting his head from his hand.

‘Not so bad. That’s to say, he never said a word.’

‘He is better, Sarah, don’t you think?’

Sarah scratched her head with a knitting-needle.

‘You can’t call it a way of living to lie in bed every day till dinner-time and sit up every night till two in the morning and never set a foot across the outside door,’ she said sharply. ‘The only difference I see. is that I’ve got the upper hand of him now.’

‘What makes you think that, Sarah?’

‘I’ve daured him,’ said Sarah. ‘Ever since one night I went into his room and stood up to him. He knows now that I can stand up to him, and we’ve had less trouble ever since. There’s no more word of Teenie giving notice, nor there won’t be as long as I’m in the house, and Ned knows it. So I just let him lie in bed in the mornings; it keeps him out of the way. I believe, William, that it’s yon breakdown of his he fashes himself about: I think he can’t account for it. So I rub that into him between times…. It’s just pure daftness to put up with him,’ she added angrily. ‘What kind of a life is it for a laddie of his age? He’s just been pampered in this house. But you won’t find strangers willing to do that. It might do him good to be living away from us. Except that I don’t see what kind of a job he could possibly be any good at.’

‘You’re wrong there, Sarah; he’s a very able fellow, Ned.’

‘He is, is he? Pity his ability can’t be turned in a more useful direction…. I must say I don’t think much of intellect,’ finished Sarah. ‘People who can pass examinations often don’t seem to be fit for anything else.’

If that was a furtive fling at Mrs Hector Shand it missed the mark; William seemed not to have heard it.

Sarah collected her knitting and went to see about supper.

Ned came down to supper and sat silently hunched over his plate. William was uncommonly silent too, and Sarah felt a little sulky as she filled the plates and passed them down. She could not help wishing for once that she had a sensible man like John Shand in the house. William was all right, of course; but he was in a queer mood. He had been having queer moods lately. And he was seeing a good deal too much of that young Mrs Hector. What had happened to-night, she wondered.

After supper, as Ned was sliding out of the door, William called: ‘Ned!’

Ned paused suspiciously.

‘Won’t you play me a game of chess!’

‘No, I’m busy.’

Ned pulled the door behind him with his usual force but the usual slam did not result, for William had caught hold of it.

‘What are you busy at? Mathematics?’

Ned thrust his head in and jerked a thumb at Sarah.

‘Needn’t think you’re going to copy her,’ he said.

‘I was only asking,’ said William gently, ‘because I’m interested. I know you’re a wonder at mathematics.’

‘She thinks she knows everything,’ said Ned, still glaring at Sarah.

But he did not go.

‘I’m not doing mathematics; I’m writing a story,’ he shot out suddenly.

‘A story?’ William was pleased.

Sarah shrugged and began to collect the dishes.

‘A story,’ said Ned emphatically. ‘About the world as it should be. Every house in all the towns empty. Nothing but cats and dogs. No women.’

His eye was still fixed on Sarah’s back as she vanished into the kitchen. Then he looked doubtfully at his brother.

‘I’d like to see it,’ said William eagerly. ‘May I come up?’

‘What d’you want to see it for, all of a sudden?’

Ned’s face was twisted with suspicion; his eyes had a dull, guarded look.

How thin the poor fellow’s getting! thought William, and he put his hand on Ned’s shoulder.

‘My dear lad,’ he said, ‘my dear Ned, just because you’re my brother.’ He let his hand lie, endeavouring to convey his affection through the contact.

Ned shook it off furiously.

‘Who do you think I am?’ he shouted. ‘Jesus Christ?’

He spat venomously in his brother’s face and slammed the door.