Growing Up In The West - John Muir Canongate Classics

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the slowness with which they were carried forward. Yet though their progress was so inexorable, it left time for a group of young men here and there to shout inviting or lewd words to the girls on the other raft as it floated past, words that evoked stony stares or tittering or raucous laughter. But at the same time these two rafts bearing all that human freightage floated just a little above the mud, were only a thin partition over a bottomless quagmire, and through the planks the mud oozed up and clung to the passengers’ shoe-soles, though their heads were so high in the air. If the whole business were to collapse! Mansie pushed his way through the moving mass and stepped on to the roadway. Safer there, though it was damp and sticky, like Eglinton Street. There was no help for it; one had just to walk right round a crowd like that. Swaggering there under the electric lights and shouting filth at each other. And people dying!

      He came to the corner of St Vincent Street. The street lay before him completely dark and silent, a blank wall of fog, and he plunged into it as though a thin paper wall hiding oblivion or nonentity. But the zone in which he found himself was not completely blank, as might have been thought; for as he walked on there went with him a small intimate circular area of clarity, a private area in which he was far more alone than he could ever have been in a room. And with a shiver of fear he knew that he could no longer escape, here in this perambulating privacy, from the thought that had been trying to catch him all evening. Was he to blame for Tom’s death? Oh God, could he be to blame? He turned a corner as if to escape from the question. Where could he be now? Tram-lines. Must be West Nile Street. Hard if a fellow was to be held responsible for a thing he never intended! Never even in his thoughts! Was it his fault that Tom took a glass too much that night and stumbled as he got off the tramcar? What had he to do with that? How could he have helped it? (Dangerous things these cars; must be careful.) And was it just that Tom should have to die of a tumour on the brain simply because of that one clout on the head? Seemed a pretty heavy punishment for taking one glass too much. And maybe it wasn’t Tom’s fault at all! The car driver may have had too much drink himself and stopped the car with a jerk; that often happened. And was that Tom’s fault? It was the car driver’s, if it was anybody’s. And Tom had to die for it after all these months with that pain in his head. And just after the fellow had turned over a new leaf too. Seemed dashed unjust.

      Mansie turned another corner and passed a church. Its grimy walls had the look of many city churches; as though they had been defiled by innumerable passing dogs, or by a long succession of drunken men overcome by need and pathetically willing to find any wall a urinal. That church in Eglinton Street. Those hooligans were still standing there, no doubt. As cocky as ever. Nothing happened to them. They were allowed to do what they dashed well liked seemingly. By gum, they would know how to treat a tart like Helen, all the same. For that was what she was, in spite of her refined airs. Tom was quite right in calling her what he did that evening. And now she was walking with Bob. In the fog where nobody could see them. Safe and cosy. Took dashed good care that nothing ever happened to her. She never went through Eglinton Street. It was simple fellows like Tom that had to pay the penalty. The menacing thought came nearer. He quickened his pace. Women! They always knew how to go scot-free. No, he wasn’t to blame! He was dashed if he was to blame.

      He came to an open space. Tall shapes rose round him in the fog. George Square. High up, the electric lamps flung down cones of bluish light on the stony heads and shoulders of the smoke-grimed statues. It was dashed uncanny, all these figures standing there without moving. Standing there for ever so long, some of them for a hundred years maybe. Must seem a queer world to them if they were to waken up now, frighten them out of their wits, think they were in the next world. That tall one was Burns, couldn’t even see his head. No electric light in his time, maybe no fog either. The banks o’ Doon. I’ll steal awa’ to Nannie. And then this. The world was a terrible place, when you came to think of it. Burns had some dashed bad hours in his lifetime. All these women he got in the family way. But none so bad as he would have if he were to waken up here now. Like johnnies frozen stiff and cold; the last fellows left on the earth might look like this. Would the earth be covered with fog then? Scooting through space, dead, the whole dashed lot of them, frozen stiff in the fog. Nobody left to care a hang for the poor beggars.

      An immense pity for all those figures staring into the fog, left stranded there in the fog, came over him, and he felt a longing to see human faces again, even if it were only those people parading Union Street.

      But when he reached Union Street again and saw the two solid streams of human beings still mechanically flowing, apparently quite unchanged, although now different bowler hats, different cheek-bones and eye-sockets were borne on the dim surface under the misty electric lights, he took the first tramcar that came as though it were an ark riding an advancing deluge about to engulf him. And as he sat on the top of the lighted tramcar he felt somewhat as if he were in an ark, felt almost grateful to the other passengers for allowing him to join them, for picking him from the jaws of danger and taking him into this company of decent fellows. Yet he did not speak to the man sitting beside him, for all those up here in this lighted, enclosed, moving chamber were united by a strangely intimate consciousness of one another, and all at once the knowledge came to him: They have all gone through it. And he was filled with pity for them, a pity quite without patronage, for he himself was included objectively in it. Yes, they had all gone through it. A great weight rolled from his heart.

      TWENTY-SIX

      JEAN AND MRS Manson were changing Tom’s bed and body linen.

      ‘Oh, his poor, poor ribs! It breaks your heart to see them sticking out o’ his skin like that, Jeannie.’

      ‘Hush, mother, he feels no pain now.’

      ‘Oh, why does he sigh like that? It’s terrible to listen to him sighing and sighing as if something was broken inside him and he couldna’ stop. His poor, poor legs. There’s no’ much flesh on him noo, Jeannie.’

      ‘He’s at rest now, mother. It’s like a sleep.’

      ‘How white his skin is. He had aye a fine white skin. Ever since he was a bairn.’

      ‘You must think of us now, mother. You still have Mansie and me. Mansie has been a good brother.’

      ‘He could lift me up wi’ one arm once, and noo I can almost lift him mysel’. Do you mind yon evening when he lifted me up on his shoulder and wadna’ let me doon again? I was frightened oot o’ my wits yon night, Jeannie, I can tell you. He was aye so fu’ o’ fun. Oh, Tom, Tom!’

      ‘There, it’s finished, mother. He’s comfortable now. Sit down by the fire and rest.’

      TWENTY-SEVEN

      DINNER WAS OVER. Jean was still softly busied with her housework, which gradually, however, seemed to be coming to a standstill, and then everything would be at rest; for after her long battle Mrs Manson was lying in her room almost as motionless as Tom outstretched to his full length in his coffin; they were both lying there with only a wall between them. Mansie sat by the kitchen fire; he felt relaxed and drowsy; everything was settled, all the funeral arrangements were made. Andas the definitive accomplishment of any long and laborious task, even if it be a death, automatically produces a feeling of satisfaction, the satisfaction of something completed, Mansie could not keep a little content from mingling tormentingly with his other feelings. He found relief for it, he almost seemed to escape responsibility for it, in the thought: ‘Well, Tom is better out of this.’ But that was not exactly what he meant, nor did the reflection that his mother was relieved now from the long strain quite seem to absolve him; queer thoughts a fellow had, thoughts that didn’t seem right when one’s dead brother was lying in the house. And under his drowsy relaxation uneasiness began to stir. He glanced across at Jean. What was she thinking? Was she thinking the same thing? An overpowering longing seized him to look in Tom’s face again, to reassure himself finally, to see once and for all, even if at what he saw a fear should start up that he would never forget all his life. And he furtively glanced at Jean, to see that she was still intent and busy, before he left the room.

      At the parlour door he waited for a little, then softly turned the handle. The sharp scent of lilies met him, and darkness, for the venetian blinds were down. He stood in the doorway breathing in the scent of the lilies, in which

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