At these words they stood up, concurring, and all but Grierson swarmed round him so that he stood amongst them, his fierce glance encompassing them, encouraging yet rebuking, sanctioning yet subduing, approving yet admonishing, like an emperor surrounded by his court. His blood, the blood that was noble like an emperor's, coursed more imperially in his veins than did the thin, serous fluid that was in theirs. In his heavy brain he felt he had achieved a great and noble action, that his gesture, in the teeth of disaster had been sublime.
"Lay on, MacDuff," they cried, stirred by the unwonted laxity and magnanimity of his usually unapproachable nature, impatient to savour the rich, golden liquor he would provide for them. As he led them through the back door of the club into the outer air and they filed, eventually, into Phemie's wee back parlour, he felt the danger was over, that he was again the master of them.
Soon the drinks were flowing as they toasted him jubilantly, in McDonald's finest Chieftain whisky, for his generosity, his discrimination, his strength. As he flung out a golden sovereign, birling it grandly on to the round, mahogany table, a faint glimmering of sense at the back of his mind whispered to him how little he could afford it now, but he thrust the thought back again, stamped it out fiercely with a loud, "Here's to us wha's like us?"
"It's a be-autiful dram, this," purred Grierson, smacking his lips appreciatively as he held his glass up to the light. "A beautiful dram, mild as mother's milk and smooth as weel smooth as the nap on one o' our friend's braw hats. The only pity is that it's so deshed more expensive than orner stuff." He tittered spitefully, knowingly, towards Brodie.
"Drink it up then, man!" replied Brodie loudly. "Lap it up when ye get the chance. You're no' payin' for't. By God, if we were a' as mean as you, the world would stop goin' round."
"That's one to put in your pipe, Grierson," laughed Paxton, hoarsely.
"Speakin' o' stinginess did ye hear the latest one about our wee friend here?" cried the Provost, with a nod towards Grierson and a wink at Brodie.
"No! What was it?" they chorused. "Tell us, Provost."
"Weel," replied Gordon, with a knowing look, "it' short and sweet. The other day a wheen bairns were playin' about outside our friend's grain store, beside a big sack o' beans at the door, when up comes the son o' the house. "Get away, boys," young Grierson cries, "and don't touch these beans or my feyther'll find out. He's got every one o' them counted!"
A roar of appreciation arose from the assembly, through which Grierson murmured easily, blinking through the smoke:
"I'll no deny I ken how many beans make five, Provost, but it's a handy thing these days wi' so much hardship and poverty about."
But Brodie, upon his throne, the already warmed pith of him flaming under the potent whisky, neither heard nor heeded the innuendo as, filled with a wild elation, the desire to act, to liberate his strength, to smash something, seized him and, raising his empty glass high above his head, he suddenly shouted, without point in the , conversation, "To hell with them! To hell with these measly Mungo swine!" and shattered the heavy tumbler violently against the wall.
The others, now mellow for his mood, responded gleefully.
"That's the spirit!"
"Another round, gentlemen."
"No heeltaps."
"Gie us a song, Wullie."
"Speech! Speech!" came their shouts.
At this point a discreet knock upon the door, followed by the noiseless entry, felt-slippered yet formidable, of the landlady, interrupted the fluid current of their hilarity.
"Ye're merry the night, Gentlemen," she said with a thin, tight-lipped smile which inferred that their gaiety was not entirely becoming to them or wholly pleasing to her. "I hope ye'll no' forget the good name o' the house." Much as she valued their connection she was too remote, too virtuous, altogether too much of an institution to be imposed upon by them. "I dinna like to hear the smash o' glass," she added acidly.
"Tits, Phemie, woman, it'll be paid for," cried Brodie. She nodded slightly, as though to convey to him that she had already taken that for granted, but in a slightly mollified tone she remarked:
"What's the occasion?"
"Just a little celebration given by our esteemed member at the head o' the table," murmured Grierson. "I dinna ken what it's to celebrate, exactly, but ye micht ca' it a beanfeast without ony beans."
"Never mind him, Phemie; send us in another hauf mutchkin," cried a voice.
"Well ye have a wee hauf yersel', Phemie?" remarked the Provost, breezily.
"Come awa' and sit on my knee, Phemie," cried one of the erstwhile draughts players now, alas, incapable of differentiating a crowned man from a peppermint oddfellow.
"Send in the whisky, Phemie," demanded Brodie. "Ill make them a' behave themselves."
She reproved them individually and collectively with her glance, raised a warning forefinger, and padded out as silently as she had come, murmuring as she went:
"Dinna forget the name o' the house. I'll send ye in the speerits, but ye maun keep quiet; ye maun mind the good name o' the house."
When she had gone the ball of their gaiety rolled of? again, quickly gathered speed, and bounded more exuberantly than before.
"Never mind Phemie," cried a voice; "her bark is waur than her bite, but her face is waur than the two o' them thegither."
"Ye wad think this public o' hers was a tabernacle o' righteousness," cried another, "she's that uncommon godly about it. She wad have ye drink like ye were in the kirk."
"There's a braw, wee tittle in the front pews, onyway," replied the more bibulous draughts player. "They say Nancy, the barmaid, is as obleegin' as she's bonnie." He winked round the assembly knowingly.
"Tits, man, tits!" cried the Provost reprovingly. "Don't 'file the nest that you're sittin' in."
"That's the cuckoo ye wad be meanin'," replied the other agreeably; "but I'm no' that."
"Would ye like me to give ye a verse o' Burns?" called out Paxton. "I'm just ripe to let ye have 'The Deil amang the Tailors.' "
"Our chairman promised us a bit speech, did he not?" remarked Grierson insinuatingly.
"Ay! Come awa' wi' that speech ye were goin' to give us," cried the Provost.
"Speech!" they insisted again. "Speech from the chairman."
Brodie's soaring pride, wafted higher by their tipsy cries, reached upward to a sublimated region where his limitations ceased, in the refined air of which his tongue seemed fluent, his incapacity for the articulate utterance of his inner thoughts forgotten.
"Very well," he called out, "I'll give ye a speech." He rose, inflating his chest, widening his eyes at them, swinging slightly from side to side on the fulcrum of his feet, wondering, now that he had risen, what he should say.
"Gentlemen," he began at length, slowly, but amidst ready applause, "ye all know who I am. I'm Brodie, James Brodie, and what that name means, maybe ye can guess." He paused, surveying each member of the group in turn. "Ay, I'm James Brodie, and in the Royal Borough of Levenford, and beyond it too, it is a name that is respected and esteemed. Show me the man that says a word against it and I'll show you what these two hands will do to him." He shot out his huge hands wildly and let them throttle the vacant air before him, missing in his emotion the general apathy, the gloating relish in Grierson's satirical eyes, and seeing only reverence. "If I but chose I could tell you something that would startle ye to the very core."
Then, as his blurred glance swept around the table, he lowered his voice to a hoarse, confidential whisper, shook his head cunningly.
"But no! I'm not goin' to do it! Guess if ye like, but I'm not goin' to tell ye now ye may never know. Never!" He shouted the word. "But h's there; and so long as I breathe breath into this body o' mine, I will uphold my name. I've had an unco trouble lately that would have bent a strong man and broken a weaker one, but what has it done to me? I'm still here, still the same James Brodie, but stronger, more determined than before. If your hand offend ye cut it off' says the Scriptures Fve had to cut my own flesh and blood; ay, but it was without flinchin' that I used the axe. I've had trouble within and trouble without, sneakin' rogues and thievin' swine at my very ain door, false friends and dirty enemies round about me, ay and sly, sleekit backbiters as weel." He looked grimly at Grierson. "But through it all and above it all, James Brodie will stand hard and fast like the Castle Rock; ay and wi' his head as high above the air," he shouted, thumping his chest with his big fist and concluding in a loud full voice, "1 tell ye I'll show ye all! Ill show every one o' ye."