Everyone agreed that Barras had behaved magnificently. The case was widely reported — the Argus giving it in a double column under the caption “Spartan Father,” the Sunday Echo featuring a special article, “Hats off to a Patriot”; it had created a tremendous sensation, not only in Sleescale, but in Tynecastle itself. Barras moved in a perfect blaze of glory which was far from being distasteful to him. Upon several occasions when dining at the Central with Hetty he observed himself being pointed out, and he could not repress a thrill of gratification. He went about a great deal now, basked in the general approval. He had arrived at that state of mind when the whole procedure of his existence was deliberately extroverted. In the beginning the reaction had been defensive; but now it was deliberate. He had no private moments of reflection, quiet introspection or self-examination. No time, no time! His figure, breathless and a little flushed, seemed to throw the words backwards across his shoulders, hurrying, hurrying away. He was engrossed by the external, increasingly absorbed by his public performance, diverted only by the limelight, by noise, cheers and crowds.
His activities upon the Tribunal were redoubled. It became almost an impossibility for even the most genuine cases to secure exemption when Barras took his seat upon that arbitrary bench. Drumming impatiently upon the table, he would appear to listen to incoherent arguments and agitated protestations with an affectation of impartiality. Yet he was not attentive to the logic of the case; his decision was already taken. No exemption.
As time went on and the inveteracy of his decisions began to pall he briskened his methods and, speeding the cases one upon the other, began to pride himself on the numbers he could dispose of in each session. Upon the evenings of such successful days he would return home with a warm satisfaction and the sense of having earned the approbation of his fellow men.
Yet, as he walked up Cowpen Street, at this moment an even deeper satisfaction was imprinted on his face. The arrangement he had concluded at the Neptune to-day gave him a glowing sense of self-approval. For months past he had deplored the enforced closure of the Paradise, but he could not bring himself to face the heavy expense of driving a new roadway through the flood-undermined whinstone. Now, however, by judicious representations in the proper quarter he could offset the cost of the necessary roadway against subsequent deliveries to the Government of Paradise coal. The road was paid for before it was begun. Nothing need interfere with the fascinating accumulation of his wartime profits. Pit-head prices had risen a further ten shillings a ton and at the Neptune he was making money faster than he could ever have believed. Deep in the very centre of his being the secret knowledge of his own substance enraptured Barras, sustained him like a drug.
He was not a miser, but had simply an awareness of his money. He would spend money — indeed it gratified him, almost childishly, to reflect that in this respect five pounds meant as little to him as fivepence. And his present excitement demanded a kind of petty cash expenditure, that life with such potentialities laid open should not pass him by uneventfully. He had developed a new acquisitiveness. Already he had carried out striking changes at the Law. New furniture and carpets, a new gramophone, the car, a number of luxurious easy chairs, a special water softener, the old American organ removed and an electric pianola substituted. It was significant that he bought no more pictures. This belonged to his earlier phase of more constrained acquisitiveness and though the sense of his art “treasures” still brought him comfort — as instanced by his frequent complacent remark, “I have a fortune locked up in my pictures!”—he did not augment his collection during these war years. His indulgence was more showy, spontaneous and erratic. He would buy upon a whim; he developed a craze for “picking up a bargain”; he became a constant frequenter of the Tynecastle Arcade, where junk and curio shops abounded, and he never returned from such expeditions without triumphantly bringing home some purchase.
The presents he made to Hetty were expressive of the same momentum. Not the simplicities of his previous paternal devotion, not sweets, perfumes or a beribboned box of handkerchiefs, but presents upon a different psychological scale.
Here he smiled consciously. Almost insensibly he had come to regard Hetty as the normal relaxation to his strenuous endeavours. Hetty had always pleased him. Even in those early days when as a little girl of twelve she would skip astride his knee, to demand a clear gum — one of the pastilles he carried in his waistcoat pocket — he had experienced a curious reaction to Hetty. Her soapy, well-washed scent had filled his nostrils and he had reflected that Hetty would make a sweet little wife for Arthur. But now, in the face of Arthur’s contemptible behaviour, this was wholly changed. The change had begun on that Sunday when Hetty, bursting into tears, had allowed Barras to comfort her in the dining-room of the Law. From that moment Barras began “to make up” for Arthur’s deficiencies. Ostensibly the motive was sympathy: Hetty had to be compensated, taken out of herself and, when the final catastrophe of Arthur’s imprisonment occurred, made to forget. All this attuned with Barras’s mood, and now with this new restlessness urging him forward, the process was intensified. He smartened himself visibly, changed his tailor, wore silk ties and socks, acquired the habit of dropping in to Stirrocks near Grainger Street for a face massage, and a vibro-electric treatment for his hair. Gradually he began to take Hetty about with a certain conscious gallantry. To-night she was accompanying him to the King’s Theatre to see the new review Zig Zag.
A sense of anticipation tingled in Barras as he walked up the drive of the Law and let himself into his house. He went straight upstairs and took a bath, lying full length in the steaming water, conscious of his own virility. Then he dressed carefully and came down to pick himself a buttonhole.
In the conservatory he found Aunt Carrie, who had just finished a half-hour’s rubbing of Harriet’s back, and was now on her way to cut some asparagus in the kitchen garden. Aunt Carrie had made the kitchen garden her especial care during these war years, even extending her activities to poultry and ducks, so that while meatless days and restricted meals became the general rule, while many stood in queues for hours on end to purchase a few pounds of potatoes, or a scrap of meat or an ounce or two of margarine, there was always an abundance of excellent food on dear Richard’s table.
As Richard entered, Aunt Carrie raised her eyes. She murmured:
“You’ve had a hard day, Richard.”
He studied her with unusual indulgence.
“I’ve decided to cut the new roadway into Paradise, Caroline.”
“Oh, Richard,” she fluttered at the favour of his confidence, “that’s good, isn’t it?”
“We shall be able to bring out those ten men,” he said gravely. “That pleases me, Caroline.”
“Yes, Richard.”
“There must be a public funeral. I’ll arrange it. A token of respect.”
Aunt Carrie inclined her head. A pause. She moved towards the door.