Each Man's Son by Hugh Maclennan Page A

in its own right, unconscious, never seeming a part of that mind of hers which always appeared to be observing him coolly, thoughtfully, withcommon sense always trying to improve him, never selfish, never demanding. And yet he knew she was lonely, too, and that he had made her so.
    Into his thoughts came the face of Mollie MacNeil, the face of his own people. They were all lost here in the mines. They were inextricably lost in their own sea-deep feelings and crazy dreams. And Margaret had said he was unkind to the girl!
    As the mare took her time pulling the carriage along the main street closer to MacDonald’s Corner, the crowds thickened on the sidewalk, but Ainslie looked straight ahead and saw no one. The first fights had not yet begun, but they took part farther up the street in the vicinity of the saloons. The shops were now closed, the coal carts and slovens were off the streets, the tram had already traversed the length of the town and gone on its way, and for the moment Ainslie’s was the only carriage in sight.
    The Presbyterian minister stood under a lamppost with one hand scratching the small of his back and the other hooked by a thumb to his waistcoat pocket. He was brooding on the sermon he was going to preach tomorrow morning. He wondered if he should stop the doctor and ask him, as one scholar to another, if he thought it was going too far to warn the congregation against taking the promises of the New Testament too literally. For if God was love, what was to be done about Jehovah? But Ainslie passed the Reverend MacAlistair without turning his head.
    Under the light of the next post was another man who wanted to speak to the doctor. He looked like a chubby walrus dressed in a bowler hat and a high white collar. Jimmie MacGillivray, the saloonkeeper, had a stomach-ache. He wanted to ask the doctor about an idea which had been scaring the wits out of him. Could a stomach-ache be sent as a punishment for sin? If it could be–and the Reverend MacAlistair said that was so–then there was no hope for therelief of Jimmie MacGillivray. For what more could a man do to keep the Sabbath holy than he was doing now? He made his daughters keep it, too. They cooked all the food for Sunday on the day before, put it on plates and the plates on the tables, and he even saw to it that they filled all the glasses in the house with water on Saturday night, so that not a tap was turned in the MacGillivray house on the Sabbath. But the stomach-ache was growing worse week by week, and the Reverend MacAlistair said that his sins would find him out. What more could he do? If only the doctor would look his way…but the doctor passed, still staring at the rump of his mare, and Jimmie turned away with a small moan.
    At the next corner a crowd was gathering and as the fringes of it spilled over the curb Ainslie had to guide the mare to the far side of the street to avoid running down some of the men. This maneuver interrupted his thoughts and he looked for the cause of the disturbance. He could hear the broad voice of Mr. Magistrate MacKeegan…“‘And by Chesus,’ I said to her, Big Annie McPhee, six foot two with the beam of a potato schooner moreoffer, ‘you whould come into my court and swear that a man the size of the prissoner wass able to rape the likes of you! By Chesus,’ I said to her, ‘you whill get down on the floor and show me, or you whill get the hell owt of here and I whill ha? you for perjury moreoffer.’ And that…” MacKeegan’s voice tailed off as Ainslie passed…“iss a hell of a lot more serious charge in my court than rapes iss, because perjury iss perssonal.”
    â€œDear God,” Ainslie muttered to himself. Now the crowds were so thick they spilled out into the street and he had to urge the mare on. Most of the men were miners who spent their days underground in the dark. He could tell at a glance how many years any one of these proud