The House With the Green Shutters (16 page)

Gourlay's resolve to be equal to Wilson in everything he did was his
main reason for sending his son to the High School of Skeighan. That he
saw his business decreasing daily was a reason too. Young Gourlay was a
lad of fifteen now, undersized for his age at that time, though he soon
shot up to be a swaggering youngster. He had been looking forward with
delight to helping his father in the business—how grand it would be to
drive about the country and see things!—and he had irked at being kept
for so long under the tawse of old Bleach-the-boys. But if the business
went on at this rate there would be little in it for the boy. Gourlay
was not without a thought of his son's welfare when he packed him off to
Skeighan. He would give him some book-lear, he said; let him make a kirk
or a mill o't.

But John shrank, chicken-hearted, from the prospect. Was he still to
drudge at books? Was he to go out among strangers whom he feared? His
imagination set to work on what he heard of the High School of
Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what could
he
do wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in
public; how could
he
stand up and spout, before a whole jing-bang o'
them?

"I don't want to gang," he whined.

"Want?" flamed his father. "What does it matter what
you
want? Go you
shall."

"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.

"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine help
you
would be in
business."

"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in
support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the
opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise
to be a minister."

Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a
different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he
growled.

So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and
forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been
opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as
he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he
was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he
was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow
important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he
was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew
upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now,
and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and
assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool
mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better
still was the home-coming—to board the empty train at Skeighan when
the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat
cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was
a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to
get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions.
Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his
lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of
nights—his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real
ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of
the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their
school days—and are fools for the remainder of their lives.

The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated
over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every
youngster in their ken.

"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle,
musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.

"To no good—you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a
regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the
train the other day he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And
he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he
swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him
from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young
Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't—he shook like a dog in a wet
sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past
your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz—it would blind ye
by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were
his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening
before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was
obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with the dizziness,'
said he, and he actually bocked himsell."

Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though
his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he
fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it
was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his
classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at
Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping
from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing
off at such times—it was easy to slip out—and playing truant in the
byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in
the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his
mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.

For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a
cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a
congenital horror of eerie sounds—he was his mother's son for that—and
he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June
afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on
the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place
oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel
and forgot the world.

He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it
was only the baker—the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes,
the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which
wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a
wonderful hearty manner with a boy.

"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time. The
storm's at the burstin'!"

"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his
birth.

"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna
see't?"

They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The
thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and
roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked
close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in
vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the
cowering earth. The rain came—a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath
to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a
white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window,
open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He
started violently—that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.

The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire.
Gourlay screamed in terror.

The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.

"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye
know. You ought to be a hardy man."

"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I
just let on to be."

But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was
vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.

"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay.
"Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his
hands.

A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a
dagger!" stared Gourlay.

"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash—then jerked
to the side—then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the
coulter of a plough."

Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its
centre.

"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace
door."

"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.

"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too
much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like
to think them over when they're by."

Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and
the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to
explain.

"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger.
"But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"—he
nodded to the warring heavens.

The baker did not understand. "Have you seen your faither?" he asked.

"My faither!" John gasped in terror. If his father should find him
playing truant!

"Yes; did ye no ken he was in Skeighan? We come up thegither by the ten
train, and are meaning to gang hame by this. I expect him every moment."

John turned to escape. In the doorway stood his father.

When Gourlay was in wrath he had a widening glower that enveloped the
offender; yet his eye seemed to stab—a flash shot from its centre to
transfix and pierce. Gaze at a tiger through the bars of his cage, and
you will see the look. It widens and concentrates at once.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, with the wild-beast glower on his
son.

"I—I—I—" John stammered and choked.

"What are you doing here?" said his father.

John's fingers worked before him; his eyes were large and aghast on his
father; though his mouth hung open no words would come.

"How lang has he been here, baker?"

There was a curious regard between Gourlay and the baker. Gourlay spoke
with a firm civility.

"Oh, just a wee whilie," said the baker.

"I see. You want to shield him.—You have been playing the truant, have
'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on
you
for this to be the end o't?"

"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy.
Dinna thrash him."

"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to
thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I
don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."

He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down
High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as
you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. John was black in the
face; time and again in his wrath Gourlay swung him off the ground.
Grocers coming to their doors, to scatter fresh yellow sawdust on the
old, now trampled black and wet on the sills, stared sideways, chins up
and mouths open, after the strange spectacle. But Gourlay splashed on
amid the staring crowd, never looking to the right or left.

Opposite the Fiddler's Inn whom should they meet but Wilson! A snigger
shot to his features at the sight. Gourlay swung the boy up; for a
moment a wild impulse surged within him to club his rival with his own
son.

He marched into the vestibule of the High School, the boy dangling from
his great hand.

"Where's your gaffer?" he roared at the janitor.

"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.

"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him—the fellow that runs
the business."

"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.

"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the
janitor down a long wooden corridor. A door was flung open showing a
classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.

The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his
fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat,
brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer
world.

"I believe I pay
you
to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is
this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son
spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet,
huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the
master.

"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.

"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay
you
to teach that boy, and you allow
him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"

"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of
deprecating hands.

The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.

"Do—do? Damn it, sir, am
I
to be
your
dominie? Am
I
to teach
you
your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him
hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word
to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"

He was gone—they heard him go clumping along the corridor.

Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the
forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them.
However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine
to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green
Shutters.

He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train
was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the
last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the
smoke down his nostrils—his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the
great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window,
he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was
Templandmuir who was speaking.

"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his,"
said the Templar.