The House With the Green Shutters (17 page)

"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then—"Gosh, he must have
lost infernal!"

"Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been
enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to
settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the
hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye.
Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the
need o' that."

Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House
with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never
entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening
doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays
were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as
a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.

"Mother, are
we
ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that
evening.

She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow
fondly. He was as tall as herself now.

"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a
grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."

"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the
times!"

Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he
was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days—only a
few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in
between—the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality,
and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now
all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of
telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a
distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At
first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was
too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the
wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had
lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with
Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had
increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the
buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that
security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.

"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed
him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched
the cash.

He was meaning to drive, of course; Gourlay was proud of his gig, and
always kept a spanking roadster. "What a fine figure of a man!" you
thought, as you saw him coming swiftly towards you, seated high on his
driving cushion. That driving cushion was Gourlay's pedestal from which
he looked down on Barbie for many a day.

A quick step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as
of one gathering heart for a venture; then a clumsy knock on the door.

"Come in," snapped Gourlay.

Peter Riney's queer little old face edged timorously into the room. He
only opened the door the width of his face, and looked ready to bolt at
a word.

"Tam's deid!" he blurted.

Gourlay gashed himself frightfully with his razor, and a big red blob
stood out on his cheek.

"Deid!" he stared.

"Yes," stammered Peter. "He was right enough when Elshie gae him his
feed this morning; but when I went in enow to put the harness on, he was
lying deid in the loose-box. The batts—it's like."

For a moment Gourlay stared with the open mouth of an angry surprise,
forgetting to take down his razor.

"Aweel, Peter," he said at last, and Peter went away.

The loss of his pony touched Gourlay to the quick. He had been stolid
and dour in his other misfortunes, had taken them as they came, calmly;
he was not the man to whine and cry out against the angry heavens. He
had neither the weakness nor the width of nature to indulge in the
luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his
proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of
quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other
calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister,
prompting the question if misfortune would never have an end.

"Damn it, I have enough to thole," Gourlay muttered; "surely there was
no need for this to happen." And when he looked in the mirror to fasten
his stock, and saw the dark, strong, clean-shaven face, he stared at it
for a moment, with a curious compassion for the man before him, as for
one who was being hardly used. The hard lips could never have framed the
words, but the vague feeling in his heart, as he looked at the dark
vision, was: "It's a pity of you, sir."

He put on his coat rapidly, and went out to the stable. An instinct
prompted him to lock the door.

He entered the loose-box. A shaft of golden light, aswarm with motes,
slanted in the quietness. Tam lay on the straw, his head far out, his
neck unnaturally long, his limbs sprawling, rigid. What a spanker Tam
had been! What gallant drives they had had together! When he first put
Tam between the shafts, five years ago, he had been driving his world
before him, plenty of cash and a big way of doing. Now Tam was dead, and
his master netted in a mesh of care.

"I was always gude to the beasts, at any rate," Gourlay muttered, as if
pleading in his own defence.

For a long time he stared down at the sprawling carcass, musing. "Tam
the powney," he said twice, nodding his head each time he said it; "Tam
the powney," and he turned away.

How was he to get to Skeighan? He plunged at his watch. The ten o'clock
train had already gone, the express did not stop at Barbie; if he waited
till one o'clock he would be late for his appointment. There was a
brake, true, which ran to Skeighan every Tuesday. It was a downcome,
though, for a man who had been proud of driving behind his own
horseflesh to pack in among a crowd of the Barbie sprats. And if he went
by the brake, he would be sure to rub shoulders with his stinging and
detested foes. It was a fine day; like enough the whole jing-bang of
them would be going with the brake to Skeighan. Gourlay, who shrank from
nothing, shrank from the winks that would be sure to pass when they saw
him, the haughty, the aloof, forced to creep among them cheek for jowl.
Then his angry pride rushed towering to his aid. Was John Gourlay to
turn tail for a wheen o' the Barbie dirt? Damn the fear o't! It was a
public conveyance; he had the same right to use it as the rest o' folk!

The place of departure for the brake was the "Black Bull," at the Cross,
nearly opposite to Wilson's. There were winks and stares and
elbow-nudgings when the folk hanging round saw Gourlay coming forward;
but he paid no heed. Gourlay, in spite of his mad violence when roused,
was a man at all other times of a grave and orderly demeanour. He never
splurged. Even his bluster was not bluster, for he never threatened the
thing which he had not it in him to do. He walked quietly into the empty
brake, and took his seat in the right-hand corner at the top, close
below the driver.

As he had expected, the Barbie bodies had mustered in strength for
Skeighan. In a country brake it is the privilege of the important men to
mount beside the driver, in order to take the air and show themselves
off to an admiring world. On the dickey were ex-Provost Connal and Sandy
Toddle, and between them the Deacon, tightly wedged. The Deacon was so
thin (the bodie) that, though he was wedged closely, he could turn and
address himself to Tam Brodie, who was seated next the door.

The fun began when the horses were crawling up the first brae.

The Deacon turned with a wink to Brodie, and dropping a glance on the
crown of Gourlay's hat, "Tummuth," he lisped, "what a dirty place that
ith!" pointing to a hovel by the wayside.

Brodie took the cue at once. His big face flushed with a malicious grin.
"Ay," he bellowed; "the owner o' that maun be married to a dirty wife,
I'm thinking!"

"It must be terrible," said the Deacon, "to be married to a dirty
trollop."

"Terrible," laughed Brodie; "it's enough to give ainy man a gurly
temper."

They had Gourlay on the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him
off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not
their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet
superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the
veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now
the malignants were around him (while he could not get away)—talking
to
each other, indeed, but
at
him, while he must keep quiet in their
midst.

At every brae they came to (and there were many braes) the bodies played
their malicious game, shouting remarks along the brake, to each other's
ears, to his comprehension.

The new house of Templandmuir was seen above the trees.

"What a splendid house Templandmuir has built!" cried the ex-Provost.

"Splendid!" echoed Brodie. "But a laird like the Templar has a right to
a fine mansion such as that! He's no' like some merchants we ken o' who
throw away money on a house for no other end but vanity. Many a man
builds a grand house for a show-off, when he has verra little to support
it. But the Templar's different. He has made a mint of money since he
took the quarry in his own hand."

"He's verra thick wi' Wilson, I notice," piped the Deacon, turning with
a grin and a gleaming droop of the eye on the head of his tormented
enemy. The Deacon's face was alive and quick with the excitement of the
game, his face flushed with an eager grin, his eyes glittering. Decent
folk in the brake behind felt compunctious visitings when they saw him
turn with the flushed grin and the gleaming squint on the head of his
enduring victim. "Now for another stab!" they thought.

"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole
of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new
houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny.—I'm thinking, Mr.
Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"

"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that
you
should have
been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far
and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built
in two or three years!"

"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some
other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor
welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"

Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of
self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved;
but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of
his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert.
Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath
seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy
said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his
jaw."

But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.

"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the
College at Embro in October?"

"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has
been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole
town."

"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on
him
! It must be a
terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never
got a prize!"

The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all
very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of
danger; but if he provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of
tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the
hedge.

"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired—a civil enough
question surely.

"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."

"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"

"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can!
It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when
it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what
you're doing—especially if you've little money left to come and go on."

"Yeth," lisped the Deacon; "if a man canna afford to College his son, he
had better put him in hith business—if he hath ainy business left to
thpeak o', that ith!"

The brake swung on through merry cornfields where reapers were at work,
past happy brooks flashing to the sun, through the solemn hush of
ancient and mysterious woods, beneath the great white-moving clouds and
blue spaces of the sky. And amid the suave enveloping greatness of the
world the human pismires stung each other and were cruel, and full of
hate and malice and a petty rage.

"Oh, damn it, enough of this!" said the baker at last.

"Enough of what?" blustered Brodie.

"Of you and your gibes," said the baker, with a wry mouth of disgust.
"Damn it, man, leave folk alane!"

Gourlay turned to him quietly. "Thank you, baker," he said slowly. "But
don't interfere on my behalf! John Gourla"—he dwelt on his name in
ringing pride—"John Gourla can fight for his own hand—if so there need
to be. And pay no heed to the thing before ye. The mair ye tramp on a
dirt it spreads the wider!"

"Who was referring to
you
?" bellowed Brodie.

Gourlay looked over at him in the far corner of the brake, with the
wide-open glower that made people blink. Brodie blinked rapidly, trying
to stare fiercely the while.