The House With the Green Shutters (28 page)

He faced round at the mirror on his mantel, and looked at his own image
with staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming hard
through his nostrils. "You're a gey ill ane," he said; "you're a gey ill
ane! My God, where have you landed yourself?"

He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively he turned to the
Howff for consolation.

With the panic despair of the weak, he abandoned hope of his character
at its first collapse, and plunged into a wild debauch, to avoid
reflecting where it would lead him in the end. But he had a more
definite reason for prolonging his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to
go home and meet his father. He shrank, in visioning fear, before the
dour face, loaded with scorn, that would swing round to meet him as he
entered through the door. Though he swore every night in his cups that
he would "square up to the Governor the morn, so he would!" always, when
the cold light came, fear of the interview drove him to his cups again.
His courage zigzagged, as it always did; one moment he towered in
imagination, the next he grovelled in fear.

Sometimes, when he was fired with whisky, another element entered into
his mood, no less big with destruction. It was all his father's fault
for sending him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would
serve the old fellow right! He had a kind of fierce satisfaction in his
own ruin, because his ruin would show them at home what a mistake they
had made in sending him to College. It was the old man's tyranny, in
forcing him to College, that had brought all this on his miserable head.
Well, he was damned glad, so he was, that they should be punished at
home by their own foolish scheme—it had punished
him
enough, for one.
And then he would set his mouth insolent and hard, and drink the more
fiercely, finding a consolation in the thought that his tyrannical
father would suffer through his degradation too.

At last he must go home. He drifted to the station aimlessly; he had
ceased to be self-determined. His compartment happened to be empty; so,
free to behave as he liked, he yelled music-hall snatches in a tuneless
voice, hammering with his feet on the wooden floor. The noise pleased
his sodden mind, which had narrowed to a comfortable stupor—outside of
which his troubles seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him but to
somebody else. With the same sodden interest he was staring through the
window, at one of the little stations on the line, when a boy, pointing,
said, "
Flat white nose!
" and Gourlay laughed uproariously, adding at
the end, "He's a clever chield, that; my nose
would
look flat and
white against the pane." But this outbreak of mirth seemed to break in
on his comfortable vagueness; it roused him by a kind of reaction to
think of home, and of what his father would say. A minute after he had
been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly in front of him. Well,
it didn't matter; it was all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going
to stand any of his jaw. "None of your jaw, John Gourlay!" he said,
nodding his head viciously, and thrusting out his clenched fist—"none
of your jaw; d'ye hear?"

He crept into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market-day, and
knots of people were still about the streets. Gourlay stole softly
through the shadows, and turned his coat-collar high about his ears. He
nearly ran into two men who were talking apart, and his heart stopped
dead at their words.

"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said one of them; "it's quite impossible. I'm not
unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."

John heard the mumble of his father's voice.

"Well," said the other reluctantly, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie
for security? I'll be on the street for another half-hour."

"Another half-hour!" thought John with relief. He would not have to face
his father the moment he went in. He would be able to get home before
him. He crept on through the gloaming to the House with the Green
Shutters.

There had been fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away
from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and
Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused
the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried,
"this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy
fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their
dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but,
over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for
the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple
expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest—of suspense, yet
certainty—that had them in its grip. "He's
bound
to come down," said
Certainty. "Yes; but
when
, though?" cried Curiosity, all the more
eager because of its instinct for the coming crash. And so they waited
for the great catastrophe which they felt to be so near. It was as if
they were watching the tragedy near at hand, and noting with keen
interest every step in it that must lead to inevitable ruin. That
invariably happens when a family tragedy is played out in the midst of a
small community. Each step in it is discussed with a prying interest
that is neither malevolent nor sympathetic, but simply curious. In this
case it was chiefly malevolent—only because Gourlay had been such a
brute to Barbie.

Though there were thus two reasons for public interest, the result was
one and the same—a constant tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a
more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every
tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with
the Green Shutters been so much talked of.

"Pride
will
have a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack
of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common
proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener
spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff
he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes
are coming. How do I ken? say ye! How do I ken, indeed? Oh-ooh, I ken
perfectly. Perfectly! It was Postie himsell that telled me."

Yet all this was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away
from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could
only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the
gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of
retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in his business. This offhand
and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.

"Hi-hi!" said the old Provost, with a cruel laugh, when he heard of
Gourlay's remark—"drawing in his business, ay! It's like Lang Jean
Lingleton's waist, I'm thinking. It's thin eneugh drawn a'readys!"

On the morning of the last market-day he was ever to see in Barbie, old
Gourlay was standing at the green gate, when the postman came up with a
smirk, and put a letter in his hand. He betrayed a wish to hover in
gossip, while Gourlay opened his letter, but "Less lip!" said surly
John, and the fellow went away.

Ere he had reached the corner, a gowl of anger and grief struck his ear,
and he wheeled eagerly.

Gourlay was standing with open mouth and outstretched arm, staring at
the letter in his clenched fist with a look of horror, as if it had
stung him.

"My God!" he cried, "had
I
not enough to thole?"

"Aha!" thought Postie, "yon letter Wilson got this morning was correct,
then! His son had sent the true story. That letter o' Gourlay's had the
Edinburgh postmark; somebody has sent him word about his son.—Lord!
what a tit-bit for my rounds."

Mrs. Gourlay, who was washing dishes, looked up to see her husband
standing in the kitchen door. His face frightened her. She had often
seen the blaze in his eye, and often the dark scowl, but never this
bloodless pallor in his cheek. Yet his eyes were flaming.

"Ay, ay," he birred, "a fine job you have made of him!"

"Oh, what is it?" she quavered, and the dish she was wiping clashed on
the floor.

"That's it!" said he, "that's it! Breck the dishes next; breck the
dishes! Everything seems gaun to smash. If ye keep on lang eneugh, ye'll
put a bonny end till't or ye're bye wi't—the lot o' ye."

The taunt passed in the anxiety that stormed her.

"Tell me, see!" she cried, imperious in stress of appeal. "Oh, what is
it, John?" She stretched out her thin, red hands, and clasped them
tightly before her. "Is it from Embro? Is there ainything the matter
with
my
boy? Is there ainything the matter with
my
boy?"

The hard eye surveyed her a while in grim contempt of her weakness. She
was a fluttering thing in his grip.

"
Every
thing's the matter with
your
boy," he sneered slowly,
"
every
thing's the matter with
your
boy. And it's your fault too,
damn you, for you always spoiled him!"

With sudden wrath he strode over to the famous range and threw the
letter within the great fender.

"What is it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so
wild about sending to College has been flung in disgrace from its door!
That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman.

Mrs. Gourlay sank into her old nursing chair and wailed, "Oh, my wean,
my wean; my dear, my poor dear!" She drew the letter from the ashes, but
could not read it for her tears. The words "drunkenness" and "expulsion"
swam before her eyes. The manner of his disgrace she did not care to
hear; she only knew her first-born was in sorrow.

"Oh, my son, my son," she cried; "my laddie, my wee laddie!" She was
thinking of the time when he trotted at her petticoat.

It was market-day, and Gourlay must face the town. There was interest
due on a mortgage which he could not pay; he must swallow his pride and
try to borrow it in Barbie. He thought of trying Johnny Coe, for Johnny
was of yielding nature, and had never been unfriendly.

He turned, twenty yards from his gate, and looked at the House with the
Green Shutters. He had often turned to look back with pride at the
gawcey building on its terrace, but never as he looked to-day. All that
his life meant was bound up in that house—it had been the pride of the
Gourlays; now it was no longer his, and the Gourlays' pride was in the
dust—their name a by-word. As Gourlay looked, a robin was perched on
the quiet roof-tree, its breast vivid in the sun. One of his metaphors
flashed at the sight. "Shame is sitting there too," he muttered, and
added with a proud, angry snarl, "on the riggin' o'
my
hoose!"

He had a triple wrath to his son. He had not only ruined his own life;
he had destroyed his father's hope that by entering the ministry he
might restore the Gourlay reputation. Above all, he had disgraced the
House with the Green Shutters. That was the crown of his offending.
Gourlay felt for the house of his pride even more than for
himself—rather the house was himself; there was no division between
them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his
character in stone and lime. He clung to it, as the dull, fierce mind,
unable to live in thought, clings to a material source of pride. And
John had disgraced it. Even if fortune took a turn for the better, Green
Shutters would be laughed at the country over, as the home of a
prodigal.

As he went by the Cross, Wilson (Provost this long while) broke off a
conversation with Templandmuir, to yell, "It's gra-and weather, Mr.
Gourlay!" The men had not spoken for years. So to shout at poor Gourlay
in his black hour, from the pinnacle of civic greatness, was a fine
stroke: it was gloating, it was rubbing in the contrast. The words were
innocent, but that was nothing; whatever the remark, for a declared
enemy to address Gourlay in his shame was an insult: that was why Wilson
addressed him. There was something in the very loudness of his tones
that cried plainly, "Aha, Gourlay! Your son has disgraced you, my man!"
Gourlay glowered at the animal and plodded dourly. Ere he had gone ten
yards a coarse laugh came bellowing behind him. They saw the colour
surge up the back of his neck, to the roots of his hair.

He stopped. Was his son's disgrace known in Barbie already? He had hoped
to get through the market-day without anybody knowing. But Wilson had a
son in Edinburgh; he had written, it was like. The salutation,
therefore, and the laugh, had both been uttered in derision. He wheeled,
his face black with the passionate blood. His mouth yawed with anger.
His voice had a moan of intensity.

"What are 'e laughing at?" he said, with a mastering quietness....
"Eh?... Just tell me, please, what you're laughing at."

He was crouching for the grip, his hands out like a gorilla's. The quiet
voice, from the yawing mouth, beneath the steady, flaming eyes, was
deadly. There is something inhuman in a rage so still.

"Eh?" he said slowly, and the moan seemed to come from the midst of a
vast intensity rather than a human being. It was the question that must
grind an answer.

Wilson was wishing to all his gods that he had not insulted this awful
man. He remembered what had happened to Gibson. This, he had heard, was
the very voice with which Gourlay moaned, "Take your hand off
my
shouther!" ere he hurled Gibson through the window of the Red Lion.
Barbie might soon want a new Provost, if he ran in now.

But there is always one way of evading punishment for a veiled insult,
and of adding to its sting by your evasion. Repudiate the remotest
thought of the protester. Thus you enjoy your previous gibe, with the
additional pleasure of making your victim seem a fool for thinking you
referred to him. You not only insult him on the first count, but send
him off with an additional hint that he isn't worth your notice. Wilson
was an adept in the art.