The House With the Green Shutters (35 page)

"Mother!" cried Janet, desperate before this apathy, "what shall we do?
what shall we do? Shall I run and bring the neebours?"

"The neebours!" said Mrs. Gourlay, rousing herself wildly—"the
neebours! What have
we
to do with the neebours? We are by
ourselves—the Gourlays whom God has cursed; we can have no neebours.
Come ben the house, and I'll tell ye something," she whispered wildly.
"Ay," she nodded, smiling with mad significance, "I'll tell ye something
... I'll tell ye something," and she dragged Janet to the kitchen.

Janet's heart was rent for her brother, but the frenzy on her mother
killed sorrow with a new fear.

"Janet!" smiled Mrs. Gourlay, with insane soft interest, "Janet! D'ye
mind yon nicht langsyne when your faither came in wi' a terrible look in
his een and struck me in the breist? Ay," she whispered hoarsely,
staring at the fire, "he struck me in the breist. But I didna ken what
it was for, Janet.... No," she shook her head, "he never telled me what
it was for."

"Ay, mother," whispered Janet, "I have mind o't."

"Weel, an abscess o' some kind formed—I kenna weel what it was, but it
gathered and broke, and gathered and broke, till my breist's near eaten
awa wi't. Look!" she cried, tearing open her bosom, and Janet's head
flung back in horror and disgust.

"O mother!" she panted, "was it that that the wee clouts were for?"

"Ay, it was that," said her mother. "Mony a clout I had to wash, and
mony a nicht I sat lonely by mysell, plaistering my withered breist. But
I never let onybody ken," she added with pride; "na-a-a, I never let
onybody ken. When your faither nipped me wi' his tongue it nipped me wi'
its pain, and, woman, it consoled me. 'Ay, ay,' I used to think; 'gibe
awa, gibe awa; but I hae a freend in my breist that'll end it some day.'
I likit to keep it to mysell. When it bit me it seemed to whisper I had
a freend that nane o' them kenned o'—a freend that would deliver me!
The mair he badgered me, the closer I hugged it; and when my he'rt was
br'akin I enjoyed the pain o't."

"O my poor, poor mother!" cried Janet with a bursting sob, her eyes
raining hot tears. Her very body seemed to feel compassion; it quivered
and crept near, as though it would brood over her mother and protect
her. She raised the poor hand and kissed it, and fondled it between her
own.

But her mother had forgotten the world in one of her wild lapses, and
was staring fixedly.

"I'll no lang be a burden to onybody," she said to herself. "It should
sune be wearing to a heid now. But I thought of something the day John
gaed away; ay, I thought of something," she said vaguely. "Janet, what
was it I was thinking of?"

"I dinna ken," whispered Janet.

"I was thinking of something," her mother mused. Her voice all through
was a far-off voice, remote from understanding. "Yes, I remember. Ye're
young, Jenny, and you learned the dressmaking; do ye think ye could sew,
or something, to keep a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was
that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now—eh, Jenny?
I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she
said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss
Richmond o' Tenshillingland."

She had no interest in her own suggestion. It was an idea that had
flitted through her mind before, which came back to her now in feeble
recollection. She seemed not to wait for an answer, to have forgotten
what she said.

"O mother," cried Janet, "there's a curse on us all! I would work my
fingers raw for ye if I could, but I canna," she screamed, "I canna, I
canna! My lungs are bye wi't. On Tuesday in Skeighan the doctor telled
me I would soon be deid; he didna say't, but fine I saw what he was
hinting. He advised me to gang to Ventnor in the Isle o' Wight," she
added wanly; "as if I could gang to the Isle of Wight. I cam hame
trembling, and wanted to tell ye; but when I cam in ye were ta'en up wi'
John, and, 'O lassie,' said you, 'dinna bother me wi' your complaints
enow.' I was hurt at that, and 'Well, well,' I thocht, 'if she doesna
want to hear, I'll no tell her.' I was huffed at ye. And then my faither
came in, and ye ken what happened. I hadna the heart to speak o't after
that; I didna seem to care. I ken what it is to nurse daith in my breist
wi' pride, too, mother," she went on. "Ye never cared verra much for me;
it was John was your favourite. I used to be angry because you neglected
my illness, and I never telled you how heavily I hoasted blood. 'She'll
be sorry for this when I'm deid,' I used to think; and I hoped you would
be. I had a kind of pride in saying nothing. But, O mother, I didna ken
you
were just the same; I didna ken
you
were just the same." She
looked. Her mother was not listening.

Suddenly Mrs. Gourlay screamed with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed
with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was
regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o'
the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays!"

There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs.
Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac—the skirl of a
human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet
stared at her in speechless fear.

"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"

"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.

"Mother!" cried Janet.

"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife
never will.
You
may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the
poorhouse, but
I
'll follow my boy."

The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers,
when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet
that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be
left alone.

"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"

"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.

She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First
Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from
the pulpit, "the thirteent'—o' the First Corinthians:"—

"
'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

"
'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.'
"

Mrs. Gourlay's manner had changed: she was in the high exaltation of
madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom
that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no
more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become
one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function
to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her
feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded
entirely to the fate that swept her on, she was imbued with its demoniac
power.

"
'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

"
'Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily
provoked, thinketh no evil;

"
'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

"
'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things.

"
'Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall
fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
knowledge, it shall vanish away.

"
'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

"
'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
shall be done away.'
"

Her voice rose high and shrill as she read the great verses. Her large
blue eyes shone with ecstasy. Janet looked at her in fear. This was more
than her mother speaking; it was more than human; it was a voice from
beyond the world. Alone, the timid girl would have shrunk from death,
but her mother's inspiration held her.

"
'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest
of these is charity.'
"

Janet had been listening with such strained attention that the "Amen"
rang out of her loud and involuntary, like an answer to a compelling
Deity. She had clung to this reading as the one thing left to her before
death, and out of her nature thus strained to listen the "Amen" came, as
sped by an inner will. She scarcely knew that she said it.

They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed
it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was
her mood. They stood with their hands on their chair backs, and looked
at each other, in a curious palsy of the will. The first step to the
parlour door would commit them to the deed; to take it was to take the
poison, and they paused, feeling its significance. To move was to give
themselves to the irrevocable. When they stirred at length they felt as
if the ultimate crisis had been passed; there could be no return. Mrs.
Gourlay had Janet by the wrist.

She turned and looked at her daughter, and for one fleeting moment she
ceased to be above humanity.

"Janet," she said wistfully, "
I
have had a heap to thole! Maybe the
Lord Jesus Christ'll no' be owre sair on me."

"O mother!" Janet screamed, yielding to her terror when her mother
weakened. "O mother, I'm feared! I'm feared! O mother, I'm feared!"

"Come!" said her mother; "come!" and drew her by the wrist. They went
into the parlour.

The post was a square-built, bandy-legged little man, with a bristle of
grizzled hair about his twisted mouth, perpetually cocking up an
ill-bred face in the sight of Heaven. Physically and morally he had in
him something both of the Scotch terrier and the London sparrow—the
shagginess of the one, the cocked eye of the other; the one's snarling
temper, the other's assured impudence. In Gourlay's day he had never got
by the gateway of the yard, much as he had wanted to come further.
Gourlay had an eye for a thing like him. "Damn the gurly brute!" Postie
complained once; "when I passed a pleasand remark about the weather the
other morning, he just looked at me and blew the reek of his pipe in my
face. And that was his only answer!"

Now that Gourlay was gone, however, Postie clattered through the yard
every morning, right up to the back door.

"A heap o' correspondence
thir
mornin's!" he would simper, his greedy
little eye trying to glean revelations from the women's faces as they
took the letters from his hand.

On the morning after young Gourlay came home for the last time, Postie
was pelting along with his quick thudding step near the head of the
Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and
yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except
where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling
off to his work, first twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and
left at the sky, to forecast the weather for the day.

From the chimneys the fair white spirlies of reek were rising in the
pure air. The Gourlays did not seem to be stirring yet; there was no
smoke above their roof-tree to show that there was life within.

Postie jerked his thumb across his shoulder at the House with the Green
Shutters.

"There'll be chynges there the day," he said, chirruping.

"Wha-at!" Toddle breathed in a hoarse whisper of astonishment,
"sequesteration?" and he stared, big-eyed, with his brows arched.

"Something o' that kind," said the post carelessly. "I'm no' weel
acquaint wi' the law-wers' lingo."

"Will't be true, think ye?" said Sandy.

"God, it's true," said the post. "I had it frae Jock Hutchison, the
clerk in Skeighan Goudie's. He got fou yestreen on the road to Barbie
and blabbed it—he'll lose his job, yon chap, if he doesna keep his
mouth shut. True! ay, it's true! There's damn the doubt o' that."

Toddle corrugated his mouth to whistle. He turned and stared at the
House with the Green Shutters, gawcey and substantial on its terrace,
beneath the tremulous beauty of the dawn. There was a glorious sunrise.

"God!" he said, "what a downcome for that hoose!"

"Is it no'?" chuckled Postie.

"Whose account is it on?" said Toddle.

"Oh, I don't ken," said Postie carelessly. "He had creditors a' owre the
country. I was ay bringing the big blue envelopes from different airts.
Don't mention this, now," he added, his finger up, his eye significant;
"it shouldn't be known at a-all." He was unwilling that Toddle should
get an unfair start, and spoil his own market for the news.

"
Nut
me!" Toddle assured him grandly, shaking his head as who should
conduct of that kind a thousand miles off—"
nut
me, Post! I'll no
breathe it to a living soul."

The post clattered in to Mrs. Gourlay's back door. He had a heavy
under-stamped letter on which there was threepence to pay. He might pick
up an item or two while she was getting him the bawbees.

He knocked, but there was no answer.

"The sluts!" said he, with a humph of disgust; "they're still on their
backs, it seems."

He knocked again. The sound of his knuckles on the door rang out
hollowly, as if there was nothing but emptiness within. While he waited
he turned on the step and looked idly at the courtyard. The inwalled
little place was curiously still.

At last in his impatience he turned the handle, when to his surprise the
door opened, and let him enter.

The leaves of a Bible fluttered in the fresh wind from the door. A large
lamp was burning on the table. Its big yellow flame was unnatural in the
sunshine.