The House With the Green Shutters (36 page)

"H'mph!" said Postie, tossing his chin in disgust, "little wonder
everything gaed to wreck and ruin in this house! The slovens have left
the lamp burning the whole nicht lang. But less licht'll serve them now,
I'm thinking!"

A few dead ashes were sticking from the lower bars of the range. Postie
crossed to the fireplace and looked down at the fender. That bright spot
would be the place, now, where auld Gourlay killed himself. The women
must have rubbed it so bright in trying to get out the blood. It was an
uncanny thing to keep in the house that. He stared at the fatal spot
till he grew eerie in the strange stillness.

"Guidwife!" he cried, "Jennet! Don't ye hear?"

They did not hear, it seemed.

"God!" said he, "they sleep sound after all their misfortunes!"

At last—partly in impatience, and partly from a wish to pry—he opened
the door of the parlour. "
Oh, my God!
" he screamed, leaping back, and
with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his desperate hurry
to be gone.

He ran round to the Square in front, and down to Sandy Toddle, who was
informing a bunch of unshaven bodies that the Gourlays were
"sequestered."

"Oh, my God, Post, what have you seen, to bring that look to your eyes?
What have you seen, man? Speak, for God's sake! What is it?"

The post gasped and stammered; then "Ooh!" he shivered in horror, and
covered his eyes, at a sudden picture in his brain.

"Speak!" said a man solemnly.

"They have—they have—they have a' killed themselves," stammered the
postman, pointing to the Gourlays.

Their loins were loosened beneath them. The scrape of their feet on the
road, as they turned to stare, sounded monstrous in the silence. No man
dared to speak. They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the
Green Shutters, sitting dark there and terrible beneath the radiant arch
of the dawn.

[1]
Browdened.
A Scot devoted to his children is said to be "browdened
on his bairns."

[2]
Thowless
, weak, useless.

[3]
Trauchle
, a poor trollop who trails about;
smeddum
, grit.

[4]
Hained gear
, saved money.

[5]
That is for the stone of fourteen pounds. At that time Scotch cheese
was selling,
roughly
, at from fifty to sixty shillings the
hundred-weight.

[6]
"
Aince wud and aye waur
," silly for once and silly for always.

[7]
Stot
, a bullock;
to stot
, to bound.