The House With the Green Shutters

by George Douglas Brown

  In those early days, to be sure, Gourlay had less occasion for the use of his crude but potent irony, since the sense of his material well-being warmed him and made him less bitter to the world. To the substantial farmers and petty squires around he was civil, even hearty, in his manner—unless they offended him. For they belonged to the close corporation of "bien men," and his familiarity with them was a proof to the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town—and for his wife, who was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay, where have you been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered, "It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."

  "Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had them laced.

  "Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window. "Wha-at?"

  "Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."

  "I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him wearily.

  "No doubt ye had to send her," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye couldna send him—eh?"

  "Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang. Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her to run for a drop milk?"

  "Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her brother should still be abed—oh, it's right that he should get the privilege—seeing he's the eldest!"

  Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened [1] on her boy." In spite of her slack grasp on life—perhaps, because of it—she clung with a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a thowless [2] thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son—which became permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was his own favourite—perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter. He took her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at the dirty kitchen table, and then marching off to the hutch, with the ridiculous dish in his hand, to feed his daughter's pets.

  *

  A sudden yell of pain and alarm rang through the kitchen. It came from the outer yard.

  When the boy, peering from the window above, saw his father disappear through the scullery door, he stole out. The coast was clear at last.

  He passed through to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the feeling: "My father is your master, and ye daurna stand up till him." Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.

  Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't.

  John, with his hands in his pockets, strutted across the yard, still watching Gilmour with that silent, offensive look. He came into the path of the whalebone. "Get out, you smeowt!" cried Gilmour, and with a vicious shove of the brush he sent a shower of dirty drops spattering about the boy's bare legs.

  "Hallo you! what are ye after?" bawled the boy. "Don't you try that on again, I'm telling ye. What are you, onyway? Ye're just a servant. Hay-ay-ay, my man, my faither's the boy for ye. He can put ye in your place."

  Gilmour made to go at him with the head of the whalebone besom. John stooped and picked up the wet lump of cloth with which Gilmour had been washing down the horse's legs.

  "Would ye?" said Gilmour threateningly.

  "Would I no?" said John, the wet lump poised for throwing, level with his shoulder.

  But he did not throw it for all his defiant air. He hesitated. He would have liked to slash it into Gilmour's face, but a swift vision of what would happen if he did withheld his craving arm. His irresolution was patent in his face; in his eyes there were both a threat and a watchful fear. He kept the dirty cloth poised in mid-air.

  "Drap the clout," said Gilmour.

  "I'll no," said John.

  Gilmour turned sideways and whizzed the head of the besom round so that its dirty spray rained in the boy's face and eyes. John let him have the wet lump slash in his mouth. Gilmour dropped the besom and hit him a sounding thwack on the ear. John hullabalooed. Murther and desperation!

  Ere he had gathered breath for a second roar his mother was present in the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized the weary trollop of the kitchen.

  "What's the matter, Johnny dear?" she cried, with a fierce glance at Gilmour.

  "Gilmour hut me!" he bellowed angrily.

  "Ye muckle lump!" she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump—to strike a defenceless wean!—Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle ye.—Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie you the order to travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about my hoose to ill-use my bairn."

  She stopped, panting angrily for breath, and glared at her darling's enemy.

  "Your servant!" cried Gilmour in contempt. "Ye're a nice-looking object to talk about servants." He pointed at her slovenly dress and burst into a blatant laugh: "Huh, huh, huh!"

  Mr. Gourlay had followed more slowly from the kitchen, as befitted a man of his superior character. He heard the row well enough, but considered it beneath him to hasten to a petty squabble.

  "What's this?" he demanded with a widening look. Gilmour scowled at the ground.

  "This!" shrilled Mrs. Gourlay, who had recovered her breath again—"this! Look at him there, the muckle slabber," and she pointed to Gilmour, who was standing with a red-lowering, downcast face, "look at him! A man of that size to even himsell to a wean!"

  "He deserved a' he got," said Gilmour sullenly. "His mother spoils him, at ony rate. And I'm damned if the best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather's gaun to trample owre me."

  Gourlay jumped round with a quick start of the whole body. For a full minute he held Gilmour in the middle of his steady glower.

  "Walk," he said, pointing to the gate.

  "Oh, I'll walk," bawled Gilmour, screaming now that anger gave him courage. "Gie me time to get my kist, and I'll walk mighty quick. And damned glad I'll be to get redd o' you and your hoose. The Hoose wi' the
Green Shutters," he laughed, "hi, hi, hi!—the Hoose wi' the Green Shutters!"

  Gourlay went slowly up to him, opening his eyes on him black and wide. "You swine!" he said, with quiet vehemence; "for damned little I would kill ye wi' a glower!"

  Gilmour shrank from the blaze in his eyes.

  "Oh, dinna be fee-ee-ared," said Gourlay quietly, "dinna be fee-ee-ared. I wouldn't dirty my hand on 'ee! But get your bit kist, and I'll see ye off the premises. Suspeecious characters are worth the watching."

  "Suspeecious!" stuttered Gilmour, "suspeecious! Wh-wh-whan was I ever suspeecious? I'll have the law of ye for that. I'll make ye answer for your wor-rds."

  "Imphm!" said Gourlay. "In the meantime, look slippy wi' that bit box o' yours. I don't like daft folk about my hoose."

  "There'll be dafter folk as me in your hoose yet," spluttered Gilmour angrily, as he turned away.

  He went up to the garret where he slept and brought down his trunk. As he passed through the scullery, bowed beneath the clumsy burden on his left shoulder, John, recovered from his sobbing, mocked at him.

  "Hay-ay-ay," he said, in throaty derision, "my faither's the boy for ye. Yon was the way to put ye down!"

  Chapter V

  *

  In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as "the bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does—he's juist a bodie!" The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of pedigrees. He can tell you exactly, for instance, how it is that young Pin-oe's taking geyly to the dram; for his grandfather, it seems, was a terrible man for the drink—ou, just terrible. Why, he went to bed with a full jar of whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye see, that's the reason o't.

  The genus "bodie" is divided into two species—the "harmless bodies" and the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure, was not an impartial witness.

  The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they forgathered every day to pass judgment on the town's affairs. And, indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street, and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters, the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing speculation which often lasted half an hour.

  It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their morning dram.

  "Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.

  When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you felt sure it was going to be good.

  "Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam, casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft, white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds, it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."

  Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.

  "Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be cheap"—and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr. Wylie.

  Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.

  "We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so plentiful."

  "Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune, and Barbie dances till't."

  That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave, knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off about the hay.

  "Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the baker.

  "Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past the Cross! Where'll he be off till at this hour of the day? He's not often up so soon."

  "They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.

  "H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man, whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying in him. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."

  T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.

  "What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's big shoulder to get a look.

  "He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to her?"

  "She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's speiring him for bawbees."

  "Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"

  "Or the Fechars?"

  "He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."

  "Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly gowk."

  "A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:—

  'The Muse nae poet ever fand her,

  Till by himsel' he learned to wander,

  Adown some trottin' burn's meander,

  And no thick lang;

  Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder

  A heartfelt sang.'"

  Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfortable. "Ay," he said dryly in his throat; "verra good, baker, verra good!—Who's yellow doag's that? I never saw the beast about the town before!"

  "Nor me either. It's a perfect stranger!"

  "It's like a herd's doag!"

  "Man, you're right! That's just what it will be. The morn's Fleckie lamb fair, and some herd or other'll be in about the town."

  "He'll be drinking in some public-house, I'se warrant, and the doag will have lost him."

  "Imph, that'll be the way o't."

  "I'm demned if he hasn't taken the Skeighan Road!" said Sandy Toddle, who had kept his eye on the minister. Toddle's accent was a varying quality. When he remembered he had been a packman in England it was exceedingly fine. But he often forgot.

  "The Skeighan Road! the Skeighan Road! Who'll he be going to see in that airt? Will it be Templandmuir?"

  "Gosh, it canna be Templandmuir; he was there no later than yestreen!"

  "Here's a man coming down the brae!" announced Johnny Coe, in a solemn voice, as if a man "coming down the brae" was something unusual. In a moment every head was turned to the hill.

  "What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.

  "It looks like
a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his profoundest cogitations to the "boax."

  "It is a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."

  "Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"

  At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his spine, so that his face was visible.

  "Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll he be doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."

  "I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than usual in the animation of discovery—"I'll wager ye Gourlay has quarrelled him and put him to the door!"

  "Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay, ay—faith ay—and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right, Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news this morning."

  They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to meet Gilmour coming down.

  "Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.

  "No wonder, sir," said Gilmour, with big-eyed solemnity, and set down the chest; "it's no wonder, seeing that I'm carrying my a-all."