The House With the Green Shutters

by George Douglas Brown

  "I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.

  "You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would calm your mind for ye."

  "Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me—no sleep for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een, coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"—he nodded, staring at her and breathing the word—"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the lobby," he whispered hoarsely—"in the lobby when it was dark—in the lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither, though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered—"they're red—they're red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.

  He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.

  "O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."

  "Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me! And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, my faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at me frae beyond the grave."

  Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him to save.

  "Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the drink gars you think sae."

  "No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing, drink—it helps a body."

  "But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen nonsense!"

  "Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the House with the Green Shutters."

  "God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"

  She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's feet, his head resting on her knee.

  They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking in the street.

  Gradually all other sounds died away.

  "Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."

  "I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.

  Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift—a gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw, and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.

  "I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"

  "No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't it?—Oh, what's that?"

  It was John talking in his sleep.

  "I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every phrase—"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist—and een like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.

  The dog was barking in the street. A cry of the night came from far away.

  That voice was as if a corpse opened its lips and told of horrors beyond the grave. It brought the other world into the homely room, and made it all demoniac. The women felt the presence of the unknown. It was their own flesh and blood that spoke the words, and by their own quiet hearth. But hell seemed with them in the room.

  Mrs. Gourlay drew back from John's head on her lap, as from something monstrous and unholy. But he moaned in deprivation, craving her support, and she edged nearer to supply his need. Possessed with a devil or no, he was her son.

  "Mother!" gasped Janet suddenly, the white circles of her eyes staring from the red flannel, her voice hoarse with a new fear—"mother, suppose—suppose he said that before anybody else!"

  "Don't mention't," cried her mother with sudden passion. "How daur ye? how daur ye? My God!" she broke down and wept, "they would hang him, so they would! They would hang my boy—they would take and hang my boy!"

  They stared at each other wildly. John slept, his head twisted over on his mother's knee, his eyes sunken, his mouth wide open.

  "Mother," Janet whispered, "you must send him away."

  "I have only three pounds in the world," said Mrs. Gourlay; and she put her hand to her breast where it was, but winced as if a pain had bitten her.

  "Send him away wi't," said Janet. "The furniture may bring something. And you and me can aye thole."

  In the morning Mrs. Gourlay brought two greasy notes to the table, and placed them in her son's slack hand. He was saner now; he had slept off his drunken madness through the night.

  "John," she said, in pitiful appeal, "you maunna stay here, laddie. Ye'll gie up the drink when you're away—will ye na?—and then thae een ye're sae feared of'll no trouble you ony mair. Gang to Glasgow and see the lawyer folk about the bond. And, John dear," she pleaded, "if there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk would stand in their doors to look at me, man—they would that—they would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun slinkin' doon the brae. Doon the brae it would be," she repeated, "doon the brae it would be"—and her mind drifted away on the sorrowful future which her fear made so vivid and real. It was only John's going that roused her.

  Thomas Brodie, glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to the station.

  "Where's he off to now?" he muttered. "There's something at the boddom o' this, if a body could find it out!"

  Chapter XXVII

  *

  When John had gone his mother roused herself to a feverish industry. Even in the early days of her strength she had never been so busy in her home. But her work was aimless and to no purpose. When tidying she would take a cup without its saucer from the table, and set off with it through the room, but stopping suddenly
in the middle of the floor, would fall into a muse with the dish in her hand; coming to herself long afterwards to ask vaguely, "What's this cup for?... Janet, lassie, what was it I was doing?" Her energy, and its frustration, had the same reason. The burden on her mind constantly impelled her to do something to escape from it, and the same burden paralyzed her mind in everything she did. So with another of her vacant whims. Every morning she rose at an unearthly hour, to fish out of old closets rag-bags bellied big with the odds and ends of thirty years' assemblage. "I'll make a patchwork quilt o' thir!" she explained, with a foolish, eager smile; and she spent hours snatching up rags and vainly trying to match them. But the quilt made no progress. She would look at a patch for a while, with her head on one side, and pat it all over with restless hands; then she would turn it round, to see if it would look better that way, only to tear it off when it was half sewn, to try another and yet another. Often she would forget the work on her lap, and stare across the room, open-mouthed, her fingers plucking at her withered throat. Janet became afraid of her mother.

  Once she saw her smiling to herself, when she thought nobody was watching her—an uncanny smile as of one who hugged a secret to her breast—a secret that, eluding others, would enable its holder to elude them too.

  "What can she have to laugh at?" Janet wondered.

  At times the haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in a restless vacancy.

  She was sitting with the rags scattered round her when John walked in on the evening of the third day. There were rags everywhere—on the table, and all about the kitchen; she sat in their midst like a witch among the autumn leaves. When she looked towards his entrance the smell of drink was wafted from the door.

  "John!" she panted, in surprise—"John, did ye not go to Glasgow, boy?"

  "Ay," he said slowly, "I gaed to Glasgow."

  "And the bond, John—did ye speir about the bond?"

  "Ay," he said, "I speired about the bond. The whole house is sunk in't."

  "Oh!" she gasped, and the whole world seemed to go from beneath her, so weak did she feel through her limbs.

  "John," she said, after a while, "did ye no try to get something to do, that you might help me and Janet now we're helpless?"

  "No," he said; "for the een wouldna let me. Nicht and day they follow me a'where—nicht and day."

  "Are they following ye yet, John?" she whispered, leaning forward seriously. She did not try to disabuse him now; she accepted what he said. Her mind was on a level with his own. "Are they following ye yet?" she asked, with large eyes of sympathy and awe.

  "Ay, and waur than ever too. They're getting redder and redder. It's not a dull red," he said, with a faint return of his old interest in the curious physical; "it's a gleaming red. They lowe. A' last nicht they wouldna let me sleep. There was nae gas in my room, and when the candle went out I could see them everywhere. When I looked to one corner o' the room, they were there; and when I looked to another corner, they were there too—glowering at me; glowering at me in the darkness; glowering at me. Ye mind what a glower he had! I hid from them ablow the claes; but they followed me—they were burning in my brain. So I gaed oot and stood by a lamp-post for company. But a constable moved me on; he said I was drunk because I muttered to mysell. But I wasna drunk then, mother; I wa-as not. So I walkit on, and on, and on the whole nicht; but I aye keepit to the lamp-posts for company. And than when the public-houses opened I gaed in and drank and drank. I didna like the drink, for whisky has no taste to me now. But it helps ye to forget.

  "Mother," he went on complainingly, "is it no queer that a pair of een should follow a man? Just a pair of een! It never happened to onybody but me," he said dully—"never to onybody but me."

  His mother was panting open-mouthed, as if she choked for air, both hands clutching at her bosom. "Ay," she whispered, "it's queer;" and kept on gasping at intervals with staring eyes, "It's gey queer; it's gey queer; it's gey queer."

  She took up the needle once more and tried to sew; but her hand was trembling so violently that she pricked the left forefinger which upheld her work. She was content thereafter to make loose stabs at the cloth, with a result that she made great stitches which drew her seam together in a pucker. Vacantly she tried to smooth them out, stroking them over with her hand, constantly stroking and to no purpose. John watched the aimless work with dull and heavy eyes.

  For a while there was silence in the kitchen. Janet was coughing in the room above.

  "There's just ae thing'll end it!" said John. "Mother, give me three shillings."

  It was not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him greater than himself.

  "There's the money!" she said, clinking it down on the table, and flashed a resentful smile at him, close upon the brink of tears.

  She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was, "Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.

  John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them apart to dree a separate weird.

  In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end; they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of herself rather than of him. She was stunned by fate—as was he—and could think of nothing.

  Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of whisky.

  It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance. There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence. John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads, keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste, not waiting till he passed ere they peeped—which was their usual way. Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining softly round him. Every eye followed till he disappeared through his own door.

  He went through the kitchen, where his mother sat, carrying the bottle openly, and entered the parlour without speaking. He came back and asked her for the corkscrew, but when she said "Eh?" with a vague wildness in her manner, and did not seem to understand, he went and got it for himself. She continued making stabs at her cloth and smoothing out the puckers in her seam.

  John was heard moving in the parlour. There was the sharp plunk of a cork being drawn, followed by a clink of glass. And then came a heavy thud like a fall.

&nb
sp; To Mrs. Gourlay the sounds meant nothing; she heard them with her ear, not her mind. The world around her had retreated to a hazy distance, so that it had no meaning. She would have gazed vaguely at a shell about to burst beside her.

  In the evening, Janet, who had been in bed all the afternoon, came down and lit the lamp for her mother. It was a large lamp which Gourlay had bought, and it shed a rich light through the room.

  "I heard John come in," she said, turning wearily round; "but I was too ill to come down and ask what had happened. Where is he?"

  "John?" questioned her mother—"John?... Ou ay," she panted, vaguely recalling, "ou ay. I think—I think ... he gaed ben the parlour."

  "The parlour!" cried Janet; "but he must be in the dark! And he canna thole the darkness!"

  "John!" she cried, going to the parlour door, "John!"

  There was a silence of the grave.

  She lit a candle, and went into the room. And then she gave a squeal like a rabbit in a dog's jaws.

  Mrs. Gourlay dragged her gaunt limbs wearily across the floor. By the wavering light, which shook in Janet's hand, she saw her son lying dead across the sofa. The whisky-bottle on the table was half empty, and of a smaller bottle beside it he had drunk a third. He had taken all that whisky that he might deaden his mind to the horror of swallowing the poison. His legs had slipped to the floor when he died, but his body was lying back across the couch, his mouth open, his eyes staring horridly up. They were not the eyes of the quiet dead, but bulged in frozen fear, as if his father's eyes had watched him from aloft while he died.

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

  "Mother!" Janet screamed, and shook her. "Mother, John's deid! John's deid! Don't ye see John's deid?"