The House With the Green Shutters (23 page)

"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan
drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of
him in Embro."

"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I."

"Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.

It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan
was kind to Jean Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to
the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week.
Gourlay was merely boasting—as young blades are apt to do of
acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of
the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John
failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.

"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you
have the great thprees?"

"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I
should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before
I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there—d'ye know, yon's the finest
fellow I ever met in my life!—and Bauldy Logan—he's another great
chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie—great friends of mine, and
damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three
there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the
talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I
remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan
whistled a jig."

Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son
to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to
pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath
John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and
his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft
management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he
felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion.
"Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would
never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"

"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said
the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood
about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns,
that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame—jutht
another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys—Pate Wylie and you
and a wheen mair—having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."

"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased.
Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns!
"I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."

"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.

"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father
and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road.
"Eh—eh—Deacon—I—I'll see you again about the nip."

"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more
convenient opportunity."

He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him
talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young
fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned
unpleasant manners.

Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev.
Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a
remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout
legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his
spoon—which were many—were caught on the round of his black waistcoat,
which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower.
His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out
rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more
especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his
face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers
projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven,
his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble
that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all
times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy
Importance" was one of his nicknames.

Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate
battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in
passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a
wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so
long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the
place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting
through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had
conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous
alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by
a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance—did
it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the
system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select
and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate.
Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads
them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To
Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the
Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy.
He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say,
"it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the
Univairsity—the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to
criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize,
having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was
fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss
Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that
they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal
required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his
Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed,"
he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's
talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that
way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found
ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what
he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view
of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses—dear me, ay—of his
courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations,
and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.

"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for
Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if
mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye
have indeed. Ex-cellently well—ex-cellently well!"

Gourlay blushed and thanked him.

"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in
three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a
clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be
wasting his time!"

Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His
father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three
years—without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.

"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if
visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted
application—a strenuous and devoted application—even from the man of
abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have
ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's
doing?"

Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he
answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.

"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best
men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the
Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master
it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty
pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his
ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a
prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I
obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on
German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he
added, with solemn and pondering brows—"perhaps he was a little too
fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too
fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door,
wondered if Hegel was a drink.

"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.

"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity.
And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your
theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"

Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare
to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered,
modestly enough.

"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the
minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a
doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm
of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the
see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only
the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great
good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the
Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great
satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant
promise!"

Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of
Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should
stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on
his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his
eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every
word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical
compliments for
his
son! The tables were turned at last.

His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had
won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a
sovereign.

"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound
to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded
eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun
spend as much as the rest o' folk."

"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.

That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's
talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness
of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking—that he
had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that
was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to
confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and
hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be
careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought
the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a
fellow to be mean."

Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered
by the minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father,
hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie—Lord, but young Gourlay was the
fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He
had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single
afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he
immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the
ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage,
and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the
student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in
answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he
yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer.
Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning
to his other occupations—plurality of professions, you observe, being
one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the
Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable
phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object,
what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty
misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and
speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That
shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge
on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to
make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well—he took a
paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting
instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he
vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former
neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been
welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity
had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave
his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the
Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now,
however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to
support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a
disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former
coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he
preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every
ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them.
That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did
not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies.
Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and
the like without drinking in every howff you came across.