The House With the Green Shutters (3 page)

BOOK: The House With the Green Shutters

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And so, gradually, his dwelling had come to be a passion of Gourlay's
life. It was a by-word in the place that if ever his ghost was seen, it
would be haunting the House with the Green Shutters. Deacon Allardyce,
trying to make a phrase with him, once quoted the saying in his
presence. "Likely enough!" said Gourlay. "It's only reasonable I should
prefer my own house to you rabble in the graveyard!"

Both in appearance and position the house was a worthy counterpart of
its owner. It was a substantial two-story dwelling, planted firm and
gawcey on a little natural terrace that projected a considerable
distance into the Square. At the foot of the steep little bank shelving
to the terrace ran a stone wall, of no great height, and the iron
railings it uplifted were no higher than the sward within. Thus the
whole house was bare to the view from the ground up, nothing in front to
screen its admirable qualities. From each corner, behind, flanking walls
went out to the right and left, and hid the yard and the granaries. In
front of these walls the dwelling seemed to thrust itself out for
notice. It took the eye of a stranger the moment he entered the Square.
"Whose place is that?" was his natural question. A house that challenges
regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its
aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its
infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like
house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts
its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a
place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its
commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay
himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did.

And its position, "cockit up there on the brae," made it the theme of
constant remark—to men because of the tyrant who owned it, and to women
because of the poor woman who mismanaged its affairs. "'Deed, I don't
wonder that gurly Gourlay, as they ca' him, has an ill temper," said the
gossips gathered at the pump, with their big, bare arms akimbo;
"whatever led him to marry that dishclout of a woman clean beats
me
! I
never could make head nor tail o't!" As for the men, they twisted every
item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment.
"What's the news?" asked one, returning from a long absence; to whom
the smith, after smoking in silence for five minutes, said, "Gourlay has
got new rones!" "Ha—ay, man, Gourlay has got new rones!" buzzed the
visitor; and then their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each
other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between
them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every
tongue—and with a scoff in the voice, if possible.

Chapter IV
*

Gourlay went swiftly to the kitchen from the inner yard. He had stood so
long in silence on the step, and his coming was so noiseless, that he
surprised a long, thin trollop of a woman, with a long, thin, scraggy
neck, seated by the slatternly table, and busy with a frowsy
paper-covered volume, over which her head was bent in intent perusal.

"At your novelles?" said he. "Ay, woman; will it be a good story?"

She rose in a nervous flutter when she saw him; yet needlessly shrill in
her defence, because she was angry at detection.

"Ah, well!" she cried, in weary petulance, "it's an unco thing if a
body's not to have a moment's rest after such a morning's darg! I just
sat down wi' the book for a little, till John should come till his
breakfast!"

"So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of
him
.
He
'll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that
you
should neglect your work till
he
consents to rise."

"Eh, the puir la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous,
maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and
the schooling's owre sore on him."

"Poor lamb, atweel," said Gourlay. "It was a muckle sheep that dropped
him."

It was Gourlay's pride in his house that made him harsher to his wife
than others, since her sluttishness was a constant offence to the order
in which he loved to have his dear possessions. He, for his part, liked
everything precise. His claw-toed hammer always hung by the head on a
couple of nails close together near the big clock; his gun always lay
across a pair of wooden pegs, projecting from the brown rafters, just
above the hearth. His bigotry in trifles expressed his character. Strong
men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately
defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else
to get a repute for. "No, no," said Gourlay; "you'll never see a brown
cob in
my
gig—I wouldn't take one in a present!" He was full of such
fads, and nothing should persuade him to alter the crotchets, which, for
want of something better, he made the marks of his dour character. He
had worked them up as part of his personality, and his pride of
personality was such that he would never consent to change them. Hence
the burly and gurly man was prim as an old maid with regard to his
belongings. Yet his wife was continually infringing the order on which
he set his heart. If he went forward to the big clock to look for his
hammer, it was sure to be gone—the two bright nails staring at him
vacantly. "Oh," she would say, in weary complaint, "I just took it to
break a wheen coals;" and he would find it in the coal-hole, greasy and
grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so
smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of
these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething
rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of
his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and
span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House
with the Green Shutters—that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes
on the poor trollop, the fresh perception of her incompetence which the
sudden sight of her flashed, as she trailed aimlessly about, seemed to
fatten his rage and give a coarser birr to his tongue.

Mrs. Gourlay had only four people to look after—her husband, her two
children, and Jock Gilmour, the orra man. And the wife of Drucken
Wabster—who had to go charing because she was the wife of Drucken
Wabster—came in every day, and all day long, to help her with the work.
Yet the house was always in confusion. Mrs. Gourlay had asked for
another servant, but Gourlay would not allow that; "one's enough," said
he, and what he once laid down he never went back on. Mrs. Gourlay had
to muddle along as best she could, and having no strength either of mind
or body, she let things drift, and took refuge in reading silly fiction.

As Gourlay shoved his feet into his boots, and stamped to make them
easy, he glowered at the kitchen from under his heavy brows with a huge
disgust. The table was littered with unwashed dishes, and on the corner
of it next him was a great black sloppy ring, showing where a wet
saucepan had been laid upon the bare board. The sun streamed through the
window in yellow heat right on to a pat of melting butter. There was a
basin of dirty water beneath the table, with the dishcloth slopping over
on the ground.

"It's a tidy house!" said he.

"Ach, well," she cried, "you and your kitchen-range! It was that that
did it! The masons could have redd out the fireplace to make room for't
in the afternoon before it comes hame. They could have done't brawly,
but ye wouldna hear o't—oh no; ye bude to have the whole place gutted
out yestreen. I had to boil everything on the parlour fire this morning;
no wonder I'm a little tousy!"

The old-fashioned kitchen grate had been removed and the jambs had been
widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A
little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the
square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime
in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased the
discomfort of the kitchen.

"Oh, that's it!" said Gourlay. "I see! It was want of the fireplace that
kept ye from washing the dishes that we used yestreen. That was
terrible! However, ye'll have plenty of boiling water when I put in the
grand new range for ye; there winna be its equal in the parish! We'll
maybe have a clean house
than
."

Mrs. Gourlay leaned, with the outspread thumb and red raw knuckles of
her right hand, on the sloppy table, and gazed away through the back
window of the kitchen in a kind of mournful vacancy. Always when her
first complaining defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue,
her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by
drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary
contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and
wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to
meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence.
She scarcely heard them.

Her head hung a little to one side as if too heavy for her wilting neck.
Her hair, of a dry, red brown, curved low on either side of her brow, in
a thick, untidy mass, to her almost transparent ears. As she gazed in
weary and dreary absorption her lips had fallen heavy and relaxed, in
unison with her mood; and through her open mouth her breathing was
quick, and short, and noiseless. She wore no stays, and her slack cotton
blouse showed the flatness of her bosom, and the faint outlines of her
withered and pendulous breasts hanging low within.

There was something tragic in her pose, as she stood, sad and
abstracted, by the dirty table. She was scraggy helplessness, staring
in sorrowful vacancy. But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven,
even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the
Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her
feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady
and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with
crude, brief irony.

Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong
character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked
the brute in him. He was so dull—only dull is hardly the word for a man
of his smouldering fire—he was so dour of wit that he could never hope
to distinguish himself by anything in the shape of cleverness. Yet so
resolute a man must make the strong personality of which he was proud
tell in some way. How, then, should he assert his superiority and hold
his own? Only by affecting a brutal scorn of everything said and done
unless it was said and done by John Gourlay. His lack of understanding
made his affectation of contempt the easier. A man can never sneer at a
thing which he really understands. Gourlay, understanding nothing, was
able to sneer at everything. "Hah! I don't understand that; it's damned
nonsense!"—that was his attitude to life. If "that" had been an
utterance of Shakespeare or Napoleon it would have made no difference to
John Gourlay. It would have been damned nonsense just the same. And he
would have told them so, if he had met them.

The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life to maintain himself at
the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a
bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is
rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto
voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me,
dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?"
"Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"—these be
words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice
had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he
despised or disliked without "the birr." Not that he was voluble of
speech; he wasn't clever enough for lengthy abuse. He said little and
his voice was low, but every word from the hard, clean lips was a stab.
And often his silence was more withering than any utterance. It struck
life like a black frost.

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."