The House With the Green Shutters (4 page)

"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!"

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.'"