The House With the Green Shutters (25 page)

"What was his name?" said Sandy Toddle.

"Your ain," said the baker. (To tell the truth, he was gey fou.)
"Alexander Toddle was his name: '
Dim it!
' he used to squeak, for he
had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and whiles he used the English.
'
Dim it!
' said he. I like a man that says '
Dahm't.
'"

"Ay; but then, you thee,
you
're an artitht in wordth," said the
Deacon.

"Ye're an artist in spite," said the baker.

"Ah, well," said the ex-Provost, "Burns proved to be wrang in the end
o't, and you'll maybe be the same. George the Fort' didna fill the
throne verra doucely for a' their clishmaclaver, and I don't think young
Gourlay'll fill the pulpit verra doucely for a' ours. For he's saftie
and daftie baith, and that's the deidly combination. At least, that's my
opinion," quoth he, and smacked his lips, the important man.

"Tyuts," said the baker, "folk should be kind to folk. There may be a
possibeelity for the Gourlays in the youngster yet!"

He would have said more, but at that moment his sonsy big wife came out,
with oh, such a roguish and kindly smile, and, "Tom, Tom," said she,
"what are ye havering here for? C'way in, man, and have a dish o' tea
wi' me!"

He glanced up at her with comic shrewdness from where he sat on his
hunkers—for fine he saw through her—and "Ou ay," said he, "ye great
muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye—I'll gang in and have a dish o'
tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.

"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She
kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."

"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un
went thae lamb-like!"

"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been drinking too. "He's
the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."

"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a
gentleman!"

"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute,
if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a
dacent wife, and a bigger field—oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the
possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his
neck till't."

"It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon.—"Here comes his
son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."

Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as
they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him.
Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their
fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything
they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady
on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the
road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter
went.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to
feel the slight, blatant to resent it.

"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.

With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.

"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."

"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon
between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled
cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay—just down for a flying visit to see my
little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again—Barbie's too quiet
for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"

The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried,
as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the
bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat
reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind,
in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering
to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side
by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was
letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a
fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left
coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the
Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear
remembrance!"

The Deacon fed on the sight. The richness of his satiric perception was
too great to permit of speech. He could only gloat and be dumb.

"Waiting for Jack Gourlay," Aird rattled again. "He's off to College
again, and we're driving in his father's trap to meet the express at
Skeighan Station. Wonder what's keeping the fellow. I like a man to be
punctual. Business training, you see; yes, by Gad, two thousand parcels
a week go out of our place, and all of 'em up to time! Ah, there he is,"
he added, as the harsh grind of wheels was heard on the gravel at the
door. "Thank God, we'll soon be in civilization."

Young Gourlay entered, greatcoated and lordly, through the two halves of
that easy-swinging door.

"Good!" he cried. "Just a minute, Aird, till I get my flask filled."

"My weapon's primed and ready," Aird ha-haed, and slapped the breast
pocket of his coat.

John birled a bright sovereign on the counter, one of twenty old Gourlay
had battered his brains to get together for the boy's expenses. The
young fellow rattled the change into his trouser pocket like a master of
millions.

The Deacon and another idler or two gathered about the steps in the
darkness, to see that royal going off. Peter Riney's bunched-up little
old figure could be seen on the front seat of the gig; Aird was already
mounted behind. The mare (a worthy successor to Spanking Tam) pawed the
gravel and fretted in impatience; her sharp ears, seen pricked against
the gloom, worked to and fro. A widening cone of light shone out from
the leftward lamp of the gig, full on a glistering laurel, which Simpson
had growing by his porch. Each smooth leaf of the green bush gave back a
separate gleam, vivid to the eye in that pouring yellowness. Gourlay
stared at the bright evergreen, and forget for a moment where he was.
His lips parted, and—as they saw in the light from the door—his look
grew dreamy and far-away.

The truth was that all the impressions of a last day at home were bitten
in on his brain as by acid, in the very middle of his swaggering gusto.
That gusto was largely real, true, for it seemed a fine thing to go
splurging off to College in a gig; but it was still more largely
assumed, to combat the sorrow of departure. His heart was in his boots
at the thought of going back to accursed Edinburgh—to those lodgings,
those dreary, damnable lodgings. Thus his nature was reduced to its real
elements in the hour of leaving home; it was only for a swift moment he
forgot to splurge, but for that moment the cloak of his swaggering
dropped away, and he was his naked self, morbidly alive to the
impressions of the world, afraid of life, clinging to the familiar and
the known. That was why he gazed with wistful eyes at that laurel clump,
so vivid in the pouring rays. So vivid there, it stood for all the dear
country round which was now hidden by the darkness; it centred his world
among its leaves. It was a last picture of loved Barbie that was
fastening on his mind. There would be fine gardens in Edinburgh, no
doubt; but oh, that couthie laurel by the Red Lion door! It was his
friend; he had known it always.

The spell lasted but a moment, one of those moments searching a man's
nature to its depths, yet flitting like a lonely shadow on the autumn
wheat. But Aird was already fidgeting. "Hurry up, Jack," he cried;
"we'll need to pelt if we mean to get the train."

Gourlay started. In a moment he had slipped from one self to another,
and was the blusterer once more. "Right!" he splurged. "Hover a blink
till I light my cigar."

He was not in the habit of smoking cigars, but he had bought a packet on
purpose, that he might light one before his admiring onlookers ere he
went away. Nothing like cutting a dash.

He was seen puffing for a moment with indrawn cheeks, his head to one
side, the flame of the flickering vesta lighting up his face, his hat
pushed back till it rested on his collar, his fair hair hanging down his
brow. Then he sprang to the driving seat and gathered up the reins.
"Ta-ta, Deacon; see and behave yourself!" he flung across his shoulder,
and they were off with a bound.

"Im-pidenth!" said the outraged Deacon.

Peter Riney was quite proud to have the honour of driving two such bucks
to the station. It lent him a consequence; he would be able to say when
he came back that he had been "awa wi' the young mester"—for Peter said
"mester," and was laughed at by the Barbie wits who knew that "maister"
was the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out
in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him
tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the
withered little man.

That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last
session at the University.

All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only
Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal
simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He
had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while
there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green
Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his
surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and
was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with
a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised
about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man
of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble
clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say,
sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young
mester; and hardy, too—infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.

But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged. It was on the day
after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on
with.

It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day—a day
when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy,
and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit
of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and
tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw—which seemed strange and
unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness,
beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in
among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons
were gurgling and
rookety-cooing
, mating for the coming year. He fell
to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap
aside—"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating
softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he
waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he
moistened his lips, and cleared his throat, and frowned, as one who
would broach unpleasant news. It was not like him to hesitate. But the
old man, encased in senility, was ill to disturb; he was intent on
nothing but the work before him; it was mechanical and soothing, and
occupied his whole mind. Gourlay, so often the trampling brute without
knowing it, felt it brutal to wound the faithful old creature dreaming
at his toil. He would have found it much easier to discharge a younger
and a keener man.

"Stop, Peter," he said at last; "I don't need you ainy more."

Peter rose stiffly from his knees and shook the mould with a pitiful
gesture from his hands. His mouth was fallen slack, and showed a few
yellow tusks.

"Eh?" he asked vaguely. The thought that he must leave the Gourlays
could not penetrate his mind.

"I don't need you ainy more," said Gourlay again, and met his eye
steadily.

"I'm gey auld," said Peter, still shaking his hands with that pitiful
gesture, "but I only need a bite and a sup. Man, I'm willin' to tak
onything."

"It's no that," said Gourlay sourly—"it's no that. But I'm giving up
the business."

Peter said nothing, but gazed away down the garden, his sunken mouth
forgetting to munch its straw, which dangled by his chin. "I'm an auld
servant," he said at last, "and, mind ye," he flashed in pride, "I'm a
true ane."

"Oh, you're a' that," Gourlay grunted; "you have been a good servant."

"It'll be the poorhouse, it's like," mused Peter. "Man, have ye noathing
for us to do?" he asked pleadingly.

Gourlay's jaw clamped. "Noathing, Peter," he said sullenly, "noathing;"
and slipped some money into Peter's heedless palm.

Peter stared stupidly down at the coins. He seemed dazed. "Ay, weel," he
said; "I'll feenish the tatties, at ony rate."

"No, no, Peter," and Gourlay gripped him by the shoulder as he turned
back to his work—"no, no; I have no right to keep you. Never mind about
the money; you deserve something, going so suddenly after sic a long
service. It's just a bit present to mind you o'—to mind you o'—" he
broke suddenly and scowled across the garden.

Some men, when a feeling touches them, express their emotion in tears;
others by an angry scowl—hating themselves inwardly, perhaps, for their
weakness in being moved, hating, too, the occasion that has probed their
weakness. It was because he felt parting with Peter so keenly that
Gourlay behaved more sullenly than usual. Peter had been with Gourlay's
father in his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and
submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any
other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever
deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More—the
going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the
quick. Therefore he scowled.