The House With the Green Shutters (7 page)

"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.

"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was
Doctor Dandy brocht
her
hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and
Dandy had his place."

"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A
doctor or a minister or wha-at?"

"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business!
It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre
again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans
speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"

"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the
Provost.

Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy
flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the
direction of their thoughts.

"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing
his chin.

"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.

"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.

And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.

John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous
trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him.
There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every
other day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a
most appropriate
rôle
. If his father was not about he would hang
round his mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old
"Bleach-the-boys"—as the master had been christened by his scholars.
"Mother, I have a pain in
my
heid," he would whimper, and she would
condole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her—were
it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but
strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was
really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at
home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to
keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from
his father.

On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that
was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag
slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie
scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now—and the
Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And
he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on
his return, never failing to note with delight the clean smell of the
yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad
nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On
Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming
arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of
his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes,
attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was
his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was
so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with
the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay
himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his
comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.

As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for
Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The
absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt
forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would
have been much more at his ease.

Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and
John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack
of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment
he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell
became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart—to feel
it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the
joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of
odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a
misgiving without knowing why. It was years after, in Edinburgh, ere he
knew the reason; he found that he never went past an upholsterer's shop,
on a hot day in spring, without being conscious of a vague depression,
and feeling like a boy slinking into school.

In spite of his forebodings, nothing more untoward befell him that
morning than a cut over the cowering shoulders for being late, as he
crept to the bottom of his class. He reached "leave," the ten minutes'
run at twelve o'clock, without misadventure. Perhaps it was this
unwonted good fortune that made him boastful when he crouched near the
pump among his cronies, sitting on his hunkers with his back to the
wall. Half a dozen boys were about him, and Swipey Broon was in front,
making mud pellets in a trickle from the pump.

He began talking of the new range.

"Yah! Auld Gemmell needn't have let welp at me for being late this
morning," he spluttered big-eyed, nodding his head in aggrieved and
solemn protest. "It wasna
my
faut! We're getting in a grand new range,
and the whole of the kitchen fireplace has been gutted out to make room
for't; and my mother couldna get my breakfast in time this morning,
because, ye see, she had to boil everything in the parlour—and here,
when she gaed ben the house, the parlour fire was out!

"It's to be a splendid range, the new one," he went on, with a conceited
jerk of the head. "Peter Riney's bringin'd from Skeighan in the
afternune. My father says there winna be its equal in the parish!"

The faces of the boys lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly
thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys,
they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only
grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee.
It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in
uncomfortable silence.

"We're aye getting new things up at our place," he went on. "I heard my
father telling Gibson the builder he must have everything of the best!
Mother says it'll all be mine some day. I'll have the fine times when I
leave the schule—and that winna be long now, for I'm clean sick o't;
I'll no bide a day longer than I need! I'm to go into the business, and
then I'll have the times. I'll dash about the country in a gig wi' two
dogs wallopping ahin'. I'll have the great life o't."

"Ph-tt!" said Swipey Broon, and planted a gob of mud right in the middle
of his brow.

"Hoh! hoh! hoh!" yelled the others. They hailed Swipey's action with
delight because, to their minds, it exactly met the case. It was the one
fit retort to his bouncing.

Beneath the wet plunk of the mud John started back, bumping his head
against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he
brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added to his wrath
against Swipey.

"What are you after?" he bawled. "Don't try your tricks on me, Swipey
Broon. Man, I could kill ye wi' a glower!"

In a twinkling Swipey's jacket was off, and he was dancing in his shirt
sleeves, inviting Gourlay to come on and try't.

"G'way, man," said John, his face as white as the wall; "g'way, man!
Don't have
me
getting up to ye, or I'll knock the fleas out of your
duds!"

Now the father of Swipey—so called because he always swiped when
batting at rounders—the father of Swipey was the rag and bone merchant
of Barbie, and it was said (with what degree of truth I know not) that
his home was verminous in consequence. John's taunt was calculated,
therefore, to sting him to the quick.

The scion of the Broons, fired for the honour of his house, drove
straight at the mouth of the insulter. But John jouked to the side, and
Swipey skinned his knuckles on the wall.

For a moment he rocked to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "
Ooh!
"
with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull
its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him
at the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his
knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily
(from between Swipey's legs), "Let me up, see!"

Swipey let him up. John came at him with whirling arms, but Swipey
jouked and gave him one on the mouth that split his lip. In another
moment Gourlay was grovelling on his hands and knees, and triumphant
Swipey, astride his back, was bellowing "Hurroo!"—Swipey's father was
an Irishman.

"Let him up, Broon!" cried Peter Wylie—"let him up, and meet each other
square!"

"Oh, I'll let him up," cried Swipey, and leapt to his feet with
magnificent pride. He danced round Gourlay with his fists sawing the
air. "I could fight ten of him!—Come on, Gourlay!" he cried, "and I'll
poultice the road wi' your brose."

John rose, glaring. But when Swipey rushed he turned and fled. The boys
ran into the middle of the street, pointing after the coward and
shouting, "Yeh! yeh! yeh!" with the infinite cruel derision of boyhood.

"Yeh! yeh! yeh!" the cries of execration and contempt pursued him as he
ran.

Ere he had gone a hundred yards he heard the shrill whistle with which
Mr. Gemmell summoned his scholars from their play.

All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the
sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings
and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the
sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an
anvil.

John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed
unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar
look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their
silent faces.

A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it
a lonely smell, and ran to get away.

"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in
through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"

"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and
simple expression of his wish.

"What for, my sweet?"

"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."

His mother saw his cut mouth.

"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear?
Has ainybody been meddling ye?"

"It was Swipey Broon," he said.

"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when
decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on
them! But what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be!
It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"

In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair,
on which she sank exhausted by her rage.

"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the
fleas off him. The other boys were on
his
side, or I would have
walloped him."

"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy,
Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's
not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step
intil."

"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"

"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If
he
saw ye!"

"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the
garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."

She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he
stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun
streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the
centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming
up. He could hear the pigeons
rooketty-cooing
on the roof, and every
now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the
slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was
still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he
started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!

If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in
his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to
snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if
somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true
kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to
earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets
live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him
and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination;
there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with
great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense
would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the
thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink
the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess—good
jade!—stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a
friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a
mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his
glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from
the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his
mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a
painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked
best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical
picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away
from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at
Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at
the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the
water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and
the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat
roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath
she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face
glaring from the pool.—Perhaps he was not so far from being the right
kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that
he
liked. He
wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals
were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved
waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a
somewhat too florid sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through
a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the
beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze
slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid
gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment
they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them
and their love!" quoth he.