The House With the Green Shutters

by George Douglas Brown

  Coe was nowhere to be seen. At last Gourlay made up his mind to go out and make inquiries at his house, out the Fleckie Road. It was a quiet, big house, standing by itself, and Gourlay was glad there was nobody to see him.

  It was Miss Coe herself who answered his knock at the door.

  She was a withered old shrew, with fifty times the spunk of Johnny. On her thin wrists and long hands there was always a pair of bright red mittens, only her finger-tips showing. Her far-sunken and toothless mouth was always working, with a sucking motion of the lips; and her round little knob of a sticking-out chin munched up and down when she spoke, a long, stiff whitish hair slanting out its middle. However much you wished to avoid doing so, you could not keep your eyes from staring at that solitary hair while she was addressing you. It worked up and down so, keeping time to every word she spoke.

  "Is your brother in?" said Gourlay. He was too near reality in this sad pass of his to think of "mistering." "Is your brother in?" said he.

  "No-a!" she shrilled—for Miss Coe answered questions with an old-maidish scream, as if the news she was giving must be a great surprise both to you and her. "No-a!" she skirled; "he's no-a in-a. Was it ainything particular?"

  "No," said Gourlay heavily. "I—I just wanted to see him," and he trudged away.

  Miss Coe looked after him for a moment ere she closed the door. "He's wanting to barrow money," she cried; "I'm nearly sure o't! I maun caution Johnny when he comes back frae Fleckie, afore he gangs east the toon. Gourlay could get him to do ocht! He always admired the brute—I'm sure I kenna why. Because he's siccan a silly body himsell, I suppose!"

  It was after dark when Gourlay met Coe on the street. He drew him aside in the shadows, and asked for a loan of eighty pounds.

  Johnny stammered a refusal. "Hauf the bawbees is mine," his sister had skirled, "and I daur ye to do ony siccan thing, John Coe!"

  "It's only for a time," pleaded Gourlay; "and, by God," he flashed, "it's hell in my throat to ask from any man."

  "No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said Johnny, "it's quite impossible. I've always looked up to ye, and I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."

  "Risk!" said Gourlay, and stared at the darkness. By hook or by crook he must raise the money to save the House with the Green Shutters. It was no use trying the bank; he had a letter from the banker in his desk, to tell him that his account was overdrawn. And yet if the interest were not paid at once, the lawyers in Glasgow would foreclose, and the Gourlays would be flung upon the street. His proud soul must eat dirt, if need be, for the sake of eighty pounds.

  "If I get the baker or Tam Wylie to stand security," he asked, "would ye not oblige me? I think they would do it. I have always felt they respected me."

  "Well," said Johnny slowly, fearing his sister's anger, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie for security. I'll be on the street for another half-hour."

  A figure, muffled in a greatcoat, was seen stealing off through the shadows.

  "God's curse on whoever that is," snarled Gourlay, "creeping up to listen to our talk!"

  "I don't think so," said Johnny; "it seemed a young chap trying to hide himself."

  Gourlay failed to get his securities. The baker, though a poor man, would have stood for him, if Tam Wylie would have joined; but Tam would not budge. He was as clean as gray granite, and as hard.

  So Gourlay trudged home through the darkness, beaten at last, mad with shame and anger and foreboding.

  The first thing he saw on entering the kitchen was his son—sitting muffled in his coat by the great fender.

  Chapter XXV

  *

  Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and significance, filling the doorway in his silence.

  The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers, his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap on him at once and glut his rage—a madness which only a will like his could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.

  To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness. Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him, till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye. Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its contrasting colour showed the white face of the coward—and a coward had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as he slunk away. "Ha!" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he lives, send him slinking away animo castrato—for that is what it comes to—is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost—derives from it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man like a wriggling urchin on the floor.

  As he stood glowering from the door Mrs. Gourlay rose, with an appealing cry of "John!" But Gourlay put his eye on her, and she sank into her chair, staring up at him in terror. The strings of the tawdry cap she wore seemed to choke her, and she unfastened them with nervous fingers, fumbling long beneath her lifted chin to get them loose. She did not remove the cap, but let the strings dangle by her jaw. The silly bits of cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "God have mercy!"

  For a length of time there was a loaded silence.

  Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat. A reek of alcohol rose from around him. Janet whimpered.

  But when Gourlay spoke it was with deadly quietude. The moan was in his voice. So great was his controlled wrath that he drew in great, shivering breastfuls of air between the words, as if for strength to utter them; and they quavered forth on it again. He seemed weakened by his own rage.

  "Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe!... Dee-ee-ar me!... Im-phm!"

  The contrast between the lowness of his voice and his steady, breathing anger that possessed the air (they felt it coming as on waves) was demoniac, appalling.

  John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going to do? The jamb of the fireplace cut his right shoulder as he cowered into it, to get away as far as he could.

  "I'm saying ... ye've won hame!" quivered Gourlay in a deadly slowness, and his eyes never left his son.

  And still the son made no reply. In the silence the ticking of the big clock seemed to fill their world. They were conscious of nothing else. It smote the ear.

  "Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence.

  "Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled.

  He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his hands. Through the open door Janet and her mother—looking
at each other with affrighted eyes—could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay, man!"... "Just that, now!"... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay!... Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony.

  When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in a suspended agony.

  "Ay, woman, Jenny, ye're there!" he said, and nipped her ear as he passed over to his chair. "Were ye in Skeighan the day?"

  "Ay, faither," she answered.

  "And what did the Skeighan doctor say?"

  She raised her large pale eyes to his with a strange look. Then her head sank low on her breast.

  "Nothing!" she said at last.

  "Nothing!" said he. "Nothing for nothing, then. I hope you didna pay him?"

  "No, faither," she answered. "I hadna the bawbees."

  "When did ye get back?" he asked.

  "Just after—just after—" Her eyes flickered over to John, as if she were afraid of mentioning his name.

  "Oh, just after this gentleman! But there's noathing strange in tha-at; you were always after him. You were born after him, and considered after him; he aye had the best o't.—I howp you are in good health?" he sneered, turning to his son. "It would never do for a man to break down at the outset o' a great career!... For ye are at the outset o' a great career; are ye na?"

  His speech was as soft as the foot of a tiger, and sheathed as rending a cruelty. There was no escaping the crouching stealth of it. If he had leapt with a roar, John's drunken fury might have lashed itself to rage. But the younger and weaker man was fascinated and helpless before the creeping approach of so monstrous a wrath.

  "Eh?" asked Gourlay softly, when John made no reply; "I'm saying you're at the outset o' a great career; are ye no? Eh?"

  Soft as his "Eh" was in utterance, it was insinuating, pursuing; it had to be answered.

  "No," whimpered John.

  "Well, well; you're maybe at the end o't! Have ye been studying hard?"

  "Yes," lied John.

  "That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my brave fellow! Noathing like studying!... And no doubt"—he leaned over suavely—"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as usual? Eh?"

  There was no answer.

  "Eh?"

  "No," gulped the cowerer.

  "Nae prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended surprise. "Nae-ae prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?"

  Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who, when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks—"No," he pants; and "Are you sorry for being a bad boy?"—"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good boy now, then?"—"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay cared—when once he had bye with him.

  Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice, Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of my life I've made—that auld trollop for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my dochter! Was it I that bred him? That!"

  He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.

  "Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and I must have a drink together—to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to celebrate the occeesion!"

  The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression. They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface. Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter, a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim which he would not kill.

  "Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear. "What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits—just to shelebrate the joyful occeesion, ye know—ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful occeesion!"

  Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.

  Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a night o't—we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"

  "Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.

  "No," wheezed John.

  "No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College! Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or this nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."

  Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy. Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins of his listeners with a start of fear—it leapt so suddenly.

  "Ha'e, sir!" he cried.

  John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go and take it.

  "Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn! The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but he wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "he wasna feared; no, by God, for he never met what scaured him!... Ay, ay," he birred softly again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name!... Eh?... Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye know—a splurge to attract folk's attention!"

  John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.

  "Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye; "take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something about that—some poetry or other. Who was it?"

  "I dinna ken," whimpered John.

  "Don't tell lies now. You do ken. I heard you mention it to Loranogie. Come on now—who was it?"

  "It was Burns," said John.

  "Oh, it was Burns, was it? And what had Mr. Burns to say on the subject? Eh?"

  "'Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram,'" stammered John.

  "A verra wise remark," said Gourlay gravely. "'Freedom and whisky gang thegither;'" he turned the quotation on his tongue, as if he were savouring a tit-bit. "That's verra good," he approved. "You're a great admirer of Burns, I hear. Eh?"

  "Yes," said John.

  "Do what he bids ye, then. Take off your dram! It'll show what a fine
free fellow you are!"

  It was a big, old-fashioned Scotch drinking-glass, containing more than half a gill of whisky, and John drained it to the bottom. To him it had been a deadly thing at first, coming thus from his father's hand. He had taken it into his own with a feeling of aversion that was strangely blended of disgust and fear. But the moment it touched his lips, desire leapt in his throat to get at it.

  "Good!" roared his father in mock admiration. "God, ye have the thrapple! When I was your age that would have choked me. I must have a look at that throat o' yours. Stand up!... Stand up when I tall 'ee!"

  John rose swaying to his feet. Months of constant tippling, culminating in a wild debauch, had shattered him. He stood in a reeling world. And the fear weakening his limbs changed his drunken stupor to a heart-heaving sickness. He swayed to and fro, with a cold sweat oozing from his chalky face.

  "What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"

  John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries. The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment, to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.