The House With the Green Shutters (22 page)

"Have you a match, Robert?" he asked very graciously of Robin Gregg, one
of the porters whom he knew. Getting his match, he lit a cigarette; and
when it was lit, after one quick puff, turned it swiftly round to
examine its burning end. "Rotten!" he said, and threw it away to light
another. The porters were watching him, and he knew it. When the
stationmaster appeared yawning from his office, as he was passing
through the gate, and asked who it was, it flattered his vanity to hear
Robin's answer, that it was "young Mr. Gourlay of Barbie, just back from
the Univ-ai-rsity!"

He had been so hot for home that he had left Edinburgh at twilight, too
eager to wait for the morrow. There was no train for Barbie at this hour
of the night; and, of course, there was no gig to meet him. Even if he
had sent word of his coming, "There's no need for travelling so late,"
old Gourlay would have growled; "let him shank it. We're in no hurry to
have him home."

He set off briskly, eager to see his mother and tell her he had won the
Raeburn. The consciousness of his achievement danced in his blood, and
made the road light to his feet. His thoughts were not with the country
round him, but entirely in the moment of his entrance, when he should
proclaim his triumph, with proud enjoyment of his mother's pride. His
fancy swept to his journey's end, and took his body after, so that the
long way was as nothing, annihilate by the leap forward of his mind.

He was too vain, too full of himself and his petty triumph, to have room
for the beauty of the night. The sky was one sea of lit cloud, foamy
ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with
its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one
peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far
away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning
edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a
circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen;
there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next
she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was
alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was
softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit
indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven
dream. He walked beneath a shadowed glory. But he was dead to it all.
One only fact possessed him. He had won the Raeburn—he had won the
Raeburn! The road flew beneath him.

Almost before he was aware, the mean gray streets of Barbie had clipped
him round. He stopped, panting from the hurry of his walk, and looked at
the quiet houses, all still among the gloom. He realized with a sudden
pride that he alone was in conscious possession of the town. Barbie
existed to no other mind. All the others were asleep; while he had a
thrilling consciousness of them and of their future attitude to him,
they did not know that he, the returning great one, was present in their
midst. They all knew of the Raeburn, however, and ere long they would
know that it was his. He was glad to hug his proud secret in presence of
the sleeping town, of which he would be the talk to-morrow. How he would
surprise them! He stood for a little, gloating in his own sensations.
Then a desire to get home tugged him, and he scurried up the long brae.

He stole round the corner of the House with the Green Shutters. Roger,
the collie, came at him with a bow-wow-wow. "Roger!" he whispered, and
cuddled him, and the old loyalist fawned on him and licked his hand. The
very smell of the dog was couthie in his nose.

The window of a bedroom went up with a crash.

"Now, then, who the devil are you?" came the voice of old Gourlay.

"It's me, faither," said John.

"Oh, it's you, is it? This is a fine time o' night to come home."

"Faither, I have—I have won the Raeburn!"

"It'll keep, my mannie, it'll keep"—and the window slammed.

Next moment it was up.

"Did young Wilson get onything?" came the eager cry.

"Nut him!" said John.

"Fine, man! Damned, sir, I'm proud o' ye!"

John went round the corner treading on air. For the first time in his
life his father had praised him.

He peeped through a kink at the side of the kitchen blind, where its
descent was arrested by a flowerpot in the corner of the window-sill. As
he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not
yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her,
on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the
fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering
moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at
the dying embers—the look of one who has gained short respite from a
task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and
the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and
to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and
apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.

She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his
news, and basked in her adoration.

She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper,
big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she
was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.

He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I,
I think we might."

He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he
listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a
fine thing!"

"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another
worshipper.

"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like
one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she
grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And I'm
sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel
ay," she said, and stared at the embers.

It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that
their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as
established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them
to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often
struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To
young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was
almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her
ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined
temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the
purest white.

"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so
many wee clouts for?"

She gasped and started. "They're just a wheen clouts I was sorting out,"
she faltered. "No, no, dear, there's noathing wrong wi' me."

"There's one sticking in your blouse," said he, and pointed to her slack
breast.

She glanced nervously down and pushed it farther in.

"I dare say I put it there when I wasna thinking," she explained.

But she eyed him furtively to see if he were still looking.

There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong
man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes
it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his
memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable
results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be
higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it;
viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful
thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a
keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a
success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is
unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out.
He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and
expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he
is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he
thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his
meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the
world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves
him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and
carries him heavens-high—till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from
that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the
world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great
position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see."
And then follows a recital of his faded glories—generally ending with
a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.

Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty
as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to
destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the
strength of it.

On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he
was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to
dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette,
he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him
with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom
they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the
conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the
disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were
tributaries to his new importance—somehow their attitude was different
from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious
bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of
his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he
could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new
feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the
Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his
father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already
buzzed about the town.

Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's
daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else.
Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a
whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers;
heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's
aince wud and aye waur
[6]
wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu'
wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre
browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but—" and
with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.

When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the
Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on
his thin shanks.

"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"

Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all
rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of
tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.

"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that
before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."

"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."

The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht
tho! Imphm. The weed."

Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he
cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been
doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."

"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left
hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling
from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a
little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in
a twinkling."

"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna
work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come
through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not
to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the
easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy
yourself. But there! what need I be telling
you
that? A College-bred
man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie!
You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun—a dram now
and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"

At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important
manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty
pose for more than five minutes at a time.

"You're
right
, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging
sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back
to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."

"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at
the Black Bull?—I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar
gude—thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a
Highland charge."—It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a
thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the
manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style.—"But no doubt,"
the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice—"but
no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a
favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine
taste in thpirits."

"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air
of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and
so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"