Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been
but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should
come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet
was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of
her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For
her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield
the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief—felt but not
considered—at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It
seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly,
deadened now by these quick calamities. But that
she
, that
Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common
charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in
agony.
"It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.
"Waken John," said her mother feverishly—"waken John, and we'll gang
through his faither's desk. There may be something gude amang his
papers. There may be something gude!" she gabbled nervously; "yes, there
may be something gude! In the desk—in the desk—there may be something
gude in the desk!"
John staggered into the kitchen five minutes later. Halfway to the table
where his mother sat he reeled and fell over on a chair, where he lay
with an ashen face, his eyes mere slits in his head, the upturned whites
showing through. They brought him whisky, and he drank and was
recovered. And then they went through to the parlour, and opened the
great desk that stood in the corner. It was the first time they had ever
dared to raise its lid. John took up a letter lying loosely on the top
of the other papers, and after a hasty glance, "This settles it!" said
he. It was the note from Gourlay's banker, warning him that his account
was overdrawn.
"God help us!" cried Mrs. Gourlay, and Janet began to whimper. John
slipped out of the room. He was still in his stocking-feet, and the
women, dazed by this sudden and appalling news, were scarcely aware of
his departure.
He passed through the kitchen, and stood on the step of the back door,
looking out on the quiet little paved yard. Everything there was
remarkably still and bright. It was an early spring that year, and the
hot March sun beat down on him, paining his bleared and puffy eyes. The
contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing,
and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the
heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized,
however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the
surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And
that bright silence was so strange and still; he could have screamed to
escape it.
The slow ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to beat upon his raw brain.
Damn the thing, why didn't it stop—with its monotonous tick-tack,
tick-tack, tick-tack? He could feel it inside his head, where it seemed
to strike innumerable little blows on a strained chord it was bent on
snapping.
He tiptoed back to the kitchen on noiseless feet, and cocking his ear to
listen, he heard the murmur of women's voices in the parlour. There was
a look of slyness and cunning in his face, and his eyes glittered with
desire. The whisky was still on the table. He seized the bottle
greedily, and tilting it up, let the raw liquid gurgle into him like
cooling water. It seemed to flood his parched being with a new vitality.
"Oh, I doubt we'll be gey ill off!" he heard his mother whine, and at
that reminder of her nearness he checked the great, satisfied breath he
had begun to blow. He set the bottle on the table, bringing the glass
noiselessly down upon the wood, with a tense, unnatural precision
possible only to drink-steadied nerves—a steadiness like the humming
top's whirled to its fastest. Then he sped silently through the
courtyard and locked himself into the stable, chuckling in drunken
triumph as he turned the key. He pitched forward on a litter of dirty
straw, and in a moment sleep came over his mind in a huge wave of
darkness.
An hour later he woke from a terrible dream, flinging his arms up to
ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that
had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in
drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting
into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world
seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there
was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes
had actually been here—and were here with him still—where he was
locked up with them alone. He strained his eyeballs in a horrified stare
at vacancy. Then he shut them in terror, for why did he look? If he
looked, the eyes might burn on him out of nothingness. The innocent air
had become his enemy—pregnant with unseen terrors to glare at him. To
breathe it stifled him; each draught of it was full of menace. With a
shrill cry he dashed at the door, and felt in the clutch of his ghostly
enemy when he failed to open it at once, breaking his nails on the
baffling lock. He mowed and chattered and stamped, and tore at the lock,
frustrate in fear. At last he was free! He broke into the kitchen, where
his mother sat weeping. She raised her eyes to see a dishevelled thing,
with bits of straw scattered on his clothes and hair.
"Mother!" he screamed, "mother!" and stopped suddenly, his starting eyes
seeming to follow something in the room.
"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.
"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look,
look!" he cried, clutching her thin wrist; "see, there, there—coming
round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would
ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing
unseen.
The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on
the floor.
Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her
Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and
murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a
child! When will Ye be satisfied?"
Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it
went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and
was throwing tumblers at his mother!
"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite
compassion—"puir body!"
"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to
her
next,
after killing his faither."
"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you
mean?"
"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the
drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and
felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled
at the sharp question.
"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer
Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy
man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny,
though, it seems uncanny."
"Strange!" murmured another; and they looked at each other in silent
wonder.
"But will this be true, think ye?" said Brodie—"about the horrors, I
mean.
Did
he throw the tumbler at his mother?"
"Lord, it's true!" said Sandy Toddle. "I gaed into the kitchen on
purpose to make sure o' the matter with my own eyes. I let on I wanted
to borrow auld Gourlay's keyhole saw. I can tell ye he had a' his
orders—his tool-chest's the finest I ever saw in my life! I mean to bid
for some o' yon when the rowp comes. Weel, as I was saying, I let on I
wanted the wee saw, and went into the kitchen one end's errand. The
tumbler (Johnny Coe says it was a bottle, however; but I'm no avised o'
that—I speired Webster's wife, and I think my details are correct)—the
tumbler went flying past his mother, and smashed the face o' the
eight-day. It happened about the mid-hour o' the day. The clock had
stoppit, I observed, at three and a half minutes to the twelve."
"Hi!" cried the Deacon, "it'th a pity auld Gourlay wathna alive thith
day!"
"Faith, ay," cried Wylie. "
He
would have sorted him;
he
would have
trimmed the young ruffian!"
"No doubt," said the Deacon gravely—"no doubt. But it wath scarcely
that I wath thinking of. Yah!" he grinned, "thith would have been a
thlap in the face till him!"
Wylie looked at him for a while with a white scunner in his face. He
wore the musing and disgusted look of a man whose wounded mind retires
within itself to brood over a sight of unnatural cruelty. The Deacon
grew uncomfortable beneath his sideward, estimating eye.
"Deacon Allardyce, your heart's black-rotten," he said at last.
The Deacon blinked and was silent. Tam had summed him up. There was no
appeal.
"John dear," said his mother that evening, "we'll take the big sofa into
our bedroom, and make up a grand bed for ye, and then we'll be company
to one another. Eh, dear?" she pleaded. "Winna that be a fine way? When
you have Janet and me beside you, you winna be feared o' ainything
coming near you. You should gang to bed early, dear. A sleep would
restore your mind."
"I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with
the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall
in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.
"You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would
calm your mind for ye."
"Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had
detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me—no sleep
for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een,
coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"—he nodded, staring at
her and breathing the word—"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is
the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as
if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness
is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the
lobby," he whispered hoarsely—"in the lobby when it was dark—in the
lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither,
though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because
I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so
feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered—"they're red—they're
red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.
He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in
his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld
against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He
was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was
no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.
"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's
een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."
"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me!
And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man,
my
faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could
throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at
me
frae beyond the grave."
Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a
snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So
colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully
across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him
to save.
"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the
drink gars you think sae."
"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing,
drink—it helps a body."
"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in
you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen
nonsense!"
"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the
House with the Green Shutters."
"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"
She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures
gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen
of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the
murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's
feet, his head resting on her knee.
They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead
from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the
town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking
in the street.
Gradually all other sounds died away.
"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my
neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."
"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.
Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift—a
gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own
sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped
a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw,
and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.
"I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring
at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark
of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert
Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"
"No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't
it?—Oh, what's that?"
It was John talking in his sleep.
"I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every
phrase—"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's
foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the
voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if
the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's
foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist—and een
like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ...
they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite
distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.