A Scots Quair (51 page)

She stood up and went over and looked in the glass, and suddenly shivered, cold after the dancing; and drew the curtains and lighted the lamp, and took off her clothes in front of that other who watched and moved in the mirror's mere. She saw herself tall, taller than of old, lithe and slim still with the brown V-shape down to the place between her breasts, she could follow the lines of the V with her finger. And she saw her face, high cheekboned and bronze, quiet and still with the mask of the years, her mouth too wide but she liked her teeth, she saw them now as she smiled at the thought her mouth was too wide! She loosed the pins in her hair and it fell, down to her knees, tickling her shoulders, faith! it was worse than a mane, a blanket, she'd cut it one day, if Robert would let her. She caught it aside and suddenly remembered a thing she'd forgot, forgotten for years, and looked for the dimple she once had had, and found it, there still, and saw her face flush faint as she minded, now that she thought of the thing at all, she'd been told that first night two years ago that the dimple was there—

Funny and queer that you were with a man! You did this and that and you lay in his bed, there wasn't a thing of you he might not know, or you of him, from the first to the last. And you could speak of these things with him, and be glad, glad to be alive and be his, and sleep with your head in his shoulder's nook, tickling his chin, you supposed, with your hair—you could do all that and blush at the memory of a daft thing said on your wedding night!

Then she remembered she'd wanted a bath. She seemed to have stood there dreaming for hours, and found her
dressing-gown and her slippers, and went down the stairs and turned on the taps. The water came gurgling out with a steam, she saw her face in the shaving glass, and stared at it—something happening to-night?

She splashed for a little thinking of that, the water about her stung quick at first; she saw herself fore-shortened and fragile, but fair enough still, so she supposed—yes, she would think that if she were a man! She lifted an arm and the water ran down it, little pellets, they nested under her cheek; and 'twas then she thought of the thing she would do. Yes, she would do it this very night! … And because that wouldn't bear thinking about, here, she splashed herself and got out, Robert's mirror blinded in a cloud of steam. She opened the bathroom door and listened, there was no one to hear or see for this once, she caught up her gear and ran quick up the stairs, in the moving pattern of splashed moonlight high from the window set in the gable, and gave a gasp as she felt a hand on her shoulder, the arm came tight, she was kissed. Robert coming down had seen the light splash as she opened the bathroom door.

She struggled away,
I've no clothes on!

He said that he'd half suspected that, teasing her a minute, then let her go. Then he said he'd go down and get ready their supper, and went lightly down the stairs as a lad, it was Chris who now stood still and looked down, high in her breast her heart beating fast. She would, and this very night she would, in spite of what he had told her and taught her!

She dressed and went down through the quiet of the Manse, Robert popped his fair pow round the edge of the door,
Supper in the kitchen, or shall we be grand?
She said she would like the kitchen as well and pushed him into a chair as she spoke, and took off Else's apron he'd draped on his trousers, and set to the making of supper herself. He sighed and stretched out and lighted his pipe, and drew at it, looking out of the window.
There's something
in the night—or is it in you?
He stood up and walked to the window and peered, and came back and looked at Chris for a while; and put out a finger upon her forearm.
Funny to think that was once monkey-hair!

She said that it wasn't, whatever his ancestors had been,
hers were decent, like Hairy Hogg's, hers (they'd both heard the story). Robert chuckled over that as he sat down again, the only result of his sermon so far to drop a blot on the Provost's escutcheon. Hopeless, the Provost, and most of the others, Geddes, poor chap, had mislaid his guts; but he'd form that Segget League even yet, wait till this young Stephen Mowat came home!

Chris asked when that was but Robert didn't know, he thought very soon, then grew puzzled again.
Funny, there
really is something about
, and Chris said
Maybe
, and keeked at him sly, as he sat there and puzzled, and restrained herself from suddenly and daftly cuddling him tight. When she opened the kitchen window wide there came a faint scent on the tide of the wind, from the garden, the jonquils and marigolds glowed faint and pale in the light of the moon.

Then Chris set the table and they both sat down, it was fine to work in her kitchen untrammelled, good though Else was as a general rule, if it wasn't for the fact that the Manse was so big they could have done well without a maid here. She said that to Robert, he said
Yes, I know, I
feel that way myself—for to-night! As though I could turn
our Segget myself into Augustine's City of God …. Something
in the night that's making us like this
, and stopped and stared,
Why, Chris, you look different!

She said he was silly—or 'twas maybe the bath! Then she felt herself colour with his eyes upon her. He shook his head,
An unusual bath!——A mental one? They're
uncommon in Segget
.

He said
That's the first time I've ever heard you bitter
, and she said she didn't feel bitter, she was fine; and they washed up and dried in the moonlight quiet, together and content and yet more than that, once he brushed her shoulder as he went to and fro, carrying the dishes over to the dresser; and he stopped and scowled, sore-puzzled upon her,
It must be
that monkey-hair that's electric!

And then they had finished and a mood came on Chris.
Let's go out in the garden
. And they both went out in the honey-dark shadows that the hedgerow threw, warm, a little mist crept up from Segget, under the nets in the strawberry patches the berries were bending their heads
full ripe, Chris knelt by a bed and found one that was big, and ate half herself, Robert the other, seeing it waiting there on her lips. And, as he laughed and kissed her for that, something caught them both to a silence, foolish and quiet by the strawberry beds. The rooks chirped drowsily up in the yews as they passed beneath to the sheltered wall where love-in-a-mist and forget-me-nots bloomed blue and soft even now in the night, under the wall that led to the kirkyard, just low enough for Chris to look over.

And so for a little she stopped and looked, that third Chris holding her body a while, how strange it was she stood here by Robert, so close that the warmth of his body warmed hers—when in such a short time she would die down there on a bit of land as deserted and left. They were gone, they were quiet, and the tears that were shed and the folk that came and the words that were said, were scattered and gone and they left in peace, finished and ended and all put by, the smell for them of forget-me-nots and the taste of a strawberry eaten at night and the kiss of lips that were hard and kind, and the thoughts of men that had held them in love and wondered upon them and believed in God. All that had gone by, now under the gold of the moon the grass rose from those bodies that mouldered in Segget, the curlews were calling up in the Kaimes, the hay lay in scented swathes in the parks, night wheeled to morning in a thousand rooms where the blood that they'd passed to other bodies circled in sleep, unknowing its debt. Nothing else they had left, they had come from the dark as the dustmotes come, sailing and golden in a shaft of the sun, they went by like the sailing motes to the dark; and the thing had ended, and you knew it was so, that so it would be with you in the end. And yet—and yet—you couldn't believe it!

Robert teased,
Choosing a place for your coffin?
and Chris said
Just that, but don't plant me deep;
and he said with a queer, sudden fear in his voice, he startled Chris and she turned to look,
Lord God, how I'd hate to be ‘planted'
myself! If I die before you, Christine, see to that: that I'm
sent for burning to a crematorium. I'd hate to be remembered
once I am dead
. Chris thought in a flash how Segget would take it, should he die and she get him a funeral like that,
They'd say, most likely, that I'd poisoned you, Robert, and
were trying to get rid of the evidence, you know
. He laughed,
So they would!
and then laughed again, a second laugh that was dreary, Chris thought.
My God, were there ever
folk like the Scots! Not only
them—
you and I are as
bad. Murderous gossip passed on as sheer gospel, though liars
and listeners both know it is a lie. Lairds, ladies, or plain Jock
Muck at the Mains—they'd gossip the heart from Christ if
He came, and impute a dodge for popularizing timber when
He was crucified again on His cross!

Chris said
That's true, and yet it is not. They would feed
Christ hungry and attend to His hurts with no thought of reward
their attendance might bring. Kind, they're so kind…. And
the lies they would tell about how He came by those hurts of
His!——

And yet you don't believe in a God. I've never asked you,
but do you, Chris?

She bent her head as she answered,
No
, not looking at him; but his laugh was kind.
You will sometime, however
you find Him
.

Then he looked at his watch, it was nearly midnight; and suddenly Chris forgot the sad things. She ran away from him and he came after, playing hide and seek, daft bairns both, in the play and wisp of the moonlight's flow, till Chris lost breath and he caught her up: and she suddenly yawned and he said,
Bedtime
. And Chris minded now the thing she had planned, and lingered a minute behind his step, shy as a bride to go with him.

The room was in shadow, for the moon had veered, Robert moved about quiet and lighted the lamp, his close- cropped hair lay smooth on his head till his clothes ruffled it up as he pulled them off. He looked over at Chris,
I'm not
sleepy at all
. And said in that voice that he sometimes used
You look very sweet, Christine, to-night. Did you know?

She reached up then and put out the light, and changed in the dark though he laughed and asked why. She answered nothing, slipped in beside him between the cool sheets; and lying so, still, she heard her heart hammer.

He lay quiet as well, then the curtain flapped and bellied in the breeze, and you saw like a shadow the smile on his
face, it was turned to you and you turned to him; and he said in a minute,
Why, Christine!
solemn, and his hands came firmly under your chin to hold you so and to kiss you, stern. And you knew that you stood on the brink of that sea that was neither charted nor plumbed by men, that sea-shore only women had known, dark, with its sailing red lights of storms, where only the feet of women had trod, hearing the thunder of the sea in their ears as they gathered the fruit on that waste, wild shore ….

So: and his lips were in yours, and they altered, and you were gladder than you'd been for years, your arm went round his bared shoulder quick … and suddenly you were lying as rigid as death. Robert said,
Tired out,
after all, Christine?

For months after that she remembered that moment, her voice hadn't come from her lips for a minute; then she said,
Just a bit
, and heard him draw breath, and she said again, soft,
Not
too
tired, Robert
, and had set her teeth fast after that, for an age, the thunder of that sea cut off by a wall, as she herself was, by a wall of fire; but she said not a word of either of these, stroked his hair where it clung to his brow; and he put his head on her breast and slept, after a while: and the house grew still.

She'd sleep soon herself, she'd put that dream by, the dream of a bairn fathered by Robert—not now, maybe never, but she could not to-night, not with memory of that scar that was torn across the shoulder of this living body beside her, the scar that a fragment of shrapnel had torn—but a little lower it would have torn this body, grunting, into a mesh of blood, with broken bones and with spouting blood, an animal mouthing in mindless torment. And she'd set herself to conceive a child—for the next War that came, to be torn like that, made blood and pulp as they'd made of Ewan—
Oh, Ewan, Ewan, that was once
my lad, that lay where this stranger's lying the night, I haven't
forgotten, I haven't forgotten, you've a Chris that lies with you
there in France, and she shan't bring to birth from her womb any
bairn to die as you, for a madman's gab
….

Quiet, oh, quiet, greet soft lest he wake, who's so kind and dear, who's so far from you now. But you'll never have
a bairn of his for torment, to be mocked by memorials, the gabblings of clowns, when they that remained at home go out to praise the dead on Armistice Day.

FAITH, WHEN IT
came there was more to remember in Segget that year than Armistice only. There was better kittle in the story of what happened to Jim the Sourock on Armistice Eve. He was aye sore troubled with his stomach, Jim, he'd twist his face as he'd hand you a dram, and a man would nearly lose nerve as he looked—had you given the creature a bad shilling, or what? But syne he would rub his hand slow on his wame,
It's the pains in my breast that
I've gotten again;
and he said that they fairly were awful sometimes, like a meikle worm moving and wriggling in there. Folk said he fair did his best to drown it, and God! that was true, the foul brute would go home, near every night as drunk as a toff, and fall in the bed by the side of his wife, she'd say
You coarse brute, you've come drunken again;
but he'd only groan, with his hand at his stomach, the worm on the wriggle like a damned sea-serpent.