A Scots Quair (55 page)

Chris heard of that later, she'd have needed second-sight to know of the gossip that would be in the future: she said she was glad to see him, she wasn't, neither glad nor sad, a funny little thing, was this what Robert depended upon? Funny that the like of him for so long had lived on the rent of folk like hers. Syne she went to the kitchen to see how the cakes came, they were brown and steaming, set on the table, and Meiklebogs, shy, like a big, sly steer, was sitting and eating one by the sink. And because she just couldn't thole him at all, he made her want to go change her vest, Chris smiled at him and was extra polite, and hoped that
he'd stay to tea with Else; and helped Else pile the things on a tray; and they carried it through and found Robert and the laird already deep in the talk that was planned by Robert himself when he first saw Segget.

Mr Mowat's English bray sounded so funny that Else gave a giggle and near dropped the tray.
Is the creature foreign?
and Chris said
No;
and Else said no more, but went solemnly in, and took only a keek or so at the creature, a little bit thing in baggy plus-fours. And he said
Oh, thenks! and I say!
and
How Jahly!
Else nearly giggled again, but she didn't, till she got to the kitchen and there was Meiklebogs, and she gave him a poke,
I say, how Jahly! You old devil, I've a good
mind to make up to the laird. What would you do then, eh, would
you say?

Meiklebogs smiled canny and said he would manage, and Else stared at him and wondered again why she'd ever allowed the old brute to come near her since she'd wept in his bed that night of the Show; she supposed she was still in a kind of a daze at finding the old brute as coarse as they'd said.

Chris sat in the sitting-room and listened to Mowat, and handed him tea, he said he'd come back to look after the mills and Segget in general, the curse of the age was its absentee landlords, not social conditions or unrest or suchlike. He was Jahly well sure he could buck up the village—didn't Mrs Colquohoun approve of that, now? he'd want her approval ever so much. And he flashed her a long, bright, toothy smile, he'd fine teeth and knew it; and Chris said,
I don't know. I'll
wait and see what the bucking consists of. My father was a crofter
and he used to say you should trust a laird just as far as you can
throw him
.

Stephen Mowat said he thought Mrs Colquohoun's father Jahly, and glinted charming, and Chris gave him up, and cleared off the tea things and came back and listened. By then, so it seemed, Robert had told of his plans, and was sitting now harkening to Mowat's reply. And the reply was: The thing that was needed everywhere was Discipline, hwaw? and order, and what not. The hand of the master—all the Jahly old things. He had been down in Italy the last few months and had seen things there, Rahly amazing, the country awakening, regaining its soul,
its old leaders back—with a new one or so. Discipline, order, hierarchy—all that. And why only Italy; why not Scotland? He'd met other men, down from 'varsity of late, who were doing as he did, going back to their estates. Scotland a nation—that was the goal, with its old-time civilization and culture. Hwaw? Didn't Mr Colquohoun agree?

But Chris had been listening, and now she must speak, she'd been trying to think as well as to listen, it was hard enough, but words suddenly came: they both turned round with a start as she spoke.
And what's going to happen when you
and your kind rule us again, as of old, Mr Mowat? Was there
ever the kind of Scotland you preach?—Happy, at ease, the
folk on the land well-fed, the folk in the pulpits well-feared, the
gentry doing great deeds? It's just a gab and a tale, no more, I
haven't read history since I was at school, but I mind well enough
what that Scotland was. I've been to Dunnottar Castle and seen
there the ways that the gentry once liked to keep order. If it came
to the push between you and the spinners I think I would give the
spinners my vote
.

Mowat said
Rahly?
staring at Chris, Robert stared as well at her down-bent face—suddenly she'd seen so much she didn't say, all the pageant of history since history began up here in the windy Mearns Howe: the ancient rites of blood and atonement where the Standing Stones stood up as dead kings; the clownings and cruelties of leaders and chiefs; and the folk—her folk—who kept such alive—dying frozen at night in their eirdes, earth-houses, chaving from the blink of day for a meal, serfs and land-workers whom the Mowats rode down, whom the armies harried and the kings spat on, the folk who rose in the Covenant times and were tortured and broken by the gentry's men, the rule and the way of life that had left them the pitiful gossiping clowns that they were, an obscene humour engraffed on their fears, the kindly souls of them twisted awry and veiled from men with a dirty jest; and this snippet of a fop with an English voice would bring back worse, and ask her to help!

And then that went by, she was suddenly cool. It was only a speak, a daft blether of words, whatever else happened to Segget, to Scotland—and there were strange things
waiting to happen—there would never come back that old darkness again to torment the simple folk of her blood. Robert was speaking, he knocked out his pipe.

I'm afraid my wife and I think the same—as all folk
worth their salt in Scotland must think. There are changes
coming—they are imminent on us—and I once thought
the folk of some teaching would help. Well, it seems they
won't—the middle class folk and the upper class folk, and
all the poor devils that hang by their tails: they think we can
last as we are—or go back—and they know all the while
they are thinking a lie. But God doesn't wait, or His instruments;
and if these in Segget are the folk of the mills, then, whatever their
creed, I'm on their side
.

CHRIS STARTED AND
moved, she nearly had frozen, leaning up here while the night went on, she ought to be down in her bed, she supposed. The rain had cleared and the stars had come out, frost was coming—there, bright down in Segget, was a mantling of grey where, the hoar was set, sprinkled like salt on the cant of the roofs. Beyond them there rose a red, quiet lowe, from the furnaces stacked for the night in the mills.

She stamped her feet and drew up her collar, watching that coming of the frost below. This impulse to seek the dark by herself! She had left Robert up in his study at work, Ewan in bed, young Mowat gone, and herself gone out for a walk through the rain that was closing in the end of Remembrance Day, wet and dank, as she'd seen it come. And it might be an age ere she came here again, too busied with living to stand looking at life, with Ewan at school and the campaign of Robert to conquer Segget for God and his dream.

A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night
.

She raised her eyes and looked where the frost lay bright in the west, where the evening star wheeled down to midnight to lead her feet home.

IT WAS funny to think, this forenoon in June, how long it had been since she climbed the Kaimes, here rose the walls, in their mantle of heather, a blackbird was whistling up in the yews, as she turned around slow she saw the light flow up and down the hill as though it were liquid, Segget below lying buried in a sea, as once all the Howe had lain, Ewan said. Still weak, Chris halted and sat on the wall, her hands below her, and looked at Segget, and drew out her hands and looked at those, so thin that almost she could see through them, so thin her face when she put up her hand that the cheekbones that once curved smooth under flesh now felt like twin jagged crags of rock—a long time ere she'd look comely again!

She leant her head in her hand a moment and waited for the hill below to cease reeling—maybe she'd come out too early from bed, this walk, Else had said she mustn't go far. But the Kaimes had called her after those weeks of the smell of medicines, close fires, and the pain that ran up and down her and played hide and seek with every sinew and bone that she had. So up she had come, the sun was up here, she was out of it for an hour or so, out of the winking flash of the days, to sit and look from the high places here, as Christ once had done with the devil for guide.

Idly she minded that and smiled—it came of being a minister's wife. What had the devil said to Christ then? Maybe
Just rest. Rest and have peace. Don't let them tear you
to bits with their hates, their cares and their loves, your angers
for them. Leave them and rest!

Yes, He'd said that, there wasn't a doubt, just as He stood by her saying it now, telling her to rest for the first time in years since that night when she last had climbed up the Kaimes, telling her to rest and leave them a-be, her cares for
Robert, for that other who came and yet never came—for that third, that stranger whom slow through the years she had grown to half-know as a traveller half-knows the face of another on a lone road at night, in the summer light of a falling star…. How Segget would snigger if they heard her say that that stranger desired was her own son Ewan!

BEING YOUNG
Ewan Tavendale wasn't all fun, you'd to get up as early as half-past six in the little room that looked down on Segget. But it was a good room, the best in the Manse, you could look of a night right into the trees when the rooks came nesting, they had a great time, fighting and mating and playing the devil. Once you nearly fell out when two rooks were at it—mating, you'd wanted to know how it was done. But that was a long time ago, when a kid, you knew all about it now, humans or rooks, mother or Robert, and there wasn't much in it, though the spinner kids of West Wynd thought so. Charlie Cronin drew pictures in the lavatories at school, the silly ass couldn't draw at all. So you drew some yourself to show how things were, he turned red-faced when you drew it so well.
Ewan that's
dirty!
What was dirty about it?

You would lie and mind these things of a morning and stare at the ceiling and hark to the rooks—moving and chattering and swearing in the cold—how they
did
swear as the daylight grew! Sometimes you'd wanted to swear yourself, and you'd tried once or twice when you were a kid, but it sounded half-witted, so you gave it up. You couldn't see sense in rubbish like swearing, any more than in speaking in Scotch, not English, as mother did sometimes, and so did Robert, and so did Else (but she couldn't help it). Scotch was rubbish, all ee's and wee's, you didn't even speak it in the school playground. And the other kids had mocked you at first, but they didn't long, with a bashing or so.

Chris (and once Else) rigged you out of a morning, now you did it yourself, nearly twelve years old. The clock went birr as you looked at its face and you got out of bed and out of your pyjamas, Charlie Cronin slept in his shirt, he said only gentry wore things like pyjamas. You were glad you were gentry, then, shirts got sticky. Then you'd hear
the clock going off down below, where the new girl slept, she was shy and said
Eh?
A perfect fool, she near fainted one morning, in summer it was, when she first came here. You'd thought you'd go down and get a bath first before either Robert or Chris should be at it. So you'd nipped down the stairs without anything on, and as you came back she came from her room, and gave a screech like a frightened hen, as though she'd never seen folk without clothes. Charlie Cronin said that his father, old George, would take off his clothes slow bit by bit, the top bits first, and cover himself up, and then the lower, and he'd cover
that
—you'd supposed that Maidie herself was like that, a fool, maybe frightened to look at herself.

So after that you had promised Chris that you'd wear some clothes when outside your room, she'd said that she herself didn't care—and you said
Yes, mother, I know
that you don't. I once saw you with nothing on coming up the
stairs—a night long ago when I was a kid. I think it was
the night of a Segget Show
.

She'd blushed, as though nearly as bad as the others, but she wasn't: you were glad that your mother was Chris. She didn't know that you called her that, to yourself, not aloud, aloud you said
Mother
. But Robert, just
Robert
, he wasn't your father. Robert was fun when he wasn't at work, with the kirk or the spinners or his Labour plans—summers he took you and Chris on your bikes out on far jaunts up and down the Howe, to Edzell, to Brechin, to Garvock Hill where they boiled the Sheriff but not Leslie the smith—you asked Robert what he meant by that say, and he and Chris laughed like a couple of fools. But out on picnics he changed and was young, and would teach you to throw and do the high jump, he could jump like anything, Robert, and box. Everybody knew that in Segget now, they hadn't at first, especially the spinners, and had mocked at Robert till he taught them manners. Charlie Cronin had been jealous of him and of you, that was at first when you first went to school, the first day he came swaggering up and said
Oh, you're the dirt from
the Manse, are you?
And you said
I'm not dirt, I'm Ewan
Tavendale
, and he mocked at you till you hit him a bash,
right on the nose, and he bled and bled, though it was only a baby bash, you were both of you just babies yourselves. But you won that fight all the same, Mr Geddes had watched it all from a window; and he went to the Manse and told Chris about it; and she asked that night
Did he hurt you
,
Ewan?
and you said
Ay
, all the kids had said
Ay;
and Chris said
Oh, Ewan, that was real like your father!
Father had been killed by the Germans in France.

Time for breakfast: and there was Robert, busy with letters, and Chris, looking sweet. But she always did that, even when she was angry, she could do nearly anything, answer you anything, she couldn't run maybe as fast as you could and she was a perfect fool about flints, but she always told the truth about things, most grown-up people told lies half the time. You didn't yourself, it wasn't worth the bother, explaining, and trying to straighten things later.

And Chris would say
It's nearly schooltime
, and you'd look at the clock, and see that it was, and Robert would say,
He's dreaming about flints!
But you hadn't been dreaming, you'd been thinking of Chris, she'd looked different of late in a puzzling way. Now, if it had been any other woman in Segget, you'd have known—but not Chris! It made a cold water come in your mouth, as though you were going to be sick, that thought. And Chris said
What's wrong?
That's a funny-loon stare
. And you said
Oh, nothing. I'll
need to be going
.

You kissed Chris every morning, one kiss a day; kisses were sloppy except for that one—like the taste of honey up on a hill, clear, with the wind in the summer south. Robert cried
Ta-ta!
and you did the same, and were out in the hall, where Maidie would be, tweetering about and worrying again, wondering if breakfast were over yet. You hardly ever took notice of her, not since she'd screeched that time on the stairs. She'd call
Master Ewan, is the
breakfast done?
and you'd say
I don't know
and leave her to twitter—who wanted to be
mastered
like a kid in a book?

Out from the Manse and down through the shingle, giving it a kick and a plough as you went, under the ferny tops of the yews, the rooks all wakened and screeching, or off—all
but the young ones, pecking, gaping. If it was summer you passed under quick, they dropped dirt down when you least expected, they dropped it once on the Provost of Segget when he came to see Robert and he walked back home with it white on his hat and everyone laughed, and he nearly had a fit when he found out about it.

He was frightened to be laughed at, most people were, you didn't care a button one way or another, they might laugh themselves blue in the face at you, you were yourself—and what did it matter?

And there was the land and there were the touns, Segget half-blue in its early smoke, you started early and with time to spare to go round the toun and back up to the school. So you'd stop and pull up your stockings to your knees, in shorts, and the shirt and tie that Chris tied, you couldn't get the knack of the thing, she would say
Oh, Ewan, you've
forgotten to tie it at all!
and you'd say
I forgot
, and she'd ruffle your hair,
Thinking about flints again, I suppose?
She and Robert were always joking about flints, and calling them wrong names, and thinking that funny.

Down by Meiklebogs the curlews were calling, you heard them above the shoom of the Mills, Robert said something about that once—
Twin daughters of the Voice of God
. You hadn't bothered to find out what he meant, though you bothered about most things right to the end, sense to find out why this went like this, and that was
so
, and the wheels went round, and some stars twinkled and a lot did not, why people were ashamed to be seen without clothes and didn't like girls to go out late at night, and hated capitalists, if they were spinners, and hated spinners, if they were New Toun.

The curlew called and you stopped and listened, Else would hear it at the Meiklebogs, you'd liked Else a lot, though not all the time. Once she'd come to your room late in the night, harvest, and was sloppy and kissed you about, you hated slop and threw a book at her, it hit her, she stared, you were sorry a bit.

There was a seagull up on that post, try a stone at it—nearly its tail!—and there was Ake Ogilvie's shop beyond. Most mornings you loitered about at Ake's, he'd lean from the door with his compass in hand and cry
Well,
then, have you learned your Burns?
'twas a joke between you, the poetry of Burns, silly Scotch muck about cottars and women, and love and dove and rot of that sort. Ake would recite you some of his own, his green eyes twinkling and his eyebrows twinkling, with a coating of sawdust sprayed on the hairs, and his long moustache going up and down, so, and you'd stare at him and listen a while, it was good enough, better than Burns's rot. Poetry was rot, why not say it plain, when a man kissed a woman or a woman had a baby?

Down past the house of Jimmy the Sourock, the road had a dip and a hollow for years, the rain would gather, deep, in a pool, you used to march through it, your feet close together, and watch the water soak in at the eyelets, and feel it trickling betwixt your toes: that was when you were only a kid. Then Mrs Sourock would look out and see, and cry she would tell the Mem at the Manse, that was Chris she meant, and you didn't care. It was no business of
hers
to get mad because you liked to wade in the water, especially as she herself was so proud that her husband, the Sourock, drank nothing but water, since he got that fright with the pig in his bed. And every Sunday he went down to the Square, to the service-meeting of MacDougall Brown, and sang about blood, and you thought that funny, he'd been so frightened at the blood of the pig. You'd once played truant from the kirk to go down and watch MacDougall Brown as he prayed, he opened his mouth and looked as though blind, with his eyes like glass and his teeth all black, perhaps he was frightened to go to the dentist.

A dentist came twice a week now to Segget, he hired a room at the back of Dite Peat's: and the first time he came Charlie Cronin was there, hiding and listening under the window to hear the howls when the teeth came out. And the first to come was old Mrs Hogg: she had a wart on her nose like Cromwell and hair growing out of the wart as well, and she groaned like anything, Charlie told. Then she said to the dentist
How much will that be?
and he said
Half a crown
, and Mrs Hogg said
What? Half
a crown for that, just pulling out a tooth? Why, old Leslie
the smith down there at the smiddy used to pull me all over
the place with his tongs, and never would ask a meek for it,
either
.

But you liked Mrs Hogg, she would cry as you passed,
Hello, Ewan lad, is there anything fresh?
And you'd show her the latest flints that you'd got, and she wouldn't just laugh or blither about Druids, as everyone else in Segget would do, but would ask what the hunters had done with the things, and she'd say that that was amazing, just, what a thing it was to be learned and young. She'd sense, Mrs Hogg, more sense than her son, who sometimes came home on a holiday; he spoke bad English and wore bad breeks, and patted your head and said
Little man
, or tried to pat you, you just stepped aside.

Sometimes you'd look into Peter Peat's shop, where he sat on a table making a suit, he'd frown and motion to you to get off, he came every Sunday and listened to Robert and hated his sermons and Robert as well. You'd heard him one Sunday say to the Provost the minister was nothing but a Bolshevik, just, as bad as that tink John Cronin, the porter. Bolsheviks lived in Russia, you knew, they'd closed all the kirks and they all worked together and they hadn't a king: and it sounded sense.