A Scots Quair

  Rob had come over to help, he’d no cutting to do; and when Chris said nay, he mustn’t leave the Mill, he twinkled his eyes and shook his head. And Chris knew he’d have little loss, folk changed and were changing again, not a soul had driven his corn cart to the Mill since Long Rob came back. He’d had nothing to do but pleiter about from park to park and look out on the road for the custom that never came; and if any came now it could damn well wait, he’d come up to stook Blawearie.

  So the two went down to the park, young Ewan went with them, and they stooked it together, the best of the crop, Rob cheery as ever it seemed to Chris. But sometimes his eyes would wander up to the hills, like a man seeking a thing he had never desired, and into the iron-blue eyes a shadow like a dark, quiet question would creep. Maybe he minded the jail and its torments then, he spoke never of that, and never a word of the War, nor Chris, all the stooking of the yavil park. Strange she had hardly known him before, Long Rob of the Mill, unco and atheist; he’d been only the miller with the twinkling eyes, his singings by morn and his whistlings by night, his stories of horses till your head fair reeled. Now it seemed she had known him always, closely and queerly, she felt queer, as though shy, when she sat by his side at the supper table and he spoke to old Brigson that night. The pallor of the jail came out in the lamp-light, under the brown that the sun had brought, and she saw his hand by the side of her hand, thin and strong, the miller’s horse-taming hand.

  He bedded young Ewan that night, for a play, and sung him to sleep, Chris and old Brigson heard the singing as they sat in the kitchen below, Ladies of Spain and There was a Young Farmer and A’ the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border. Hardly anybody left in Kinraddie sang these songs, it was full of other tunes from the bothy windows now, Tipperary and squawling English things, like the squeak of a rat that is bedded in syrup, the Long, Long Trail and the like. It was queer and eerie, listening to Rob, like listening to an echo from far in the years at the mouth of a long lost glen.

  And she never knew when and how in the days that followed, it came on her silently, secretly, out of the earth itself, maybe, the knowledge she was Rob’s to do with as he willed, she willed. She wanted more than the clap of his hand on her shoulder as they finished the bout at evening and up through the shadows took their slow way, by parkside and dyke, to the close that hung drenched with honeysuckle smell. She wanted more than his iron-blue eye turned on her, warm and clean and kind though she felt her skin colour below that gaze, she wanted those things that now all her life she came to know she had never known—a man to love her, not such a boy as the Ewan that had been or the poor demented beast he’d become.

  And if old John Brigson guessed of those things that whispered so shamelessly there in her heart he gave never a sign, wise and canny and kind. And no sign that he knew did Rob give either, swinging by her side in the harvest that drew to its end. And in Chris as she bent and straightened and stooked the last day was a prayer to the earth and fields, a praying that this harvest might never end, that she and Long Rob would tramp it forever. But the binder flashed its blades at the head of the last, long bout, and Long Rob had his hand on her shoulder, He’s finished, Chris quean, and it’s clyak!

  That evening she went out with him to the gate of the close, and he swung his coat on his shoulder, Well, well, Chris lass, I’ve liked this fine. And then, not looking at her, he added I’m away to Aberdeen to enlist the morn.

  For a moment she was stupefied and stared at him silently, but she had no place in his thoughts, he was staring across Kinraddie’s stooked fields. And then he began to tell her, he’d resolved on this days before, he couldn’t stay out of it longer, all the world had gone daft and well he might go with the rest, there was neither trade nor trust for him here, or rest ever again till this War was over, if it ever ended at all. So I’m giving in at last, I suppose they’ll say. And this is ta-ta, Chris; mind on me kindly some times.

  She held to his hand in the gloaming light and so he looked down at last, she was biting her lips to keep down the tears, but he saw them shine brimming then in her eyes. And his own changed, changed and were kind and then something else, he cried Why, lass! and his hand on her shoulder drew her close, she was close and against him, held tight so that she felt the slow beat of his heart, she wanted to rest there, safe and safe in these corded arms. And then she minded that to-morrow he’d be gone, it cried through the evening in every cry of the lapwings, So near, so near! So this also ended as everything else, every thing she had ever loved and desired went out to the madness beyond the hills on that ill road that flung its evil white ribbon down the dusk. And it was her arms then that went round his neck, drawing down his head and kissing him, queer and awful to kiss a man so, kissing him till she heard his breath come quick, and he gripped her, pleading with her, We’re daft, Chris quean, we mustn’t! But she knew then she had won, she wound her arms about him, she whispered The haystacks! and he carried her there, the smell of the clover rose crushed and pungent and sweet from under her head; and lying so in the dark, held to him, kissing him, she sought with lips and limbs and blood to die with him then.

  But that dark, hot cloud went by, she found herself still lying there, Rob was there, and she drew his head to her breast, lying so with him, seeing out below the rounded breasts of the haystacks the dusky red of the harvest night, this harvest gathered to herself at last, reaped and garnered and hers in her heart and body. So they were for hours, John Brigson never called out to them; and then she stood beside Rob at the head of the road again, drowsy and quiet and content. They made no promises, kissing for last, she knew already he was growing remote from her, his eyes already remote to that madness that beckoned beyond the hills. So it was that he went from her next, she heard him go step- stepping slow with that swinging stride of his down through the darkness, and she never saw him again, was never to see him again.

  IT HAD BURNED up as a fire in a whin-bush, that thing in her life, and it burned out again and was finished. She went about the Blawearie biggings next day singing under breath to herself, quiet and unvexed, tending to hens and kye, seeing to young Ewan’s sleep in the day and the setting of old Brigson’s supper ere he came at night. She felt shamed not at all, all the vexing fears had gone from her, she made no try to turn from the eyes in the glass that looked out at her, wakened and living again. She was glad she’d gone out with Long Rob, glad and content, they were one and the same now, Εwan and her.

  So the telegram boy that came riding to Blawearie found her singing there in the close, mending young Ewan’s clothes. She heard the click of the gate and he took the telegram out of his wallet and gave it to her and she stared at him and then at her hands. They were quivering like the leaves of the beech in the forecoming of rain, they quivered in a little mist below her eyes. Then she opened the envelope and read the words and she said there was no reply, the boy swung on his bicycle again and rode out, riding and leaning he clicked the gate behind him; and laughed back at her for the cleverness of that.

  She stood up then, she put down her work on the hack- stock and read again in the telegram, and began to speak to herself till that frightened her and she stopped. But she forgot to be frightened, in a minute she was speaking again, the chirawking hens in the close stopped and came near and turned up bright eyes to her loud and toneless whispering, What do I do — oh, what do I do?

  She was vexed and startled by that—what was it she did? Did she go out to France and up to the front line, maybe, into a room where they’d show her Εwan lying dead, quiet and dead, white and bloodless, sweat on his hair, killed in action? She went out to the front door and waved to the harvesters, Brigson, young Ewan, and a tink they’d hired, they saw her and stared till she waved again and then John Brigson abandoned the half-loaded cart and came waddling up the park, so slow he was, Did you cry me, Chris?

  Sweat on his hair as sweat on Ewan’s. She stared at that and held out the telegram, he wiped slow hands and took it and read it, while she clung to the
door-post and whispered and whispered What is it I do now, John? Have I to go out to France? And at last he looked up, his face was grizzled and hot and old, he wiped the sweat from it, slow. God, mistress, this is sore news, but he’s died like a man out there, your Ewan’s died fine.

  But she wouldn’t listen to that, wanting to know the thing she must do; and not till he told her that she did nothing, they could never take all widows to France and Ewan must already be buried, did she stop from that twisting of her hands and ceaseless whisper. Then anger came, Why didn’t you tell me before? Oh, damn you, you liked tormenting me! and she turned from him into the house and ran up the stairs to the bed, the bed that was hers and Ewan’s, and lay on it, and put her hands over her ears trying not to hear a cry of agony in a lost French field, not to think that the body that had lain by hers, frank and free and kind and young, was torn and dead and unmoving flesh, blood twisted upon it, not Ewan at all, riven and terrible, still and dead when the harvest stood out in Blawearie’s land and the snipe were calling up on the loch and the beech trees whispered and rustled. And she knew that it was a lie

  He wasn’t dead, he could never have died or been killed for nothing at all, far away from her over the sea, what matter to him their War and their fighting, their King and their country? Kinraddie was his land, Blawearie his, he was never dead for those things of no concern, he’d the crops to put in and the loch to drain and her to come back to. It had nothing to do with Ewan this telegram. They were only tormenting her, cowards and liars and bloody men, the English generals and their like down there in London. But she wouldn’t bear it, she’d have the law on them, cowards and liars as she knew them to be!

  It was only then that she knew she was moaning, dreadful to hear; and they heard it outside, John Brigson heard it and nearly went daft, he caught up young Ewan and ran with him into the kitchen and then to the foot of the stairs; and told him to go up to his mother, she wanted him. And young Ewan came, it was his hand tugging at her skirts that brought her out of that moaning coma, and he wasn’t crying, fearsome the sounds though she made, his face was white and resolute, Mother, mother! She picked him up then and held him close, rocking in an agony of despair because of that look on his face, that lost look and the smouldering eyes he had. Oh Ewan, your father’s dead! she told him the lie that the world believed. And she wept at last, blindly, freeingly, for a little, old Brigson was to say it was the boy that had saved her from going mad.

  BUT THROUGHOUT Kinradie the news went underbreath that mad she’d gone, the death of her man had fair unhinged her. For still she swore it was a lie, that Ewan wasn’t dead, he could never have died for nothing. Kirsty Strachan and Mistress Munro came up to see her, they shook their heads and said he’d died fine, for his country and his King he’d died, young Ewan would grow up to be proud of his father. They said that sitting at tea, with long faces on them, and then Chris laughed, they quivered away from her at that laugh.

  Country and King? You’re havering, havering! What have they to do with my Ewan, what was the King to him, what their damned country? Blawearie’s his land, it’s not his wight that others fight wars!

  She went fair daft with rage then, seeing the pity in their faces. And also it was then, and then only, staring through an angry haze at them, that she knew at last she was living a dream in a world gone mad. Ewan was dead, they knew it and she knew it herself; and he’d died for nothing, for nothing, hurt and murdered and crying for her, maybe, killed for nothing: and those bitches sat and spoke of their King and country…

  They ran out of the house and down the brae, and, panting, she stood and screamed after them. It was fair the speak of Kinraddie next day the way she’d behaved, and nobody else came up to see her. But she’d finished with screaming, she went quiet and cold. Mornings came up, and she saw them come, she minded that morning she’d sent him away and she might not cry him back. Noons with their sun and rain came over the Howe and she saw the cruelty and pain of life as crimson rainbows that spanned the horizons of the wheeling hours. Nights came soft and grey and quiet across Kinraddie’s fields, they brought neither terror nor hope to her now. Behind the walls of a sanity cold and high, locked in from the lie of life, she would live, from the world that had murdered her man for nothing, for a madman’s gibberish heard in the night behind the hills.

  AND THEN CHAE Strachan came home at last on leave, he came home and came swift to Blawearie. She met him out by the kitchen door, a sergeant by then, grown thinner and taller, and he stopped and looked in her frozen face. Then, as her hand dropped down from him, he went past her with swinging kilts, into the kitchen, and sat him down and took off his bonnet. Chris, I’ve come to tell you of Ewan.

  She stared at him, waking, a hope like a fluttering bird in her breast. Ewan? Chae–Chae, he’s not living? And then, as he shook his head, the frozen wall came down on her heart again. Ewan’s dead, don’t vex yourself hoping else. They can’t hurt him more, even this can’t hurt him, though I swore I’d tell you nothing about it. But I know right well you should know it, Chris. Ewan was shot as a coward and deserter out there in France.

  * * *

  CHAE HAD LAIN in a camp near by and had heard of the thing by chance, he’d read Ewan’s name in some list of papers that was posted up. And he’d gone the night before Ewan was shot, and they’d let him see Ewan, and he’d heard it all, the story he was telling her now— better always to know what truth’s in a thing, for lies come creeping home to roost on unco rees, Chris quean. You’re young yet, you’ve hardly begun to live, and I swore to myself that I’d tell you it all, that you’d never be vexed with some twisted bit in the years to come. Ewan was shot as a deserter, it was fair enough, he’d deserted from the front line trenches.

  He had deserted in a blink of fine weather between the rains that splashed the glutted rat-runs of the front. He had done it quickly and easily, he told to Chae, he had just turned and walked back. And other soldiers that met him had thought him a messenger, or wounded, or maybe on leave, none had questioned him, he’d set out at ten o’clock in the morning and by afternoon, taking to the fields, was ten miles or more from the front. Then the military policemen came on him and took him, he was marched back and court-martialled and found to be guilty.

  And Chae said to him, they sat together in the hut where he waited the coming of the morning, But why did you do it, Ewan? You might well have known you’d never get free. And Ewan looked at him and shook his head, It was that wind that came with the sun, I minded Blawearie, I seemed to waken up smelling that smell. And I couldn’t believe it was me that stood in the trench, it was just daft to be there. So I turned and got out of it.

  In a flash it had come on him, he had wakened up, he was daft and a fool to be there; and, like somebody minding things done in a coarse wild dream there had flashed on him memory of Chris at Blawearie and his last days there, mad and mad he had been, he had treated her as a devil might, he had tried to hurt her and maul her, trying in the nightmare to waken, to make her waken him up; and now in the blink of sun he saw her face as last he’d seen it while she quivered away from his taunts. He knew he had lost her, she’d never be his again, he’d known it in that moment he clambered back from the trenches; but he knew that he’d be a coward if he didn’t try though all hope was past.

  So out he had gone for that, remembering Chris, wanting to reach her, knowing as he tramped mile on mile that he never would. But he’d made her that promise that he’d never fail her, long syne he had made it that night when he’d held her so bonny and sweet and a quean in his arms, young and desirous and kind. So mile on mile on the laired French roads: she was lost to him, but that didn’t help, he’d to try to win to her side again, to see her again, to tell her nothing he’d said was his saying, it was the foulness dripping from the dream that devoured him. And young Ewan came into his thoughts, he’d so much to tell her of him, so much he’d to say and do if only he might win to Blawearie…

  Then the military policemen had t
aken him and he’d listened to them and others in the days that followed, listening and not listening at all, wearied and quiet. Oh, wearied and wakened at last, Chae, and I haven’t cared, they can take me out fine and shoot me to-morrow, I’ll be glad for the rest of it, Chris lost to me through my own coarse daftness. She didn’t even come to give me a kiss at good-bye, Chae, we never said good-bye; but I mind the bonny head of her down-bent there in the close. She’ll never know, my dear quean, and that’s best — they tell lies about folk they shoot and she’ll think I just died like the rest; you’re not to tell her.

  Then he’d been silent long, and Chae’d had nothing to say, he knew it was useless to make try for reprieve, he was only a sergeant and had no business even in the hut with the prisoner. And then Ewan said, sudden-like, it clean took Chae by surprise, Mind the smell of dung in the parks on an April morning, Chae? And the peewits over the rigs? Bonny they’re flying this night in Kinraddie, and Chris sleeping there, and all the Howe happéd in mist. Chae said that he mustn’t mind about that, he was feared that the dawn was close; and Ewan should be thinking of other things now, had he seen a minister? And Ewan said that an old bit billy had come and blethered, an officer creature, but he’d paid no heed, it had nothing to do with him. Even as he spoke there rose a great clamour of guns far up in the front, it was four miles off, not more; and Chae thought of the hurried watches climbing to their posts and the blash and flare of the Verey lights, the machine-gun crackle from pits in the mud, things he himself mightn’t hear for long: Ewan’d never hear it at all beyond this night.