A Scots Quair

  And Bruce said Right; and took old Smithie out, and gey near settled him entire, you would say. It just showed you what happened to a billy that stole, there’s a difference between nicking a thing here and there, and being found out and made look a fair fool.

  AND NEXT SABBATH MacDougall Brown, the postmaster, came down to the Square and preached on stealing, right godly-like, and you’d never have thought that him and his wife stayed up of a night sanding the sugar and watering the paraffin—or so folk said, but they tell such lies. He was maybe a fifty years old, MacDougall, a singer as well as a preacher, i’faith! though some said his voice was the kind of a thing better suited to slicing a cheese. During the War he had fair been a patriot, he hadn’t fought, but losh! how he’d sung! In the first bit concert held in the War he sang Tipperary to the Segget folk, with his face all shining like a ham on the fry, and he sang it right well till he got to the bit where the song has to say that his heart’s right there. And faith, MacDougall got things a bit mixed, he clapped down his hand the wrong side of his wame; and Ake Ogilvie that sat in the front of the hall gave a coarse snicker and syne everybody laughed; and MacDougall had never forgiven Ake that. But he got on well with his post-office place, Johnnie his son was a bit of a fool and MacDougall sent him to take round the letters, it cost him little with a son that was daft and MacDougall kept the cash for himself. Forbye young Jock he’d two daughters as well, the eldest, Cis, was bonny and trig, with a grave, douce face, she went to the College but she wasn’t proud, a fine bit queen, and all Segget liked her.

  Well, MacDougall had a special religion of his own, he wasn’t Old Kirk and he wasn’t of the Frees, he wasn’t even an Episcopalian, but Salvation Army, or as near as damn it. He went on a Sabbath morn to the Square and preached there under the lee of the angel, that the road to heaven was the way he said. He’d made two-three converts in his years in Segget, they’d stand up and say what the Lord had done, how before they’d met Him they were lost, ruined souls: but now God had made them into new men. And faith! you would think, if that was the case, the Lord’s handiwork was failing, like everything else.

  Well, that Sunday after the row at Smithie’s, he was there at his stance where the angel stood, MacDougall himself with his flat, bald head, and beside him his mistress, a meikle great sumph, she came from the south and she mouthed her words broad as an elephant’s behind, said Ake Ogilvie. She thought little of Cis, that was clever and bonny, but a lot of her youngest, the quean called Mabel—by all but her mother, she called her May-bull. Well, they both were there, and the daftie Jock, gleying, and slavering up at the angel, and a two-three more, the gardener Grant and Newlands the stationy, them and their wives; with the angel above with her night-gown drawn back, right handy-like, in case it might rap against the bald pow of MacDougall Brown. Mistress Brown opened up the harmonica they’d brought, it groaned and spluttered and gave a bit hoast, syne they started the singing of their unco hymns, Newlands burring away in his boots and MacDougall slicing the words like cheese.

  Syne MacDougall started to preach about stealing, with a verse from Leviticus for the text, though the case of old Smithie had supplied the cause; and they started singing another bit hymn, all about being washed in the Blood of the Lamb, the Lamb being Jesus Christ, said MacDougall, he was awful fond of hymns full of blood, though he’d turned as white as a sheet the time Dite Peat had come over to kill his pig, and asked MacDougall to hold the beast down.

  Well, they were getting on fine and bloody, and having fairly a splash in the gore, when MacDougall noticed there was something wrong, the words all to hell, he couldn’t make it out. Syne his mistress noticed and screwed round her head, and she said What is’t? and saw MacDougall, red as rhubarb, he’d stopped his singing. The rest of them had to do the same, for a drove of the spinners had come in about, with that tink Jock Cronin at their head, as usual, they were singing up fast and fair drowning MacDougall, a coarse-like mocking at MacDougall’s hymn:

  whiter than—the whitewash on the wall!

  whiter than—the whitewash on the wall!

  Oh— wash me in the water

  Where you washed your dirty daughter

  And I shall be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!

  MacDougall waited until they had stopped, then he cried to Cronin Have you no respect—you, John Cronin—for the Lord’s Day at all? And the tink said, Damn the bit; nor have you. And MacDougall nearly burst to hear that, he’d lived by the Bible all his life. And John Cronin said You believe all that’s in it? and MacDougall Brown said, Ay, I have faith. But Cronin had fairly got him trapped now, he said Well, it says in the Bible that if you’ve got faith you can move a mountain. That’ll be proof Move back the Mounth there in front of our eyes!

  The spinners with him, a lot of tink brutes, all brayed up then, Ay, come on, MacDougall! Move a mountain— you’re used to move sand! MacDougall habbered redder than ever, then he cried We’ll now sing Rock of Ages. Jock Cronin cried Where’s the rock of your faith? and as soon as MacDougall and his converts began the spinners sang up their song as before, about being whiter than the whitewash on the wall, and about MacDougall’s dirty daughter; and such a noise was never heard before in the Sabbath Square of Segget.

  Old Leslie came by and he heard the noise, and he knew MacDougall and was right sorry for him. But when he came over and tried to interfere, Jock Cronin cried Christ, here’s Ananias! And old Leslie walked away, fair in a rage, and went up to the Manse to complain about them.

  He arrived there just after the morning service, the minister new back, and dinner-time done. And old Leslie said ’twas Infernal, just, the way that they treated a man nowadays. In his young days if a loon like that Cronin had miscalled a man he’d have been ta’en out and libbed. Ay, he minded when he was a loon up in Garvock—

  But the new minister rose up and said Well, I’ll hear that again, I’ve no time to waste, with a look as black as though he could kill you. And afore old Leslie knew well what had happened he was out on the doorstep and heard the door bang.

  CHRIS HEARD the door bang and she saw old Leslie, he was turning slow to go down the walk, crunching the shingle under his feet; and suddenly you saw the old man that he was, his back crooked into that queer-like shape, cruel and a shame to get rid of him so, suddenly you wanted to weep, but you didn’t, biting your lips as you watched him go. Only a tiring old fool, as you knew, and he’d come on Robert in that mad, black mood. And yet—

  Things like that caught you again and again, with a tightening heart, when you had no thought—Robert in weariness half an hour back, his head in his hands, as he said What’s the use? Robert’s head as he prayed to that God of his that you couldn’t believe in, though you hid that away, what need to hurt Robert with something that never he or you could alter though you lived forever? So, in the strangest of moments it would come, in a flame and a flash, a glimpse into depths that wrung your heart, you’d see the body of Else as she bent, a curve of pleasure that would curve yet in pain. You’d see—frightening the things if you cared to think in the dark of the night in the quiet of Segget, the hush of the yews out there on the lawn—the hopeless folly of all striving, all hope. Sudden, in a Segget shop, maybe, you’d glimpse a face like your father’s, near, alive and keen with its bearded lips, and you’d think of your father, long ago dead, bones rotted from flesh in Kinraddie kirkyard—what had life availed him and all his long years when he hoped for this and he strove for that? He died a coarse farmer in a little coarse house, hid in the earth and forgot by men, as forgot as your pains and your tears by God, that God that you knew could never exist….

  Only with Εwan you’d never these glimpses into the shifting sands of life, bairn though he was there was something within him hard and shining and unbreaking as rock, something like a sliver of granite within him. Strange that his body had once come from yours in the days when you were a quean unthinking, so close to the earth and its smell and its feel that nearly he came from the earth
itself!

  From that we all came, you had heard Robert say, but wilder and stranger you knew it by far, from the earth’s beginning you yourself had been here, a blowing of motes in the world’s prime, earth, roots and the wings of an insect long syne in the days when the dragons still ranged the world—every atom here in your body now, that was here, that was you, that beat in your heart, that shaped your body to whiteness and strength, the speed of your legs and the love of your breasts when you turned to the kiss of your Robert at night—these had been there, there was nothing but a change, in a form, the stroke and the beat of a song.

  And you thought how long, long ago with Will, your brother, that time he came home from France, before he went back and was killed in France you’d said that the Scots were never religious, had never believed as other folks did; and that was fell true, and not only for you, MacDougall that brayed by the angel in the Square, the folk that came to the kirk on a Sunday, Robert himself—even Robert himself! There was something lacking or something added, something that was bred in your bones in this land—oh, Something: maybe that Something was god—that made folk take with a smile and a gley the tales of the gods and the heavens and the hells, the afterlives and the lives before, heaven on earth and the chances of change, the hope and belief in salvation for men—as a fairy-tale in a play that they’d play, but they knew the whole time they were only players, no Scots bodies died but they knew that fine, deep and real in their hearts they knew that here they faced up to the real, at last, neither heaven nor hell but the earth that was red, the cling of the clay where you’d alter and turn, back to the earth and the times to be, to a spraying of motes on a raging wind when the Howe was happed in its winter storms, to a spray of dust as some childe went by with his plough and his horse in a morning in Spring, to the peck and tweet of the birds in the trees, to trees themselves in a burgeoning Spring. You knew, and you knew that they knew—even Robert, holding to God in his blackest hour, this God he believed was the father of men, pitiful, He was Pity and a Friend, helpless even in a way as men, but Kind and Hero, and He’d conquer yet with all the legions of hell to battle.

  So Robert believed: but now, as you heard his feet coming down the stairs in haste, out of his mood and happy again, you knew that he knew he followed a dream, with the black mood real, and his hopes but mists.

  CHRIS REMEMBERED THAT dream of her own—she’d been daft! she thought as she fled about next week’s work. There was jam to make and she thought it fun, and so did Else, they’d boil pot on pot and fill all the jars, and forget about dinner. And Robert would come sweating in from the garden and cry Losh, Christine, where have you been? I thought you promised to come out and help. What’s wrong—nothing wrong with you, is there, my dear? Chris would say Only hunger, and he’d say Not love? and the two would be fools for a moment till they heard the stamp of Else bringing in the tray. Syne they’d each slip into a chair and look solemn; but once Else caught them and said to the minister Faith, I don’t wonder! and looked at Chris; and Chris thought that the nicest thing ever looked about her.

  Ewan ran wild, Chris seldom saw him all the length of the summer days, he was out in Segget, exploring the streets, Chris at first had been feared for him—that he’d fall in front of a horse, or a car, or one of the buses that went by to Dundon. She tried to tell him to be careful, then stopped, he’d to take his chances with the rest of the world.

  On the Saturday she and Robert looked up from their work in the garden, and stood and watched Ewan, hands in his pockets, no cap on his head, go sauntering out through the gates of the Manse, his black hair almost blue in the sun, and turn by the Meiklebogs, going to the Kaimes, Chris wondered what he could want up there?

  Robert said He’s seeking the High Places already, and laughed, and went on with his digging, Chris the same, sweet and forgotten the smell of the earth, you thrust with your spade, the full throw of your body, so, and the drill built up as you dug. Then the rooks came cawing and wheeling in by, and they both looked up from Segget to the Mounth, rain drumming upon it far in the heuchs, cattle, tail-switching, dots on the heath. Chris asked what the clouds were, up there by Trusta, they piled up dome on dome in the sky, like the roofs of a city in the land of cloud. Robert said Cumulus: just summer rain; and a minute later—Look, here it comes!

  Chris saw it come wheeling like a flying of rooks, dipping and pelting down from the heights, she looked left and saw it through a smother of smoke, the smoke stilled for a minute as it waited the rain, all Segget turning to look at the rain. Then Robert was running and Chris ran as well, under the shelter of the pattering yews. There they stood and panted and watched the water, whirling in and over the drills, the potato-shaws a-bend in the pelt, the patter like hail and then like a shoom, like the sea on a morning heard from Kinraddie, the empty garden blind with rain. And then it was gone and the sun bright out, and Chris heard, far, clear, as though it never had stopped, a snipe that was sounding up in the hills.

  By noon they saw a drooked figure approaching. Chris heard Else cry Are you soaked! and Ewan answer I was; but I dried, he’d some thing in his hand. Turning it over he came up to Robert. Look, I found this up on the Kaimes.

  Chris stopped as well to look at the thing, the three of them stood in the bright, wet weather, Robert turning the implement over in his hands, it was rusted and broken, the blade of a spear. Did they use it for ploughing? Ewan wanted to know, and Robert said No, they used it for killing, it’s a spear, Ewan man, from the daft old days.

  Then Else came crying them in for their dinner, and in they all went, as hungry as hawks. Ewan wanted to know a lot more about spears, ’twas a wonder he managed to ask all he did, him eating as well, but he managed both fine; he’d a question-mark for a brain, Robert said!

  But the most of his questions he kept until night, when Chris bathed him and took him up to his room. Why did the stairs wind? Why weren’t they straight? Would it be long till he was a man? Where was Christ now, and had Robert met Him? That’s an owl, why don’t owls fly in the day? Why don’t you go to sleep when I do? Does Else like Dalziel of the Meiklebogs much? I like the smiddy of old Mr Leslie, he says that when he was a loon up on Garvock he was never let gang anywhere near a smiddy, his mammy would have smacked his dowp; didn’t she like it? I saw Mr Hogg, he said ‘What’s your name?’ Why is there hair growing out of his nose? Mrs Hogg is fat, is she going to have a calf? Does she take off her clothes to have it, mother? Mother, have you got a navel like mine? I’ll show you mine, look, there it is, isn’t it funny? I’m not sleepy, let’s sing a while. Why——

  He was sleeping at last, in the evening quiet, the Saturday quiet, the sun not yet gone. Chris went down to the garden and took out a chair, and leaned back in it with her arms behind her, drowsy, watching the gloaming come. Robert was up in his room with his sermon, he wrote the thing out when he’d thought of a theme—he would think of a theme of a sudden and swear because he hadn’t a note-book at hand.

  This afternoon it had come on him suddenly. I know! That spear-blade that Ewan brought—where the devil has he hidden the thing?

  At half-past ten next morning, the Sunday, Chris heard John Muir and looked out and saw him, his shoulder a-skeugh in his Sunday suit, come stepping up the path from the kirk. There’s a fair concourse of the folk the day; and how are you keeping then, mistress, yourself?

  Chris said she was fine, and he gleyed at her cheery, Faith, so you look, you take well with Segget. Well, well, if the minister hasn’t any orders I’ll taik away back and tug at the bell.

  Chris heard that bell in a minute or so beat and clang through the quiet of the air. It was time that she herself had got ready, she sought out her hymn-book and hanky and Bible, and inspected Ewan, and straightened his collar. Then the two of them hurried through the blow of the garden, and out of the little door let in the dyke, and into the little room back of the kirk. There the sound of the bell was a deafening clamour. Chris brushed Ewan down and went into the kirk, and put E
wan into a pew and herself went ben to the pews where the kirk choir sat, Mrs Geddes, the schoolmaster’s wife, there already, smiling and oozing with eau-de-Cologne, whispered right low and right holy-like, Morning. A grand day, isn’t it, and such a pity so few have come up to hear the Lord’s word.

  Chris said, Oh, yes, and sat down beside her, and looked round as the folk came stepping in, slow, Hairy Hogg, the Provost, and his mistress, Jean, they plumped in their seats and Hairy looked round and closed his eyes like a grass-filled cow. Then the wife and queans of John Muir came in, Chris had heard a lot about them from Else. Else said she could swear there were times when Muir wished he’d stayed where he was when he fell in that grave. His wife was one of the Milton lot that farmed down under Glenbervie brae, she deaved John Muir from morning till night to get out of his job, a common bit roadman, and get on in the world and show up her sister, Marget Ann, that had married a farmer. But John Muir would say Damn’t, we all come to the same—a hole and a stink and worms at the end and his mistress would snap, Ay, maybe we do, but there’s ways of getting there decent and undecent. And as for stinking, speak of yourself. And, real vexed, she’d clout Tooje one in the ear. Tooje was her eldest, fairly a gawk, and then clout little Ted when she started to greet because she saw her sister Tooje greeting; and John Muir would get up and say not a word but go dig a grave as a bit of a change.

  Then Chris saw Bruce, the porter, come in, with the mark on his jaw where his goodfather hit him, then Leslie, the smith, paiching and sweating, he dropped his stick with an awful clatter. Then she saw Geddes, the Segget headmaster, sitting grim in a pew midway, his rimless specs set close on his nose, looking wearied to death, as he was. Robert had thought to make him an ally, but he’d said to Robert, Don’t be a fool, leave the swine to stew in their juice—by swine he meant his fellow-folk of Segget. He would stand hymn-singing with his hand in his pocket, and rattle his keys and yawn at the roof.