A Scots Quair

  This life she lived now could never endure, she knew that well as she looked about her, however it ended it could not go on; she was halted here, in these Segget years, waiting the sound of unhasting feet, waiting a Something unnamed, but it came. And then—

  She stopped in her work and looked down at herself, at her breast, where the brown of her skin went white at the edge of the thin brown dress she wore, white rose the hollow between her breasts, except where it was blue-veined with blood; funny to think that twice in her life a baby had grown to life in her body and herself changed so to await that growth, and still she looked like a quean, she thought, breast, hips, and legs, and she liked her legs, even yet, as she looked at them with a smile, at the line of herself as she squatted to weed, nice still to cuddle spite her sulky face! Had she lived in the time of the golden men who hunted the hills by the Trusta bents there would have been cuddles enough, she supposed, fun and pain and the sting of the wind, long nights of sleep in a heath-hid cave, morns shining over the slopes of the hills as you stirred by your man and peered in his face, lying naked beside you, naked yourself, with below the Howe just clearing its mists as the sun came up from an alien sea—the Howe, unnamed and shaggy with heath, with stone-oak forests where the red deer belled as the morning grew and the Bervie shone; and far over the slopes of the Howe you could see the smoke rise straight from another cave, and know your nearest friends a day off; and you’d not have a care or a coin in the world, only life, swift, sharp, and sleepy and still, and an arm about you, life like a song, and a death at the end that was swift as well—an hour of agony, or only a day, what woman feared death who had borne a child? And many enough you’d have borne in the haughs and been glad enough of their coming in that day, undreaming the dark tomorrows of the Howe that came with the sailing ships from the south….

  And, kneeling and cutting at a wallflower clump that had grown over-large for its portion of earth, Chris smiled as she thought of her talk with Else on this matter of humankind itself growing over-large for its clump of earth. Else had stood and listened with red-tinted ears, and stammered and blushed, it was funny and sad, Chris knew how she felt, she had once felt the same. Else said Oh, Mem, but I couldn’t do that—it wouldn’t be right to do anything like that! Chris said It’s surely better to do that than have the bairns that you can’t bring up? Else shook her head, They’ll just come, and we’ll manage. But I couldn’t do things to myself like that.

  Robert had overheard Chris as she talked, he had heard the talk through the kitchen door, coming down the stairs in his silent way. And when he and Chris were alone together, he said You shouldn’t have said that, Christine, gentle and quiet and even of speech. Chris had shivered a little and drawn further away. Why not? she asked, and he said Because we have no rights in these matters at all. We have meddled too much with our lives as it is; they are God’s concern, the children who come.

  For a minute Chris hardly believed what she heard, she had stared at him, at his maskèd face; they themselves had done this thing he denounced….

  ALL THE NEXT afternoon, as it seemed to Chris, she heard the rumour and hum of the wedding, down in the hall of the Segget Arms. It had turned to a day sun-blown and clear, the earth was hard as she weeded the beds, clumps of begonias under the dykes, back of the Manse the chickens of Muir were deep in a drowsy scraiching, well-fed. Chris went and looked over the wall and watched, and laughed a little at the courting play of an over-small cock with a haughty, shamed look, as though it thought mating a nasty thing, but yet was right eager to make half a try. There were lots of folk who had minds like his!

  Robert and Ewan were both at the wedding, Robert returned as soon as he might, Chris heard him climb up the stairs to his room. The noise went on far into the night, stirring in sleep towards the Sunday morning Chris heard the light step of Ewan go by. Next morning he wasn’t stirring as usual, and she carried a cup of tea to his room, and knocked and went in and he still slept fast, lying straight, his dark hair thick as a mop, she stood and looked at him and tickled his arm, and he woke up lightly, as he always woke. Oh, it’s you, Chris! and stared a moment: I’m sorry, Mother!

  She said Oh, I’m Chris as well, I suppose, and sat on the side of the bed while he drank, the morning growing in the yews outside, promise of another day of summer yellow on the ivied walls of the Manse. She asked how the wedding had gone, and he yawned, so grown-up, and stretched while she caught the cup; and he said that the wedding had gone off fine, except that folk were afraid of Robert, he’d changed so much, with never a laugh. Ewan had heard Dite Peat say of Robert—

  Chris said Yes, what did he say of Robert? and Ewan lay and looked at her, calm and cool. He said that Robert had lain with Else, he knew bed-shame in a man when he saw it.

  Chris said You didn’t believe that, did you? Ewan yawned again, I don’t know; he might. Though I shouldn’t think it likely, he has you to sleep with: and you must be very nice, I should think.

  Chris felt the blood come swift in her cheeks, and a moment the wildest feeling of fear; and then that went by, she’d be honest as him. She said Oh, I think I am nice to sleep with. You’ve to be terribly in love with someone for that—it makes all the difference, as you’ll know some time.

  He said, politely, Yes, I suppose so, he hadn’t much interest in the matter at all; and told some more of the fun at the wedding, the Provost and MacDougall Brown had both sung, the Provost banking and braeing, bass, MacDougall strong on the Blood of the Lamb. There had been lots to eat and lots of dancing, Ewan had danced with most of the women, rather fun, though most were too fat round the hips, the hips were the things that counted, he’d found. He’d told Else that and she’d said she was shocked, but he didn’t suppose that she was, very much. And then Alec Ogilvie and Dite Peat had quarrelled, it seems they had hated each other for years, and kept away from each other for years, neither one nor the other sure that he’d win. It was round about seven o’clock that it happened; they went out to the back of the Arms to fight, Ewan didn’t hear till the fight was near done and went out and saw Dite Peat on the grass, his eyes closed up and rather a mess, Ake Ogilvie being helped into his coat and wiping a trickle of blood from his nose. And Ewan had felt a bit sorry for Dite—goodness knew why, the dirtiest rat.

  Chris asked what time he’d reached home and he said Not till this morning some time, nearly two. I took a friend of Else’s to Frellin, the servant-maid at the Manse up there. Chris asked was she nice? and Ewan gave a shrug, I thought her rather a boring young beast, she wanted me to make love to her—up to a point, I suppose, I don’t know. Chris asked And did you? and Ewan said No, but I thought I would try to teach her a lesson. You know I’ve got strong wrists?—I get them from you—so I held her with one hand and smacked her with the other, and patted her all neat and nice again, and put her in through the Frellin Manse gate, and came home to my bed: I felt a bit tired.

  FOLK SAID HE fair was a nickum, that loon, young Ewan Tavendale that came from the Manse, and went to the college at Dundon each day, cool and calm you’d see him swing by, no hat on his head be it sun, be it sleet, folk said he was proud as dirt: and for why? He was only the son of a crofter, just, killed in the War, and only his luck his mother had married into a Manse. He never went by with a loon-like slouch, or reddened up, loon-like, over the lugs, if he met with a covey of queans in the Square—damn’t, there was something unnatural about him, a sly young brute, you could well believe. And what though they said he did well at college? No doubt his step-father, the minister Colquohoun, did all his lessons and he got the credit.

  Then the speak got about from the Frellin Manse that he’d taken a lass from the wedding of Else, the lass that idle young thing Jeannie Ray, and she’d thought to have a bit play with the loon—she often would play about with the loons and get them sore in a way to have her, syne leave them looking and habbering like fools. But she’d got a sore stammy-gaster with Ewan, the coarse young brute assaulted the quean, and left her greeti
ng on the Manse door-mat. And she told the news to a crony in Frellin, and the crony giggled and passed it on, and it reached Ag Moultrie, the Roarer and Greeter, and she nearly exploded with shame and delight. And next time she met in with Ewan she cried, Ay, Ewan, what’s this that I hear about you and that lass Jeannie Ray down at Frellin Manse? And the loon said I’m sorry I don’t know what you’d heard, Miss Moultrie, but no doubt Segget soon will. Good morning. And he smiled, polite, and passed on, not a bit ashamed, and left Ag to gape. And not only that, she felt a bit feared, it was fair uncanny, a loon like that.

  And a queerer thing followed, her father was dying, Rob Moultrie that said he wasn’t her father, the coarse old brute still tormented his wife with the speak that Ag was no daughter of his. Well, he was down and fast sinking at last, about time that he was, the snarling old sinner. And near to the last, when he’d got gey low, he said that he’d like to see the young man, Ewan Something his name was, up at the Manse, he’d like to see him and nobody else. Ag sat by his bed and she heard the bit blither, and she said to him, soothing, You’re wandering a bit. He doesn’t know you, the young man at the Manse. And Rob Moultrie said Go get him at once, you goggle-eyed gowk, with your claiking tongue. He’s more kin of mine than you’ll ever be, you with your half-dozen fathers or more.

  So Jess Moultrie trudged away up through Segget, and gave in the message, and young Ewan came down, and went in and sat by the bed of old Moultrie, not feared as a loon at the breath of death, but cool and calm, as though it were nothing. Folk sat outbye and couldn’t make out the words that the two spoke one to the other, except that they heard Ewan Tavendale say Yes, I’ve noticed that, and Yes, that’s worth knowing. And he shook hands with Rob when at last he stood up, and didn’t make on, as any other would, that old Rob would soon be up and about, instead he shook hands and wished him Goodbye, and went out as calm as he had come in—ay, a heartless young mucker if ever there was one, whatever could Moultrie have wanted with him?

  Rob wouldn’t hear of the minister coming, and died without a prayer in the house, and that was queer in a childe like him, fell religious and fond of his Bible. Ag cried that her father had died unblessed; and when he was dead she just Roared and Grat.

  They buried the old tyke on a hot, quiet day, Mr Colquohoun thinner and quieter than ever; but he had a fine voice as he read out the words, lower than once it had been, more genteel, he fairly had quietened down, had Colquohoun. Once on a time at a burial service folk said the minister would speak out as though he fair meant that the dead would rise up some day, and live once again, and it made your hair crawl—it was all in the Bible, no doubt, and right fine, but you knew the whole thing just a stuttering of stite. But now the minister spoke earnest and low, with a kind of a whine that you heard undisturbed as they lowered old Moultrie down in the clay, with his ill-led life and his ill-gettèd ways, his hatred of gentry, his ill-treating of Jess. Well, that was his end, and you felt undisturbed, all but John Muir, as he told to Ake later.

  For it came on him when the folk had gone, and he worked there alone in the stilled graveyard, and watched the figure of Colquohoun move off, that something was finished and ended in Segget, more than old Moultrie, older than him. And a queer qualm came in the pit of his wame, he stopped in the sun to gley in a dream, ’twas as though they were shadows in the sunblaze he saw, nothing enduring and with substance at all, kirk and minister, and stones all around graved with their promised hopes for the dead, the ways and beliefs of all olden time—no more than the whimsies a bairn would build from the changing patterns that painted the hills.

  AND FAITH, THERE were more than enough of those changes, folk woke to the fact of ill changes in Segget, you’d to count your silver now ere you spent it, there wasn’t a soul but was hit some way, prices so high and the spinners, the dirt, with hardly a meek to spend in shops. Whiles one of the Mowat mills still joggled along, as it wore to Autumn you’d see its smoke like a lazy snake uprise in the air. But it joggled half-hearted, there was fell little traffic, the stationy, Newlands, said so little jute came in he wondered the Mill kept going: and he tried to get spinners to do what he did, bawl for the Blood of MacDougall’s Lamb; and no doubt he fair was a pious childe, though you thought yourself that praying for blood was hardly the way to start a jute mill.

  The Segget wynds were crowded with spinners, lolling about in the sun, the dirt, you turned one moment from cursing the brutes for their sweirty and living off the like of yourself, and the next you had nearly moaned your head off that there wasn’t a thing they now bought in your shops. Dite Peat was the first to feel the bit nip, he’d never done well with the spinners, Dite, since that time long back he’d mishandled his father. But up until late he’d managed to live, with trade from the rest of Segget New Toun, though most from the countryside out around. Well, he found that the farms were failing him now, cottar folk got their meat from the vans on the roads, and all the farmers had gotten them cars and went into Stonehaven or even Dundon: in the end Dite Peat was rouped from his door. It lent a bit of excitement, that, Dite’s stuff sold up while he stood and looked on, still bearing the marks of the knocks he had got in that tink-like fight with the joiner of Segget.

  Folk wondered what would become of him now, it was said he hadn’t a meek of his own: and though when it seemed he owned a bit shop folk bore with him and his dirty jokes, they weren’t such fools as to do that now and cold-shouldered him everywhere that he went. And down in the Segget Arms one night when he started in with his dirty tales, Alec Hogg was there and he said You shut up, we’re sick of you and the things you can do–though you can’t keep your shop-roof over your head. Dite bared his rotten brown teeth like a dog, but other folk were crying That’s right, and he didn’t dare make a set at young Hogg. That was near the end of the brute in Segget, he went to Meiklebogs and asked for a fee, folk told that Dalziel had ta’en him on cheap—Dalziel whose new housekeeper was in the old way; faith! with Dite Peat at the Meiklebogs as well, the question of fatherhoods in the future would be more of a complication than ever.

  For bairns came thick as ever they’d come, folk cut their costs in all things but cradles, down in Old Toun they squawked into life, the bairns, in rooms that were packed out already. The less the work the more of the creatures, they bred fair disgusting old Leslie would say, and it showed you the kind of dirt that they were, living crowded like that, four-five in a room, in houses that were not fit for pig-rees. ’Twas Infernal, just: the men should be libbed: now, when he himself was a loon up in Garvock—

  But his trade at the smiddy was failing as well, though he habbered and blethered as much as ever, you’d fell often hear the anvil at rest and look in and see old Leslie sit there, sitting and staring down at his pipe, it gave you an unco-like feeling to see him. There were fell few jobs came down from the Mills and a mighty few from the farms outbye, with their new-like ploughs that needed no coulters, if they broke a bit they looked in a book and sent away to the makers for’t. Not like the days of the crofter childes, when in and about from Kinraddie, Arbuthnott, and half the hill-land betwixt Segget and Fordoun, the folk of the lost little farms would ride with plenty of trade in a small-like way.

  The only creature that seemed to flourish as the harvest brought a dour end to the weather and the clouds rolled slower over the Howe was Will Melvin that kept the Segget Arms, him and that sharp-tongued besom his wife, the spinners would go down to the Arms and get drunk, instead of biding at home in their misery and cutting their throats, as decent folk would.

  Mr Mowat came suddenly home to Segget and sacked every servant he met in the House: he said that he Jahly well must, he’d no choice, he was taxed to death by those Labour chaps. Then he went to the kirk, the first time in years, and sat and listened to a dreich-like discourse—God! there was something queer with Colquohoun. But he kept his eyes, Mr Mowat, folk told, on Mrs Colquohoun and not the minister, as she sat in the choir with her sulky-proud face, and her swathings of hair, ay, she?
??d fairly fine hair, herself looking up at the pulpit as though she didn’t know Mr Mowat looked at her—and didn’t know, as everybody else did in Segget, that he’d been the father of that bairn of hers that died away a three-four years back.

  Mr Mowat never went near the Manse now, he hadn’t done that since the days of the Strike, nor the Geddeses either since Mrs Colquohoun had raised a row at the w.r.i. And what do you think that row was about? A socialist creature had offered to come down from Dundon and lecture on birth-control: and all the folk were against it at once, except the tink bitch the minister had wed…. And what might it be? you asked, and folk told you: just murdering your bairns afore they were born, most likely that was what she herself did.

  She did her own work in the Manse nowadays, they had had to draw in their horns as well, no other maid took the place of Else. And the Sourock’s wife was fairly delighted, she said getting down on the floors to scrub would be an ill-like ploy, she would warrant, for the brave silk knickers that Mrs Colquohoun wore. For the Sourock’s wife had never forgiven the minister’s wife her bit under-things, and the way she voted at the General Election.

  But syne news came that fair raised a stir, the Labour Government thrown out at last, and that fine-like childe, Ramsay MacDonald, was in with the Tories, and said they were fine. And them that had wireless sets listened in, and Ramsay came on with his holy-like voice and maaed like a sheep, but a holy-like sheep, that the country could yet be saved: and he’d do it. Ay, he’d grown a fine chap and had got back his guts, you were pleased to hear as the maa went on, now he had jumped to the gentry’s side. And no doubt you would see fine changes in Segget.