Classic first Scots chapters: Cloud Howe from Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quai

But that didn’t matter, she wasn’t going there, in a while she turned by a path that wound, dark, a burn was hidden in the grass, over a stile to the hills beyond. And now, as she climbed swift up the slope, queer and sudden a memory took her--of the hills above the farm in Kinraddie, how sometimes she’d climb to the old Druid stones and stand and remember the world below, and the things that were done and the days put by, the fun and fear of the days put by. Was that why the Kaimes had so filled her sky the twenty-four hours she had been in Segget?

Now she was up on the lowermost ledge, it lay dark about, the old castle of Kaimes, no more than a litter of ruined walls, the earth piled high up over the stones that once were halls and men-shielded rooms. There were yews growing low in a corner outbye, they waved and moved as they heard Chris come. But she wasn’t feared, she was country-bred, she wandered a little, disappointed, then laughed, at herself, to herself, and the place grew still. Maybe it thought, as did Robert Colquohoun, that her laugh was a thing worth listening for.

She felt her face redden, faint, at that, and she thought how over her face the slow blood would now be creeping, she’d once or twice watched it, bronzed and high in the cheek-bones her face, and a kindly smoulder of grey-gold eyes, she minded how once she had wished they were blue! She put up her hand to her hair, it was wet, with the dew she supposed from the dark Manse trees, it was coiled over either ear in the way she had worn it now for over two years.

She turned round then and looked down at Segget, pricked in the paraffin lights of dawn. They were going out one by one as the east grew wanly blind in the van of the sun, behind, in the hills, a curlew shrilled--dreaming up here while the world woke, Robert turning in his bed down there in the Manse, and maybe out-reaching a hand to touch her as he’d done that first morning two years ago, it had felt as though he wakened her up from the dead . . .

So strange it had seemed a long minute she’d lain, half feared, with his hand that touched her so. Then he’d moved, quick breathing, deep in his sleep, and the hand went away, she reached out in the dark and sought it again and held to it, shy. It was winter that morning, they both had slept late from their marriage night; and, as the winter light seeped grey into the best bedroom of Kinraddie Manse, Chris Colquohoun, who had once been married to Ewan, and before that time was Chris Guthrie, just, had lain and thought and straightened things out, like a bairn rubbing its eyes from sleep. . . . This was new, she had finished with that life that had been, all the love she had given to her Ewan, dead, lost and forgotten far off in France: her father out in the old kirkyard: that wild, strange happening that had come to her the last Harvest but one there was of the War, when she and another -- but she’d not think of that, part of the old, sad dream that was done. Had that other remembered the happening at all, his last hour of all in a Flanders trench? And she thought that maybe he had not at all, you did this and that and you went down in hell to bring the fruit of your body to birth, it was nothing to the child that came from your womb, you gave to men the love of your heart, and they’d wring it dry to the last red drop, kind, dreadful and dear, and deep in their souls, whatever the pretence they played with you, they knew it a play and Life waiting outbye.

So she lay and thought, and then wriggled a little -- to think these things on her marriage-morn, the hand she held now never held so before! And she peered in his face in the light that came, his hair lay fair on the pillow’s fringe, fair almost to whiteness, his skin ivory-white, she saw his brows set dark in a dream, and the mouth came set in a straight line below, she liked his mouth and his chin as well, and his ears that were small and lay flat back, so, and the hand that had tightened again in his sleep – oh! more than that, you liked all of him well, with his kisses in the night that had only just gone, his kisses, the twinkle-scowl in his eyes: And now it’s to bed, but I don’t think to sleep. She had laughed as well, feeling only half-shy. An awful speak, Robert, for Kinraddie’s minister! and he said Don’t ministers do things like that? and she’d looked at him swift, and looked quick away. Maybe, we’ll see; and so they had seen.

SHE stretched then, softly, remembering that, warm under the quilt her own body felt queer, strange and alive as though newly blessed, and she smiled at that thought, in a way it had been, one flesh she was made with a kirk minister! Funny to think she had married a minister, that this was the Manse, that she was its mistress – oh! life was a flurry like a hen-roost at night, the doors were banging, you flew here and there, were your portion the ree or the corner of a midden you could not foretell from one night to the next.

She got from bed then and into her clothes, agile and quick, and not looking back, if ministers ate as well as they loved, Robert would be hungry enough when he woke. Down in the kitchen she came on Else Queen, ganting as wide as a stable-door, she stopped from that, the Manse’s new maid, a handsome quean, and she said Hello! Chris felt the blood in the tips of her ears, she saw plain the thing in the great lump’s mind. You call me Mrs. Colquohoun, you know, Else. And you get up smart in the morning as well, else we’ll need another maid at the Manse.

Else went dirt-white and closed up her mouth. Yes--Mem, I’m sorry, and Chris felt a fool, but she didn’t show it, and this kind of thing had just to be settled one way or the other. My name’s not Mem, it’s just Mrs. Colquohoun. Get the water boiling and we’ll make the breakfast. What kind of a range is this that we’ve got?

That was that, and she had no trouble at all with meikle Else Queen in Kinraddie Manse, though the speak went out and about the parish that Chris Tavendale, the new minister’s new wife, had grown that proud that she made her maid cry Mem! every time they met on the stairs, a fair dog’s life had that poor Else Queen, it just showed you the kind of thing that happened when a creature got up a bit step in the world. And who was she to put on her airs – the daughter of a little bit farmer, just, and the wife of another, killed in the War. Ay, them that were fond of their men didn’t marry as close as that on the death of the first, the Manse and the minister’s silver the things that the new Mrs. Colquohoun had had in her mind.

Chris heard those stories in the weeks that went, if you bade in Kinraddie and any ill tale were told about you -- and you fair had to be an angel in breeks if that weren’t done and even then, faith! they’d have said there were unco things under your breeks – the very trees rose and sniggered it to you, the kye lowed the news from every bit gate. But she paid no heed, she was blithe and glad, happed in her Robert and the nearness of him, young Ewan as well, a third by the fire as they sat of a night and the storms came malagarousing the trees down the length and breadth of the shrilling Howe.

Behind and far up you would hear the hills quake, Robert would raise up his head and laugh, the twinkle-scowl in his deep-set eyes – The feet of the Lord on the hills, Christine!

Ewan would look up, staring and still, Who’s the Lord? and Robert would drop his great book and stare in the fire, That’s a tough one, Ewan. But He’s Something and sure, our Father and Mother, our End and Beginning.

Ewan’s eyes would open wider at that. My mother’s here and my father’s dead. Robert would laugh and upset his chair. A natural sceptic -- come out of that chair, there’s over many of your kind already squatting their hams in the thrones of the mighty!

So the two of them would crawl round the floor and would growl, play tigers and beasts of like gurring breeds, Ewan with his coolness and graveness forgot, Robert worse than a bairn, Chris sitting and watching, a book in her hand or darning and knitting, but not often those. Robert got angered when she sat and darned. What, waste your life when you’ll soon be dead? You’re not going to slave for me, my girl! And she’d say But you won’t like holes in your socks? and he’d laugh When they’re holed we’ll buy a new pair. Come out for a tramp, the storm’s gone down.

And out they would tramp, young Ewan in bed, the night black under their feet as cold pitch, about them the whistle and moan of the trees till they cleared the Manse and went up by the Mains, with the smell of the dung from its hot cattle-court, and the smell of the burning wood in its lums. You’d see and hear little about you by then, just the two of you swinging up the hill in the dark, till the blow of the wind would catch in your throats as you gained by the cambered edge of the brae.

Around them, dry, the whistle of the whins, strange shapes that rose and were lost in the dark, Robert would stop and would fuss at her collar, pretending he did it to keep out the cold. But she’d grown to know him, the thing that he’d want, she’d put up her arms round close by his throat, and hug him, half-shy, she was still half-shy.

He’d told her that once and Chris had been vexed, lying in his arms, for a sudden moment she had touched him with lips fierce and sudden with a flame that came up out of her heart, up out of the years when she still was unwed: and he’d gasped, and she’d laughed Do you call that shy? Then she’d been half-ashamed and yet glad as well, and fell fast asleep till the morning came, and they both woke up and looked at each other, and he said that she blushed and she hid her face and said that one or the other was a fool.

But best she minded of those night-time walks the first that took them up to the hills, a rousting night in December’s close. They came at last on Blawearie’s brae, and panting, looked down on the windy Mearns, the lights of Bervie a lowe in the east, the Laurencekirk gleams like a scattering of faggots, Segget’s that shone as the blurring of stars, these were the lights of the jute mills there. So they stood a long while and looked down the brae, Kinraddie below them happed in its sleep; and Robert fell into a dreaming muse, as he often did, with his mind far off. Chris said nothing, content though she froze, after one peek at his stillness beside her. Queer with him here on Blawearie brae, that once was hers, if they walked down over that shoulder there they’d come to the loch and the Standing Stones to which she had fled for safety, compassion, so often and oft when she was a quean. . . .

She could smell the winter smell of the land and the sheep they pastured now on Blawearie, in the parks that once came rich with corn that Ewan had sown and they both had reaped, where the horses had pastured, their kye and their stock. And she minded the nights in the years of the War, nights such as this when she’d lain in her bed and thought of the times that would come yet again – Ewan come back and things as before, how they’d work for young Ewan and grow old together, and buy Blawearie and be happy forever.

And now she stood by a stranger’s side, she slept in his bed, he loved her, she him, nearer to his mind than ever she had been to that of the body that lay mouldering in France, quiet and unmoving that had moved to her kisses, that had stirred and been glad in her arms, in her sight, that had known the stinging of rain in his face as he ploughed the steep rigs of Blawearie brae, and come striding from his work with that smile on his face, and his clumsy hands and his tongue that was shy of the things that his eyes could whisper so blithe.

Dead, still and quiet, not even a body, powder and dust he with whom she had planned her life and her days in the times to be.

In a ten years’ time what things might have been? She might stand on this hill, she might rot in a grave, it would matter nothing, the world would go on, young Ewan dead as his father was dead, or hither and borne, far from Kinraddie: oh, once she had seen in these parks, she remembered, the truth, and the only truth that there was, that only the sky and the seasons endured, slow in their change, the cry of the rain, the whistle of the whins on a winter night under the sailing edge of the moon – And suddenly, daft-like, she found herself weep, quiet, she thought that she made no noise, but Robert knew, and his arm came round her.

It was Ewan? Oh, Chris, he won’t grudge you me!

Ewan? It was Time himself she had seen, haunting their tracks with unstaying feet.

BUT the Spring was coming. You looked from the Manse at the hills as they moved and changed with each day, the glaur and the winter dark near gone, the green came quick and far on the peaks, the blink of the white snow-bonnets grew less, swallows were wheeling about the Manse trees, down in the fields of the Mains you could hear the click and spit of a tractor at work, far up by Upperhill parks rise the baa of the sheep they pastured now at Bridge End. It seemed to Chris when those first days came that she’d weary to death with a house and naught else, not to have fields that awaited her help, help in the seeding, the spreading of dung, the turning out of the kye at dawn, hens chirawking mad for their meat, the bustle and hurry of Blawearie’s close. But now as she looked on the land so strange, with its tractors and sheep, she half-longed to be gone. It had finished with her, that life that had been, and this was her’s now: books, and her Robert, young Ewan to teach, and set a smooth cloth on the Manse’s table, hide in the little back room at the top and darn his socks when Robert didn’t see.

He was out and about on the work of the parish, marrying this soul and burying that, christening the hopeful souls new-come to pass in their time to marriage and burial. He’d come back dead tired from a day of his work, Chris would hear him fling his stick in the hall and cry out Else, will you run me a bath? And because of those strange, dark moods she had met, Chris seldom met him now on the stairs, she’d wait till he changed and was Robert again, he’d come searching her out and tell her the news, and snatch the book from young Ewan’s hand as Ewan squatted in the window-seat, reading. A prig, a bookworm! Robert would cry as he flung the book the other side of the room; and Ewan would smile in his slow, dark way, and then give a yell and they’d scuffle a while, while Chris went down and brought up the tea.

From that room you could see all Kinraddie by day and the lights of Kinraddie shine as night came, Robert would heave a great sigh as he sat and looked from Chris to Kinraddie below. Wearied? she’d ask, and he’d say, Lord, yes, and frown and then laugh: Looks everywhere that would sour the milk! But my job’s to minister and minister I will though Kinraddie’s kirk grows toom as its head. And would think a while, It’s near that already.

Faith! so it was, nothing unco in that, there was hardly a kirk in the Mearns that wasn’t, the War had finished your fondness for kirks, you knew as much as any minister. Why the hell should you waste your time in a kirk when you were young, you were young only once, there was the cinema down in Dundon, or a dance or so, or this racket or that; and your quean to meet and hear her complain she’s not been ta’en to the Fordoun ball.

You’d chirk to your horses and give a bit smile as you saw the minister swoop by on his bike, with his coat-tails flying and his wee, flat hat; and at night in the bothy some billy or other would mock the way that he spoke or moved. To hell with ministers and toffs of his kind, they were aye the friends of the farmers, you knew.

All the farmers now of Kinraddie were big, but they had as little liking as the bothy for the Reverend Colquohoun and the things he said, Would a man go up to the kirk of a Sabbath to sit down and hear himself insulted? You went to kirk to hear a bit sermon about Paul and the things he wrote the Corinthians, all of them folk that were safely dead; but Kinraddie’s minister would try to make out that you yourself, that was born in Fordoun of honest folk, were a kind of Corinthian, oppressing the needy, he meant those lazy muckers the ploughmen. No, no, you were hardly so daft as take that, you would take the mistress a jaunt instead, next Sunday like or maybe the next, up the Howe to her cousin in Brechin that hadn’t yet seen the new car you had bought; or maybe you’d just lie happed in your bed, and have breakfast, and read all about the divorces the English had from their wives – damn’t, man! they fair had a time, those English tinks! You wouldn’t bother your head on the kirk, to hell with ministers of the kind of Colquohoun, they were aye the friends of the ploughmen, you knew.

And Chris would stand in the choir and sing, and sometimes look at the page in her hand and think of the days when she at Blawearie had never thought of the kirk at all, over-busied living the life that was now to bother at all on the life to come. Others of the choir that had missed a service would say to her with a shy-like smile, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Colquohoun, I was late; and Chris would say that they needn’t fash, if she said it in Scots the woman would think, Isn’t that a common-like bitch at the Manse? If she said it in English the speak would spread round the minister’s wife was putting on airs.

Robert’s stipend was just three hundred pounds, when he’d first told Chris she had thought it a lot, and felt deep in her a prick of resentment that he got so much, when the folk on the land that did all the work that really was work – they got not a third, with a family thrice bigger. But soon she was finding the money went nowhere, a maid to keep and themselves forbye, this and that charity that folk expected the minister should not only help but head. And they didn’t in vain, he’d have given the sark from his back, would Robert, if Chris hadn’t stopped him, and syne given his vest. When he heard of a cottar that was needy or ill he’d wheel out his old bike and swoop down the roads, he rode with old brakes and they sometimes gave way, and then he would brake with a foot on the wheel, his thoughts far off as he flew through the stour, if he hadn’t a broken neck it was luck. That was his way and Chris liked him for it, though she herself would as soon have thought of biking that way as of falling off the old tower by the kirk, and lippening to chance she would land on her feet.

Well, so, and most likely sparked up with glaur, he’d come to the house where the ill man lay, and knock and cry Well, are you in? and go in. And sit him down by the bed of the man, and tell him a story to make him laugh, never mention God unless he was asked, and that was seldom enough, as you knew, a man just blushed if you mentioned God. So Robert would talk of the crops and fees, and Where is your daughter fee’d to now? and The wife look fine, and I’ll need to be off. And syne as he went he’d slip a pound note into the hand of the sick bit man; and he’d take it and redden up, dour, and say Thank you; and after Robert went they’d say, What’s a pound? Him that gets paid as much as he does.

Chris knew that they said that kind of thing, Else told her the news as they worked in the kitchen; and she knew as well how the news went out from the Manse of every bit thing that was there--Ewan, her son, how he dressed, what he said; and the things they said and the things they sang and how much they ate and what they might drink; when they went to bed and when they got up; and how the minister would kiss his wife, without any shame, in the sight of the maid--Oh, Chris knew most and she guessed the rest, all Kinraddie knew better than she did herself how much she and Robert might cuddle in bed, and watched with a sneer for sign of a son. . . . And somehow, just once, you would hate them for that.

You knew these things, it was daft to get angry, you couldn’t take a maid and expect her a saint, especially a lass from a cottar house, and Else was no worse than many another. So in time you grew used to knowing what you did--if you put your hair different or spoke sharp to Ewan or went up of an evening to change your frock--would soon be known to the whole of Kinraddie, with additional bits tacked on for a taste. And if you felt sick, once in a blue moon, faith! but the news went winged in the Howe, a bairn was coming, all knew the date, they would eye you keen as you stood in the choir, and see you’d fair filled out this last week; and they’d mouth the news on the edge of their teeth, and worry it to death as a dog with a bone.

But Chris cooked and cleaned with Else Queen to help, and grew to like her in spite of her claik, she’d tried no airs since that very first time, instead she was over-anxious to Mem! Chris couldn’t be bothered in a while to stop her, knowing well as she did that in many a way she was a sore disappointment to Else.

In other bit places where a quean would fee, with the long-teethed gentry up and down the Howe or the poverty put-ons of windy Stonehive, the mistress would aye be glad of a news, hear this and that that was happening outbye, you’d got it direct from so and so’s maid. But Mrs. Colquohoun would just listen and nod, maybe, polite enough in a way, but with hardly a yea or a nay for answer. And at first a lassie had thought the creature was acting up gentry, the minister’s wife: but syne you saw that she just didn’t care, not a button she cared about this place and that, and the things that were happening, the marryings and dyings, the kissings and cuddlings, the kickings and cursings, the lads that had gone and the farmers that broke; and what this cottar had said to his wife and what the wife had thrown at the cottar. And it fair was a shock, the thing wasn’t natural, you made up your mind to give in your notice and go to a place where you wouldn’t be lonesome.

So you’d have done if it hadn’t been Ewan, the laddie that came from her first bit marriage, so quiet and so funny, but a fine little lad, he’d sometimes come down and sit in the kitchen and watch as you peeled the potatoes for dinner, and tell you things he had read in his books, and ask, What’s a virgin princess like--like you, Else? And when you laughed and said Oh, but bonnier a lot, he would screw up his brows, I don’t mean that, is she like you under your clothes, I mean?

You blushed at that, I suppose she is, and he looked at you calm as could be. Well, that’s very nice, I am sure--so polite you wanted to give him a cuddle, and did, and he stood stock still and let you, not moving, syne turned and went out and suddenly went mad in the way that he would, whistling and thundering like a horse up the stairs, with a din and a racket to deafen a body, but fine for all that, you liked a place with a bairn at play; though not aye making a damned row, either.

So you stayed at the Manse as the summer wore on, and you liked it better, and sometimes you’d stop--when outbye or gone up home for a day--in the telling of this or that at the Manse, and be sorry you ever had started the tale. And your father would growl Ay, and what then? and you’d say, Oh, nothing, and look like a fool, and whoever was listening would be sore disappointed. But you’d minded sudden the face of the mistress, or young Ewan, polite, who thought you looked nice; and it didn’t seem fair to tell stories of them.

And then, in the August, you were ill as could be, and they didn’t send you off home to Segget, as most others would, to the care of your folk. Faith! you half thought as the mistress came in and dosed you with medicine and punched up your pillows and brought you your breakfast and dinner and tea, that she was well pleased to do all the work, you heard her singing washing the stairs, the minister himself went to help in the kitchen, you heard of that through the half-open door, then laugh as the mistress threw water at him and the scamper of feet as he chased her for that. When next dinner came the minister himself came in with the tray and his shirt-sleeves up, you blushed, and tried to cover your nightie, he cried, All safe, Else, you needn’t be shy. I’m old and I’m married, though you’re pretty enough.

And somehow you just didn’t tell that outbye, folk would have said that he slept with you next. So you lay in your bed and had a fine rest but that they tormented you to read books and brought great piles to put by your bed, and themselves were so keen that you fair were fashed, they would read you out bits, the mistress or minister, sometimes them both, and you never had had patience with books in your life. You could never get in them or past the long words, some thing there was that stood fast between, though you knit up your brows and tried ever so hard.

And you’d drop the damn book when a minute was past and listen instead to the birds in the trees, as the evening drew in and they chirped in their sleep, and the low of the kye in the parks of the Mains, and see through the swinging of the casement window the light of the burning whins on the hills, smell--you smelled with your body entire--the tingle and move of the harvesting land. And then you’d be wearied and lie half asleep, wondering what Charlie was doing to-night, had he taken some other quean out to the pictures, or was sitting about at some bothy fire? And would he come to see you as he’d written he’d come?

He came that Sunday, and the mistress herself it was brought him up, he stood with his cap in his hands and he blushed, and you did the same, but the mistress didn’t. Now sit down and talk and I’ll bring you both tea. And off then she went, and you thought then, as often, she was bonny in a way, in a dour, queer way, with her hair dark-red and so coiled, and the eyes so clear, and the mouth like a man’s, but shaped to a better shape than a man’s, you stared at the door even after she’d gone, till Charlie whispered, Do you think she’ll come back? And you said, No, you gowk, and peeked at him quiet, and he looked round about as slow as a sow and then cuddled you quick, and that was fair fine, and you wanted a minute to cry in his arms, because you were ill and weak and half-witted. You told yourself that and pushed him away, and he smoothed his hair and said, You’re right bonny, and you said, Don’t haver, and he said, Well, I don’t.

The mistress and Ewan brought up the tea, then left you enough together alone for the two of you to have wedded and bedded, as you thought in a peek of a thought that came. And you looked at Charlie, he was sitting there douce, telling of his place, and the hard work there was, he’d as soon have thought ill as of dancing a jig. Like a fool you felt only half-pleased to know that, of course you didn’t want anything to happen, but at least he should try to make out that he did, it was only nature a man should want that, especially if you looked as bonny as he said. So you were fell short with him in the end, and he took his leave and the mistress came up. And you suddenly felt a fool altogether, you were weeping and weeping, with her arm about you, safe you felt there and sleepy and tired. She said, It’s all right, Else, sleep, you’ll be fine. You’re tired now and you’ve talked so long with your lad.

But you knew from her look she knew more than that, she knew the thing you yourself had thought; and you said to yourself when she left you that night, If I ever hear any speak ill of the Colquohouns, I’ll--I’ll--and afore you’d decided whether you’d blacken their eyes, or their character, or both, you fell fast asleep.

Sometimes a black, queer mood came on Robert, he would lock himself up long hours in his room, hate God and Chris and himself and all men, know his Faith a fantastic dream; and see the fleshless grin of the skull and the eyeless sockets at the back of life. He would pass by Chris on the stairs if they met, with remote, cold eyes and a twisted face, or ask in a voice that cut like a knife, Can’t you leave me alone, must you always follow?

The first time it happened her heart had near stopped, she went on with her work in a daze of amaze. But Robert came from his mood and came seeking her, sorry and sad for the queer, black beast that rode his mind in those haunted hours. He said that the thing was a physical remembrance, only that just and Chris not to worry; and she found out that near the end of the War he’d been gassed by an awful gas that they made, and months had gone by ere he breathed well again, and the fumes of that drifting Fear were gone. And sometimes the shadows of that time came back, though his lungs were well enough now, he was sure, though ‘twas in the months of his agony he’d known, conviction, terrible and keen as his pain, that there was a God Who lived and endured, the Tortured God in the soul of men, Who yet might upbuild the City of God through the hearts and hands of men of good faith.

But also Chris found it coming on Robert that here he could never do good or do ill, in a countryside that was dying or dead. One night he looked at Chris and said, Lord! But for you, Christine, I was daft to come here. I’ll try for a kirk in some other place, there’s work enough to be done in the towns. And thought for a while, his fair head in his hands. Would you like a town?

Chris said, Oh fine, and smiled reassurance, but she bit at her lips and he saw, and he knew. Well, then, not a town. I’ll try to find something betwixt and between.

So he did ere a month was out, news came from Segget its minister was dead, Robert brought the news home: I’m to try for his kirk. And Chris said, Segget? and Robert said Yes, and Chris quoted the bit of poetry there was, somebody they said in Segget had made it: Oh, Segget it’s a dirty hole, A kirk without a steeple, A midden-heap at ilka door And damned uncivil people.

Robert laughed, We’ll make them both civil and clean. Chris said, But you haven’t yet gotten the kirk, and he said, Just wait, for I very soon will.

Three Sundays later they set out for Segget, Robert to preach there and Chris to listen, it was April, quiet and brown in the fields, drowsy under a blanket of mist that cleared as the sun rose, leaving the hills corona’d in feathery wispings of clouds, Chris asked their name, and Robert said, Cirrus. They bring fine weather and they’re standing still. There’s little wind on the heights today.

And Chris on her bicycle suddenly felt young, younger far than she’d felt for years, Robert beside her on his awful bike, it made a noise like a threshing machine, collies came barking from this close and that, but Robert ground on and paid them no heed, scowling, deep in his sermon, no doubt. But once he swung round. Am I going too fast? and Chris said, Fast? It’s liker a funeral, and he came from the deeps of his thoughts and laughed. Oh, Chris, never change and grow English-polite! Not even in Segget, when we settle in its Manse!

Syne he said of a sudden, a minute or so later, they were past Mondynes and Segget in sight: Do you mind how Christ was tempted of the devil? And so was I till you spoke just now, I’d made up my mind I’d butter them up, in the sermon I preached--just for the chance of getting out of Kinraddie, settled in Segget, and on with some work. Well, I won’t. . . . By God, I’ll give them a sermon!

The old minister had died of drink, fair sozzled he was, folk said, at the end; and his last words were, so the story went, And what might the feare’s prices be today? No doubt that was just a bit lie that they told, but faith! he’d been greedy enough for his screw, with his long grey face and his bleary eyes and his way that he had of speaking to a man, met out in the street ordown by the Arms, as though he were booming from the pulpit itself: Why didn’t I see you in the kirk last Sabbath? And a billy would redden and give a bit laugh, and look this way and that, were he one of New Toun. But more than likely, were he one of the spinners, he’d answer: Maybe because I wasn’t there! in the awful twang that the creatures spoke; and go off and leave old Greig sore vexed, he’d never got over the fact that the spinners cared hardly a hoot for kirk session or kirk.

Ah well, he was a dead and a two-three came to try for his pulpit, more likely his stipend, two old men came, each buttered up Segget, you’d have thought by the way the creatures blethered the Archangel Michael could have come to Segget, and bought a shop, and felt at home as he sat at the back and sanded the sugar. Folk took that stite with a dosing of salts, then the third man came and some stories with him, ‘twas the Reverend Robert Colquohoun of Kinraddie, he’d been down there only a bare two years, and half his congregation had gone, they’d go anywhere but listen to him, he was aye interfering and preaching at folk that had done him no harm, couldn’t he leave them a-be? Forbye that he’d married a quean of the parish, and if there’s a worse thing a minister can do than marry a woman that knows the kirk folk, it’s only to suck sweeties under the pulpit in the time he’s supposed to be in silent prayer.

Well, Mr. Colquohoun, he didn’t suck sweets, but he did near everything else, folk said, and most of Segget, though it thronged to hear him, had no notion to vote for the creature at all.

But when he was seen stride up to the pulpit, and he leaned from the pulpit rails and he preached, the elders were first of all ta’en with his way, and the old folk next with the thing that he preached, not the mealy stuff that you’d now hear often, but meaty and strong and preached with some fire--and man! he fairly could tell a bit tale!

For he took his text from a chapter in Judges, his sermon on Gath and the things that that Jew childe Samson did, how at last the giant was bound to a pillar but he woke from the stupor and looked round about, and cried that the Philistines free him his bonds; and they laughed and they feasted, paying him no heed, sunk in their swing-like glaurs of vice. Their gods were idols of brass and of gold, they lived on the sweat and the blood of men, crying one to the other, Behold, we are great, we endure, and not earth itself is more sure. Pleasure is ours, and the taste of lust, wine in our mouths and power in our hands; and the lash was heard on the bowed slave’s back, they had mercy on neither their kith nor their kin.

And Samson woke and looked round again, he was shorn of his hair, bound naked there, in the lights of the torches, tormented and chained. And then sudden the Philistines felt the walls rock and they looked them about and saw the flames wave, low and sharp in a little wind; and again about them the great hall groaned, and Samson tore down the pillars of the roof, and the roof fell in and slew him and them. . . . And Samson was rising again in our sight, threatening destruction unless we should change, and free both him and the prisoners chained in the littered halls of our secret hearts.

And maybe it was because it was Spring, new-come, the sun a long, drowsy blink in the kirk, and folk heard the voice of the Reverend Colquohoun like the wind they’d hear up under the hills, fine and safe as they listened below, and who could be mean by Samson but them, ground down by the rents they’d to pay the Mowats? Maybe it was that and maybe it was because folk aye had prided themselves in Segget in taking no heed of what others said, that they licked up the sermon like calves at a cog; and a fair bit crowd watched Robert Colquohoun, him and his wife, she seemed decent and quiet, mount on their bikes and ride home to Kinraddie.

Robert said to Chris, That’s the end of my chance. But I’m glad I preached what I felt and thought. But Chris had a clearer vision than his, They liked the sermon and I think they liked you. They hadn’t a notion what the sermon meant--themselves the Philistines and someone else Samson.

Robert stared. But I made it plain as plain. Chris laughed, To yourself; anyhow, we’ll see. And they rode to Kinraddie, and the days went by, Robert didn’t believe he would head the leet. But he found out, for fun, all he could about Segget, from papers and Else and lists and old books, there was less than a thousand souls in Segget, and most of them lost, if you trusted Else.

Half of the Segget folk worked at the mills--the spinners, as the rest of Segget called them; the others kept shops or were joiners or smiths, folk who worked on the railway, the land, the roads, and the gardens of Segget House. Robert found an old map of the place and renewed it, playing as a boy with a toy town.

Chris leaned on his chair and looked over his shoulder, his fingers nimble in limning New Toun (where the folk had gone when the spinners came), Old Toun and its winding jumble of lanes that bunched and clustered around the West Wynd. South was the Arms, in the Segget Square, the East Wynd dotted with a joiner’s, a school, a tailor’s shop, a grocery, a sutor’s--and the Lord knows what, Robert said as his pen swopped down the Wynd to the Segget Square. Then it wheeled about and went up The Close to the post-office-grocery-shop combined, dotted the Segget smiddy beyond, and syne lost itself in the Segget slums. . . . Chris saw on the northern outskirts of Segget two dots for the Manse and the steepleless kirk, and over to the west another one still, Segget House, where the Mowats lived, the old mill-owner, new-dead, said Else, and his son, young Stephen at an English college.

And Robert would whistle as he looked at his map--What mightn’t a minister do in Segget, with the help of young Mowat or the folk of the schools? And sutors are atheists, bound to have brains, and extremely religious, all atheists are. One could do great things with a village League. . . .

Then he would laugh, Just playing with bricks! Ewan, where are those toys you’ve outgrown?

The news that he’d topped the leet at the poll was brought to Robert by an elder of Segget, it was Else who opened the door for the creature, she knew him well, but she didn’t let on. It was wee Peter Peat, the tailor of Segget, his shop stood mid-way the wind of Easy Wynd, with his house behind it, he thought it a castle. And he spoke right fierce, and he’d tell a man, before you were well in the lithe of his door, that he made a fine neighbour to those that were good, the best of friends to his friends, he was, but God pity the man that fell out with him, he’d never forgive an injury, never. And he was the biggest Tory in Segget, the head of the Segget Conservative branch, and an awful patriot, keen for blood; but he’d loup in his shoes as he heard his wife, Meg Peat that was slow and sonsy to look at, come into the shop, she’d cry Peter, I’m away. Mind the fire and have tea set ready; and he’d quaver, Ay, Meg, like an ill-kicked cur. But soon’s she was gone he’d look fierce as ever, ready to kill you and eat you forbye, and running his tape up and down your bit stomach as though he were gutting you and enjoying it.

Well, here he was standing, fierce as a futret. Is the Reverend Mr. Colquohoun indoors? And Else said, I’ll see; what name shall I tell him? And he said Gang and tell him Peter Peat’s here.

Else went and found the minister in his study, and the minister said Peat? and looked at the mistress; and the mistress smiled in the quiet way she had, and shook her head, and the minister shook his. Still, kindling or peat, I suppose I’d best see him!

Else went down the stairs to where Peter stood. Come in, and wipe your feet on the mat. He looked as though he’d have liked to wipe them on her, but he came in, fierce in his five feet two, the minister was waiting and rose when he came. I’ve come from Segget, Else heard the thing say, and the minister answer as she closed the door, Oh, yes? Well, won’t you sit down, Mr. Peat?

And then, half an hour or so after that, Chris heard the closing of the Manse front door and syne the scamper of feet on the stairs, she thought it was Ewan come in from his play. But instead it was Robert, he burst into the room, his face was flushed and he caught her arms, and plucked her up from the chair she sat in, and danced her half round the great-windowed room. She gasped, What is’t? and he said What, that? Peter Peat, the tailor of Segget, of course. Then he dropped in the chair from which he had plucked her, and sat there panting, still holding her hands. Christine, you’re now looking at Segget’s minister. And he’s promised that never as long as he lives he’ll pray for All-but the Prince of Wales!

He told the story he’d gotten from Peter, and Chris heard it later amended by Else, a warning that folk in a pulpit speak plain. He was fell religious, wee Peter Peat, an elder of the kirk and twice every Sunday he’d nip up and down the pews with the bag; and look at you sharp to see what you put in. And once he cried out to Dalziel of Meiklebogs, that was stinking with silver but fair was right canny. No, no, I’ll not have a button from you! And Meiklebogs reddened like a pig with rash, and dropped a half-crown in the bag by mistake, he was so took aback and affronted-like. That was back a good while, in the days of old Nichols, the last minister but one, he was, as proud and stuck-up as a hubbley-jock, English, and he never learned to speak right; and his prayers at first had fair maddened Peat. For when he came to the bit about Royalty, and he’d pray for the birn with might and with main, he’d finish up And all but the Prince of Wales!

Now Peat he was Tory and fond of the Prince, he went home to his wife in a fair bit stew, What the hell ails him at the Prince of Wales that he blesses all but him, I would like to know? And at last he tackled old Nichols on the matter, and the creature gave a bit sniftering laugh, and said to Scotch ears he supposed that All-but was how it sounded when he said Albert. And he spoke this slow, in a sneering bit way, as though he thought Scotch ears were damn poor ears, mostly bad in the need of a clean--when manners were being given out he hadn’t even the manners to stay and receive his, Peter Peat said.

Chris woke on the morning of the move to Segget with a start of fear she had over-slept. It was May, and the light came round about five, red and gold and a flow of silver down the parks that she knew so well, she got from bed at the very first blink. Robert yawned and sat up and remembered the day, and dived for his clothes, no bath this morning she told him as each struggled into clothes. He said, Ah well, I’m not very foul, and she thought that funny, and giggled and tangled her hair with her dress; and he said, Let me help, and his help was a hinder, it was only an excuse to take her and kiss her, this day of all!

She pushed him away at last and he went, whistling, two steps at a time down the stair, Chris heard Else moving already in the kitchen and when she got down found breakfast near ready, and Else all excitement, and young Ewan up, his knickers pulled on the wrong way in his hurry. She’d to alter that and try answer his questions, and run to help Robert with the very last kist, full up to the brim with books and suchlike; and he swore at the thing and Chris sat on the top, and Ewan came running and jumped there as well, and it closed with a bang, and they all of them cheered.

They sat down to breakfast, famished already. Suddenly Else came running in--Mem, it’s started to rain! with her face as though it were raining ink, and thick ink forbye. So Chris had to quiet her, and see Ewan ate, and Robert forbye, excited as Else. Then they heard down the road the burr of a lorry, and Else came again: It’s Melvin from Segget.

So it was, they’d hired him to do the Manse flitting, and had heard his character redd up by Else. He kept the only hotel in Segget, the Segget Arms that stood in the Square, the other inn down at the foot of West Wynd had been closed when the local option came. Will Melvin had been right well pleased over that, he said if this was their Prohibition, then he for one was all for the thing. He’d a face like a cat, broad at the eyes, and he’d spit like a cat whenever he spoke; he aye wore a dickey and a high, stiff collar and a leather waistcoat, and leggings and breeks, and he drove the two cars on hire in Segget, and carted folks’ coals and attended the bar when Jim the potman, that folk called The Sourock, was down with the awful pains in his wame.

Will Melvin had married fell late in life, an Aberdeen woman, right thin and right north, she kept a quick eye on the bar and the till. And if she heard a billy give a bit curse, as a spinner or a cottar might do from outbye, knowing no better, they weren’t Segget folk, she’d cry out sharp in the thin Aberdeen: None of your Blasting and Blaspheming in here. So folk called her the Blaster and Blasphemer for short, and if thoughts could have burned she’d have needed to go and take out a life insurance for fire.

Well, here was Will Melvin, he sat in the kitchen, but got to his feet when Chris came in. Good morning, Mem, and Chris said Good morning, and he asked, Will I start then to load her up? meaning the lorry, Chris saw, not herself. And he said he had Muir, the gravedigger, to help, and Chris called in Robert, and he came and scowled because he was thinking of some other thing. But he said, Hello, then, are we all ready? Would you like a dram before we begin? Will Melvin said, genteel, Just a drop, and would have sat and waited for the dram by himself but that Chris asked, Isn’t there another with you?

So John Muir was brought in from his seat in the lorry, he was big and cheery and buirdly, John Muir, a roadman of Segget, and the two had their dram, and John Muir as he drank began to tell them of the awful time he’d once had with a grave. He’d aye a horror of premature burial, a fell few there were that were buried like that, when you dug up the coffins of folk of old time and the boards fell agley you would sometimes see, through the shrouds, the bones all bulging and twisted, the creatures had struggled down there in the earth, not dead at all, gasping for breath. . . .

Well, he’d been thinking of that one night as he went to dig a new grave by the kirk, it was windy weather on the winter’s edge. He’d only finished digging the hole, and turned about, and straightened his back, when the earth gave way and his feet as well. Next minute his head went over his heels and flat in a puddle of red earth he went, right down at the bottom of the grave he had dug, his head half-jammed in under his shoulder. He nearly fainted with the awful shock, syne cried for help as loud as he could. But he heard long nothing, it was winter time, the light was waning up on the hills, he looked up and knew before long he’d be dead. And he cried again and as luck would have it the old minister heard his bit yowl, and came canny and slow down through the graves, and looked in the hole where John Muir was lying. And he said: Who is’t? and John Muir was sore vexed. Oh, we’ve been introduced, he cried back, so stand on no ceremony--damn’t, get a ladder!

Maybe that was why he still gleyed that way and went with a kind of twist to his shoulder, Chris thought; but Robert just laughed and looked at his watch. Well, this is a flitting, not yet a funeral. John Muir set down his glass and gleyed cheery. Ah, well, it’ll end in that, come time, you’d have thought he had something wrong with his stomach. But he gleyed at Chris cheery as a cock on a ree, and fell to with a will, him and Will Melvin, and carried out tables and presses and chairs, and kists and beds and boxes of dishes, and piled them up till the lorry groaned. Will Melvin near did the same at the sound and went spitting around like a startled cat. Then they drove off, Robert went with them to help, Else went as well in the back of the lorry, clasping the best tea-set to herself, and giving young Ewan a wave as she went.

The rain had cleared and Chris watched the lorry lurch down by the Mains in the flare of the sun, they’d got a fine day after all for the flitting. She liked John Muir, if not Melvin much; but then it was daft to judge folk at first sight. Young Ewan came running and asked for a piece, they sat together in the half-tirred rooms, and ate some biscuits and looked at each other, with the bizz of a fly on the stripped window-panes. Ewan asked why they were moving to Segget. Chris tried to tell him, and he listened, polite, and then went out and drowsed in the grass till he heard the lorry returning from Segget.

They loaded up the last of the stuff, John Muir climbed gleying up in its midst, and Chris locked the door and left the key for the folk of the Mains to come up and get, hid in a little hole in the wall. Then she went to the lorry where Melvin was waiting, young Ewan beside him, and climbed in as well; and the lorry wound out through the bending of yews where long, long ago the knight Wallace had hidden as the English were looking for him in the wars.

They saw not a soul as they passed the Mains, then they swung out into the road that led south; and so as they went Chris turned and looked back, at Kinraddie, that last time there in the sun, the moors that smoothed to the upland parks Chae Strachan had ploughed in the days gone by, the Knapp with no woods to shelter it now, Upperhill set high in a shimmer of heat, Cuddiestoun, Netherhill--last of them all, high and still in the hill-clear weather, Blawearie up on its ancient brae, silent and left and ended for you; and suddenly, daft, you couldn’t see a thing.

But that went by, Chris glad to be gone; and the lorry switched from the main road’s ribbon up by the old thatched toun of Culdyce, and she saw the Howe, spread out like a map, there was Drumlithie down in its hollow, a second Segget, but steepled enough. Mondynes that stood by the Bervie Water, Fettercairn, where the soldiers of the widow Finella had lain in wait to mischieve King Kenneth. All the parks were set with their hoeing squads, four, five, at a time they swung by the drills, here and there the hindmost man would stop, and straighten up slow, a hand at his back, to look at the lorry--who’s could it be? And all the long line would straighten up, slow, and catch a glimpse of Chris, in her blue, and young Ewan in his, with his straight, black hair.

And there, as they swung by the Meiklebogs farm, the hills to the right, at last lay Segget, a cluster and crawl of houses white-washed, the jute-mills smoking by Segget Water, the kirk with no steeple that rose through the trees, the houses of the spinners down low on the left, though Chris didn’t know that these were their houses. Then the lorry puffed up to the old kirk Manse, on the fringe of Segget, and Chris saw the lawn piled in a fair hysteria of furniture. She jumped down and stood a minute at gaze, in the shadows, the shadows the new yews flung, the grass seemed blue in the blaze of the heat.

Then as Melvin backed back the lorry and Ewan went running out over the lawn to the door, Robert came out and saw Chris and waved, and was pleased as though they’d been parted a year. He dropped the end of the press he’d picked up, near dropped it down on the toes of Muir (who gleyed as cheery as though ‘twas a coffin) and cried to Chris, Come and see the new study. And nothing could content him but up she must go, leaving Melvin below to glower after the gowks.

Then two men came taiking up the Manse drive, Dalziel of the Meiklebogs and one of his men, Robert went down to see who they were. Dalziel said, Ay, you’ll be the minister? and smiled, he was bad in the need of a shave, of middle height though he looked a lot less, so broad in the shoulders, hands like hams; and he smiled slow and shy with his red, creased face, and he said that he’d seen the lorries go by, and he knew right well the sore job it was to do a flitting without much help. And all the time he was smiling there, shy, he looked to Chris like a Highland bull, with his hair and his horns and maybe other things: there was something in his shyness that made her shiver. Beside him Robert seemed like a boy from school, thin and tall with his slim, thin face; and back of Robert was Else as she looked, not slim at all but big and well-made, her head flung back in that way she had and a look on her face as much as to say, Good Lord, what’s this that has come to us now?

Then they all fell to carrying in the Manse gear, and Chris fled here and there in the house, a great toom place that shambled all ways, there were stairs that started and suddenly finished and steps that crumbled away into gloom, down to old cellars that never were used. And sometimes you’d think you would come to a room, and you didn’t, you came slap-bang on another, the windows fast-closed and stiff with the heat. Chris told where and how to place all the things, and Meiklebogs and Else carried up the beds, and set them together, Chris heard Else give orders and Meiklebogs answer, canny and shy, You’ll be the new minister’s bit maidie? Else said, There’s damn the MAIDIE about me; and Chris didn’t hear more, but she guessed a bit.

John Muir came to her and asked where to put a press and a bed and some other things she’d brought from Blawearie the first flit she made. And she didn’t know, in that crowding of rooms, till he said, Would you maybe like the gear altogether? and she said, Just that, in a small-like room. So he carried the bed up and back through the Manse, to a high-built room, it was three stairs up. The place was so lost that the cleaners had missed it, there were cobwebs looped from the walls like twine. But through the window, when you swung it out wide, you saw sudden hills rise up in your face, with below you the roll of long, grass-grown mounds. John Muir let down the bed with a bang, the great heavy bed that had once been her father’s. Chris asked him what were the ruins up there, and he said, You’ve heard of the Kaimes of Segget?

Chris leaned from the window and looked to the west. And what’s that to the left, that hiddle of houses?--Where the spinners bide, he told her, she stared, she had thought them abandoned byres or pig-sties. But Muir just gleyed and said they were fine--good enough for the dirt that’s in them. If you gave good houses to rubbish like them, they’d have them pig-rees in a damn short while. They’re not Segget folk, the spinners, at all.

Chris said Oh! and looked at him, quiet, then they went down to bring up the rest; and there was Meiklebogs met on the stair, smiling shy at that sumph of a maid. And John Muir thought, You’d think he’d have quieted by now. A man that can’t keep off the women by the time he’s reaching to sixty or so should be libbed and tethered in a cattle-court.

Near twelve they’d the most of the furniture in, all but a long table brought from the north, from the Manse of Robert Colquohoun’s old father, solid and oak and a hell of a weight. And then Else called that the dinner was ready, Chris said they all must stay and have dinner. Robert said Let’s eat it out on this table.

So Else served them the dinner in the shade of the yews, and sat down herself when she’d finished with that, Meiklebogs waiting to see where she sat, and sitting down next with a shy-like smile. Robert came out, getting into his coat, and stood at the end of the table a minute and bent his head, fair in the sunny weather, and said the grace, the grace of a bairn; and they bent and listened, all but young Ewan: God bless our food, And make us good.

And pardon all our sins, For Jesus Christ’s sake.

Then they all ate up, Muir, Melvin, and Meiklebogs, and the fee’d man that blushed and was shy, not just looked it. Chris liked him best, with that sudden compassion that always came on her as she looked at one of his kind--that conviction that he and his like were the REAL, they were the salt and savour of earth. She heard him, shy-like, say Ay, I’ve a spoon, as Else was asking, and knew by the way that he mouthed the spoon that he came from the North, as she did herself. And faith! so he did, like her ‘twas from Echt, and he knew fine the place where once she had bidden. Cairndhu in the Barmekin’s lithe. And he fair buckled up and he lost his shyness, Ay, then, you’re a Guthrie? and she said that she was, and he said that they minded him long up in Echt, John Guthrie, her father, the trig way he farmed: and Chris felt herself colour up with sheer pleasure, her father could farm other folk off the earth!

Then she fell in a dream as she heard them talk, the rooks were cawing up in the yews, and you thought how they’d fringed your pattern of life--birds, and the waving leafage of trees: peewits over the lands of Echt when you were a bairn with your brother Will, and the spruce stood dark in the little woods that climbed up the slopes to the Barmekin bend; snipe sounding low on Blawearie loch as you turned in unease by the side of Ewan, and listened and heard the whisp of the beech out by the hedge in the quiet of the night; and here now rooks and the yews that stood to peer in the twisty rooms of the Manse. How often would you know them, hear them and see them, with what things in your heart in what hours of the dark and what hours of the day, in all the hours lying beyond this hour when the sun stood high and the yew-trees drowsed?

But she shook herself and came out of her dream, back to the table and the sun on the lawn, daft to go prowling those copses of night where the sad things done were stored with the moon. Here was the sun, and here was her son, Ewan, and Robert, the comrade of God, and those folk of Segget she had yet to know, and all the tomorrows that waited her here.

But that night she had slept in fits and in starts, waking early in that strange, quiet room, by the side of Robert, sleeping so sound. Then it was the notion had suddenly arisen, to come up to the Kaimes, as here she was now, watching the east grow pale in the dawn.

Pale and so pale: but now it was flushed, barred sudden with red and corona’d with red, as though they were there, the folk who had died, and the sun came washed from the sea of their blood, the million Christs who had died in France, as once she had heard Robert preach in a sermon. Then she shook her head and that whimsy passed, and she thought of Robert--his dream just a dream? Was there a new time coming to the earth, when nowhere a bairn would cry in the night, or a woman go bowed as her mother had done, or a man turn into a tormented beast, as her father, or into a bullet-torn corpse, as had Ewan? A time when those folk down there in Segget might be what Robert said all men might be, companions with God on a terrible adventure? Segget: John Muir, Will Melvin, Else Queen; the folk of the grisly rees of West Wynd-- Suddenly, far down and beyond the toun there came a screech as the morning grew, a screech like an hungered beast in pain. The hooters were blowing in the Segget Mills.