A Scots Quair (40 page)

SEGGET WAS wakening as Chris Colquohoun came down the shingle path from the Manse. Here the yews stood thick, in a starlings' murmur, a drowsy cheep on the edge of the dawn; but down the dark, as you reached the road, you saw already lights twink here and there, in the houses of Segget, the spinners' wynds, a smell in the air of hippens and porridge. But she'd little heed for these, had Chris, she went quick as she looked at the eastern sky, the May air warm in her face as she turned, north, and went up the Meiklebogs road. So rutted it was and sossed with the carts that there was a saying in Segget toun:
There's
a road to heaven and a road to hell, but damn the road to the
Meiklebogs
.

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 outreaching 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, quiet-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 Εwan, 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 in 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 Εwan 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 or 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 on 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 hers 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.