A Scots Quair Read online

  Some folk at the tables laughed out at that, the ill-nature grinned from the faces of them, and suddenly Chris hated the lot, the English Chris came back in her skin a minute, she saw them the yokels and clowns everlasting, dull-brained and crude. Alec Mutch took up the card from Cuddiestoun then and began on education and the speak ran round the tables. Most said it was a coarse thing, learning, just teaching your children a lot of damned nonsense that put them above themselves, they’d turn round and give you their lip as soon as look at you. But Chae was sitting down himself by then and he wouldn’t have that. Damn’t man, you’re clean wrong to think that. Education’s the thing the working man wants to put him up level with the Rich. And Long Rob of the Mill said I’d have thought a bit balance in the bank would do that. But for once he seemed right in agreement with Chae—the more education the more of sense and the less of kirks and ministers. Cuddiestoun and Mutch were fair shocked at that, Cuddiestoun cried out Well, well, we’ll hear nothing coarse of religion, as though he didn’t want to hear anything more about it and was giving out orders. But Long Rob wasn’t a bit took aback, the long rangy childe, he just cocked an eye at Cuddiestoun and cried Well, well, Munro, we’ll turn to the mentally afflicted in general, not just in particular. How’s that foreman of yours getting on, Tony? Is he still keeping up with his shorthand? There was a snicker at that, you may well be sure, and Cuddiestoun closed up quick enough, here and there folk had another bit laugh and said Long Rob was an ill hand to counter. And Chris thought of her clowns and yokels, and was shamed as she thought—Chae and Long Rob they were, the poorest folk in Kinraddie!

  At a quarter past six the mill loosed off again from its bumblebee hum, the threshers came trooping down to the tables again. More dumpling there was, cut up for tea, and bread and butter and scones and baps from the grocer, and rhubarb and blackberry jam, and syrup for them that preferred it, some folk liked to live on dirt out of tins. Most of the mill folk sat down in a right fine tune, well they might, and loosed out their waistcoats. Will was near last to come in from the close, a long, dark young childe came in at his heels, Chris hadn’t set eyes on him before, nor he on her by the way he glowered. The two of them stood about, lost-like and gowkèd, looking for seats in the crowded kitchen till Mistress Strachan cried over to Chris Will you lay them places ben in the room?

  So she did and took them their supper there, Will looked up and cried Hello, Chris, how have you gotten on? and Chris said Fine, how’ve you? Will laughed Well, God, my back would feel a damned sight easier if I’d spent the day in my bed. Eh, Tavendale? And then he minded his manners. This is Ewan Tavendale from Upprums, Chris.

  So that was who; Chris felt queer as he raised his head and held out his hand, and she felt the blood come in her face and saw it come dark in his. He looked over young for the coarse, dour brute folk said he was, like a wild cat, strong and quick, she half-liked his face and half-hated it, it could surely never have been him that did that in the larch wood of Upperhill? But then if you could read every childe’s nature in the way he wiped his nose, said Long Rob of the Mill, it would be a fine and easy world to go through.

  So she paid him no more heed and was out of the Knapp a minute later and ran nearly all the way up to Blawearie to see to the milking there. The wind was still up but the frost was crackling below her feet as she ran, the brae rose cold and uncanny with Blawearie’s biggings uncertain shadows high up in the cold mirk there. She felt tingling and blithe from her run, she said to herself if she’d only the time she’d go out every winter night and run up over hills with frost and the night star coming in the sky.

  But that night as Blawearie went to its bed Will opened his bedroom door and cried Father! Chris! See that light down there in the Knapp!

  CHRIS WAS OVER at her window then in a minute, bare- footed she ran and peered by the shadow of the great beech tree. And there was a light right plain enough, more than a light, a lowe that crackled to yellow and red and rose in the wind that had come with the night. Peesie’s Knapp would be all in a blaze in a minute, Chris knew; and then father came tearing down the stairs, crying to Will to get on his clothes and follow him, Chris was to bide at home, mind that. They heard him open the front door and go out and go running right fleetly down the night of Blawearie hill, Chris cried to Will Wait for me, I’m coming as well, and he cried back All right, but for Christ’s sake hurry!

  She couldn’t find her stockings then, she was trembling and daft; and when found they were, her corsets were missing, slipped down the back of the kist they had, Will came knocking at the door Come on!—Light a match and come in, she called and in he came, knotting his muffler, and lighted a match and looked at her in her knickers and vest, reaching out for the new-seen corsets. Leave the damn things where they are, you’re fine, you should never have been born a quean. She was into her skirt by then, and said I wish I hadn’t, and pulled on her boots and half-laced them, and ran down the stairs after Will and put on her coat at the foot. In a minute they were out in the dimness then, under the starlight, it was rimed with frost, and running like mad down to the lowe that now rose like a beacon against the whole of Kinraddie. God, I hope they’ve wakened! Will panted, for every soul knew the Strachans went straight to bed at the chap of eight. Running, they could see by then it was the barn itself that had taken alight, the straw sow seemed burned to a cinder already, and the barn had caught and maybe the house. And all over Kinraddie lights were springing up, as they ran Chris lifted her eyes and saw Cuddiestoun’s blink and shine bright down through the dark.

  And faith, quick though they were, it was father that saved Chae Strachan’s folk. He was first down at the blazing Knapp, John Guthrie; and he ran round the biggings and saw the flames lapping and lowing at the kitchen end of the house, not a soul about or trying to stop them though the noise was fair awful, the crackling and burning, and the winter air bright with flying sticks and straw. He banged at the door and cried Damn’t to hell do you want to be roasted? and when he got no answer he smashed in the window, they heard him then and the bairns scraiched, there was never such a lot for sleep, folk said, Chae’d have slept himself out of this world and into hell in his own firewood if John Guthrie hadn’t roused him then. But out he came stumbling at last, he’d only his breeks on; and he took a keek at John Guthrie and another at the fire and cried out Kirsty, we’re all to hell! and off he tore to the byre.

  But half-way across the close as he ran the barn swithered and roared and fell, right in front of him, and he’d to run back, there was no way then of getting at the byre. By then Long Rob of the Mill came in about, he’d run over the fields, louping dykes like a hare, and his lungs were panting like bellows, he was clean winded. He it was that helped Mrs Strachan with the bairns and such clothes as they could drag out to the road while Chae and John Guthrie tried to get at the byre from another angle: but that was no good, the place was already roaring alight. For a while there was only the snarling of the fire eating in to the wooden couplings, the rattle of falling slates through the old charred beams, and then, the first sound that Will and Chris heard as they came panting down the road, a scream that was awful, a scream that made them think one of the Strachans was trapped down there. And at that sound Chae covered his ears and cried Oh God, that’s old Clytie, Clytie was his little horse, his sholtie, and she screamed and screamed, terrible and terrible, Chris ran back to the house trying not to hear and to help poor Kirsty Strachan, snivelling and weeping, and the bairns laughing and dancing about as though they were at a picnic, and Long Rob of the Mill smoking his pipe as cool as you please, there was surely enough smell and smoke without that? But pipe and all he dived in and out of the house and saved chairs and dishes and baskets of eggs; and Mistress Strachan cried Oh, my sampler! and in Rob tore and rived that off a blazing wall, a meikle worsted thing in a cracked glass case that Mistress Strachan had made as a bairn at school.

  And then came the clip-clop of a gig, it was Ellison down from the Mains, him and two of his
men, and God! he might be little more than a windy Irish brute but he’d sense for all that, the gig was crammed with ropes and pails, Ellison strung out the folk and took charge, the pails went swinging from hand to hand over the close from the well to the childe that stood nearest the fire, and he pelted the fire with water. But feint the much good that did for a while and then there was an awful sound from the byre, the lowing of the cattle with the flames among them, and Long Rob of the Mill cried out I can’t stand it! and took a pick-axe and ran round the back of the close; and there he found the sow was nothing but a black heap then, hardly burning at all, and he cried back the news and himself louped through the smoke and came at the back wall of the byre and started to smash it in fast as he could. Chae followed and John Guthrie, and the three of them worked like madmen there, Ellison’s men splashed water down on the roof above them till suddenly the wall gave way before them and Chae’s oldest cow stuck out its head and said Moo! right in Chae’s face. The three scrambled through into the byre then, that was fell dangerous, the rafters were crumbling and falling all about the stalls, and it was half-dark there in spite of the flames. But they loosed another cow and two stirks before the fire drove them out, the others they had to leave, their lowing was fair demented and the smell of their burning sickening in your throat, it was nearly a quarter of an hour later before the roof fell in and killed the cattle. Long Rob of the Mill sat down by the side of the road and was suddenly as sick as could be, and he said By God, I never want to smell roasting beef again.

  So that was the burning of the Peesie’s Knapp, there was a great throng of folk in about by then, the Netherhill folk and the Upperhill, and Cuddiestoun, and Alec Mutch with his great lugs lit up by the fire, some had come on bicycles and some had run across half Kinraddie and two had brought their gigs. But there was little to do now but stand and glower at the fire and its mischief, Ellison drove off to the Mains with Mistress Strachan and the bairns, there for the night they were bedded. The cattle he’d saved from the byre Chae drove to Netherhill, folk began to put on their jackets again, it was little use waiting for anything else, they’d away home to their beds.

  Chris could see nothing of either father or Will, she turned to make for Blawearie then. Outside the radiance of the burning Knapp it was hard and cold, starless but clear, as though the steel of the ground glowed faintly of itself; beyond rose the darkness as a black wall, still and opaque. On the verge of its embrasure it was that she nearly ran into two men tramping back along the road, she hardly saw them till she was on them. She cried Oh, I’m sorry, and one of them laughed and said something to the other, next instant before she knew what was happening that other had her in his arms, rough and strong, and had kissed her, he had a face with a soft, grained skin, it was the first time a man had ever kissed her like that, dark and frightening and terrible in the winter road. The other stood by, Chris, paralysed, heard him breathing and knew he was laughing, and a far crackle rose from the last of the lowe in the burning biggings. Then she came to herself and kicked the man that held her, young he was with his soft, grained face, kicked him hard with her knee and then brought her nails down across his face. As he swore You bitch! and let go of her she kicked him again, with her foot this time, and he swore again, but the other said Hist! Here’s somebody coming, and the two of them began to run, the cowardly tinks, it was father and Will on the road behind them.

  And when Chris told Will of what happened, next morning it was that she told him when father wasn’t by, he looked at her queerly, half-laughing, half-solemn, and made out he thought nothing of the happening, all ploughmen were like that, aye ready for fun. But it hadn’t seemed fun to her, dead earnest rather; and lying that night in her bed between the cold sheets, curled up so that she might rub her white toes to some warmth and ease, it was in her memory like being chased and bitten by a beast, but worse and with something else in it, as though half she’d liked the beast and the biting and the smell of that sleeve around her neck and that soft, unshaven face against her own. Sweet breath he had had anyway, she thought, and laughed to herself, that was some consolation, the tink. And then she fell asleep and dreamed of him, an awful dream that made her blush even while she knew she was dreaming, she was glad when the morning came and was sane and cool and herself again.

  BUT THAT DREAM came to her often while the winter wore on through Kinraddie, a winter that brought hardly any snow till New Year’s Eve and then brought plenty, darkening the sky with its white cascading. It was funny that darkening the blind fall and wheep of the snow should bring, like the loosening of a feather pillow above the hills, night came as early as three in the afternoon. They redd up the beasts early that evening, father and Will, feeding them well with turnips and straw and hot treacle poured on the straw; and then they came in to their supper and had it and sat close round the fire while Chris made a fine dumpling for New Year’s Day. None of them spoke for long, listening to that whoom and blatter on the window-panes, and the clap- clap-clap of some loose slate far up on the roof, till father whispered and looked at them, his whisper hurt worse than a shout, God, I wonder why Jean left us?

  Chris cried then, making no sound, she looked at Will and saw him with his face red and shamed, all three of them thinking of mother, her that was by them so kind and friendly and quick that last New Year, so cold and quiet and forgotten now with the little dead twins in the kirkyard of Kinraddie, piling black with the driving of the snow it would be under the rustle and swing and creak of the yews. And Will stared at father, his face was blind with pity, once he made to speak, but couldn’t, always they’d hated one the other so much and they’d feel shamed if they spoke in friendship now.

  So father took up his paper again and at ten o’clock Chris went out to milk the kye and Will went with her over the close, carrying the lantern, the flame of it leapt and starred and quivered and hesitated in the drive of the snow. In the light of it, like a rain of arrows they saw the coming of the storm that night swept down from the Grampian heuchs, thick and strong it was in Blawearie, but high in the real hills a smoring, straight wall must be sweeping the dark, blinding down against the lone huts of the shepherds and the faces of lost tinks tramping through it looking for lights the snow’d smothered long before. Chris was shaking, but not with cold, and inside the byre she leant on a stall and Will said God, you look awful, what is’t? And she shook herself and said Nothing, Why haven’t you gone to see Mollie to-night?

  He said he was going next day, wasn’t that enough, he’d be a corpse long ere he reached Drumlithie to-night—listen to the windy it’ll blow the damn place down on our lugs in a minute! And the byre shook, between the lulls it seemed to set its breath to rise and take from the hill-side into the air, there was such straining and creaking. Not that the calves or the stirks paid heed, they slept and snored in their stalls with never a care, there were worse things in the world than being a beast.

  Back in the house it seemed to Chris she’d but hardly sieved the milk when the great clock ben in the parlour sent peal after peal out dirling through the place. Will looked at Chris and the two at father, and John Guthrie was just raising up his head from his paper, but if he’d been to wish them a happy New Year or not they were never to know, for right at that minute there came a brisk chap at the door and somebody lifted the sneck and stamped the snow from his feet and banged the door behind him.

  And there he was, Long Rob of the Mill, muffled in a great grey cravat and with leggings up to the knees, covered and frosted from head to foot in the snow, he cried Happy New Year to you all! Am I the first? And John Guthrie was up on his feet, Ay, man, you’re fairly that, out of that coat of yours! They stripped off the coat between them, faith! Rob’s mouser was nearly frozen, but he said it was fine and laughed, and waited the glass of toddy father brought him and cried Your health! And just as it went down his throat there came a new knock, damn’t if it wasn’t Chae Strachan, he’d had more than a drink already and he cried Happy New Year, I’m the first f
oot in am I not? And he made to kiss Chris, she wouldn’t have minded, laughing, but he slithered and couped on the floor, Long Rob peered down at him and cried out, shocked-like, God Almighty, Chae, you can’t sleep there!

  So he was hoisted into a chair and was better in a minute when he’d had another drink; and he began to tell what a hell of a life it was he’d to live in Netherhill now, the old mistress grew worse with the years, she’d near girn the jaws from her face if the Strachan bairns so much as gave a bit howl or had a bit fight-fell unreasoning that, no bairns there were but fought like tinks. And Long Rob said Ay, that was true, as it said in the hymn ’twas dog’s delight to bark and bite, and faith! the average human could out-dog any cur that ever was pupped. Now, horses were different, you’d hardly ever meet a horse that was naturally a quarreller, a coarse horse was a beast they’d broken in badly. He’d once had a horse–a three-four years come Martinmas that would have been, or no! man, it was only two—that he bought up in Auchinblae at the fall of the year, a big roan, coarse as hell, they said, and he’d nearly kicked the guts out of an old man there. Well, Rob had borrowed a bridle and tried to ride home the beast to the Mill, and twice in the first mile the horse threw him off with a snort and stood still, just laughing, as Rob picked himself up from the stour. But Rob just said to himself, All right, my mannie, we’ll see who’ll laugh last: and when he’d got that horse home he tied him up in his stall and gave him such a hammering, by God he nearly kicked down the stable. Every night for a week he was walloped like that, and damn’t man! in the shortest while he’d quietened down and turned into a real good worker, near human he was, that horse, he’d turn at the end of a rig as it drew to eleven o’clock and begin to nicker and neigh, he knew the time fine. Ay, a canty beast that, he’d turned, and sold at a profit in a year or so, it just showed you what a handless man did with a horse, for Rob had heard that the beast’s new owner had let the horse clean go over him. A sound bit leathering and a pinch of kindness was the only way to cure a coarse horse.