A Scots Quair Read online

  By the time Chae came down she had nearly unyoked it, Chae cried Damn’t, Chris, what’s on? and she told him Dinner, you’re to stay for that. So he was fell pleased, though he hummed and hawed a minute about rousting back to the Knapp. But she smiled at him, that way she’d done to the boy in Semple’s office, and Chae stared at her and wound up his waxed mouser and twinkled his eyes and gave her shoulder a slap, Lord, Chris, they’ll right soon be after you, the lads, with your eyes like that! And he gave a bit sigh as though, other times, other ways, he’d have headed the band himself.

  So into the kitchen he came and sat himself down with old Mistress Melon, and Chris dished up the rabbit stew and they ate a great dinner, Mistress Melon was a funny old wife as soon as she saw you put on no airs. She’d a great red face as though she’d just unbended from a day’s hard baking, and pale blue eyes like a summer sky, and faded hair that had once been brown, and Chris soon saw she was maybe the biggest gossip that had ever come into Kinraddie, and faith! that meant the challenging of many a champion. But her stories of Stonehaven had a lilt and a laugh, and the best was the one of the Provost that had lost his stud in his tumbler when speaking to a teetotal gathering. And Chae said that was a fine one, Damn’t, mistress, when I was in Africa … and he told them a story of a man he knew, a black he’d been, real brave, and he found a diamond, on his own ground too, but as soon as the British heard of it they sent to arrest him for’t. And what had that black childe done? Swallowed the damned thing and nothing of him could the British make, and they couldn’t arrest him, and the black got his diamond back in a day or so in the course of nature, they were awful constipated folk, the blacks.

  All the time he was telling the story Chae had been tearing into his rabbit and oat-cake; and soon’s he’d finished one plate he took a look over the pot and cried God, that was right fine, Chris quean. Is there more on the go? Chris liked that, it was fine to have somebody that was hungry and liked his meat and didn’t make out he was gentry or polite, there was less politeness about Chae than about a potato fork. Mistress Melon was eating right heartily too, and syne Chae told them another story, about a lion that he and the black head childe had hunted, they’d been awful chief together… Mistress Melon asked What, you and the lion? and winked at Chris, but Chae wasn’t a bit put out, he just said Damn’t no, mistress, me and the head man, and went on with the story again, it was plain Mistress Melon thought he was a bit of a liar till suddenly, casual-like, Chae opened the front of his sark and finished up And that was the bit momento the damned beast left on me. Syne they saw the marks on his chest, the marks of great raking claws they were they had torn fair deep and sure, and Chae’s dark body-hair didn’t grow in them. So Mistress Melon was fair stammy-gastered at that; and said so to Chris when Chae was gone.

  Soon as that was Chris set to arranging with the Melon wife how the two of them would partition the work, Mistress Melon could do the cooking and cleaning, Chris preferred the outside, she’d milk and see to the kine; and they’d get on bravely, no doubt. Mistress Melon was a fell good worker in spite of her awful tongue, she’d cleared up the dinner things and washed them and put them away ere Chris was well out of the house. Then down on her knees she went and was scrubbing the kitchen floor, Chris was glad enough to see her at that, she hated scrubbing herself. If only she’d been born a boy she’d never had such hatings vexing her, she’d have ploughed up parks and seen to their draining, lived and lived, gone up to the hills a shepherd and never had to scunner herself with the making of beds or the scouring of pots. But neither would she ever have had Εwan hold her as last night he had.

  And then she blushed and went on in silence with the cleaning of the byre, thinking of his coming and what she would say to him and the thing it was they’d arrange. Before she knew it the new plan came shaping up bravely in her mind, neat and trim and trig, and when she looked out and saw the gloaming near and went over the close and down through the parks for the kye, she had everything fixed, it didn’t matter a fig what folk might say.

  So when Ewan came in by at last she waited him ben in the parlour, with a great fire kindled there and the two big leather chairs drawn close. It was Mistress Melon that brought him through, her meikle red face fair shaking with ill-fashionce, agog to know what was toward. But Chris just said Thank you. Mistress Melon, and ticed Ewan over to his chair, and took his cap from him and made him sit down and fair closed the door in the old wife’s face. It was bright and warm in the room, she turned round and saw her lad sit so; and then she raised her head and saw herself in the long, old mirror of the parlour wall, and thought how she’d changed, it crept on you and you hardly noted, in ways you were still as young as the quean with the plaits that had run by Marget to catch the scholars’ train. But she saw herself then in her long green skirt, long under the knee, and her hair wound in its great fair plaits about her head, and her high cheek-bones that caught the light and her mouth that was well enough, her figure was better still; and she knew for one wild passing moment herself both frightened and sorry she should be a woman, she’d never dream things again, she’d live them, the days of dreaming were by; and maybe they had been the best; and there was Ewan waiting her, the great quiet cat, reddening and turning his head up with its smouldering eyes.

  She went to him then and put her hand on his shoulder and before she knew it they were close together and so stayed long after they had finished with kissing, just quiet, in the firelight, his arms about her, her head on his shoulder, watching the fire. And when at last they began to speak she put her hands over his lips, whispering to him to whisper in case Mistress Melon should be listening out by. Maybe she wasn’t but in the shortest while they heard her go stamping about the kitchen, singing a hymn fell loud, and that was a bit suspicious.

  But they ceased from heeding her soon enough, they’d a hundred things to plan and discuss, there in the fireglow, they lit no lamp, Chris listened with her head down-bent as he told her he couldn’t marry, he’d no more than a hundred pounds saved up, they’d have to wait. And she told him she had three hundred pounds, no credit to her, it was father’s saving, but if she and Ewan married fair soon he could take over Blawearie’s lease, they could stay where they were, and that would be fine, no need for you any day then to go back through the parks to Upperhill. He kissed her again at that, hurting her lips, but she didn’t heed, it was fine to be hurt like that; but she wouldn’t kiss back till he’d put him his Highland pride in his pouch and muttered All right.

  THEY’D PLANNED to be married in December and as they’d planned so the thing worked out without any hitch at all. In November Ewan found and fee’d a substitute foreman for Upperhill, a quiet-like childe James Leslie; and though old Gordon was none so pleased he couldn’t well afford to fall out with so near a neighbour as the new Blawearie. Chris went into Stonehaven again with Ewan and saw the man Semple, he was fair suspicious, at first, but she argued him soon from that, and he got the lease changed to Ewan’s name, and well- feathered his own nest in the changing, no doubt.

  By then the news was no news, Kinraddie knew all, and when they came from the station that night they met in with Ellison down from the Mains, he’d been waiting them there to go by and he wouldn’t have it but that they go up to the house and drink their own healths in a dram. Mistress Ellison was gentry and nice, more gentry than nice, poor thing, she was still no more than a servant quean and fleered and arched to make Chris and Ewan blush, she managed with Ewan. But Chris kept cool as ice, and nearly as friendly, she didn’t see that a joke was less dirty if a neighbour spoke it. She and Ewan fair quarrelled over that when they left the Mains, it was their first quarrel and she wouldn’t let him touch her, she said If you like foul stories, I don’t, and he said, prigging at her, Oh, don’t be a fool, Chris quean, and she said There’s no need for you to marry a fool, then, and the Highland temper quite went with him then, he flared up like a whin with a match at it, Don’t be feared, I’ve no such intention! and off he went, up ov
er the hill through the evening parks. Chris walked on prim and cold and quick, it was near to sunset, she turned her head, she couldn’t but help it, to see if he wasn’t looking back, he wasn’t; and that was too much, she stopped and cried Εwan! and he wheeled like a shot and came running to her, she was crying in earnest by then, she cried up against his coat while he held her and panted and swore at himself, Oh Chris, I didn’t mean to hurt you! and she sniffed You didn’t, it was myself; and they made it all up again. She walked home subdued-like that night, it wouldn’t be always plain sailing, they’d awful tempers, both of them. Then she saw the light of Blawearie shine steadfast across the parks and her heart kindled to a queer, quiet warmth at that.

  They’d arranged to be married on New Year’s Eve, most folk would be free to come that day. For three evenings they sat in Blawearie parlour and wrote their invitations to folk they knew and some they didn’t, nearly every soul in Kinraddie was asked, they couldn’t well miss out one of them. And to Auntie and Uncle and Dod and Alec they wrote, and to Ewan’s friend McIvor, a Highlandman out of Ross. He hadn’t any near relatives, Ewan, and faith! they were feint the loss.

  Chris knew that some would be sore affronted she should marry so close to her father’s death, and with all the stir they intended, too. But Ewan said Damn it, you’re only married once as a general rule, and it wont hurt the old man in Kinraddie kirkyard. So when Uncle wrote down from Auchterless that he’d think black, burning shame to attend such a marriage, Ewan said he could blacken and burn till he was more like a cinder heap than a man, for all they need care.

  Chris was sorry they wouldn’t let her brothers come, but it couldn’t be helped, she wasn’t to weep for that. So they planned out a wedding they’d mind on when they grew old, ordering food enough to feed the French, as the saying went, Mistress Melon near burst her meikle face with amaze as the packages came pouring in; and she spread the story of Chris’s extravagance out through the Howe, she’d soon see the end of old Guthrie’s silver. Folk shook their heads when they heard of that, it was plain that the quean wouldn’t store the kiln long.

  When Ewan went over to see to the banns the Reverend Gibbon tried to read him a lecture about such a display so close to John Guthrie’s death. But he gave it up quick enough when Ewan began to spit like a cat and say the service he wanted was a wedding, not a sermon. Syne it grew plain they couldn’t meet so often, Ewan would have to bide at the Upperhill all the day before the marriage. Chris kissed him good-bye that evening and told him to look after himself, and herself looked after him, troubled, knowing the kind of coarse things they might try him with in the bothy. And try they did, but Ewan couped one of them into the midden and threw young Gordon into the horse-trough when that brute was trying the same on Ewan himself; so they let him be, dour devils to handle, those Highlandmen.

  And down in Blawearie next day, what with cooking and chaving and tending to beasts, and wrestling with the worry of the barn, it wasn’t half spruced for the dance, Chris might well have gone off her head if Chae and Long Rob of the Mill hadn’t come dandering up the road in the afternoon, shy- like, bringing their presents. And Rob’s was fine, two great biscuit-barrels in oak and silver; and Chae’s was from him and Kirsty, sheets and pillows, kind of Mistress Strachan, that, when you minded how the two of you’d fallen out over father ill. And when they heard of the barn they cast off their coats, Leave it to us, Chris lass, just tell’s what you want; and they set to with ladders and tow and fancy frills and worked till near it was dark, redding up the place, it looked fine as a fairy-palace in a picture-book when they finished. Chae said And who’s your musician? Chris nearly dropped through the floor with shock, she and Ewan had fair forgot about music. But Chae said it didn’t matter, he’d bring his melodeon and Long Rob his fiddle; and faith! if that didn’t content the folk they were looking for a church parade of the Gordons, not a wedding.

  Syne they bade good night to Chris, and they laughed at her, kind-like, and said This time the morn you’ll be a married woman, Chris, not a quean. Sleep sound to-night! And she laughed back and said Oh, fine that; but she blushed when Long Rob began to glint his grey eyes at her, he’d have to think of getting married himself, he said, fine it must be to sleep with a slim bit the like of herself those coldrife winter nights. And Chae said Away, Rob, feint the much sleep you’d give her!

  And then they cried their good nights again and went off, leaving Chris with such lonesome feeling as she’d seldom had, all had been done that could be done, she wanted to sleep but couldn’t sleep; and she wandered from room to room till Mistress Melon was fair upset and cried For God’s sake gang to your bed, lass, I’ll tend to the rest; if you don’t lie down you’ll look more like a bull for the butcher’s than a bride the morn. And Chris laughed, she heard her laugh funny and faint-like, and said she supposed so, and went off to her room, but not to bed. She sat by the window, it was a night that was rimed with a frost of stars, rime in the sky and rime on the earth, the Milky Way shone clear and hard and the black trees of Blawearie waved their leafless boughs up against the window, sparkling white with the hoar; and far across the countryside for hours she watched the winking of the paraffin-lights in the farmhouses, till they sank and went out, and she was left in a world that might well have been dead but that she lived. Strange and eerie it was, sitting there, she couldn’t move from the frozen flow of thoughts that came to her then, daft things she’d no need to think on her marriage eve … that this marriage of hers was nothing, that it would pass on and forward into days that had long forgotten it, her life and Ewan’s, and they pass also, and the face of the land change and change again in the coming of the seasons and centuries till the last lights sank away from it and the sea came flooding up the Howe, all her love and tears for Ewan not even a ripple on that flood of water far in the times to be. And then she found herself cold as an icicle and got to her feet and at last began to get from her clothes-strange to think that to-morrow and all the to-morrows Ewan would share her room and her bed with her.

  She thought that cool and unwarmed, still in the grip of the strange white dreaming that had been hers, looking down at herself naked as though she looked at some other than herself, a statue like that of the folk of olden time that they set in the picture galleries. And she saw the light white on the satin of her smooth skin then, and the long, smooth lines that lay from waist to thigh, thigh to knee, and was glad her legs were long from the knee to the ankle, that made legs seem stumbling and stumpy, shortness there. And still impersonally she bent to see if that dimple still hid there under her left breast, it did, it was deep as ever. Then she straightened and took down her hair and brushed it, standing so, silly to stand without her night-gown, but that was the mood she was in, somehow it seemed that never again would she be herself, have this body that was hers and her own, those fine lines that curved from thigh to knee hers, that dimple she’d loved when a child—oh, years before!

  And then a clock began to strike, it struck two, and suddenly she was in a panic to be bedded and snug and herself again; and was in between the sheets in an instant, cuddling herself to some warmth and counting how many hours it would be till morning. And oh! it was still so long!

  IT CAME IN SNOW that morning; she looked out from her window and saw it sheeting across the countryside, all silent; but still the daft peewits wheeped and wheeled against the hills, looking for the nests they’d lost in the harvest and couldn’t forget. In the race and whip of the great broad flakes the leafless trees stood shivering; but down below Mistress Melon was already at work, Chris heard the clatter of the breakfast things, it was time she herself was into her clothes, there were hundreds of things to do.

  Then she took out to the chest of drawers her under- things, there was no need to wait to change them, and looked at them, the silken vest, awful price it had been, and knickers and petticoat, vest, knickers and petticoat all of a shade, blue, with white ribbon; and they looked lovely and they smelt fine, she buried her face in the
m, so lovely they were and the queer feeling they brought her. And she changed her mind, she couldn’t wear anything now she’d be wearing when she was married, she put on her old things and her old skirt and went down the stairs; and there was Mistress Melon smiling at her, How do you feel on your marriage-morn, Chris?

  And Chris said Fine, and Mistress Melon said that was a good job, too, she’d known creatures of queans come down fair hysterical, others that just shook with fright, still others that spoke so undecent you knew fine a man’s bed was no unco place for them. She hoped Chris would be awful happy, no fear of that, and soon have a two-three bairns keep her out of longer. And Chris said You never know, and she ate her porridge and Mistress Melon hers, and they cleared the table and scrubbed the kitchen and then Chris went out and tended the beasts, the very horses seemed to guess there was an unco thing on the go, Bess nozzled up against her shoulder; and there in the barn when she peeked in it, right in the middle of the floor were two great rats, sitting up on their tails, sniffing at each other’s mouths, maybe kissing, and that was so funny, she tried not to laugh, but gave a choked gurgle and flirt! the rats were out of sight and into their holes.

  In the cornyard the hens came tearing about her, mad with hunger, she gave them meat hot from the pot and then a bushel of corn, they liked that fine. But first the little bit Wyandotte got up on the cartshaft and gave a great crow that might have been heard in the Upperhill; and he cocked a bright eye on her, first one eye and then the other, and Chris laughed again.

  She didn’t feel hurried after that, then the postman came, fell dry, they gave him a dram and he licked his lips and said Here’s to you, Chris! as blithe to drink to her health as to blacken her character. He’d brought him two parcels, one was a lovely bedspread from Mistress Gibbon of the Manse, nice of the quiet-voiced English thing, and the other from the Gordons of Upperhill, a canteen of cutlery, full enough of knives and forks and things to keep you cleaning them a week on end and not be finished, said Mistress Melon.