A Scots Quair Read online

  He hardly seemed tired even then, though, Ewan, prowling locking the doors like a great quiet cat till Chris called to him softly Oh, sit by me! So he came to the chair she sat in and picked her out of it, so strong he was, and himself sat down, still holding her. They watched the fire a long time and then Chris’s head drooped down, she didn’t know she had been asleep till she woke to find Εwan shaking her, Chris, Chris, you’re fair done, come on to bed. The fire was dying then and the paraffin had run low in the lamp, the flame swithered and went out with a plop! as Ewan blew on it; and then they were in the dark, going up the stairs together, past the room that had been Chris’s and where Mistress Melon slept for a night ere she went back to Stonehaven.

  And to Chris going up that stair holding the hand of her man there came a memory of one with awful eyes and jutting beard, lying in that room they came to, lying there and whispering and cursing her. But she put the memory away, it had never happened, sad and daft to remember that, she was tired. Then, with her hand on the door, Ewan kissed her there in the dark, sweet and wild his kiss, she had not thought he could kiss her like that, not as though he wanted her as a man might do in that hour and place, but as though he minded the song he had heard her sing. She put up her face to the kiss, forgetting tiredness, suddenly she was wakeful as never she had been, the sleep went out of her head and body and the chill with it, Ewan’s hand came over hers and opened the door.

  A fire burned bright in the fireplace, they had thought the place would be black and cold, but Mistress Melon had seen to that. And there was the bridal bed, pulled out from the wall, all in white it was, with sheet and blanket turned back, the window curtains were drawn, and in the moment they stood breathing from their climb of the stairs Chris heard the sound of the snow that stroked the window, with quiet, soft fingers, as though writing there.

  Then she forgot it, standing by the fire getting out of her blue things, one by one. She found it sweet to do that, so slowly, and to have Ewan kiss her at last when there was no bar to his kisses, lying with him then, with the light put out and the radiance of the fire on the walls and ceiling. And she turned towards him at last, whispering and tender for him, We’re daft, we’ll catch cold without anything on! and then she saw his face beside her, solemn and strange, yet not strange at all. And he put his left hand below her neck, and he took her close to him, and they were one flesh, one and together; and far into the morning she woke, and was not cold at all, him holding her so, and then she heard again the hand of winter write on the window, and listened a moment, happy, happy, and fell fast asleep till morning brought Mistress Melon and two great cups of tea to waken Ewan and herself.

  SO THAT WAS HER marriage, not like wakening from a dream was marrying, but like going into one, rather, she wasn’t sure, not for days, what things they had dreamt and what actually done—she and this farmer of Blawearie who would stir of a morning at the jangle of the clock and creep from bed, the great cat, and be down the stairs to light the fire and put on the kettle. She’d never be far behind him, though, she loved even the bitterness of those frozen mornings, and a bitter winter it was, every crack and joist of the old house played a spray of cold wind across the rooms. He’d be gone to the byre and stable as she came down and sought out the porridge meal and put it to boil, Blawearie’s own meal, fine rounded stuff that Ewan so liked. She’d leave it to hotter there on the fire and then bring the pails from the dairy and open the kitchen door on the close and gasp in the bite of the wind, seeing a grey world on the edge of morning, the bare stubble of the ley riding quick on the close, peering between the shapes of the stacks, the lights of the lanterns shining in byre and stable and barn as Ewan feeded and mucked and tended horses and kye.

  And the byre would hang heavy with the breaths of the kye, they’d have finished their turnips as she came in, and Ewan would come swinging after her with a great armful of straw to spread them in front, he’d tickle her neck as she sat to milk and she’d cry You’re hand’s freezing! and he’d say Away, woman, you’re still asleep. Up in the morning’s the thing! and go whistling out to the stable, Clyde and Bess stamping there, getting fell cornfilled and frolicsome, they more than wanted exercise. She would carry the milk back herself most mornings, and make the breakfast, but sometimes Ewan would come with her, so young and daft they were, folk would have laughed to see them at that, both making breakfast and sitting them close to eat it. Then Ewan would light his pipe when he’d done and sit and smoke while she finished more slowly; and then he’d say that he’d meat the hens, and she’d tell him not to haver, she’d do that herself, and he’d argue, maybe sulk, till she kissed him back to his senses again. Then he’d laugh and get up and get down John Guthrie’s gun, and be out and up in the moors till eleven, sometimes he’d bring a great bag and Chris would sell the spare rabbits to the grocer that came on Tuesdays.

  There was little to be done, such weather on Blawearie. Ewan tidied the barn they’d danced in, it seemed years ago since that night, and got ready plough and sock and coulter for the time when the weather would break. And then he found the bruised corn running low in the great kist there, that was his first out-going from the place since his marriage, Chris watched him go, sitting in the front of the box-cart, Clyde in the shafts, the cart loaded down with corn for the Mill, and Ewan turning to wave to her from the foot of Blawearie brae. And all that afternoon he was away she fretted from room to room, oh! she was a fool, there was nothing could happen to him! And when at last he came back she ran out to him, fair scared he was at the way she looked, and thought her ill, and when she cried she had missed him so he went white and then blushed, just a boy still, and forgot to unyoke Clyde left in the cold, he was kissing Chris instead. And faith! for the bairns of farmers both they might well have had more sense.

  But, and it crept into her mind that night and came often in the morning and days that followed, somehow that going of Ewan’s to the Mill had ended the foolishness that shut them in fast from Kinraddie and all the world, they two alone, with all the gladness that was theirs alone and her kisses the most that Ewan’d ever seek and his kisses ending days and nights, and almost life itself for her. Kinraddie came in again, something of her own cool reliance came back, the winter wore on to its close, and mid-February brought the sun, weather that might well have come out of a May. Looking out from her window as every morning still she did, Chris saw the steam of the lands below the house, it was as though the earth had swung round the fields of Kinraddie into the maw of the sun, a great furnace, and left them there to dry. The hills marched their great banners of steam into the face of each sunrise and through the whisper and wakening and shrouding of the morning came presently the moan of the foghorn at Todhead, a dreadful bellow, like a sore-sick calf, it went on and on, long after the mist had cleared, it rose and faded into the sun-dazzle overhead as great clouds of gulls came wheeling in from the sea. They knew what was toward on Kinraddie’s land, Chris heard the call of them as she went about the day’s work, and looked out on the ley field then, there was Ewan with the horses, ploughing his first rig, bent over the shafts, one foot in the drill, one the rig side, the ploughshare, sharp and crude and new, cleaving the red-black clay. The earth wound back like a ribbon and curved and lay; and the cloud of gulls cawed and screamed and pecked on the rig and followed at Ewan’s heels again.

  All over Kinraddie there were horse-pairs out, though none so early as Ewan’s, it seemed, folk had stayed undecided about the weather, they’d other things to do, they’d say, than just wait about to show off like that young Blawearie. But, when the day rose and at nine Chris set her a jug of tea in a basket, and set by it scones well buttered and jammed, and carried out the basket to Ewan wisshing up the face of the rig, Chae Strachan, far away and below, was a-bend above his plough-shafts at the tail of his team, Upperhill had two pairs in the great park that loitered up to the larch-wood, and there was Cuddiestoun’s pair, you guessed it him and his horses, though they never came full in sight, their heads
and backs just skimmed the verge of the wood and hill.

  Spring had come and was singing and rilling all over the fields, you listened and heard, it was like listening to the land new wake, to the burst and flow of a dozen burns in this ditch and that; and when you turned out the cattle for their first spring dander, in case they went off the legs, they near went off the face of the earth instead, daft and delighted, they ran and scampered and slid, Chris was feared that the kye would break their legs. She tried driving them down to the old hayfield, but the steers broke loose and held down the road, and Εwan saw them and left his plough and chased them across the parks, swearing blue murder at them as he ran; and faith! if it hadn’t been for the postman meeting them and turning them at the end of the road they might well have been running still.

  Chris had known then mazes of things to do in that bright coming of the weather, the house was all wrong, it was foul and feckless, Εwan unyoking at midday would come in and make hardly his way through the kitchen, heaped high with the gear of some room, Chris saw her long hands grow sore and red with the scrubbing she did on the sour old walls. Εwan said she was daft, the place was fine, what more did she want? And she said Less dirt; and that maybe he liked dirt, she didn’t; and he laughed Well, maybe I do, I like you right well! and put his arm round her shoulders and they stood and kissed in the mid of the heaped and littered kitchen—awful to be like that, said Chris, they could hardly be sane.

  IN MARCH THE weather broke, the rain came down in plashing pelts, you could hardly see a hand’s-length in front of your face if you ran through the close. Εwan sat in the barn, winnowing corn or tying ropes, or just smoking and swearing out at the rain. Chae Strachan came up for a talk on the second day, all in oilskins he came; and he sat in the barn with Ewan and said he’d seen it rain like this in Alaska, and the mountains move when the snows were melting. And Ewan said he didn’t care a damn though Alaska moved under the sea the morn, when would it clear on Blawearie? Munro came next, then Mutch of Bridge End, they’d nothing on their hands but watch the rain and shake their heads and swear they were all fair ruined.

  But at last it went, the unending rain of a fortnight went, and that morning they woke and found it fine, Ewan took him a look at the land from the bedroom window and prompt lay back in the bed again. Damn Blawearie and all that’s on’t, let’s have a holiday the day, Chris quean. She said I can’t, I’m cleaning the garret, and Ewan got angered, she’d never seen him angry like that before, Highland and foreign then, spitting like a cat. Are you to spend all your days cleaning damned rooms? You’ll be old and wizened and a second Mistress Munro before you’re well twenty. Off on a holiday we’re going to-day.

  And, secretly glad, she lay back, lying with her hands under her head, lazy, and looking at him, thinking how different he was from that lad she’d tramped to Dunnottar with, so close she knew him now, the way he thought and the things he liked and his kindness and slowness to take offence, and the bitter offence, how it rankled in him, once it was there! Like and not like what she’d thought and wanted in those days before they had married. Spite of their closest moments together, Ewan could still blush at a look or a touch of hers; she touched him then to make sure, and he did! He said Hold off! you’re a shameless limmer, for sure, and not nineteen yet. Come on, let’s get out and get off.

  So they raced through the morning’s work and by nine were down at the Peesie’s Knapp, and borrowed Chae’s gig and heard Chae promise to milk and take in Blawearie’s kye. Then out they drove and swung left through Kinraddie, into the Laurencekirk road, the sun shining and the peewits calling, there were snipe in a loch they passed, the North Sea was gloom-away by Bervie as the sholtie trotted south. You could see then as the land rose higher the low parks that sloped to the woods and steeple of Drumlithie, beyond that the hills of Barras, the Reisk in its hollow among its larch-woods. West of that rose Arbuthnott, a fair jumble of bent and brae, Fordoun came marching up the horizon in front of them then, and they were soon going through it. Εwan said if he bided in Fordoun he’d lay his neck on the railway line and invite the Flying Scotsman to run over it, so tired he’d be of biding in a place that looked like a barn painted by a man with nothing but thumbs and a squint in both eyes.

  But Chris liked the little place, she’d never seen it before and the farms that lay about it, big and rich, with fine black loam for soil, different from the clay of bleak Blawearie. Εwan said To hell with them and their fine land too, they’re not farmers, them, only lazy muckers that sit and make silver out of their cotters; and he said he’d rather bide in a town and wear a damned apron than work in this countryside. And then they were near Laurencekirk, the best of weather the day held still, Laurencekirk looked brave in the forenoon stir, with its cattle mart and its printing office where they printed weekly the Kincardineshire Observer, folk called it The Squeaker for short. It had aye had a hate for Stonehaven, Laurencekirk, and some said that it should be the county capital, but others said God help the capital that was entrusted to it; and would speak a bit verse that Thomas the Rhymour had made, how ere Rome–

  became a great imperial city,

  ’Twas peopled first, as we are told,

  By pirates, robbers, thieves, banditti:

  Quoth Tammas: Then the day may come

  When Laurencekirk shall equal Rome.’

  And when Laurencekirk folk heard that they would laugh, not nearly cry as they did in Drumlithie when you mocked at their steeple, or smile sick and genteel as they did in Stonehaven when you spoke of the poverty toffs. Ewan said it was a fine town, he liked Laurencekirk, and they’d stop and have dinner there.

  So they did, it was fine to eat food that another had cooked. Then they looked at the day and saw how it wore and planned to drive over to Edzell Castle—There’s nothing to see there but a rickle of stones, said Ewan, but you’ll like them fine, no doubt.

  So they did as they’d planned, the afternoon flew, it was golden and green. Under Drumtochty Hill they passed, Ewan told that in summer it came deeper with the purple of heather than any other hill in Scotland; but it hung dark and asleep like a great cloud scraping the earth as they trotted past. There was never a soul at the castle but themselves, they climbed and clambered about in the ruins, stone on stone they were crumbling away, there were little dark chambers in the angle walls that had sheltered the bowmen long syne. Ewan said they must fair have been fusionless folk, the bowmen, to live in places like that; and Chris laughed and looked at him, queer and sorry, and glimpsed the remoteness that her books had made.

  She was glad to be out in the sun again, though, clouds were racing it up from the North and Ewan said they’d not need to loiter long. In the garden of the castle they wandered from wall to wall, looking at the pictures crumbling there, balls and roses and rings and callipers, and wild heraldic beasts without number, Ewan said he was glad that they’d all been killed. But Chris didn’t laugh at him, she knew right well that such beasts had never been, but she felt fey that day, even out here she grew chill where the long grasses stood in the sun, the dead garden about them with its dead stone beasts of an ill-stomached fancy. Folk rich and brave, and blithe and young as themselves, had once walked and talked and taken their pleasure here, and their play was done and they were gone, they had no name or remembered place, even in the lands of death they were maybe forgotten, for maybe the dead died once again, and again went on. And, daft-like, she tried to tell Ewan that whimsy, and he stared at her, pushing his cap from his brow, and looked puzzled and said Ay, half-heartedly; he didn’t know what she blithered about. She laughed then and turned away from him, angry at herself and her daftness; but once she’d thought there wouldn’t be a thing they wouldn’t understand together…

  And the rain that had held away all the day came down at last and caught them on their way back home, overtaking them near to Laurencekirk, in a blinding surge that they watched come hissing across the fields, the sholtie bent its head to the storm and trotted on cannily, it g
rew dark all of a moment and Ewan found there was never a lamp on Chae’s bit gig. He swore at Chae and then drove in silence, and the wind began to rise as they came on the long, bare road past Fordoun, near lifting the sholt from its feet; and out in the darkness they heard the foghorn moaning by Todhead lighthouse. They were a pair of drookéd rats when they turned the gig into the close at Peesie’s Knapp, and Chae cried to them to come in and dry, but they wouldn’t, they ran all the way to Blawearie and the wet trees were creaking in the wind as they reached to their door.

  NOW THAT WAS THE last wet day of the Spring and to Chris the weeks began to slip by like posts you glimpse from the fleeing window of a railway train in a day of summer—light and shade and marled wood, light and shade and the whoom of the train, life itself seemed to fly like that up through the Spring, Ewan had the corn land all ploughed and sown himself almost early as was the Mains; only in the yavil did Chris go out and carry the corn for him.

  And that she liked fine, not a chave and a weariness as it was with father, Ewan brisk and cheerful with the smoulder gone from his eyes, they had settled to a clear, slow shining, it seemed to Chris, now he had his own home and wife. Then in the days of the harrowing Chris drove the harrows while he carted manure to the turnip-land, she was glad that she hadn’t that work, glad to tramp behind the horses instead, with kilted skirts, a switch in her hand and the reins there and the horses plod-plodding steadily, they knew her fine, and she spoiled them with bits of loaf and jam so that Ewan, coming to drive them himself, cried vexedly, Hold up your head from my pockets, Clyde! What the hell are you sniff-sniff- sniffing for?

  Then he went down to Stonehaven and bought a new sower and sowed the turnips; and the night he finished and unloosed and came back to the biggings for his supper, he couldn’t find Chris though he called and called. She heard him calling and didn’t answer, herself lying out in the garden under the beeches, brave and green and rustling their new Spring leaves, whispering without cease over her head that was buried in the grass while she lay and thought. A little insect ran over her hand and she hated it, but it mightn’t disturb her for this time at the least, nothing might do that, she lay so certain and still because of this thing that had come to her. She felt neither gladness nor pain, only dazed, as though running in the fields with Ewan she had struck against a great stone, body and legs and arms, and lay stunned and bruised, the running and the fine crying in the sweet air still on about her, Ewan running free and careless still, not knowing or heeding the thing she had met. The days of love and holidaying and foolishness of kisses—they might be for him yet but never the same for her, dreams were fulfilled and their days put by, the hills climbed still to sunset but her heart might climb with them never again and long for to-morrow, the night still her own. No night would she ever be her own again, in her body the seed of that pleasure she had sown with Ewan burgeoning and growing, dark, in the warmth below her heart. And Chris Guthrie crept out from the place below the beech trees where Chris Tavendale lay and went wandering off into the waiting quiet of the afternoon, Chris Tavendale heard her go, and she came back to Blawearie never again.