FOUR

Zircon

THE HILL SLOPES were rustling with silence in the glimmer of the late June gloaming as Chris Ogilvie made her way up the track, litheness put by for a steady gait. On the bending slopes that climbed ahead to the last of the daylight far in the lift the turning grass was dried and sere, a June of drought and swithering heat, the heather bells hung shrunken and small, bees were grumbling going to their homes, great bumbling brutes Chris brushed from her skirts. Halfway up she stopped a minute and rested and looked down with untroubled eyes at the world below, sharp-set and clear each item of it in that brightness before the dark came down, mile on mile of coarse land and park rolling away to the distant horizons that tumbled south to her forty years in the distant Howe.

She looked down at herself with a smile for her gear and then took to the climb of the brae again, following the windings of the half-hidden path, choked with whins and the creep of the heather since the last time men had trauchled up here. Then, greatly cupped and entrenched and stone- shielded, she saw the summit tower above her, so close and high here the play of the gloaming it seemed to her while she stood and breathed if she stretched up her hand she could touch the lift—the bending bowl of colours that hung like a meikle soap-bubble above her head.

Treading through the staying drag of the heather she made her way under the shoggle of the walls to a high, cleared space with stones about, to the mass of stone where once the astronomers had come a hundred years before to take an eclipse of the moon or sun—some fairely or other that had bothered them and set them running and fashing about and peering up at the lift and gowking, and yammering their little supposings, grave: and all long gone and dead and forgotten. But they’d left a great mass of crumbling cement that made a fine seat for a wearied body—a silly old body out on a jaunt instead of staying at home with her work, eident and trig, and seeing to things for the morn—that the morn she might get up and see to more things.

That the reality for all folk’s days, however they clad its grim shape in words, in symbols of cloud and rock, mountain that endured, or shifting sands or changing tint—like those colours that were fading swift far in the east, one by one darkening and robing themselves in their grave-clouts grey, happing their heads and going to the dark…. Change that went on as a hirpling clock, with only benediction to ring at the end—knowledge that the clock would stop some time, that even change might not endure.

She leaned her chin in her hand and rested, the crumbling stone below her, below that the world, without hope or temptation, without hate or love, at last, at long last. Though attaining it she had come a way strewn with thorns and set with pits, like the strayings of a barefoot bairn in the dark—

She’d not failed in her bargain she told herself that night in the house on Windmill Place, been glad for the man with kindness and good heart, given that which he needed and that which he sought, neither shrinking not fearing. And he’d given her a pat Ay, lass, but you’re fine, and thrust her from him, assuaged, content, and slept sound and douce, alien, remote. Her husband, Ake Ogilvie.

She bit her lips till they bled in those hours that followed, seeking not to think, not to know or heed or believe when every cell of her body tingled and moved to a shivering disgust that would not cease—Oh, she was a fool, what had happened to her that wasn’t what she’d known, expected to happen? Idiot and gype to shiver so, she’d to sleep, to get up in the morning and get on with her work, get her man’s meat ready, his boots fresh-polished, sit by his side and eat in a kitchen, watch his slobberings of drink and his mouthings of food while he took no notice of her, read his paper, laced his boots and went showding out to look for a job, a contented childe…. She’d all that waiting for her the morn, all morns: sleep and be still, Oh, sleep and be still!

And at last she lay still with memories and ghosts, Εwan with dark hair and boy’s face, Ewan beside her, Ewan from the dust, who’d thought her the wonder of God in the wild, dear daftness of early love, Ewan whom she’d loved so and hated so, Ewan—oh, little need to come now, she’d paid the debt back that he’d given for her when they murdered him that raining morning in France, paid it to the last ounce, body and flesh. And then in the darkness another came, a face above her, blue-eyed, strong-lined, only a moment as that moment’s madness between them long syne. Not in longing or lust had they known each other, by chance, just a chance compassion and fear, foolish and aimless as living itself. Oh, Long Rob whose place was never with me, not now can you heed or help me at all….

Quiet and quiet, because not that third, not look at him or remember him. And she buried her face in the pillow not to see, and then turned and waited rigid: Robert.

And she saw him for the first time since he’d died Robert completed, who’d had no face in her memory so long, Robert with eyes and face and chin and the steady light of madness in his eyes. Robert not the lover but the fanatic, Robert turning from her coughing red in sleep in that last winter in Segget, Robert with red lips as he sat in the pulpit—she stared at him dreadfully in the close-packed dark, far under her feet the clocks came chiming while she lay and looked and forgot to shiver.

Not Ake alone, but beyond them all, or they beyond her and tormenting her. And she knew in that minute that never again in memory or reality might any man make in gladness unquiet a heart passed beyond lust and love alike—past as a child forgetting its toys, weeping over their poor, shattered shapes no longer, and turning dry-eyed to the lessons of Life.

   

Ewan tramped Duncairn in search of a job—he knew it would be too expensive a job to try and fight on the apprentice’s rights which Gowans and Gloag had torn up with his agreement. No chance of winning against them, of course, they could twist any court against a Red. He told that to Chris, cheery and cool; but his coolness was something different now. Cold and controlled he had always been, some lirk in his nature and upbringing that Chris loved, who so hated folk in a fuss. But now that quality she’d likened to grey granite itself, that something she’d seen change in Duncairn from slaty grey to a glow of fire, was transmuting again before her eyes—into something darker and coarser, in essence the same, in tint antrin queer. More like his father he seemed every day, if one could imagine that other Ewan with his angers and hasty resentments mislaid…. She told him that and he laughed and teased her: Only I’m a lot better looking! and she said absently he would never be that, there was over-much bone in his face.—And what job are you thinking of trying to get?

He said he’d no idea, any old job, there’d likely not be much opening for a Red: I’m sorry to have upset your plans, you know, mother.

Chris asked What plans? and he asked with a grin hadn’t she wanted him to be respectable, genteel, with no silly notions and a nice office suit? Chris didn’t laugh, just said she hadn’t known she’d mothered a gowk: if he knew as little of the beliefs that had made him a Red as he knew of her— faith, it would be long before he and Mr Trease ruled in Duncairn.

He sat and listened to that with a smile: Faith, it’ll be long anyway, I’m afraid. And as for what you call my beliefs, they’re just plain hell—but then—they are real. And you ought to like them, you’re so much alike!

She asked what he meant, and he said Why, you’re both real, and stood up and cuddled her, laughing down at her, Ewan who’d once had no sense of humour, had he found that in torment in a prison cell? Didn’t you know you were real, Chris, realer than ever? And stepfather Ake’s pretty real as well.

   

Real? She watched through the days that followed, manner and act, gesture and gley, with a kind, quiet curiosity. Like Ewan he was tramping Duncairn for a job, she’d listen to his feet on the stairs as he went, and the stride never altered, an unhastening swing. And at evening they’d sit long hours in the kitchen, Chris sewing, him reading, hardly speaking a word, Chris because she had nothing to say, Ake because he’d no mind for claik. Then he’d drink his cocoa and look at the clock, and say Lass, it’s time we went off to bed, and off he’d go, in his socks, no slippers or shoes, she’d follow and find him winding his watch, feet apart, independent, green- eyed, curled mousered, taking a bit glance at the night-time sky. And even while they undressed he’d say no word, getting cannily into the bed and lying down. Then he’d swing over on his pillow and off to sleep without a good night or a single remark: would a man be as daft as say good night to his own wife?

And Chris as those nights went by, padding at the heels of unchanging days, slept well enough now without fears at all on that matter that had set her shivering at first, she shivered no longer, he came to her rarely, eidently, coolly; and with a kind honesty, unhurtable now, she awaited him, paying her share of the price of things, another function for the woman-body who did the cooking and attended the house while he still kept up his hunt for a job.

Kisses there were none, or caresses even, except a rare pat as she leaned over to set a plate in front of him. They said bare things one to the other: Ay, it’s clearing…. Rain in the lift…. Eggs up in price…. That’ll be Ewan….

She was finding ease who had known little.

   

The Reverend MacShilluck had never heard the like, he’d advertised for a gardening body and the morning the advertisement appeared in the Runner, the first to come in search of the job—now, who do you think the young thug was?

The housekeeper simpered and said she didn’t know: could it be the young man was an ill-doer, like?

The Reverend MacShilluck said Not only that, far worse than that, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, far worse. And the housekeeper said Well, God be here. Was the smokie to your taste? for she wanted away back to the kitchen to add up the grocer’s account for the week and see how much she could nick on the sly and save up against the day that would come when she’d be able to clear out completely and leave the clorty cuddy forever…. But he was fairly in full swing by then and went on to tell that the young man who’d come was no other than that thug Ewan Tavendale who’d led the strikers at Gowans and Gloag’s and been sacked for it, he’d been in the jail and yet had the impertinence to come looking for a job about a Manse. So the Reverend had refused him, sharp and plain, he’d seen the young brute was a typical Red, born lazy, living off doles and never seeking an honest day’s work—

The housekeeper said God be here, like that? Then he couldn’t have been seeking the job at all? And the Reverend MacShilluck gave a bit cough and said he would never trust a Red, not him; had he ever told her the tale of the way at the General Assembly he’d once choked off a Socialist, Colquohoun—shame on him, and him a minister, too! …

Miss Murgatroyd said Eh me, it was Awful, but had Mrs Colquohoun—oh, sorry, she meant Mrs Ogilvie—heard of the Dreadful Occurrence at Gawpus’s shop? And Chris said she hadn’t and Miss Murgatroyd said she didn’t know how to speak, she was sure Mrs Ogilvie would understand her point of view and that she didn’t really believe that young Mr Ewan had behaved like that. And Chris asked what was this about Ewan? and Miss Murgatroyd told her the dreadful story, just as she’d got it from that dear Mrs Gawpus that afternoon at the Unionist Ladies. It seemed that Mr Ewan had got employment in the basement of Bailie Gawpus’s shop, and oh me, it was awful to tell the rest. He’d been there only a day or so when the other workmen in the basement had started raising a din because there wasn’t a proper, you know, wc there, the Bailie had thought it would be just pampering keelies, wasn’t there the yard outside? The Bailie had gone down to see what was wrong, and then he’d set eyes on Mr Ewan, so unfortunate, for the Bailie remembered him—he had seen him when he was arrested for taking a part in that dreadful strike. Bailie Gawpus hadn’t known that Mr Ewan was one of his employees, a foreman had engaged him—such a nice man, the Bailie, but awful strict, a little stout, she was sure it was his heart—

Well, he became Such Indignant at seeing Mr Ewan, and sure that he was causing the bother, that he ordered him out of the basement at once, he was so against the Communists and the dreadful things they had done to the Common People in Russia. He told Mr Ewan he was dismissed on the spot, Such a Pity, Bailie Gawpus perhaps not as nice as he might have been—in fact, Mrs Gawpus admitted that her husband perhaps exceeded his powers, he laid hands on Mr Ewan to push him out. And then—it was dreadful, dreadful, a man old enough to be his father—Mr Ewan seized Bailie Gawpus by the collar of his coat and ran him out to the yard at the back, the Bailie almost dying of rage and heart-failure, and showed him—you know, the place that those awful basement people Used. And he asked how the Bailie would like to use it? And before the Dear Bailie could say anything at all he was down on his hands and knees and his face being Rubbed in It—feuch, wasn’t that awful? Worse still, the rest of the dreadful keelies came out from the basement and cheered and laughed and when Bailie Gawpus got up to his feet and threatened to send for a policeman Mr Ewan said there was no need to do that, he was off to get one himself and report the sanitary conditions of the place. So dreadful for the Bailie. He’d to pay up a week’s wages to Mr Ewan and promise to have a proper wc constructed; and the Bailie was just Boiling with Rage….

   

Almost every night after that weekend in Drumtochty Ellen would slip through her doorway, sly pussy-cat, and trip along to Ewan’s room, scratch on the door and be letten in, and taken and kissed and looked at and shaken, because they were mad and the day had seemed—Oh, so horribly long! And Ellen would forget the vexatious Scotch brats whom she tried to drum up the steep cliffs of learning, sour looks and old women and the stench from the drains of the Ecclesgriegs Middle, the sourly hysterical glares of Ena Lyon —everything every time in that blessed minute when inside Ewan’s door she was inside his arms, tight, arms hard and yet soft with their dark down fringe, Ewan’s face bent down to hers to that breathless moment when she thought she would die if he didn’t, in one second—oh, kiss her quick!

And he did, and her arms went up round his neck, fun, thrilly: you’d often wondered what men’s necks were for. And the two of you would stand still, so cuddled, not kissing, not moving, just in blessed content to touch, to hear the beating of each other’s hearts, each other’s breathing, know each other’s being, content and lovely, without shelter or shyness one from the other, blessed minute that was hardly equalled in all else, not even the minutes that followed it later.

But first she made tea on Ewan’s gas-ring with the kettle and teapot they’d bought together in a Saturday evening scrimmage at Woolies, China tea, Ellen kneeling to make it, having made Εwan sit and be quiet and not fuss, tired out with haunting the streets for a job. And he’d say But I’m not, and she’d say then he ought to be—Sit still and read and don’t argue. Εwan would laugh and drag down a book, silence in the room but for the gas-hiss, Ellen drowsy as she watched the bubbling gas-flame and the kettle begin to simmer and stir. Housekeeping comfy and fun, alone in a room with Εwan: though the house wasn’t theirs, nor the room, nor the furniture, nothing but a sixpenny kettle and teapot and cups and saucers at a penny a piece!

She’d glance up at him, deep in his book, and not heed the book, but only him, nice arms bare and the curve of his head, strange and dear, nice funny nose, lips too thick, like her own, brown throat—she could catalogue them forever, over and over, and know a fresh thrill every word every time—oh, damnable and silly and lovely to be in love!

And they’d drink the tea in a drowse of content and talk of his books and the men of old time, the Simple Men who had roamed the earth before Civilization came. If ever men attained that elemental simplicity again—

And Ellen would rouse: But then, what’s the use? If we don’t believe in that we’re just—oh daft, as you Scotch people say, wasting our lives instead of—And Ewan would ask Instead of what?—Saving up to get married? and laugh and hold her face firm between his hands, young rough hands, the look in his eyes that made her responses falter even while at his laugh and the thing he laughed at something denying struggled up in her, almost shaped itself to words on her lips. Sometime, surely—Oh, sometime they’d get married when the Revolution came and all was put right.

And sometimes, she’d feel just sick and desolate the way he would talk of that coming change, he didn’t expect it would come in their time, capitalism had a hundred dodges yet to dodge its own end, Fascism, New Deals, Douglasism, War: Fascism would probably outlast the lot. Ellen said that she didn’t believe that a minute else what was the good of all their struggles, what was the good of dissolving the League and both of them joining the Communist Party? And Ewan would smile at her: No good at all. Child’s play, Ellen, or so it’ll seem for years. And we’ve just to go on with it, right to the end, History our master not the servant we supposed….

He’d fall to his books again, dryest stuff, economics she never could stick, she would reach up and catch the book from him and his eyes meet hers, blank a while, cold, blank and grey, horrible eyes like a cuttle-fish’s—like the glint on the houses in Royal Mile, the glint of grey granite she thought once, and shivered. And he asked her why and she said she was silly and he said he knew that, eyes warm again, and they fooled about, struggling a little in the fading June night: and then were quiet, her head on his knee, looking out of the window at summer-stilled Duncairn, little winds tapping the cord of the blind, far off in the fall of the darkness the winking eye of Crowie Point lighting up the green surge of the North Sea night. And Ellen would say Oh, aren’t we comfy? Fun, this, he’d say nothing, just cuddle her, staring out at that light wan and lost that bestrode the sky.

In bed, beside him, breathing to sleep, the little sleep after those moments that she still thought fun, she would tickle his throat with her hair, feel sure and confident as never in the light, here in the dark he was hers unquestioned, hers and no other’s, breathing so, sweat on his brow, hair curling about her fingers from the dark, sleek head. He would stroke her with a swift, soft hand, like a bird’s light wing, into that little sleep till somewhere between two and three she would awake, he wakeful as well, and they’d kiss again, cool and neat, and slip out of bed, slim children both, and stand hand in hand and listen, all the house in Windmill Place silent. Then they’d pad to the door and lug it open and peer out, nothing, the lobby dark below, no glimmer about but faint on the landing the far ghost-radiance of Footforthie. Ewan would open her door for her, sleepily they’d hug, and yawn at each other in the dark, giggle a bit because of that, and Ellen close the door and slip into her bed, asleep before she had reached it, almost.

   

But one morning she saw his hands cut and bruised and asked why, and he said oh that was from his new job, up at Stoddart’s, the granite-mason’s, he’d been taken on there as a labourer.

The table looked at him, the first any had heard: Chris asked if he liked it, were the other folk nice?

Miss Murgatroyd simpered she was awful glad he had found Respectable Employment, like. Such Pity not to be in the office though; they were awful respectable folk, the Stoddarts.

Mr Piddle said he-he! and ate like a gull landed famished on the corpse of a whale.

Mr Quaritch cocked his wee beard to the side: You’ll be able to study the proletariat at first hand now. Tell me when you get sick of them, lad. I might be able to find something better.

Ena Lyon sniffed and said she Just Hated gravestones.

Ellen sat and stared in blank, dead silence, feeling sick and forgotten while they all talked. Oh goodness, hadn’t they heard, had they all gone deaf? Ewan—EWAN A LABOURER!

   

July came in slow heat over Duncairn, and with it the summer-time visitors. John Cushnie took his feeungsay down to the Beach every night that his mecks would meet, in to hear Gappy Gowkheid braying his jokes in the Beach Pavilion, awfully funny, Christ, how you laughed when he spoke the daft Scotch and your quean beside you giggled superior and said Say he was sure the canary’s camiknicks, she was awful clever and spoke a lot like that that she’d heard at the Talkies—though if you had mentioned her camiknicks she’d have flamed insulted right on the spot.

Or you’d take her down of a Wednesday afternoon, when Raggie’s had closed, birring on the tramcars loaded for the Beach, wheeling out from Footforthie, there glimmering and pitching and reeling in the sun the Amusements Park with its scenic railway, Beach crowded with folk the same as the cars, you and your quean would sit and listen to the silly English that couldn’t speak proper, with their ’eads and ’ands and ’alfs and such. Then off you’d get and trail into the Amusements Park, you’d only a half-dollar but you wouldn’t let on, your feeungsay was so superior and you only the clerk in Raggie Robertson’s. She was fairly gentry and said how she’d enjoyed her holiday away with her Girl Friend, they’d gone for a week out in the country, and the farmers were awful vulgar and funny. And you said Yes, you knew, hicks were like that, and she said You’ve spilt it—with their awful Scotch words: Tyesday for Tuesday, and Foersday for Friday, and no proper drainage at all, you know. And you said again that you knew; she meant there weren’t real wc’s but rather would have died than say so right out.

So you asked if she’d like the scenic railway, and she said It’s okay by me, on you got, she screamed and grabbed you and the hair got out from under her hat, you were awful proud of her but wished to hell she wouldn’t scream as though her throat were chokeful up of old razor blades, and clutch at her skirt, and skirl Oh, stop! Christ, hadn’t she legs like other folk and need she aye be ashamed of them? So you gave her a bit grab about the legs and she screamed some more and hung on to you: but when the ride finished she was real offended and said she wasn’t that kind of girl, Don’t try and come it fresh on me.

You said you were sorry, so you were, and were just trying to make it up with her when she saw her friend and cried Cooee, Ena! and the quean came over, all powder and poshness, and who should it be but Miss Ena Lyon that you’d known at the lodgings in Windmill Place. She said she was just having a stroll about, and no, she hadn’t a boy with her. And your quean giggled, and Miss Lyon giggled and you felt a fool, queans were like that; and as you followed them into the tea-tent you wished a coarse minute they’d stop their damned showing-off and be decent to a chap that was treating them—wished a daft minute you’d a quean who didn’t care about Talkies and genteelness or was scared at her legs being touched or her feelings offended—one that would cuddle you because she liked it, liked you, thought her legs and all of herself for you, and was douce and sweet and vulgar and kind—like a keelie out of the Cowgate…. Christ, it must be the sun had got at you!

Your quean and Miss Lyon were at it hell for leather talking about their holidays and where they had bade, and how much they paid for digs in Duncairn. And Miss Lyon said she thought she’d move hers, the landlady had once been a minister’s widow but now she had married an Awful Common person, a joskin just, that lorded it about the place and wasn’t a bit respectful at all. Worse than that, though, the landlady’s son was a Red…. You said that you’d known that, that’s why you’d left, Raggie Robertson was dead against the Reds…. And your quean said Don’t be silly. Go on, Ena.

And Miss Lyon said that another of the lodgers was a schoolteacher, Red as well, and she was sure there were Awful Things between them. She’d heard—and she giggled and whispered to your quean and you felt yourself turn red round the ears, what were the daft bitches gigg-giggling about? And your quean made on she was awful shocked and said she wouldn’t stay there a minute, the place was no better than a WICKED HOUSE, just.

Miss Lyon said that she’d got no proof, of course, and your quean mustn’t say anything, and your quean said she wouldn’t but that Ena could easily get proof and show up the two Reds and then leave the place. And then you all talked together about the Communists, coarse beasts, aye stirring up the working class—that was the worst of the working class that they could be led astray by agitators, they’d no sense and needed to be strongly ruled.

You told the queans that but they didn’t listen, they were giggling horrified to each other again, your quean said What, did you really hear the bed creak? and Miss Lyon said Yes, twice, and their faces were all red and warmed up and glinting, they minded you suddenly of the faces of two bitches sniffling round a lamp-post, scared and eager and hot on a scent…. But you mustn’t think that, they were real genteel.

For your quean was the daughter of a bank-clerk in Aberdeen and Miss Ena Lyon’s father had been a postmaster, some class, you guessed, you didn’t much like to tell them yours had been only the hostler at the Grand Hotel, what did it matter, you were middle-class yourself now and didn’t want ever to remember that you might have been a keelie labourer—Christ, living in some awful room in Paldy, working at the Docks or the granite-yards, going round with some quean not genteel like yours but speaking just awful, Scotch, no restraint or knowing how to take care of herself, maybe coming into your bed at night, smooth and fine and kissing you, cuddling you, holding you without screaming, just in liking and kindness…. Your quean asked Whatever’s come over you, red like that? and you said Oh, nothing, it’s stuffy in here.

And home you all went on the evening tram, your quean and Miss Lyon sitting together and your quean telling Miss Lyon what fine digs she had, the landlady so respectful, a perfect old scream: and Ena should wait about tonight and catch the two Reds and show them up, and then leave the place and come bide with your quean.

And Miss Lyon said that she would, too, she was sick of the place, anyhow—the dirty beasts to act like that, night after night…. And they giggled and whispered some more and for some funny reason you felt as though you’d a stone in your gall, sick and weary, what was the use?—what was the use of being middle-class and wearing a collar and going to the Talkies when this was all that you got out of it? And your quean, whispering some direction to Miss Lyon, turned round and said Don’t listen a minute, and you nearly socked her one in the jaw—och, ’twas the summer night’s heat that was getting you.

   

Chris’s roses were full and red in bloom, scentless and lovely, glowing alive in the Sunday sun as she herself came out to the little back garden. Εwan and Ellen were out there already, their backs to the house, one kneeling one standing, their dark hair blue in the sunlight, young, with a murmur of talk and laughter between them. And she saw indeed they were children no longer, Ellen a woman, slim, a slip of a thing, but that pussy-cat dewiness lost and quite gone, Ewan with the stance and look and act of some strange species of Gallowgate keelie who had never hidden or starved in a slum and planned to cut all the gentry’s throat, politely, for the good of humankind…. And Miss Ena Lyon was no doubt right in all she had said: Chris must tell them somehow.

But standing looking at them she knew that she couldn’t, not because she was shamed to speak of such things to either but because they were over-young and happy to have their minds vexed with the dirty sad angers of Miss Ena Lyon, poor lass. She’d never had a soul slip into her room of a night, maybe that was the reason for her awful stamash about Ellen and Ewan exchanging visits…. She’d bade up last night, she had told to Chris, and waited on the stairs to confirm her suspicions. And sure enough it had happened again, oh, Disgusting, at Eleven o’clock Miss Johns slipping into Mr Tavendale’s room. And she couldn’t stay on any longer in a place like this, it was no better than a Brothel, just.

Chris had looked at her in a quiet compassion and said there was no need to stay even a week, she’d better pack and get out at once. Miss Lyon had stared and flushed up raddled red: What, me that’s done nothing? You’ve more need to shift those—

She’d called them a dirty name, Chris had said without anger You’ll pack and be gone in an hour; and left her to that and gone down to the kitchen and shortly afterwards heard a tramping overhead as Miss Lyon got her bit things together—thrown out of her lodgings for trying to keep keelies respectable.

Working in the kitchen with Jock the cat stropping himself up against her legs, Chris had thought that funny for a moment, then it wasn’t, she’d have to ask the two what they meant to do. And she thought how awful it was the rate that things tore on from a body’s vision, only a year or so since she’d thought of Ewan as a little student lad, her own, jealous when he talked to the pussy-cat: and now she’d have to ask him when he meant to marry!

So she’d made the oatcakes and scones all the lodgers cried for, Ake had come swinging in from outbye, out to buy his bit Sunday paper, no collar, his boots well-blacked, his mouser well-curled, he’d sat down and eaten a cake while he read. Chris had brought him some milk though he’d said he’d get it for himself, he’d taken to saying that kind of thing, queer, though she’d paid it little attention, looking at him quiet and friendly, just, this business of getting a job was a trauchle. She’d asked was there any sign of work and he’d said not a bit in the whole of Duncairn, and folded back his paper and looked up at her with green-glinting eyes as he drank his milk! A job? Devil the one. And I’m thinking I know the reason for that.

Chris had asked What reason? and he’d said Jimmy Speight, no doubt he’d sent a message all round Duncairn to the joiners and timber-merchants and such, warning them against employing Ake. Chris had said that surely he’d be feared to do that seeing that Ake knew the scandal about him, Ake had shaken his head, Ay, but he’d promised never to use that knowledge again and Jimmy knew that he’d keep the promise, a body must keep a promise made even to a daft old skate like the Provost.

And then he’d said something that halted Chris: I’m sorry, mistress, that I drove you to marrying me.

Chris had said Why, Ake! in surprise, and he’d nodded: Ay, a damn mistake. Queer the daft desires that drive folk. I might well have known you’d never mate with me, you’d been spoiled in the beds of ministers and the like. I’d forgotten that like an unblooded loon.

Chris had stood and listened in a kind surprise, beyond fear of being startled or hurt any more by any man of the sons of men who brought their desires their gifts to her. She’d said she’d done all she could to make them happy, and Ake had nodded, Ay, all that she could, but that wasn’t enough, och, she wasn’t to blame. Then he’d said not to fash, things would ravel out in time, he was off for a dander round the Docks.

So he’d gone, leaving Chris to finish the cooking and set the dinner and watch the taxi drive up and take away Miss Lyon’s luggage, a pile of it, and hear the cabman ask if she shouldn’t have hired a lorry instead? And Miss Lyon had said she wanted none of his impudence, she’d had enough of that already, living in a brothel. Chris had started a little, overhearing that, but the cabman just said Faith now, have you so? Trade failing that you’re leaving? and got in and drove off.

And now, the pastry browning fine and Jock the cat purring away, Chris had come out to the noon-time yard to ask Ellen and Ewan what they meant to do over this business of sleeping together without the kirk’s licence and shocking Miss Lyon.

But the picture they made took that plan from her mind, she saw now what it was they were laughing about, they’d gotten in the baby from over next door, the bald-headed father had been left in charge and had wanted to mow his lawn awful bad and the bairn had wakened up in its pram and started a yowl, frustrating the man: till Ellen looked over and said Shall I? And he’d handed it over, all red and thankful, and now Ellen squatted by the rose-bush, the bairn in her lap and was wagging a bloom in front of its nose. And the bairn, near as big and bald as his father, was kicking his legs, gurgling, and burying his nose and mouth in the rose, sniffing, and then kicking some more in delight. And Chris saw Ewan looking down at the two with a look on his face that made her stop.

Not the kind of look at all a young man should have given his quean with a stranger’s bairn—a drowsy content and expectation commingled. Instead, Ewan looked at the two cool and frank, amused and a little bored, as he might at a friend who played with a kitten….

And Chris thought, appalled, Poor Ellen, poor Ellen!

  

Gowans and Gloag’s had quietened down after the strike, the chaps went back and said to themselves no more of listening to those Communist Bulgars that got you in trouble because of their daftness, damn’t, if the Chinks and the Japs wanted to poison one the other, why shouldn’t they?—they were coarse little brutes, anyhow, like that Dr Fu Manchu on the films. And wee Geordie Bruce that worked in Machines said there was nothing like a schlorich of blood to give a chap a bit twist in the wame. But you, though you weren’t a Red any longer, said to Geordie that he’d done damn little bloodletting against the bobbies; and Norman Cruickshank took Wee Geordie’s nose and gave it a twist, it nearly came off, and said Hey, sample a drop of your own. Christ, and to think it’s red, not yellow!

You took a bit taik into Machines now and then for a gabble with Norman on this thing and that, the new wing they’d built, called Chemicals, where the business of loading the cylinders with gas was to start in another week or so. Already a birn of chaps had come from the south with a special training for that kind of work, Glasgow sods and an Irishman or so. You and Norman would sneak out to the wc for a fag, and you’d ask if Norman had seen anything of Ewan? And Norman would say he’d seen him once or twice at meetings of the Reds down on the Beach, he’d fairly joined up with the Communists now and spoke at their meetings—daft young Bulgar if ever there was one, and him gey clever and educated, Bob.

You said rough enough that you knew all that, and Norman looked at you queer and said Oh of course, you yourself had been a bit of a Red a while back and belonged to that league that Tavendale had raised. Why had you scuttled? Got the wind up?

You took him a smack in the face for that, he was at you in a minute, you couldn’t stand up to him, the foreman came running in and pulled you apart: Hey, what the hell do you think this is? Boxing gymnasium? Back to your work, you whoreson gets. And back you both went, b’God you’d given the mucker something to think of, saying that you had the wind up—you!

It was just that you’d seen the Reds were daft, a chap that joined them never got a job, got bashed by bobbies and was sent to the camps, never had a meek to spend of a night or a shirt that didn’t stick to his back. Och to hell! You wanted a life of your own, you’d met a quean that was braw and kind, she and you were saving up to get married, maybe at New Year and maybe a bit sooner, you’d your eyes on two rooms in Kirrieben, the quean was a two months gone already but you’d be in time if your plans came off; and you weren’t sorry a bit, you’d told her, kissing her, she’d blushed and pushed you away, awful shy Jess except in the dark. So who’d time at all for this Red stite and blether that never would help a chap anyway, what was the use of getting your head bashed in for something worse than religion?

But that evening you and some of the chaps had a bit of overtime in the works, clearing up the mess of some university loons allowed down to potter about in Castings. You finished gey late and as you came out there was some kind of meeting on at the gates, a young chap up on a kind of platform, speaking low and clear, who could he be? And you and the rest took a dander along, a fair crowd around, Broo men and fishers, stinking like faeces, and a dozen or so of the toff student sods that had messed about that evening in Castings. The toffs were laughing and crying out jokes, but the young chap wasn’t heeding them a bit, he was dressed in old dungarees, all whitened, a chap from the granite-works, no doubt, with big thick boots and red rough hands. And only as you got fell close did you see that the speaker was young Ewan Tavendale himself.

He was saying if the workers would only unite—when one of the university toffs made a raspberry and called Unite to give you a soft living, you mean? Ewan said Quite, and you a hard death, we’ll abolish lice in the Communist state, and then went on with his speech, quick and cool, the students started making a rumpus and some of the fishers gave a bit laugh and started to taik away home at that, quiet old chaps that didn’t fancy a row. But Norman Cruickshank called out to Ewan to carry on with his say, would he? they’d see to the mammies’ pets with the nice clean collars and the fat office dowps. And Norman called to the Gowans’ chaps: Who’ll keep order?

Most of the others cried up that they would, you didn’t yourself but taiked away home, you’d your quean to meet and were going that night to look at a bit of second-hand furniture in a little shop in the Gallowgate. Only as you turned the bend of the street you looked back and saw a fair scrimmage on, the whey-faced bastards down from the colleges were taking on the Gowans chaps, you nearly turned and ran back to join—och, you couldn’t, not now, mighty, what about Jess? And you started to run like a fool, as though feared—feared at something that wasn’t yourself, that leapt in your heart when you looked at Ewan.

   

Jim Trease said that was one way of holding a meeting, not the best, you should never let a free fight start at your meetings unless it was well in the heart of a town, with plenty of police about and folk in hundreds and a chance of a snappy arrest or so, to serve the Party as good publicity.

Ewan said Yes, he knew, but he’d taken the opportunity to stir up antagonism between the Gowans chaps and students. Deepening the dislike between the classes. Obvious enough that the day of the revolutionary student was done, he turned to Fascism or Nationalism now, the fight for the future was the workers against all the world. Trease nodded, a bit of heresy there, but true enough in the main. Anyhow, there was no great harm done, Εwan had barked his knuckles a bit, he’d better come up to the Trease house in Paldy and get them iodined. And maybe he’d like a cup of tea.

Εwan said he would and folded up his platform, the fight was over and the students had gone, chased up the wynds by the Gowans men. But Norman Cruickshank came panting back: All right, Ewan? and Ewan said Fine. Thanks to you, Norman. When’ll I see you?

—I don’t know, but to hell—sometime. Never heard anybody speak about things as you used to do in the Furnaces. And he asked what Ewan was doing now and Ewan told him he was a labourer at Stoddart’s, and Norman said Christ, what a job for a toff, and Ewan said he wasn’t a toff, just a worker, and Norman said tell that to his grandmother: only, where would they meet again? So they fixed that up, Trease standing by, big and sonsy, with the twinkle in his little eyes and his shabby suit shining in the evening light.

Mrs Trease held out a soft hand and said Howdedo? … Jim, I’m away out to the Pictures. See and not start the Revolution without me, there’s two kippers in the press if you’d like some meat, the police have been here this afternoon and the landlord’s going to give us the push. That’s all. Ta-ta. Trease gave her a squeeze and said that was fine, so long as nothing serious had happened; and told her to see and enjoy the picture, who was the actress? Greena Garbage? Well, that was fine; and gave Mrs Trease a clap on the bottom, out she went, Ewan standing and watching. And Trease came back and smiled at Ewan, big, creased: Ay. Think her a funny bitch?

Ewan said No, she seemed all right, was she a Communist as well? Trease gave his head a scratch, he’d never asked her, he’d aye been over-busy, her as well, moving from this place and that, chivvied by the bobbies, her ostracized by the neighbours and the like, never complaining though, canty and cheery—they’d had no weans and that was a blessing.

Ewan nodded and said he saw that, there wasn’t much time for the usual family business when you were a revolutionist. And Big Jim twinkled his eyes and said No, for that you’d to go in for Socialism and Reform, like Bailie Brown, and be awful indignant about the conditions of those gentlemanly coves, the suffering workers. And Ewan grinned at him, he at Εwan, neither had a single illusion about the workers: they weren’t heroes or gods oppressed, or likely to be generous and reasonable when their great black wave came flooding at last, up and up, swamping the high places with mud and blood. Most likely such leaders of the workers as themselves would be flung aside or trampled under, it didn’t matter, nothing to them, THEY THEMSELVES WERE THE WORKERS and they’d no more protest than a man’s fingers complain of a foolish muscle.

And Trease made the tea and they cooked the kippers and had a long chat on this and that, not the revolution, strikes or agitprop, but about skies and stars and Ewan’s archæology that he’d loved when he was a kid long ago, Trease knew little or ought about it though he’d heard of primitive communism. He said he misdoubted they’d ever see workers’ revolution in their time, capitalism had taken crises before and would take them again, it was well enough organized in Great Britain to carry ten million unemployed let alone the two and a half of today, Fascism would stabilize and wars help, they were coming, the wars, but coming slow.

Ewan said he thought the same, for years it was likely the workers’ movements would be driven underground, they’d to take advantage of legality as long as they could and then prepare for underground work—perhaps a generation of secret agitation and occasional terrorism. And Trease nodded, and they left all that to heed to itself and Trease sat twinkling, his collar off, and told Ewan of his life as a propagandist far and wide over Scotland and England, agitprop in Glasgow, Lanark, Dundee, the funny occurrences that now seemed funny, they’d seemed dead serious when he was young. He’d tramped to lone villages and stood to speak and been chased from such places by gangs of ploughmen—once taken and stripped and half-drowned in a trough; he’d been jailed again and again for this and that petty crime he’d never committed, and in time took the lot as just the day’s work; he’d been out with Connolly at Easter in Dublin, an awfully mismanaged Rising that. But the things he minded best were the silly, small things—nights in mining touns when he’d finished an address to a local branch and the branch secretary would hie him away home to his house: and Trease find the house a single room, with a canty dame, the miner’s wife, cooking them a supper and bidding them welcome: and they’d sit and eat and Trease all the time have a bit of a worry on his mind—where the hell was he going to sleep?: and the miner would say Well, look this way, comrade, and Trease would hear a bit creak at the back of the room—the miner’s wife getting into bed: and he and the miner would sit and claik the moon into morning and both give a yawn and the miner would say Time for the bed. I’ll lie in the middle and you in the front: and in they’d get and soon be asleep, nothing queer and antrin in it at all, not even when the miner got up and out at the chap of six and left you lying there with his mate, you’d as soon have thought of touching your sister.

And Ewan laughed and then grew serious and spoke of his work in the Stoddart yard, he was raising up something of a cell in the yard, could Jim dig out a bundle of pamphlets for him? They’d all been Labour when he went to Stoddart’s, but already he’d another four in the cell. Trease said he’d give him pamphlets enough, Stoddart’s was a place worth bothering about, how long did Ewan think he would last before he was fired by the management? Ewan said he thought a couple of months, you never could tell, damned nuisance, he was getting interested in granite. And that led him on to metallurgy, on and on, and Trease sat and listened and poured himself a fresh cup of tea now and then … till Ewan pulled himself up with a laugh: Must clear out now. I’ve been blithering for hours.

But Mrs Trease came back from the Talkies and wouldn’t hear of it, Jim would need a bit crack and a bit more supper, she thought there was some cheese. Greena Garbage had been right fine, cuddled to death and wedded and bedded. Would Ewan stir up the fire a little and Jim move his meikle shins out of the way? Ta-ra-ra, ’way down in Omaha—

Trease twinkled at Ewan: That’s what you get. Not revolutionary songs, but Ta-ra-ra, ’way down in Omaha. Mrs Trease said Fegs, revolutionary songs gave her a pain in the stomach, they were nearly as dreich as hymns—the only difference being that they promised you hell on earth instead of in hell.

And Ewan sat and looked on and spoke now and then, and liked them well enough, knowing that if it suited the Party purpose Trease would betray him to the police tomorrow, use anything and everything that might happen to him as propaganda and publicity, without caring a fig for liking or aught else. So he’d deal with Mrs Trease, if it came to that…. And Ewan nodded to that, to Trease, to himself, commonsense, no other way to hack out the road ahead. Neither friends nor scruples nor honour nor hope for the folk who took the workers’ road; just life that sent tiredness leaping from the brain; that sent death and wealth and ease and comfort shivering away with a dirty smell, a residuum of slag that time scraped out through the bars of the whooming furnace of History—

And then he went out and home through the streets, swinging along and whistling soft, though he hardly knew that till he heard his own wheeber going along the pavement in front, the August night mellow and warm and kind, Duncairn asleep but for a great pelt of lorries going up from the Fishmarket, the cry of a wakeful baby somewhere. And he smiled a little as he heard that cry, remembering Ellen and her saying that Communism would bring a time when there would be no more weeping, neither any tears…. She was no more than a baby herself.

A bobby stopped in a doorway and watched him go by: there was something in that whistle that was bloody eerie, a daft young skate, but he fair could whistle.

   

It was plain to Chris something drastic must be done to reorganize the house in Windmill Place. With Cushnie first gone and syne Ena Lyon and Ake still seeking about for a job she’d have to get new lodgers one way or the other. But the price Ma Cleghorn had set on the house had made it for folk of the middle-class, except such rare intruders as Ake—and he’d come in search of her, she supposed, much he’d got from the coming, poor wight.

She asked Neil Quaritch when he came to tea, he looked thinner and stringier and tougher than ever, a wee cocky man with a wee cocky beard, pity his nose was as violent as that. Lodgings?—he’d ask some of the men in the Runner. Especially as they might never see Mr Piddle again.

Chris said Why? and Neil licked his lips and thought Boadicea probably looked like that. She’d strip well—and damn it, she does—for Ogilvie. Then he pushed his cup over for replenishing, they were sitting at tea alone, and told the tale about Mr Piddle that had come up to the office as he left. Mrs Ogilvie knew this side-line of Piddle’s?—sending fishing news to the Tory Pictman? Well, he’d been gey late in gathering it to-day, doing another side-line down in Paldy, prevailing on a servant lassie there to steal him the photo of an old woman body who had hanged herself, being weary with age. Back at last he’d come to the office, he-he! photo in hand and all set fine, and looked at the clock and saw he’d a bare three minutes to tear down the Mile and reach the train at the Station in time. So he flittered down the stairs like a hen in hysterics and got on his bike and tore up the Mile, and vanished from sight, the Runner subs leaning out from their window and betting on the odds that he’d meet that inevitable lorry right now—it was an understood thing that he’d die under a lorry some day, and be carted home in a jam-pot.

Well, it seems that he reached the Station all right, the lorries scattering to right and left and Piddle cycling hell for leather, shooting through the taxi-ranks at the Station and tumbling into the arms of a porter. And the porter asked who he thought he was, Amy Mollison doing a forced landing? Piddle said He-he! and dropped his bike and ran like the wind for the Pictman train, he knew the platform for it fine, he’d to run half-way up to the middle guard’s van.

Well, he rounded into No. 6 platform and gave a bit of a scraich at the sight, the Pictman train already in motion and pelting out of Duncairn toun. It was loaded up with Edinburgh students, clowning and playing their usual tricks, a bit fed up with their visit to Duncairn, they’d been leaning out to shout things to the porters when Mr Piddle came hashing in sight, head thrust out like a cobra homing like hell to the jungle with a mongoose close on his tail. And they gave a howl and started to cheer, Mr Piddle running like the wind by now to reach the middle brake. The guard looked out and yelled to him to stop, he’d never make it and do himself a mischief. But the van was chockablock with students, they pushed the guard aside, a half-dozen of them, and thrust out their hands, Piddle thought that fine, if only he could get near enough to hand up the Pictman packet to them. And at last, bursting his braces and a half-dozen blood-vessels, or thereabouts, he got close in touch—down came the hands, the students all yelled, and next minute Piddle was plucked from the earth and shot, packet and all, into the guard’s van. And then the train vanished with a howl of triumph, an express that didn’t stop till it got to Perth.

Chris sat and laughed, sorry for Mr Piddle though she was, poor little weasel howked off like that. Then Ewan came in and heard the tale and laughed as well, ringing and hearty, no boy’s laugh any longer, Neil thought—far from that lad who’d once thought those silly happenings to folk had little or nothing of humour in them. Damned if one liked the change for all that, a difficult young swine to patronize, growing broader and buirdlier, outjutting chin and radiating lines around the eyes—Quaritch knew the face on a score of heads, he’d seen them on platforms, processions, police courts, face of the typical Communist condottiere, cruel and pig-headed and unreasonable brutes with their planning of a bloody revolution tomorrow when Douglasism were it only applied and the maze of its arguments straightened out would cure all the ills that there were of our time: the only problem was distribution, manufacture and function couldn’t be bettered.

*

It was as though a great hand had battered, broad-nieved, against the houses that packed Footforthie. Windows shook and cracked, the houses quivered, out in the streets folk startled looked up and saw the lift go suddenly grey. Then, belly-twisting, the roar of the explosion.

Folk tore from their houses and into the streets, pointed, and there down by Gowans and Gloag’s in the afternoon air was a pillar of fire sprouting a blossoming to the sky, it changed as you looked and grew black and then green, blue smoke fringe—Christ, what had happened? Next minute the crowd was on the run to the Docks, some crying the fire had broke out in a ship, but you knew that that was a lie. And John—Peter—Thomas—Neil—Oh God, he was there, in Furnaces, Machines—it was and it couldn’t be Gowans and Gloag’s.

Then, rounding into the Dockside way you found the place grown black with folk, bobbies there already crying to keep back, forward the left of the Works like a great bulging blister, a corral of flame, men were running out from Gowans clapping their hands to blackened faces, some screaming and stitering over to the Docks to pitch themselves in agony into the water. And as they did that the blister burst in another explosion that pitched folk head-first down on the ground, right and left—Forward, against the green pallor of the Docks, a rain of stone and iron stanchions fell.

And out of the sunset, and suddenly, the lift covered over with driving clouds.

.   .   .   .   .

The Tory Pictman got the news from Duncairn over the telephone, clear-the-line, from Mr Piddle he-heing! like fun: all about the charred bodies, the explosion, the women weeping, the riot that broke out against the Gowans house up in Craigneuks when their windows were bashed in by Reds. And the Pictman printed a leader about it, full of dog Latin and constipated English, but of course not Scotch, it was over-genteel: and it said the affair was very regrettable, like science and religion experiment had its martyrs for the noble cause of defending the State. The treacherous conduct of extremists in exploiting the natural grief of the Duncairn workers was utterly to be deplored. No doubt the strictest of inquiries would be held—

.   .   .   .   .

The Reverend Edward MacShilluck preached from his pulpit next Sunday and said the catastrophe was the Hand of Gawd, mysteriously at work, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, my brethren, what if it was a direct chastisement of the proud and terrible spirit of the times, the young turning from the Kirk and its sacred message, from purity and chastity and clean-living? And Craigneuks thought it a bonny sermon, and nearly clapped, it was so excited; and the Reverend MacShilluck went home to his lunch and fell asleep when he’d eaten it and woke with a nasty taste in his mouth and went a little bit stroll up to Pootsy’s room, and opened the door and peeped in at her and shoggled his mouth like a teething tiger—

.   .   .   .   .

Jim Trease said to Ewan they hadn’t done so bad, twenty new members had joined the local, damn neat idea that of Ewan’s to have the Gowans windows bashed in. Ewan was to take Kirrieben for the weekend meetings, he himself Paldy and Selden Footforthie. And be sure and rub in the blood and snot well and for God’s sake manage a decent collection, he’d be getting in a row with the ec in London, they were so far behind with the Press contribution.

Eh? Of course the Works had been well-protected, that kind of accident would happen anywhere. But Ewan had been right, that was hardly the point, he could rub in if he liked that there had been culpable negligence…. Eh, what was that? Suggest it had all been deliberately planned to see the effect of poison-gas on a crowd? Hell! Anyhow, Ewan could try it. But for Christ’s sake mind about the collection—

.   .   .   .   .

Alick Watson said in his barrack-room: See what’s waiting us in the next war, chaps? Skinned to death or else toasted alive like a winkle in front of a fire, see? And the rookies said Christ, they all saw that, what was there to be done about it? And Alick said to organize and stick up for their rights, would they back him today down in the mess if he made a complaint about the mucking meat? They could force they sods to feed them proper, no fear of that if they’d stick together, no need to knuckle-down to the bloody nco’s. And if a war came and the chaps in the companies were well-organized: what the hell could the officers do to them then?

.   .   .   .   .

Norman Cruickshank lay in the hospital and didn’t say a word, quiet and unmoving, half of his face had been eaten away by the flame.

.   .   .   .   .

Jess would never see Bob again. She thought at his graveside, decent in her black, Young Erchie’s been awful kind to me. Maybe the furniture me and Bob’s bought will do if he’s really serious, like…. But she mustn’t think of that, even with her Trouble, poor Bob that had been so kind and sensible even though he’d once mixed with those dirt, the Reds—

.   .   .   .   .

Ellen Johns said, sick, it was horrible, horrible, but, Ewan, you know that that was a lie. It was sickening of you to suggest that they let loose the gas deliberately…. Ewan, it’s just cheating, it’s not Communism!

.   .   .   .   .

Chris had said But, Ake, why are you leaving me?

He’d tapped out his pipe by the side of the fire, Just for what I’ve said, mistress: I want a change. So I’ve ta’en on the job of ship’s carpenter, on the Vulture, bound for Newfoundland. That’s all about it.

She’d said But it wasn’t all; what was this stuff about not coming back? And at that the Ake Ogilvie of Segget had awakened, a minute, as he told her why: that he’d never had a minute since his marriage day when he was a free and happy man, aye knowing how she looked on him, thought of him—oh aye, she’d done her best, he knew, it was just that the two of them never should have wed, You were made for somebody different from me, God knows who, neither me nor Colquohoun. But it’s been like hell, we just can’t mix. Lass, do you think I haven’t seen you shiver over things another woman would laugh at or like?

She’d said that that was just foolishness, she’d liked him well and had aye done so. And he’d said she looked bonny standing there, trying to be kind. It was more than kindness he’d once hoped to get; and now they’d speak of the soss no more.

And he’d told her his plans, he was off in three days, and he’d maybe write her, had he anything to write about, when he got to Newfoundland or Canada. He thought of crossing over Canada and taking a look at Saskatchewan, plenty of work there for a joiner, he’d heard. Of what money he made he’d let her have half.

Chris had said quiet she wouldn’t have that, if they parted she’d no need to live off him, they parted for good and all—if at all.

And Ake had nodded, Ay, that would be best.

So, watching from the doorway as he went this last morning, she minded in pity and smiled at him, kind. He hoisted the case on his shoulder and nodded, Well, I’ll away. Ta-ta, mistress.

Her heart was beating high in her breast and her throat felt tight so that hardly she could speak: and all that meant little enough, as she knew. If she tried even now she could keep him by her—who would soon have so few to fall back upon. But he wasn’t for her, she for any man, they’d each to gang their own gait.

She’d finished with men or the need for them, no more that gate might open in her heart, in her body and her soul, in welcome and gladness to any man. Quick and quick in the flying months she passed with hasting feet over ways that once had seemed ever-lasting: the need not only for a lover’s caresses, but the need for anyone’s liking, for care, kind words and safe eyes…. That dreadful storm she’d once visioned stripping her bare was all about her, and she feared it no longer, eager to be naked, alone and unfriended, facing the last realities with a cool, clear wonder, an unhasting desire. Barriers still, but they fell one by one—

She stared from the doorway, standing still, motionless, almost the last sight Ake saw, it twisted his heart and then left it numb. Ay, a strange quean, yon. And not for him. He’d thought that glimmer in her eyes a fire that he himself could blow to a flame; and instead ’twas no more than the shine of a stone.

   

Ewan at last had been fired from Stoddart’s he told to Ellen as they drove from Duncairn in the little car they’d hired for the weekend. Ellen had hired it and sat aside now while Ewan took the wheel and a reckless road through the lorry traffic of Kirrieben in the whistling spatter of December snow. She’d been deep in thought: on the road, on herself, on the week-end that waited them in that inn in Drumtochty. Now she started: Oh Lord, what’ll you do now?

He said he hadn’t the ghost of a notion, something or other, and whistled to himself, dark and intent, growing tall, still slim, with the mouth that was losing its lovely curves, growing hard and narrow she suddenly thought: dismissed that thought—he was just Ewan still.

And some time she’d tell him. But not tonight.

For a while Ewan drove without saying more. Topping the Rise the storm had cleared, the snow no more than an inch or so thick scarred with the passing of buses and lorries, a lorry came clanging to meet them, chains on, and once the little car caught on a slide and skidded and galumphed a wiggling moment till Ewan’s hands switched it into line again. Up here the full blow of the wind was upon them; behind, down in its hollow, Duncairn was a pelting scurry of flakes, browny white as smoke rose to snow and commingled and presently drew down a veil, capped with darkness in the early sunset, over the whitening miles of grey granite. Forward the country wavered and shook, no solid lines as they held the road, a warm, birring dot, tap-tap the hardened flakes on the shield. Ellen snuggled up closer to Ewan and he reached out a hand and gave her a pat and nodded thanks as she put a cigarette between his lips. She lit it and then said Goodness, we’re comfy. Wish we’d a car like this of our own.

He said he’d have to get Selden’s job for that: and he doubted if it would be as easy next time! She asked what on earth he was talking about and he steered through a drifting drove of cattle, head down to the storm, drover behind, and didn’t answer her for a moment. Then he asked her hadn’t she heard the news?—oh no, she hadn’t been down to the Communist local for nearly a couple of weeks, lazy thing. The point is that Selden’s bunked with the funds.

—Selden? With the funds of the Party?

—Every cent, and there was a decent amount. I thought it risky to have him treasurer, and so did Trease, but he’d got in well with the ec in London. Cleared us out to the very last copper.

She said the man was a beast, it was filthy; but Εwan had started his whistling again, hardly heeding her, only the road and the car, he said Selden had shown a lot of sense in waiting till the local had a spot of coin. Been sick of unemployment and his wife wasn’t well—her that used to be Chris’s maid—remember?

—You speak as though you might do the same.

He laughed at that, cheerfully, I’m a Communist. And fell to his whistling again, but soberly. And when he next spoke there was steel in his voice, the steel of a cold, unimpassioned hate: I could tell long ago that Selden would rat; you can tell a rat easily among revolutionists—yeasty sentiment and blah about Justice. They think they’re in politics or a parlour game.

And what did he himself think it was? But she didn’t ask, didn’t want to hear more, wanted to forget Duncairn and all in it and that dreadful paper they had made her sign. And Ewan drove as though he owned the road and all the Howe and half of December and had specially arranged the storm effects, the storm coming rolling down from the Mounth and pelting across the grey fields in wan tides, now snow, now sleet, once, curling and foaming, combers of hail. The shrouded farms cowered in by their woods, here and there a ploughman wrapped to the ears went whistling up to the end of a rig, the lapwings flying, Lost; lost! their plaint above the wheel and fall of the snow.

Ellen drowsed against Ewan’s sleeve, and woke and looked out, they were past Auchinblae going down into the Glen of Drumtochty, here no snow fell, far in the lift Drumtochty rose with its firs going climbing to the racing clouds. She said Remember that day there, Ewan? and told him to be careful, he’d nearly turned the car in a ditch, kissing her, he laughed, he’d remembered as well, something like a shadow went over his face, not from it, and a moment she saw again the shamed hurt boy whom she’d loved, still loved, deeper and madder and worse than ever.

The landlady said God be here, they’d expected no visitors on New Year’s Eve, but they both were welcome. If they’d wait a while she’d stir up those sweir meikle bitches the maids and see that a room was set in order. Och, she minded the two of them fine back in May and she’d known another thing though she’d never letten on—that the two of them had been on their honeymoon. Wasn’t that true?

Ellen said it was, but the landlady was looking at Ewan, hardly heard, she said he’d take a bit dram with her?—and his good lady too, maybe?

So they sat and had their dram, all three, and the landlady and Ewan were at it in a minute, gossip that somehow left Ellen out, though she didn’t know how, she was just as interested in floods and storms and hens and chickens and farm boys as Ewan was (and once a lot more). But as always with the working people everywhere, however she dreamed of justice for them, flamed in anger against their wrongs, something like a wall of glass came down cutting her off from their real beliefs, the meanings in tones and intonation, the secret that made them bearable as individuals. But Ewan had now the soap-box trick of pretending to be all things to all kinds of keelies—That was damn mean and wasn’t true, there was no pretence, he was all things—sometimes, frighteningly, it seemed to her that he was the keelies, all of them, himself.

But they were served a warm supper ben in the parlour and sat there thawing in front of a fire, resin-spitting, curling bright amber flames up the wide lum, it whoomed in the blasts of the storm driving night, hunted, down through Drumtochty. Sometimes the whoom in the lum would still, then roust and ring as though the storm going by beat a great bell in the low of the lift. And Ellen felt happy and content again, sleepy as a cat, a little bit like one: and something a moment touched through to Εwan, a hand from other days, other nights, queerly. He said You’re thinner, you were always slim, but plump in a way as well that time we climbed the Barmekin. She shook her head, she was just the same, only horribly sleepy, was he coming now?

He went to the window and looked out at the storm, solid in front of the inn it went by, speckled in the lights, a great ghost army hastening east, marching in endless line on line, silent and sure; and he thought a minute Our army’s like that, the great lost legion, nothing to stop it in heaven or hell; and that thought lit him up a little moment till he closed it away in impatient contempt. Bunk symbolism was a blunted tool.

So he said he’d look in at the bar a minute, and sent Ellen to bed: looked a tired kid. When he got up the stairs in a half-hour or so the house was shaking in every gust, the candle-flame leaped as he opened the door, Ellen lying in bed in silk nightie, pretty thing, drowsy, she said Hurry, it’s cold.

But soon it wasn’t, the candle out, the lights from the fire lay soft in the room, he said Warm now? and she said That was fun: remember the first time I said that? And she laid her head in the hollow of his arm sleeping the New Year in.

  

The storm was over when they woke next day, breakfast ready and a tramp in the snow to follow, they climbed to the top of Cairn o’ Mount, bare ragged and desolate under the snow, no exaltation of the storm left; around them, mist- draped, the jumble of hills. It seemed to Ellen the most desolate place that God ever made, and she hated it.

But Ewan said one could think up here and sat on a stone and filled his pipe, and dusted the stone clear of snow: Sit down. I’ve something to ask you.

She sat down and cuddled up close to his shoulder and said if the question was if she still loved him, the answer was in the affirmative, worse luck. And did he know he was, oh damnably thrilling?

He said Listen, Ellen. About the Party. Why haven’t you been to the meetings of late?

She watched a puff of wind come over the snow, ruffling it like an invisible snake, nearer and nearer, and caught her breath, if it didn’t reach them—for a luck, a sign…. It blew a white dust over her hands.

She said quietly as him Just because I can’t, or I’d lose my job.

He said Oh, and knocked out the pipe and filled it again with the cheap tobacco, his suit was frayed and the coat collar shiny, she saw, sitting away from him: funny she had never noticed these things before…. What’s happened, then?

She laughed and caught his shoulder Ewan! Don’t use that tone to me! EWAN!

His face was a stone, a stone-mason’s face, carved in a sliver of cold grey granite. You might as well tell me.

Suddenly frightened she stared at him, and told him she couldn’t do anything else. The Education Authority had got to hear and had put the choice plainly enough. She’d to sign a paper saying she’d take no more part in extremist activities and stop teaching the children—what she’d been teaching them. Oh, Ewan, I couldn’t help it!

—Does that mean you’ve left the Party as well as left off attending its meetings?

And then anger came on her: Yes, I’ve left the Party! And it wasn’t only that. I’ve left because I’m sick of it, full of cheats and liars, thieves even, look at Selden, there’s not one a clean or a decent person except you and perhaps Jim Trease. And I’ve left because I’m sick of being without decent clothes, without the money I earn myself, pretty things that are mine, that I’ve worked for…. Oh, Ewan, you know they’re hopeless, these people—the keelies remember you used to call them?—hopeless and filthy; if ever there’s anything done for them it’ll be done from above, not by losing onself in them…. Oh, can’t you see?

He nodded, not looking at her. And colour came back into Ellen’s cheeks—oh, he was going to understand! She leaned forward and told him all that she planned: he would get away from ridiculous jobs, Mr Quaritch had promised to find him another. They could save up like anything and get married in a year or so, have a dinky little flat somewhere in Craigneuks. Even that car down there at the inn—it had been hired with her money, hadn’t it? Well, they’d soon get one of their own, you couldn’t have any fun without money. And it needn’t mean they must give up social work completely, there was the Labour Party—

He stood up then, dark and slim, still a boy, and brushed her off carefully, and the snow from his knees: Go to them then in your comfortable car—your Labour Party and your comfortable flat. But what are you doing out here with me? I can get a prostitute anywhere.

She sat still, bloodless, could only whisper: Ewan!

He stood looking at her coolly, not angered, called her a filthy name, consideringly, the name a keelie gives to a leering whore; and turned and walked down the hill from her sight.

   

The extremists were getting out of hand again said the Daily Runner in a column and a half; and Duncairn was the centre of their sinister activities. There had been several strange and unexplained phenomena in the blowing up of the new wing of Gowans and Gloag’s: and though no definite charge might be laid at any door hadn’t there been similar occurrences abroad inspired by the Asiatic party of terrorism? And what had followed within a few months of the explosion?—a soldier of the North Highlanders arrested and court- martialled for circulating seditious literature in the barrack- rooms—an ex-employee of Gowans and Gloag’s. He had been dealt with with the severity appropriate to his case, but behind the muddled notions of Private Watson what forces were aiming at the forcible overthrow of Society and suborning the loyalty of our troops? It was true the soldiers had no sooner become aware of the contents of the leaflets than, with admirable promptitude, they had seized the culprit and marched him off to the guard-room. The tales of the barrack-room riots in his defence might be discounted as malicious gossip….

And here the sub-editor who wrote the leaders stopped and scratched his head in some doubt and stared at the Spring rain pelting Duncairn and streaming from the gutters of the grey granite roofs. He wondered a moment what had really happened when the furniture was smashed in two barrack- rooms and five rounds issued to the NCO’S? Better cut out that bit and keep bloody vague. Something about the absolute and unswerving loyalty of our Army and Navy throughout the hundreds of years of their history? What about Parker and the Mutiny at the Nore? Or, closer in memory, the Navy at Invergordon? Or the Highlanders in France? … Better miss it all out. Some blah about the bloody hunger-march now—

… In civil affairs the same state of things, culminating in the organizing of this hunger march down through Scotland and England to London. Hunger—there was none anywhere in Duncairn. For their own ends extremists were deluding the unemployed into the privations of a march that would profit them nothing, a march already disowned by official Labour—

.   .   .   .   .

Bailie Brown said Ay, B’God that was right, the Labour Party would have nothing to do with it: if the unemployed would wait another three years and put the Labour Party back in power, their troubles would all be solved for them. But of course it was no class party, Labour: wasn’t it Labour had instituted the Means Test? It stood for a sound and strong government, justice for all, peace and progress, sound economy and defence of our rights…. And hurrying to the police court at ten o’clock he sentenced two keelies to two months a-piece, for obstructing the police near the Labour Exchange, and to show the low brutes what Reform would be like—

.   .   .   .   .

 The Reverend MacShilluck said straight from the pulpit we could see the mind of Moscow again, deluding our unemployed brothers, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, why didn’t the Government take a stern stand and put down these activities of the anti-Christ? The unemployed were fully provided for and the Kirk was here to guide and to counsel. Straitened means and times were the test-gauge of God….

And he wondered what Pootsy would have for lunch; and finished the service and got into the car and drove home, the streets shining white in the rain. And he let himself into the Manse, rubbing his hands, and called for the woman to come take his coat. But he heard no reply, the place sounded empty; and he couldn’t find her ben in the kitchen or yet upstairs or yet in the sitting-room. In the dining-room he came on his desk smashed open and gaping, the Kirk fund gone, and where had the silver gone from the sideboard? But there in the middle of the desk was a note: I’ve cleared off at last and taken my wages—with a little bit extra as a kind of a tip for sticking your dirty habits so long. Just try and prosecute and I’ll show you up so you can’t show your face anywhere in Duncairn—

.   .   .   .   .

In Paldy Parish and the Gallowgate, in Kirrieben, Eccles- griegs and Lower Footforthie, folk stood and debated with a bit of a laugh this hunger march that the Reds were planning. And those that had jobs said Christ, look out, they’re just leading you off to get broken heads, they don’t care a damn for themselves or any other, the Communionists, the sods aren’t canny. And those that hadn’t jobs said Maybe ay, maybe no. Who got the pac rates raised if it wasn’t the Reds, tell us that?

Not that you were a Red, Christ, no, you had more sense, and you wouldn’t be found in this daft-like March, you hadn’t the boots for it for one thing. And the wife said Mind, Jim … or Sam … or Rob … you’re not being taken in by this coarse March of the Reds, are you now? And you said to her Away to hell. Think I’ve gone gyte?; and took a stroll out, all the Gallowgate dripping and drookèd, most folk indoors but chaps here and there nipping in and out of the wynds and courts, what mucking palaver was on with them now?

Then, afore you could do a sneak back and miss him, there was Big Jim Trease bearing down upon you, crying your name, he’d been looking for you as one of the most active and sure of the chaps. The March wouldn’t be a march unless you were in it to stiffen the backbone of the younger lads. And you said To hell, you hadn’t any boots; and he said that they’d be provided all right and wrote your name down in a little book, and you saw Will’s there and Geordie’s and Ian’s and even old Malcolm’s—Christ, you could go if they were going; and it was true what Big Jim said, you wanted a pickle of the older men to put some guts in the younger sods—

.   .   .   .   .

And in and out through the courts and wynds and about the pubs all through that last week were Trease and that mad young devil Εwan Tavendale, prigging with folk and taking down names and raising the wind to buy chaps boots. The bobbies kept trailing after them, the sergeant called Feet and a couple of constables, who the hell were they to interfere? They’d never let up on young Tavendale since he’d shown up the explosion at Gowans and Gloag’s as the work of the Government testing out gas to see its effect in a crowded shed. So you guarded him and Trease in a bit of a bouroch, a bodyguard, like, wherever they went, young Tavendale whistling and joking about it, a clever young Bee—and Christ, how he could fight! They said he was a devil with the queans as well, though you hadn’t heard that he’d bairned one yet.

.   .   .   .   .

Trease said the last afternoon to Ewan that he’d better get home and put in a bit sleep, he’d want it afore setting out the morn to tackle the chave of the march down south, the windy five hundred miles to London. Lucky young devil that he was to be going, Trease wished it was him that was leading the March, but the ec had given its instructions for Ewan and intended keeping him down there in London as a new organizer—right in the thick…. And for God’s sake take care on the line of march to keep the sods from straying or stealing or raising up trouble through lying with queans, they’d find the Labour locals en route were forced to give them shelter and help, never heed that, never heed that, rub it well in through all the speeches that the workers had no hope but the Communist Party.

Ewan said with a laugh that Jim needn’t worry, rape Labour’s pouches, but not its wenches, he’d got that all fixed; well, so long, comrade. You’ll lead us out with the band tomorrow? And Trease said he would, and then So long, Ewan, and they shook hands, liking each other well, nothing to each other, soldiers who met a moment at night under the walls of a town yet unstormed.

   

The workmen from Murray’s Mart had come up and bade in the house all the afternoon tirring the rooms of their furniture. Chris had made the two men each a cup of tea, they’d sat in the kitchen and drank it, fell grateful: You’ll be moving to a smaller house, then, mistress? Chris said Yes, and leaving Duncairn, and the older man gave his bit head a shake when he heard the place she was moving to. He doubted she’d be gey lonely, like. He was all for the toun himself, he was.

Now, in the early fall of the evening, Chris went from room to room of the house, locking the doors and seeing the windows were snibbed up against the beat of the wind. The floors sent up a hollow echo to her tread, in Miss Murgatroyd’s room a hanky lay in a corner, mislaid, she’d be missing it the morn and maybe sending for it. She’d said Eh me, she was Such Sorry that the place was breaking up, but maybe for the best, maybe for the best, she’d be Awful Comfortable in her new place she was sure. And would Mrs Ogilvie take this as a Small Bit Present? And this for young Mr Ewan, if he’d have it?—two Awful Nice books about the ancient Scots, such powerful they were in magic, Mr Ewan had once read the books and So Liked them.

Chris closed that door and went ben the corridor, to Archie Clearmont’s, and peeped in a minute; he’d flushed, standing in that doorway, trunk behind him: I say, I’m damnably sorry to leave. Given you a lot of trouble, often. I say—and flushed again, looking at her. And Chris had known and smiled, known what he wanted, and kissed him, and watched him go striding away, and thought, kind, Nice boy; and forgotten him.

Nothing in here, nor in Mr Quaritch’s, except the pale patches along the walls where his books had rested, still the fug of his pipe. He’d said You were never meant for this, anyhow. Mind if I ask: Is your husband coming back? Chris had shaken her head and said No, they had separated, Ake was settling in Saskatchewan. And Neil had fidgeted and then proposed, she could get a divorce, he had some money saved, get a decent house and he wouldn’t much bother her. When she shook her head he gave a sigh: Well, luck go with you if you’re not for me.

Mr Piddle hadn’t bidden good-bye at all, he’d brought a cab and loaded in his goods, and gone cycling off in the rear of it, head down, neck out, without a He-he! And, queer, that had hurt Chris a bit she found—that the funny thing couldn’t have said good-bye. The cracked pane in his window was winking in the light from the lamps new-lit outside as she looked round his room; then closed it and locked it. That was the lot. Oh no, there was one.

So she climbed up the stairs and stood in that, the room above her own, next to Ewan’s, half-dark and quite empty but for its shadows. It had had no lodger a three months now, Ellen Johns herself had never come back from that week-end she’d gone away with Ewan: Ewan himself had come back mud-splashed as though he’d been walking the roads like a tink. And then next day a messenger had come with a little note, asking Mrs Ogilvie if she’d pack Ellen’s things, Ellen was too busy to come herself and here was a week’s pay in place of notice. And she hoped Mrs Ogilvie would be awfully happy….

Chris had ceased wondering on that long ago; but now, going down to the kitchen where Ewan sat and the fire was whooming and the supper near ready, she minded it as in an ancient dream. As she closed the door Ewan looked up, he’d been deep for hours in papers and lists, marking off items of marching equipment, addresses, routes, notes for speeches: Chris had looked over his shoulder earlier and seen the stuff and left him a-be. But now, with that distant stare upon her, she asked if he’d ever seen Ellen since then?

He said Seen whom? and looked blank, and then shook his head. Not a glimpse. Why?

Chris said Oh nothing, she’d just wondered about her; and Ewan nodded, forgetting them both, finishing his lists while she laid the supper, the house unquiet without furnishing, filled with rustlings and little draughts. Then she called Ewan to supper and they ate in silence, night without close down on Duncairn.

He said suddenly and queerly The Last Supper, Chris. Will you manage all right where you’re going?

She said that he need have no fear of that, she was going to what she wanted, the same as he was going. And they smiled at each other, both resolute and cool, and Chris cleared the table and re-stoked the fire and they sat either side and watched the fire-lowe and heard the spleiter of the wet on the panes. And Ewan sat with his jaw in his hand, the briskness dropped from him, the hard young keelie with the iron jaw softening a moment to a moment’s memory: Do you mind Segget Manse and the lawn in Spring?

Chris said that she minded, and smiled upon him, in pity, seeing a moment how it shook him, she herself beyond Such quavers ever again. But his thoughts had gone back to other things in Segget: that day that Robert had died in the kirk—did Chris mind the creed he’d bade men seek out, a creed as clear and sharp as a knife? He’d never thought till this minute that that was what he himself had found—in a way, he supposed, Robert wouldn’t have acknowledged, a sentimentalist and a softie, though a decent sort, Robert.

Chris stirred the fire, looking into it, hearing the Spring wind rising over Duncairn, unending Spring, unending Spring! …. Rain tomorrow, Ewan said from the window, rotten for the march, but they’d got those boots. Then he came and sat down and looked at her, and asked her, teasing, of what she was dreaming. She said Of Robert and this faith of yours. The world’s sought faiths for thousands of years and found only death or unease in them. Yours is just another dark cloud to me—or a great rock you’re trying to push up a hill.

He said it was the rock was pushing him; and sat dreaming again, who had called Robert dreamer: only for a moment, on the edge of tomorrow, all those tomorrows that awaited his feet by years and tracks Chris would never see, dropping the jargons and shields of his creed, thinking again as once when a boy, openly and honestly, kindly and wise:

There will always be you and I, I think. Mother. It’s the old fight that maybe will never have a finish, whatever the names we give to it—the fight in the end between freedom and GOD.

   

The night was coming in fast Chris saw from her seat on the summit of the Barmekin. Far over, right of Bennachie’s ridges, a gathering of gold cloud gleamed a moment then dulled to dun red. The last of the light would be going soon.

Alow her feet, under the hills, she could see the hiddle of Cairndhu, all settled for the night as she’d left it, the two kye milked and the chickens meated, her corn coming fine in the little park that ran up the hill, its green a jade blur in the soft summer light. Tomorrow she’d be out to tackle the turnips, they were coming up fairly choked with weed.

At first they’d been doubtful about letting her the place, doubtful of a woman body at all. But they’d long forgotten her father, John Guthrie, and the ill ta’en in which he had flitted from Echt twenty-three years before. To them she was just a widow-body, Ogilvie, wanting to take on the coarse little place that hadn’t had a tenant this many a year. She’d moved in early in the April, setting the house to rights, working till she near bared her hands to the bone, scrubbing it out both but and ben, the room where she herself had been born, the kitchen where she’d sat and heard her mother, long syne, that night the twins were born…. And sometimes in the middle of that work in the house or tinkling a hoe out in the parks she’d close her eyes a daft minute and think nothing indeed of it all had happened—Kinraddie, Segget, the years in Duncairn—that beside her Will her brother was bending to weed, her father coming striding peak-faced from the house, she might turn and see her mother’s face…. And she’d open her eyes and see only the land, enduring, encompassing, the summer hills gurling in the summer heat, unceasing the wail of the peesies far off.

And the folk around helped, were kind in their way, careless of her, she would meet them and see them by this road and gate, they knew little of her, she less of them, she had found the last road she wanted and taken it, concerning none and concerned with none….

Crowned with mists, Bennachie was walking into the night: and Chris moved and sat with her knees hand-clasped, looking far on that world across the plain and the day that did not die there but went east, on and on, over all the world till the morning came, the unending morning somewhere on the world. No twilight land anywhere for shade, sun or night the portion of all, her little shelter in Cairndhu a dream of no-life that could not endure. And that was the best deliverance of all, as she saw it now, sitting here quiet—that that Change who ruled the earth and the sky and the waters underneath the earth, Change whose face she’d once feared to see, whose right hand was Death and whose left hand Life, might be stayed by none of the dreams of men, love, hate, compassion, anger or pity, gods or devils or wild crying to the sky. He passed and repassed in the ways of the wind, Deliverer, Destroyer and Friend in one.

Over in the Hill of Fare, new-timbered, a little belt of rain was falling, a thin screen that blinded the going of the light; behind, as she turned, she saw Skene Loch glimmer and glow a burnished minute; then the rain caught it and swept it from sight and a little wind soughed up the Barmekin. And now behind wind and rain came the darkness.

Lights had sprung up far in the hills, in little touns for a sunset minute while the folk tirred and went off to their beds, miles away, thin peeks in the summer dark.

Time she went home herself.

But she still sat on as one by one the lights went out and the rain came, beating the stones about her, and falling all that night while she still sat there, presently feeling no longer the touch of the rain or hearing the sound of the lapwings going by.

   

THE END OF
a scots quair

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