BOOK TWO. CHAPTER EIGHT

Although papa had not told me directly I was to have no more lessons from the dominie, I was well aware he knew that I knew his wishes on the matter. I felt guilty and apprehensive, therefore, as I hurried to the schoolhouse the next day; but Julia had pleaded with me to go. I think she expected he would make me the bearer of his answer to her letter.

‘He’ll have to tell me, Julia, what I know already,’ I said to her, ‘that papa doesn’t want me to have any more lessons from him.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she had replied.

‘And I’ll have to pretend to be surprised, Julia, and look as though I hadn’t known.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she had said again, and in the next breath prayed me to go.

The dominie was not in the schoolroom when I arrived, which perplexed me, for neither Julia nor I had thought of such an eventuality. I wondered if I were later than usual, for I had met no children on the brae, returning home from school, yet I knew I had set off at the customary time on the hall clock. I sat on a bench trying to puzzle out what I should do next while I totted up all ways the half-finished sum the dominie had chalked on the blackboard. Nothing is more depressing than an empty schoolroom. The one in which I sat wore a dingy, deserted look as though the children who had last conned lessons there had been of a generation ago and no one had entered it since.

When a quarter of an hour passed, I realised that the dominie was not returning to the schoolroom that afternoon and that, if I wanted to see him, I must go to his house. My footsteps echoed hollowly as I walked down the room. Usually the schoolroom door was open and the door of the house shut, like a rebuff. To-day, however, I had had to push the schoolroom door a-jar and the door to the house was open wide to all comers. I hesitated for a moment, then put out my hand to knock on it when I gave a violent start.

‘Whit we feel regret aboot, Mr MacDonald,’ came the voice of Simon Fraser from within, so distinctly I might have been in the room with him, ‘is that ye didna tak’ us into your confidence to the extent o’ telling us ye were a Roman Catholic’

‘It is not a question of excluding you from my confidence, Mr Fraser,’ I heard the dominie reply, his voice shaking with perturbation, ‘that I never knowingly did. I was not to know that what was natural as breathing to me would be unnatural to you. Never for a moment did I dream there would be antagonism because I was a Catholic.’

‘It’s a peety, Mr MacDonald, that ye hadna tauld us at the beginning and tested oor antagonism then.’ I knew it was Naughton, the mole-catcher and elder, who spoke; he was an insignificant-looking man with a secretive smile always lurking on his lips.

‘Mr Naughton,’ it was the dominie speaking again, ‘do you want me to understand that you think I purposely concealed telling you I was a Catholic?’

‘Na, na, Mr MacDonald,’ I heard Naughton hurriedly retract, and add lamely, ‘but it is a peety, and a peety’s a peety.’

‘I cannot allow it to be said that I came here, determined to be dominie and so concealed the fact I was a Catholic. Not only from Mr Naughton, but from all here, I have the impression that is what is thought.’ There followed a silence in which the very house seemed to join. ‘I have a right to say there was nothing to hide and I hid nothing. After all, you only conceal what you are ashamed of, do you not? You are all proud of your religion; I, too, am proud of mine.’

‘If that’s the case, Mr MacDonald, the sooner ye gang the better and the sorrier we are ye came.’ When I heard the tones of Gow, the farmer, I realised each of the four elders would be within: Simon Fraser and Naughton, Gow, who despite his fair spade beard had the face of a beautiful woman, and MacLeod, the gamekeeper, a swarthy, hirsute man.

‘Mebbe it is as weel,’ MacLeod now said reflectively; ‘ye sit up unco late at nicht.’

‘And what has that to do with it?’ came the dominie’s astonished voice.

‘Aweel, it doesna gie a place a guid name,’ Simon Fraser put in.

‘Only on Wednesday,’ Gow informed them, ‘MacLean from Maragdow, on the ither side o’ the loch, said to me at the market, passing-like, “Your dominie canna be o’er wide-awake for his scholars of a morning.”’

‘Onywey, if ye hadna been going,’ came Fraser’s voice again, ‘we had meant to say to ye that we thocht ye were wasting o’er muckle o’ your ain and the bairns’ time telling them so muckle aboot floors.’

‘They can see floors ony day,’ said some one else.

‘And ye havena gi’en the tawse ainse syne ye’ve been here.’

‘It’s no natural-like for bairns na to need the tawse.’

‘I mind saying at the verra beginning afore Mr MacDonald came,’ MacLeod remarked, ‘that we werena gi’en near lang enow to think it a’ o’er. We only had twa days to mak’ oor decision, ye mind, no counting the Sabbath.’

‘It was ye, Naughton, wha wanted things settled in a hurry. Ye mind, when I bespoke for ma cousin, ye said it would be o’er lang for us to wait until he could come frae Aberdeen to see us.’

‘I thocht it a peety, Fraser, the bairns should lose ony mair days’ schooling.’

‘Weel, it’s been a peety, Naughton, a grave peety, for noo they’ll lose mair in the end. It’s a guid thing for us ma cousin has na been fixed by one ither body.’

‘Aweel, Fraser, stikkit meenisters aften have deeficulty in finding poseetions for themsel’s.’

‘It’s no a case o’ deeficulty, Naughton; it’s a case o’ Providence working for us.’

‘We had better be for telling Mr MacDonald when we want him to gang,’ pointed out Gow.

‘We canna gie ye langer than Monday, Mr MacDonald,’ declared Simon Fraser, ‘for I have written telling ma cousin to come wi’ a’ his gear on the Tuesday coach.’

‘I understand.’

‘Then we will bid ye guid-day.’

I heard their heavy tramp across the floor. There was nowhere I could hide outside, nor had I time to run away or the presence of mind to pretend I was only arriving. Panic seized me. Before I realised what I was doing, I found myself pressed between the wall and the open door.

I saw them, through a crack in the door, file past, so near to me and real that I felt faintly sick. MacLeod’s broad back, clothed in hairy raploch, brought up the rear.

‘We micht have kent,’ I heard him say, ‘no to have ta’en a MacDonald.’