BOOK TWO. CHAPTER NINE

The house was very still after they left, so still that the rasp the door made as I drew myself from behind it sounded like a screech. I waited, my heart beating unevenly, for the noise to summon the dominie into the passage, but he did not stir. For one moment before I turned and fled, I saw into the room in which he stood, his back towards me. It was a bare room, as though he had not yet unpacked, and was filled with the loud ticking of a wag-at-the-wa’ clock which, as its pendulum jerked its shadow across the wall, seemed to be making up frenziedly for lost time.

I ran from the schoolhouse, my footsteps hurrying after me. As I mounted the brae, I saw Emmy and Julia, Emmy’s full skirt swinging like a bell, disappear into Mrs Wands’ cottage. They had not noticed me, and when I came to the cottage door I tapped softly.

Mrs Wands’ kitchen was dark when I entered, as though it were dusk outside, for the rafters were low, the window was tiny and the sun had moved round to the gable-end of the cottage. Shadows tottered on the walls, great misshapen shadows of the hams hanging from the rafters, the hook of the swee and the back of a chair, like instruments of torture. They shifted over the old woman in the bed, who stirred as I entered, moving her head on the bolster to see who I was.

‘So it’s ye, come ben, come ben,’ she welcomed me. ‘I was juist saying to your sisters that it’s a lang day syne I’ve seen ony o’ ye. Ay, it’s been a lang winter. The lambs arena guid this year for the winter’s been so hard the sheep are lean. Eh, Miss Julia, ye’ll ne’er guess wha sat on yon chair afore ye.’

We thought of all manner of people to please her, from Dr Malcolm to the Marquis’s grieve, but at each wrong guess she cried out with gratification, ‘Na, na, na him,’ until Emmy suddenly clapped her hands and guessed the Marquis himself.

‘Na him, but his wife,’ she said with high delight, and went on, lowering her voice as though her Grace might hear, ‘and the Lord hasna made her better looking than ony ither body although He has made her a Marchioness.’

‘And what did she say to you?’ Emmy asked excitedly.

‘She sat on yon chair, juist as Miss Julia’s doing noo, and speired frae me this and that and hoo lang I had been leeing here, and shook her heid when I tauld her and said, “Ah me” aince or twice. So I juist said to her I could see and hear as mony a one half ma age couldna. And then she said, “Mistress Wands, I believe ye have a verra nice piece o’ china and I wunnered if ye would gie it to me and I would mak’ it weel up to ye.”’

‘What piece of china did she mean, Mrs Wands?’

‘It was the auld blue dish o’ ma graundmither’s she meant—I mind Mr Urquhart when he cam’ ben last summer turning it upside doon to read something on its foot. I said I was sorry she couldna have it as I kept ma butter in it, and she said she would bring me anither dish, a better dish for ma butter wi’ na so mony corners to it. But I tauld her ma butter wouldna taste the same somewey oot o’ ony ither dish than ma grannie’s. She left soon aifter that,’ she finished reminiscently.

‘I’m glad she came and not the Marquis,’ Emmy said discursively. ‘They say she’s nicer than he is. He used to ogle mamma most disgracefully in Princes Street in Edinburgh.’

‘I’ve only seen him aince, when he gave the baptism stane to the kirk, and I thocht to masel’ no a’ the baptism stanes in Christendom will keep ye oot o’ hell. But he comes o’ a guid family, e’en supposing they did get a’ their land by murdering ither folk. But they’re in a sad way these days whit wi’ thirlages and debts. When ma graundfaether was alive, they had four castles in a’, and noo they have but twa. Ay, ay, there’s na muckle laund to earl it o’er noo. But whit wi’ her veesit and a’ this strumash o’er the dominie, I havena kent which side to lee on.’

‘What have you heard about the dominie?’ inquired Julia, her passivity suddenly wakening into interest.

‘I’ve been hearing things aboot him, on and aff, a’ winter,’ she answered. ‘I mind saying to ye when ye were here afore that he was unbekent, na like ither folk, and that’s whit ither folk began to feel aboot him.’

‘How do you mean “not like other people”?’ Emmy asked curiously.

‘Weel, Miss Emmy, he did things ither folk wouldna or couldna do. I’ll tell ye a thing he did that I saw wi’ ma ain een. It was one day when Dookit was awa’—the day ye gave your picnic, Miss Julia, wi’ your freends frae Dormay. Ian MacPhee had caught some trout in the burn and on his way hame he cam’ ben and left me wi’ twa. The dominie cam’ o’er to see me a meenit aifter Ian and said he would cook the fish for me. I saw him gut them in the twinkling o’ an e’e. They were lifeless as stanes when he put them in the pan but na sooner had he turned his back and afore they began e’en to sizzle, they lepit in the air like live things and fell on to the floor. I tell ye, I wouldna have eaten yon trout if it was to cost me ma life.’

‘But, surely, Mrs Wands,’ Julia protested impatiently, ‘you don’t think the dominie made the trout jump out of the pan when he was not even touching it?’

‘I’ve seen trout cooked a’ the days o’ ma life, Miss Julia, and I’ve ne’er seen them behave like yon trout. They say he casts spells o’er folk as well as o’er things—o’er the bairns to keep them quiet and o’er ithers wha arena ignorant like bairns.’ Her eyes sought ours and dwelt on Julia.

‘That is nonsense,’ Emmy said briskly; ‘people don’t cast spells nowadays.’

‘If they could cast them in the past, Miss Emmy, whit’s to hinder them doing it still? I think he cast one o’er me, for when folk cam’ ben here during the winter, telling me this and that aboot him, many’s the time I oped ma mouth to say he was a Roman Catholic and I ne’er yet foond the words.’

‘But the dominie was always so quiet,’ persisted Emmy, ‘the last person, I would have imagined, to be whispered about and have stories hung round him.’

‘When folk are as quiet as him, Miss Emmy, there’s something hid in them. They say his licht was always the last to gang oot in Barnfingal and some nichts he went oot and walked by himsel’ amang the hills and didna come hame till the early oors o’ the morning.’

‘But really, Mrs Wands, there is nothing evil about that. Why shouldn’t he, if he wanted to? He was busy all day.’

‘It’s no natural, Miss Julia, it’s no natural at a’ to gang walking when ither men sleep. Whit was he doing a’ by himsel’ on the hills wi’ na one to see him? Like as not waiting to midnicht to ca’ up the deil frae a stane to speak wi’ him.’

‘It is wrong of people to speak like that,’ Julia said tempestuously, ‘wrong and wicked to see evil where there is none. There is nothing unnatural in the dominie’s walking at night, alone with his thoughts, when he felt he had the world to himself. He interfered with no one, and did no one any harm. Why then should people try to harm him with hard thoughts?’

‘Aweel, Miss Julia, mony’s the hard thing I’ve heard said against him ben this kitchen, richtly or wrang. They a’ kent there was something na richt aboot him e’en afore they kent he was a Roman Catholic. I mind John Ferguson, and he’s no a back-biting man, telling me he aince thocht to himsel’ that he would ask the dominie to gie his Rob some extra schooling that he micht win a bursary mebbe, syne there wasna enow work for him on the croft. He didna tell ony one, e’en his wife, whit he was thinking but set aff for the schoolhouse and saw the dominie some distance aff, coming towards him alang the road frae the direction o’ the manse. When they cam’ up to one anither, afore John Ferguson e’en oped his mouth, the dominie said to him, “Ay, maist certainly, Mr Ferguson, I’ll teach your Rob if he waits aifter school oors, and I dinna see why he shouldna win a bursary to himsel’. It will be a graund help to ye for ye have your ither lads to help ye wi’ your laund.” Na, na. They micht have kent a’ alang frae his een mischief lay in him, for he wasna marked wi’ twa deeferent een for ony guid.’

‘I rather like his two different eyes,’ Emmy said thoughtfully, ‘they make you wonder what he really is seeing. How did they find out he was a Catholic, Mrs Wands?’

The old woman straightened herself as well as she could in the box-bed and set swinging the frayed rope that dangled above her.

‘When Homish MacLeod fell frae the Dingwall’s loft,’ she said. ‘If there’s ony fashery in this clachan, there’s a MacLeod in it somewhere. His leg bent under him and he fell on top o’ it. The dominie cam’ running to him, and pu’d at his leg and crackit it and held it in his twa haunds. Mebbe he thocht Homish had swooned but Homish had done na such thing, and he heard him saying, saft-like to himsel’:

The Lord rade, and the foal slade;

He lighted, and he righted.

Set joint to joint, bone to bone,

And sinew to sinew,

Heal, in the Holy Ghost’s name.

Her voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘Homish was running aboot next day wi’ no e’en a hirple. He tauld his faether whit the dominie had done to him and said as he was doing it, and his faether tauld Simon Fraser wha didna like the soond o’ it at a’. He said he had been thinking for a lang time back, Miss Julia, that it was an unbecoming thing for the dominie to walk seeven miles every Sabbath to attend Mr Urquhart’s kirk when he could hear a better sermon by far frae your faether only two miles awa’.’ She pulled up the counterpane into a poke with her fingers and then flattened it with her hand. ‘Yon was the day MacLauchlan o’ Dormay was passing through Barnfingal wi’ his shepherd, and Simon Fraser met him on the road and asked if he had e’er seen the dominie in Mr Urquhart’s kirk. “I’ve ne’er clapped een on him,” said MacLauchlan, “and if he went to the kirk, I couldna miss seeing him.” So Simon Fraser went to the schoolhouse and chappit on the door, e’en though the bairns were at their lesson. And when the dominie cam’, he said, “Whit meenister do ye sit onder, Mr MacDonald?” And he answered, “Na meenister, Mr Fraser, but the priest in the chapel at Inverlui.” When Simon Fraser heard that, he turned and left him and changed into his blacks and went straight to see your faether, Miss Julia.’