TWO

Cumulus

CROSSING THE steep of the brae in the dark, by the winding path from the Manse to the Kaimes, Chris bent her head to the seep of the rain, the wet November drizzle of Segget. Then she minded a wall of the Kaimes still stood, and ran quick up the path to stand in its lee. That gained, she stood and panted a while, six months since she’d been up here in the Kaimes—only six months, she could hardly believe it!

It felt like years—long and long years—since she’d worked as a farmer’s wife in Kinraddie. Years since she’d felt the beat of the rain in her face as she moiled at work in the parks. How much had she gained, how much had she lost?—apart from her breath, she had almost lost that!

She felt the wall and then leant against it, wrapped in her ulster, looking at Segget, in its drowse of oil-lamps under the rain. Safe anyhow to go home this time…. And she smiled as she minded last time she had climbed to the Kaimes, and Segget had seen her go home—by the tale they told all Segget had seen her and stared astounded, a scandalled amaze——

   

BUT INDEED, IT was only Ag Moultrie that morning, as ill-luck would have it, who saw her go home. She had gone out early to the school to redd up, she went heavy with sleep and her great mouth a-agant, as you well might believe, though she didn’t tell that. Folk knew her fine, all the Moultries forbye, Rob Moultrie had once been the saddler of Segget, his shop lay down by the edge of the Square. And as coarse an old brute as you’d meet, was Rob Moultrie, though a seventy years old and nearing his grave. ’Twas only a saddler’s shop in name now, the trade had clean gone this many a year. There was still a britchen or so in the shop, and a fine bit bridle Rob Moultrie had made in the days long syne when he still would work. But his trade had gone and his sweirty had come, he was never a popular man in the toun; he couldn’t abide the sight of the gentry, or the smell of the creatures either, he said, and that was why he was Radical still. And if he went on a dander somewhere, along the road and he’d hear a car, toot-tooting behind him, would he get off the road? Not him, he’d walk on bang in the middle, dare any damn motorist try run him down. So sometimes he’d come back to Segget from a walk, step-stepping cannily along the bit road, with a two-three motorists hard at his heels, toot-too ting like mad, and the shovers red-faced. Mrs Moultrie would be looking from the window and see, and cry as he came, Losh, Rob, you’ll be killed! And he’d stop and glower at her with his pocked old face, and his eyes like the twinkling red eyes of a weasel, and sneer, the old creature, shameful to hear. Ay, that would be fine—no doubt you’d get up to your old bit capers. Get out of my way! And he’d lift his stick, maybe more than do that, syne hirple over to his armchair, and sit there and stare in the heart of the fire or turn to the reading of his old bit Bible.

For he’d never forgiven Jess Moultrie the fact that more than a forty years before, when he’d met her and married her, she’d been with a bairn. She told how it was before she would marry, and he’d glowered at her dour: More fool that I am. But I’m willing to take you and your shame as well. And he took her, and the bairn was born, young Ag, no others came and maybe that was why he still kept up the sneer at his wife. But she would say nothing, she was patient and bowed, little, with a face like a brown, still pool; and she’d say not a word, getting on with her work, making ready the supper for Ag when she came. She cleaned out the school and the hall and such places, did Ag, and in winter made the school broth, as nasty a schlorich as ever you’d taste. She looked like a horse ta’en out of a plough, and her voice was a neigh like a horse’s as well, and she’d try to stand up for her mother with old Rob. Don’t speak that way to my mother! she would cry, and he’d look at her dour, Ay, ay, no doubt she’s precious in your sight. You had only one mother, though three or four fathers; and Ag more than likely would start to greet then, she wasn’t a match for the thrawn old brute, though a good enough one for most other folk. And faith! she’d a tongue for news that was awful. Ake Ogilvie called her the Segget Dispatch, she knew everything that happened in Segget, and a lot that didn’t, but she liked best to tell of births and funerals and such-like things; and how the daughter of this or that corpse no sooner looked on the dead than broke down—and fair roared and grat when she saw him there. So folk called her the Roarer and Greeter for short.

Well, then, it was her, to get on with the tale, as she blinked her way in that morning in May, saw a woman come down the hill from the Kaimes, and stopped dumbfoundered: Who could she be?

Ag was real shocked, for the Kaimes was the place where spinners and tinks of that kind would go, of a Sabbath evening, and lie on the grass and giggle and smoke and do worse than that—Ay, things that would leave them smoking in hell, as the old minister said that they would. So no decent folk went up there at night, this creature of a woman was surely a tink. And Ag gave a sniff, but was curious forbye, and crept canny along in the lithe of the dyke that hemmed in the lassies’ playground from the lads’. So she waited there till the woman went by, hurrying, bare-headed, with a stride and a swing and a country-like gait. And then Ag Moultrie near fainted with joy, though she didn’t tell you that when she told you the story, she saw that the woman was Mrs Colquohoun, the wife of the new minister of Segget.

Well, afore the day was well started all Segget had heard that the wife of the new minister had been seen by Ag Moultrie up on the Kaimes, she’d been out all night with a spinner up there, Ag had seen them cuddling and sossing in the grass. Folk said, By God, she’s wasted no time; and who would the spinner have been, would you say? Old Leslie heard the story in the smiddy and he said the thing was Infernal, just. Now, he minded when he was a loon up in Garvock—And the sweat dripped off him, pointing a coulter, and he habbered from nine until loosening-time, near, some story about some minister he’d known; but wherever that was and why it had been, and what the hell happened, if anything ever had, you couldn’t make head nor tail if you listened; and you only did that if you couldn’t get away. Old Leslie was maybe a fair good smith: he was sure the biggest old claik in Segget. He’d blether from the moment you entered his smiddy, he’d ask how the wife and the bairns all were, and your brother Jock that was down in Dundon, and your sister Jean that was in a sore way; and your father that was down with the colic or the like, and your grandfather, dead this last fifty years. And syne he’d start on your cousins, how they were, and your uncles and aunts and their stirks and their stots, their maids and all that were in their gates: till your hair would be grey and your head fair dizzy at the thought you’d so many relations at all. And his face would sweat like a dripping tap as he hammered at the iron and habbered at you and then he’d start some story of the things he’d done or seen or smelt when a loon up in Garvock, and the day would draw in, the night would come on, and the stars come out, he’d have shod all your horses and set all the coulters and you near were dead for lack of some meat; but that damned story wouldn’t have finished, it would be going on still with no sign of an end, he’d start it the next time he saw you or heard you, though you were at the far side of a ten-acre field—unless you took to your heels and ran.

Well, about the only soul that couldn’t do that was his son, Sim Leslie, the policeman of Segget. He had joined the police and had been sent back to Segget, and still bade with his father, he was used to the blether: and folk said if he listened with a lot of care, for a twenty years or so at a stretch, he at least might find out what really had happened that time when his father was a loon up on Garvock. Folk called him Feet, Sim Leslie the bobby, he’d feet so big he could hardly coup, there was once he was shoeing a horse in the smiddy, an ill-natured brute from the Meiklebogs; and the creature lashed out at him fair and square and caught him such a clour on the chest as would fair have flattened any ordinary man. But young Sim Leslie just rocked a wee bit, his feet had fair a sure grip on Scotland.

Well, Feet heard the story of Mrs Colquohoun, from his father, as the two of them sat at dinner. And he kittled up rare, there was something in this, and maybe a chance of promotion at last. So he went and got hold of Ag Moultrie, the sumph, and pulled out his notebook with his meikle red fingers, and asked was she sure ’twas the minister’s wife? And Ag said Ay, and Feet made a bit note; and then he seemed stuck, and he said; You’re sure? And Ag said Ay, I’m as sure as death. Feet made another note, and scratched at his head, and swayed a bit in his meikle black boots. It fair was her? and Ag said Ay; and by then it seemed just about dawning on Feet it really was her and nobody else.

But Ag was real vexed, as she told to folk, she hadn’t wanted to miscall a soul, God knows I’m not a body to claik; and she said when she’d finished with Feet and his questions she went home and sat down and just Roared and Grat, so sorry she was for the new minister. And she’d tell you some more how the woman had looked, her face red-flushed, with a springy walk; and if you were married you well could guess why all of that was—damn’t, man, ’twas fairly a tasty bit news!

That night Feet went up and prowled round the Manse, with his bull’s-eye held in his hand and his feet like the clopping of a Clydesdale heard on the ground. He didn’t know very well what he was there for, or what he would say if Mrs Colquohoun saw him; but he was awful keen on promotion. And he said he was fine at detective-work, like, and if honest merit were given its reward, they’d make him a real detective ere long. And Ake Ogilvie said in his tink-like way A defective, you mean? God, ay, and certificated!

Well, Feet had prowled round to the back of the Manse, and had stopped to give his head a bit scratch, when sudden the window above him opened and afore he could move there came a bit splash and a pailful of water was slung down his back. He spluttered and hoasted and his lamp went out, when he came to himself he was shaking and shivering, but the Manse was silent and still as the grave. He thought for a while of arresting the lot—ay, he would in the morning, by God; and turned and went home, running home stretches to change his bit sark, in case he might catch a cold from his wetting.

And, would you believe it, next day as he sat in his office writing up his reports, his mother said, Here’s a woman to see you. And Feet looked up and he knew the quean, Else Queen, the maid at the Manse it was; ’twas said she’d been brought up as a lassie in Segget, though her father had moved to Fordoun since then, now she was fair a great brute of a woman, with red eyes and hair, and cheeks of like tint. And she said, Are you Feet? and Feet reddened a bit. I’m Simon Leslie the policeman of Segget.——Well, I’m the person that half-drowned you last night; and I’ve come to tell you when you want the same, just prowl round the Manse at such a like hour.

And she didn’t stop only at Feet then, either. She made for Ag Moultrie and told her the same, she would have her sacked from her job at the school; and Ag broke down and just Roared and Grat, she said she’d never said an ill word of any, but what was the minister’s wife doing on the Kaimes? Looking at the hills and the sunrise, you fool. Did you never hear yet of folk that did that? And Ag said she hadn’t; and who ever had? Folk shook their heads when they heard that tale, if the woman at the Manse wasn’t fair just a bitch, damn’t! you could only suppose she was daft.

   

DITE PEAT HEARD the story and fair mocked at Feet. What, you that were once in the barracks? he said, and lived in Dundon, and can’t manage a woman? And he told a story, ’twas down in the Arms, about how once when he was living in London, he’d come there, he said, on a leave from the Front, he hired a bit lodging near Waterloo.——And old Leslie that was standing by said Eh? Would that be the place the battle was at? and Dite Peat said, Oh, away to hell, a coarse way to speak to an old bit man.——Well, Dite had put up in his London room, he saw the landlady was a gey bit quean, fair young and fair sonsy, her man at the Front. And he tried this way and that to get round her, keen for a woman but not a damn fool like some that came back on leave from the Front, they’d spend all their silver on whores, but not Dite, he wanted a gratis cuddle and squeeze. Well, he waited and waited about for a bit, and half-thought of getting the woman at night, she was only English and they’re tinks by nature, it wasn’t as though she was decent and Scotch. But she locked up her door and went early to bed till there came one night that he heard her scraich, and he louped from his bed and he went to the door, and there she was standing down in the hall, in her nightgown, the tink, and white as a sheet. She’d a telegram held in her hands as she stood, and was gowking and gobbling at the thing like a cow, choked on the shaws of a Mearns swede. And Dite called down What’s wrong with you, then? and she laughed and laughed as she looked up at him, she was young, with a face like a bairn, a fool, white, with no guts, like the English queans. And she said Oh, it’s just that my husband’s dead, and laughed and laughed, and Dite licked his lips, it fair was a chance, he saw it and took it. Well, she wasn’t so bad, but far over-thin; and God! she was fair a scunner with her laughing, every now and then she would laugh like an idiot, he supposed that the English did that in their pleasure. So he took her a clour or so in the lug, to learn her manners, and that quietened her down. Oh ay, she was tasty enough in her way.

Some folk in the Arms asked what happened next, did he bide there long? Dite said Damn the fears. I nipped out next morning, afore she awoke. She might have tried on to get me to marry her. And he went on to tell what tinks were the English, they’d rob right and left if you gave them the chance. He gave them damn few, but once out in France——

That fair was a sickener, you put down your glass, or finished the dram and rose up and went out; and Will Melvin looked mad as he well could look, Dite sitting and telling a story like that, sickening customers away from their drinks. But you couldn’t do much with a billy like Dite, a dangerous devil when he got in a rage. He looked a tink though he kept a shop, he and his brother, wee Peter the tailor, hadn’t spoken for years, though they lived next door. His father had lived with Dite till he died, Dite saw to that dying, some said helped it on. The old man had been one of the road-mender childes, he worked with old Smithie and that fool John Muir, he’d come back with his wages at the end of the week and maybe he’d have spent a shilling on tobacco. And soon’s he saw that Dite Peat would fly up and take him a belt in the face, most like, and send him to bed without any meat; and as he lay dying the old man cried to see his other son, wee Peter, the tailor. But Dite snapped Be quiet, damn you and your wants. You’ll see him in hell soon enough with yourself. That was hardly the way to speak to your father, him dying and all; and some folk stopped then going to his shop, spinners and the like, they said Dite should be shot; and collected below his windows one night and spoke of taking him out for a belting. But Feet, the policeman, came up and cried Now, you’ll need to be moving if you’re standing about here; and the spinners forgot the thing they’d come on, and took to tormenting the bobby instead, they carried him down the Drumlithie road and took off his breeks and filled him with whisky; and left the poor childe lying drunk in the ditch; and went back and fairly raised hell in the Arms, the Blaster and Blasphemer near scraiched herself hoarse, the spinners had new got a rise in their pay.

Ah well, that was how Dite Peat had escaped, spinners and their like wouldn’t trade with him now, though most other folk weren’t foolish as that. You went on as before and waited the time when he and Ake Ogilvie would yet get to grips, Ake hated Dite Peat as a dog hates a rat.

   

CHRIS FOUND IT took nearly a fortnight to settle, the whole of the Manse wanted scrubbing and cleaning, she and Else Queen were at it all hours, Robert laughed and locked himself in his room. But he came out to help rig the curtains on rods, both he and Else were handy and tall, they spent the most of one long afternoon tacked up to the walls like flies in glue; and Chris handed up rods and curtains and pictures, and this and that, and hammers and nails; and Else and Robert would cling to the walls, by their eyebrows sometimes, or so it would seem, and push and tug and hammer and pant. Else was willing and strong and enjoyed it, she’d poise on the edge of a mantel and cry Will that do, Mem? and near twist her neck from her shoulders to catch a look at some picture or other. Chris would cry Mind! and Else: Och, I’m fine! and nearly capsize from her ledge, and young Ewan, watching below, give a yell of delight.

But at last all things were trig and set neat. That evening, with Ewan bathed and to bed, Chris found Else yawning wide as a door, and sent her off to her bed as well. Chris felt she was almost too tired to rest as she sat in a chair in Robert’s room; and Robert knew and came and made love; and that was nice, and she felt a lot better. In the quiet and hush of the evening below you could see the touns drift blue with their smoke, as though it was they that moved, not the smoke. Robert sat in his shirt-sleeves, smoking his pipe, planning his campaign to conquer Segget, as Chris supposed, but she closed her eyes. In a minute she’d get up and go to her bed.

But Robert jumped up sudden and picked up his coat. I know! Let’s go and see Segget at night.

Chris thought If it wasn’t that I am in love—Goodness, how far I could tell him to go! But she said not a word of that, but went down, and he groped in the dark and found her coat, and she his, and next they were out on the shingle, it crunch-crunched under the tread of their feet, the moon had come and was sailing a sky, lilac, so bright that the Manse stood clear as they turned and looked back, the yews etched in ink, beyond them the kirk that hadn’t a steeple, set round with its row upon row of quiet graves, the withered grass kindled afresh to green, in long, shadowy tufts that whispered like ghosts. An owlet hooted up on the hill and through the quiet of the night round about there came a thing like a murmur unended, unbegun, continuous, the hum of the touns—and that was queer, most folk were in bed! Chris thought a thought and put it from her mind—an awful woman to have wedded a minister!

The she slipped her arm in Robert’s, beside him, Segget stood splashed in the light of the moon like a hiddle of houses a bairn would build. Their feet were quiet on the unpaved street, they smelt the reek of the burning wood, and Robert said sudden, his voice not a whisper, It’s like walking a town of the dead, forgotten, a ruined place in the light of the moon. Can you think that folk’ll do that sometime, far off some night in the times to be, maybe a lad and his lass, as we are, and wonder about Segget and the things they did and said and believed in those little houses? And the moon the same and the hills to watch.

Chris thought it most likely they would find these enough, the hills and the moon, and not bother about Segget, that lad and that lass in the times to be. So they passed quiet down through the wind of East Wynd, over to the right the hiddling of lanes where the spinners bade, nearer the road and black in the moon the school and the schoolhouse set round with dykes. They passed a joiner’s shop to the left, Chris peered at the name and saw ALEC OGILVIE, then came to a place with shops all around, a grocer’s shop with D. PEAT on the sill, fat lettering over a shoemaker’s— HOGG; and a narrow little front that barked PETER PEAT. Beyond, to the right, a lane wound down to the post-office kept by MacDougall Brown, so Chris had been told, she hadn’t been there.

East Wynd to the left was now bare of houses, beyond its dyke was the garden of Grant. And once they heard through the night a crying, some bairn frightened or waked in the dark, and a voice that called it back to its sleep, all in a drowsy hush through the night. There’s honeysuckle somewhere, said Chris, and stopped to smell, as they came to the Square, over here by the saddler’s shop.

But Robert was giving no heed to smells, he had stopped and he said My God, what a slummock! And Chris saw the thing that had now ta’en his eyes, the War Memorial of Segget toun, an angel set on a block of stone, decent and sonsy in its stone night-gown, goggling genteel away from the Arms, as though it wouldn’t, for any sum you named, ever condescend to believe there were folk that took a nip to keep out the chill…. Chris thought it was fine, a pretty young lass. But then as she looked at it there came doubts, it stood there in memory of men who had died, folk of this Segget but much the same still, she supposed, as the folk she had known in Kinraddie, folk who had slept and waked and had sworn, and had lain with women and had lain with pain, and walked in the whistle of the storms from the Mounth, and been glad, been mad, and done dark, mad things, been bitter for failure, and tender and kind, with the kindness deep in the dour Scots blood. Folk of her own, those folk who had died, out in the dark, strange places of earth, and they set up THIS to commemorate THEM—this, this quean like a constipated calf!

Robert said May God forgive them this horror! And look at the star on its pantomine wand. But still it’s a star; not a bundle of grapes. Folk’ll think it a joke when we’ve altered things, this trumpery flummery they put up in stone!

His dream again he could alter things here! But what kind of change, Robert, what can you do? Things go on the same as ever they were, folk neither are better nor worse for the War. They gossip and claik and are good and bad, and both together, mixed up and down. This League of the willing folk of Segget—who’ll join it or know what you want or you mean?

He leaned by the angel, looked down at her, smiled cool and sure of his vision to-night. Chris, if ever we’ve a child, you and I, and when it grows up it finds that that’s true—what you’ve said—then I hope it’ll come here with Ewan, and a host of others of their own generation, and smash this Memorial into smithereens for the way that we failed them and left God out. Change? It’s just that men must change, or perish here in Segget, as all over the earth. Necessity’s the drive, the policeman that’s coming to end the squabbling stupidities of old——

Then he laughed. What, sleepy as that? Let’s go back.

   

HE FAIR HAD plenty on his hands that summer, Feet, the policeman, as the days wore to Autumn. First, ’twas the trouble in the roadman’s place, old Smithie and the hay he nicked from coles and carted home at night to his kye. His house stood side by side with John Muir’s, both under the lee of the kirk and the Manse, their back doors opened out on the land that stretched east under the scowl of the hills to the lands that were farmed by Meiklebogs. Muir kept no stock and he bought his milk, but old Smith on the chap of dawn would be out, up out of his bed and round to the byre, where his cows and his two young calves were housed, none knew where he bought the fodder to feed them; and that wasn’t surprising, he stole the damned lot.

He’d look this way and that, he’d a face like a tyke, thin, and ill-made, with a bushy moustache; and then, as swack as you like he would loup, canny and careful in over a fence, and make up a birn of somebody’s hay; and be back and breaking his stones as before when the next bit motor appeared on the road. Syne at night he would load the lot on his bike and pedal canny without any light, and nip up through Segget as the Arms bar opened and folk had gone in for a bit of a nip, none out to see; and syne he was home, and the cows, as hungry as hawks, would low, old Smithie would give a bit low as well, and stuff them with hay and pat at their shoulders, daft-like, he near was crack about kye, he liked the breath of the creatures, he said.

Folk said that the cows couldn’t be so particular, else they’d fair get a scunner at his bit breath. For he liked a dram and he took what he liked, he’d no more than peek round the door of an evening (though the house was his and all the gear in it) than his daughter would cry Here’s the old devil home! and her bairns, the bairns of Bruce the porter, would laugh and call him ill names as they liked. And he’d smile and stand there and mumble a while, though he wasn’t a fool in the ordinary way; and syne he’d go down to the Arms in a rage and swear that before another night came he’d have Bruce and his birn flung out of his doors, he was damned if he’d stand their insultings longer. Well, damned he was, for he kept them on, folk would once kittle up with excitement when they heard old Smithie get wild and say that, they’d ’gree with him solemn and say ’twas a shame for a man of Segget to stand what he did; and they’d follow him home when the Arms closed down and stand by the door to hear the din. But all that they’d hear would be Ellen his daughter, fat as a cow at the calving time, cry Feuch, you old brute, and where have you been? And Smithie would just mumble and gang to his bed.

He’d another daughter as well as his Ellen, he’d slaved to give her an education; and faith! so he’d done, and made her a teacher. She lived in Dundon and never came south. And the only thing Smithie said that he’d gotten, for all his pains and his chaving for her, was one cigarette: and that wouldn’t light.

Well, that Saturday afternoon in July, old Smithie was wearied with chapping at stones, and instead of stealing some hay outbye and rowing it home strapped over his bike, he got on the bike and pedalled near home, till he came to the new-coled hay of Meiklebogs. And old Smithie got off and lighted his pipe and made on he’d got off for nothing but that. There wasn’t a soul to be seen round about, the park was hidden, and old Smithie was quick, he nipped in over and pinched some hay, and was back with the stuff strapped on to his bike—so quick that you’d fair have thought it a wonder that his corduroy trousers didn’t take fire. But no sooner was he gone than Dalziel jumped up, he’d been hiding all the while in the lee of a cole; and he ran to the close and got his own bike, and followed old Smithie and shadowed him home. Then he went down the toun and collected Feet, and they came on old Smithie as he entered the byre, the bundle of stolen hay in his hands.

And Feet cried out Mr Smith, I want you; and old Smithie looked round and near dropped the birn. Ay, do you so? he quavered, and syne the old whiskered creature fairly went daft, he threw the birn in Meiklebogs’ face. Take your damned stuff, I wouldn’t poison my kye with such dirt!

Feet said, Well, I doubt this’ll be a case, but old Smithie was dafter than ever by then. He said, Make it two, and to hell with you both! and went striding into his house as he hadn’t, striding that way, gone in for years. His daughter, that sumph that was Mistress Bruce, fair jumped as she heard the bang of the door, she cried You nasty old wretch, what’s the din? Old Smithie was fairly boiling by then, he said, Do you know who you’re speaking to, Ellen? and she said, Ay, fine, you disgrace to Segget; and at that old Smithie had her over his knee, afore she could blink, she was stunned with surprise. She gave a bit scraich and she tried to wriggle, but she’d grown over fat and old Smithie was strong. And damn’t! if he didn’t take down her bit things and scone her so sore she grat like a bairn, her own bairns made at old Smithie and kicked him, but he never let on, just leathered his quean till his hand was sore, not so sore as her dowp. That’s a lesson for you, you bap-faced bitch, he said, and left her greeting on the floor, and went down to the Arms, and near the first man that he met there was Bruce, old Smithie by then like a fighting cock.

Bruce was a dark and a sour-like childe, but he looked near twice as sour in a minute when old Smithie took him a crack in the jaw. What’s that for? Bruce cried, and Smithie said Lip, and came at him again, the daft-like old tyke. Well, you couldn’t expect but that Bruce would be raised, he was knocking Smithie all over the bar when Mistress Melvin came tearing in. She cried in her thin Aberdeen, What’s this? Stop your Blasting and Blaspheming in here. Bruce said, I haven’t sworn a damn word, she said That’s enough, take your tink fights out, sossing up the place with blood and the like. If you’ve any quarrel to settle with your relations, go out and settle it where folk can’t see.

And Bruce said Right; and took old Smithie out, and gey near settled him entire, you would say. It just showed you what happened to a billy that stole, there’s a difference between nicking a thing here and there, and being found out and made look a fair fool.

   

AND NEXT SABBATH MacDougall Brown, the postmaster, came down to the Square and preached on stealing, right godly-like, and you’d never have thought that him and his wife stayed up of a night sanding the sugar and watering the paraffin—or so folk said, but they tell such lies. He was maybe a fifty years old, MacDougall, a singer as well as a preacher, i’faith! though some said his voice was the kind of a thing better suited to slicing a cheese. During the War he had fair been a patriot, he hadn’t fought, but losh! how he’d sung! In the first bit concert held in the War he sang Tipperary to the Segget folk, with his face all shining like a ham on the fry, and he sang it right well till he got to the bit where the song has to say that his heart’s right there. And faith, MacDougall got things a bit mixed, he clapped down his hand the wrong side of his wame; and Ake Ogilvie that sat in the front of the hall gave a coarse snicker and syne everybody laughed; and MacDougall had never forgiven Ake that. But he got on well with his post-office place, Johnnie his son was a bit of a fool and MacDougall sent him to take round the letters, it cost him little with a son that was daft and MacDougall kept the cash for himself. Forbye young Jock he’d two daughters as well, the eldest, Cis, was bonny and trig, with a grave, douce face, she went to the College but she wasn’t proud, a fine bit queen, and all Segget liked her.

Well, MacDougall had a special religion of his own, he wasn’t Old Kirk and he wasn’t of the Frees, he wasn’t even an Episcopalian, but Salvation Army, or as near as damn it. He went on a Sabbath morn to the Square and preached there under the lee of the angel, that the road to heaven was the way he said. He’d made two-three converts in his years in Segget, they’d stand up and say what the Lord had done, how before they’d met Him they were lost, ruined souls: but now God had made them into new men. And faith! you would think, if that was the case, the Lord’s handiwork was failing, like everything else.

Well, that Sunday after the row at Smithie’s, he was there at his stance where the angel stood, MacDougall himself with his flat, bald head, and beside him his mistress, a meikle great sumph, she came from the south and she mouthed her words broad as an elephant’s behind, said Ake Ogilvie. She thought little of Cis, that was clever and bonny, but a lot of her youngest, the quean called Mabel—by all but her mother, she called her May-bull. Well, they both were there, and the daftie Jock, gleying, and slavering up at the angel, and a two-three more, the gardener Grant and Newlands the stationy, them and their wives; with the angel above with her night-gown drawn back, right handy-like, in case it might rap against the bald pow of MacDougall Brown. Mistress Brown opened up the harmonica they’d brought, it groaned and spluttered and gave a bit hoast, syne they started the singing of their unco hymns, Newlands burring away in his boots and MacDougall slicing the words like cheese.

Syne MacDougall started to preach about stealing, with a verse from Leviticus for the text, though the case of old Smithie had supplied the cause; and they started singing another bit hymn, all about being washed in the Blood of the Lamb, the Lamb being Jesus Christ, said MacDougall, he was awful fond of hymns full of blood, though he’d turned as white as a sheet the time Dite Peat had come over to kill his pig, and asked MacDougall to hold the beast down.

Well, they were getting on fine and bloody, and having fairly a splash in the gore, when MacDougall noticed there was something wrong, the words all to hell, he couldn’t make it out. Syne his mistress noticed and screwed round her head, and she said What is’t? and saw MacDougall, red as rhubarb, he’d stopped his singing. The rest of them had to do the same, for a drove of the spinners had come in about, with that tink Jock Cronin at their head, as usual, they were singing up fast and fair drowning MacDougall, a coarse-like mocking at MacDougall’s hymn:

WHITER than—the whitewash on the wall!

WHITER than—the whitewash on the wall!

    Oh— WASH me in the water

    Where you washed your dirty daughter

And I shall be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!

MacDougall waited until they had stopped, then he cried to Cronin Have you no respect—you, John Cronin—for the Lord’s Day at all? And the tink said, Damn the bit; nor have you. And MacDougall nearly burst to hear that, he’d lived by the Bible all his life. And John Cronin said You believe all that’s in it? and MacDougall Brown said, Ay, I have faith. But Cronin had fairly got him trapped now, he said Well, it says in the Bible that if you’ve got faith you can move a mountain. That’ll be proof Move back the Mounth there in front of our eyes!

The spinners with him, a lot of tink brutes, all brayed up then, Ay, come on, MacDougall! Move a mountain—you’re used to move sand! MacDougall habbered redder than ever, then he cried We’ll now sing Rock of Ages. Jock Cronin cried Where’s the rock of your faith? and as soon as MacDougall and his converts began the spinners sang up their song as before, about being whiter than the whitewash on the wall, and about MacDougall’s dirty daughter; and such a noise was never heard before in the Sabbath Square of Segget.

Old Leslie came by and he heard the noise, and he knew MacDougall and was right sorry for him. But when he came over and tried to interfere, Jock Cronin cried Christ, here’s Ananias! And old Leslie walked away, fair in a rage, and went up to the Manse to complain about them.

He arrived there just after the morning service, the minister new back, and dinner-time done. And old Leslie said ’twas Infernal, just, the way that they treated a man nowadays. In his young days if a loon like that Cronin had miscalled a man he’d have been ta’en out and libbed. Ay, he minded when he was a loon up in Garvock—

But the new minister rose up and said Well, I’ll hear that again, I’ve no time to waste, with a look as black as though he could kill you. And afore old Leslie knew well what had happened he was out on the doorstep and heard the door bang.

   

CHRIS HEARD the door bang and she saw old Leslie, he was turning slow to go down the walk, crunching the shingle under his feet; and suddenly you saw the old man that he was, his back crooked into that queer-like shape, cruel and a shame to get rid of him so, suddenly you wanted to weep, but you didn’t, biting your lips as you watched him go. Only a tiring old fool, as you knew, and he’d come on Robert in that mad, black mood. And yet—

Things like that caught you again and again, with a tightening heart, when you had no thought—Robert in weariness half an hour back, his head in his hands, as he said What’s the use? Robert’s head as he prayed to that God of his that you couldn’t believe in, though you hid that away, what need to hurt Robert with something that never he or you could alter though you lived forever? So, in the strangest of moments it would come, in a flame and a flash, a glimpse into depths that wrung your heart, you’d see the body of Else as she bent, a curve of pleasure that would curve yet in pain. You’d see—frightening the things if you cared to think in the dark of the night in the quiet of Segget, the hush of the yews out there on the lawn—the hopeless folly of all striving, all hope. Sudden, in a Segget shop, maybe, you’d glimpse a face like your father’s, near, alive and keen with its bearded lips, and you’d think of your father, long ago dead, bones rotted from flesh in Kinraddie kirkyard—what had life availed him and all his long years when he hoped for this and he strove for that? He died a coarse farmer in a little coarse house, hid in the earth and forgot by men, as forgot as your pains and your tears by God, that God that you knew could never exist….

Only with Εwan you’d never these glimpses into the shifting sands of life, bairn though he was there was something within him hard and shining and unbreaking as rock, something like a sliver of granite within him. Strange that his body had once come from yours in the days when you were a quean unthinking, so close to the earth and its smell and its feel that nearly he came from the earth itself!

From that we all came, you had heard Robert say, but wilder and stranger you knew it by far, from the earth’s beginning you yourself had been here, a blowing of motes in the world’s prime, earth, roots and the wings of an insect long syne in the days when the dragons still ranged the world—every atom here in your body now, that was here, that was you, that beat in your heart, that shaped your body to whiteness and strength, the speed of your legs and the love of your breasts when you turned to the kiss of your Robert at night—these had been there, there was nothing but a change, in a form, the stroke and the beat of a song.

And you thought how long, long ago with Will, your brother, that time he came home from France, before he went back and was killed in France you’d said that the Scots were never religious, had never BELIEVED as other folks did; and that was fell true, and not only for you, MacDougall that brayed by the angel in the Square, the folk that came to the kirk on a Sunday, Robert himself—even Robert himself! There was something lacking or something added, something that was bred in your bones in this land—oh, Something: maybe that Something was GOD—that made folk take with a smile and a gley the tales of the gods and the heavens and the hells, the afterlives and the lives before, heaven on earth and the chances of change, the hope and belief in salvation for men—as a fairy-tale in a play that they’d play, but they knew the whole time they were only players, no Scots bodies died but they knew that fine, deep and real in their hearts they knew that here they faced up to the REAL, at last, neither heaven nor hell but the earth that was red, the cling of the clay where you’d alter and turn, back to the earth and the times to be, to a spraying of motes on a raging wind when the Howe was happed in its winter storms, to a spray of dust as some childe went by with his plough and his horse in a morning in Spring, to the peck and tweet of the birds in the trees, to trees themselves in a burgeoning Spring. You knew, and you knew that they knew—even Robert, holding to God in his blackest hour, this God he believed was the father of men, pitiful, He was Pity and a Friend, helpless even in a way as men, but Kind and Hero, and He’d conquer yet with all the legions of hell to battle.

So Robert believed: but now, as you heard his feet coming down the stairs in haste, out of his mood and happy again, you knew that he knew he followed a dream, with the black mood REAL, and his hopes but mists.

   

CHRIS REMEMBERED THAT dream of her own—she’d been daft! she thought as she fled about next week’s work. There was jam to make and she thought it fun, and so did Else, they’d boil pot on pot and fill all the jars, and forget about dinner. And Robert would come sweating in from the garden and cry Losh, Christine, where have you been? I thought you promised to come out and help. What’s wrong—nothing wrong with you, is there, my dear? Chris would say Only hunger, and he’d say Not love? and the two would be fools for a moment till they heard the stamp of Else bringing in the tray. Syne they’d each slip into a chair and look solemn; but once Else caught them and said to the minister Faith, I don’t wonder! and looked at Chris; and Chris thought that the nicest thing ever looked about her.

Ewan ran wild, Chris seldom saw him all the length of the summer days, he was out in Segget, exploring the streets, Chris at first had been feared for him—that he’d fall in front of a horse, or a car, or one of the buses that went by to Dundon. She tried to tell him to be careful, then stopped, he’d to take his chances with the rest of the world.

On the Saturday she and Robert looked up from their work in the garden, and stood and watched Ewan, hands in his pockets, no cap on his head, go sauntering out through the gates of the Manse, his black hair almost blue in the sun, and turn by the Meiklebogs, going to the Kaimes, Chris wondered what he could want up there?

Robert said He’s seeking the High Places already, and laughed, and went on with his digging, Chris the same, sweet and forgotten the smell of the earth, you thrust with your spade, the full throw of your body, so, and the drill built up as you dug. Then the rooks came cawing and wheeling in by, and they both looked up from Segget to the Mounth, rain drumming upon it far in the heuchs, cattle, tail-switching, dots on the heath. Chris asked what the clouds were, up there by Trusta, they piled up dome on dome in the sky, like the roofs of a city in the land of cloud. Robert said Cumulus: just summer rain; and a minute later—Look, here it comes!

Chris saw it come wheeling like a flying of rooks, dipping and pelting down from the heights, she looked left and saw it through a smother of smoke, the smoke stilled for a minute as it waited the rain, all Segget turning to look at the rain. Then Robert was running and Chris ran as well, under the shelter of the pattering yews. There they stood and panted and watched the water, whirling in and over the drills, the potato-shaws a-bend in the pelt, the patter like hail and then like a shoom, like the sea on a morning heard from Kinraddie, the empty garden blind with rain. And then it was gone and the sun bright out, and Chris heard, far, clear, as though it never had stopped, a snipe that was sounding up in the hills.

By noon they saw a drooked figure approaching. Chris heard Else cry Are you soaked! and Ewan answer I was; but I dried, he’d some thing in his hand. Turning it over he came up to Robert. Look, I found this up on the Kaimes.

Chris stopped as well to look at the thing, the three of them stood in the bright, wet weather, Robert turning the implement over in his hands, it was rusted and broken, the blade of a spear. Did they use it for ploughing? Ewan wanted to know, and Robert said No, they used it for killing, it’s a spear, Ewan man, from the daft old days.

Then Else came crying them in for their dinner, and in they all went, as hungry as hawks. Ewan wanted to know a lot more about spears, ’twas a wonder he managed to ask all he did, him eating as well, but he managed both fine; he’d a question-mark for a brain, Robert said!

But the most of his questions he kept until night, when Chris bathed him and took him up to his room. Why did the stairs wind? Why weren’t they straight? Would it be long till he was a man? Where was Christ now, and had Robert met Him? That’s an owl, why don’t owls fly in the day? Why don’t you go to sleep when I do? Does Else like Dalziel of the Meiklebogs much? I like the smiddy of old Mr Leslie, he says that when he was a loon up on Garvock he was never let gang anywhere near a smiddy, his mammy would have smacked his dowp; didn’t she like it? I saw Mr Hogg, he said ‘What’s your name?’ Why is there hair growing out of his nose? Mrs Hogg is fat, is she going to have a calf? Does she take off her clothes to have it, mother? Mother, have you got a navel like mine? I’ll show you mine, look, there it is, isn’t it funny? I’m not sleepy, let’s sing a while. Why——

He was sleeping at last, in the evening quiet, the Saturday quiet, the sun not yet gone. Chris went down to the garden and took out a chair, and leaned back in it with her arms behind her, drowsy, watching the gloaming come. Robert was up in his room with his sermon, he wrote the thing out when he’d thought of a theme—he would think of a theme of a sudden and swear because he hadn’t a note-book at hand.

This afternoon it had come on him suddenly. I know! That spear-blade that Ewan brought—where the devil has he hidden the thing?

At half-past ten next morning, the Sunday, Chris heard John Muir and looked out and saw him, his shoulder a-skeugh in his Sunday suit, come stepping up the path from the kirk. There’s a fair concourse of the folk the day; and how are you keeping then, mistress, yourself?

Chris said she was fine, and he gleyed at her cheery, Faith, so you look, you take well with Segget. Well, well, if the minister hasn’t any orders I’ll taik away back and tug at the bell.

Chris heard that bell in a minute or so beat and clang through the quiet of the air. It was time that she herself had got ready, she sought out her hymn-book and hanky and Bible, and inspected Ewan, and straightened his collar. Then the two of them hurried through the blow of the garden, and out of the little door let in the dyke, and into the little room back of the kirk. There the sound of the bell was a deafening clamour. Chris brushed Ewan down and went into the kirk, and put Ewan into a pew and herself went ben to the pews where the kirk choir sat, Mrs Geddes, the schoolmaster’s wife, there already, smiling and oozing with eau-de-Cologne, whispered right low and right holy-like, Morning. A grand day, isn’t it, and such a pity so few have come up to hear the Lord’s word.

Chris said, Oh, yes, and sat down beside her, and looked round as the folk came stepping in, slow, Hairy Hogg, the Provost, and his mistress, Jean, they plumped in their seats and Hairy looked round and closed his eyes like a grass-filled cow. Then the wife and queans of John Muir came in, Chris had heard a lot about them from Else. Else said she could swear there were times when Muir wished he’d stayed where he was when he fell in that grave. His wife was one of the Milton lot that farmed down under Glenbervie brae, she deaved John Muir from morning till night to get out of his job, a common bit roadman, and get on in the world and show up her sister, Marget Ann, that had married a farmer. But John Muir would say Damn’t, we all come to the same—a hole and a stink and worms at the end and his mistress would snap, Ay, maybe we do, but there’s ways of getting there decent and undecent. And as for stinking, speak of yourself. And, real vexed, she’d clout Tooje one in the ear. Tooje was her eldest, fairly a gawk, and then clout little Ted when she started to greet because she saw her sister Tooje greeting; and John Muir would get up and say not a word but go dig a grave as a bit of a change.

Then Chris saw Bruce, the porter, come in, with the mark on his jaw where his goodfather hit him, then Leslie, the smith, paiching and sweating, he dropped his stick with an awful clatter. Then she saw Geddes, the Segget headmaster, sitting grim in a pew midway, his rimless specs set close on his nose, looking wearied to death, as he was. Robert had thought to make him an ally, but he’d said to Robert, Don’t be a fool, leave the swine to stew in their juice—by swine he meant his fellow-folk of Segget. He would stand hymn-singing with his hand in his pocket, and rattle his keys and yawn at the roof.

Then Moultrie came in, a slow tap-tap, with his stick and his glare, and stopped half-way, his wife, Jess Moultrie, waiting behind, her hand on his arm, gentle and quiet. But when he moved on he shook her away. Chris had heard the story of him and of her and how he had never forgiven her her daughter, Ag, whom they called the Roarer and Greeter.

The others came in, all in a birn, Chris didn’t know some and of some was uncertain, she thought that one was Ake Ogilvie the joiner; and a trickle of folk from the farms outbye, a spinner or so, but they were fell few, and Dalziel of the Meiklebogs, red-faced and shy, funny how one couldn’t abide him at all.

Syne John Muir finished with the ringing of the bell and came with his feet splayed out as he walked, and his shoulder agley, down the length of the kirk; and went into the little room at the back. Robert would be there and Muir help him to robe. Syne the door opened and John Muir came out, and swayed and gleyed cheerful up to the pulpit and opened the door and stood back and waited. And Robert went up, with his hair fresh-brushed, and his eyes remote, and sat down and prayed, silent, and all the kirk silent as well, for a minute, while Chris looked down at her hands.

Then Robert stood up in the pulpit and said, in his clear, strong voice that hadn’t a mumble, that called God GOD and never just GAWD, We will begin the worship of God by the singing of hymn one hundred and forty, ‘Our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days, pavilioned in splendour and girded with praise.’ Hymn one hundred and forty.

Folk rustled the leaves and here and there a man glowered helpless while his wife found the page; and the organ started with a moan and a grind and the kirk was a rustle with Sunday braws, folk standing and singing, all straight and decent, except young Εwan, a-lean in his pew, and Geddes the Dominie, hand in his pouch.

Chris liked this hymn near as much as did Robert, most folk stuck fast when they came to pavilioned, Robert’s bass came in, Chris’s tenor to help, Mrs Geddes’ contralto a wail at their heels. Then down they all sat; Robert said Let us pray.

Chris wondered what Robert was to preach to-day, his text was no clue when he gave it out. Folk shuffled in their seats, and hoasted genteel, and put up their hankies to slip sweeties in their mouths; sometimes Chris wished she could do the same, but she couldn’t very well, the minister’s wife. And all Segget lifted its eyes to Robert, he flung back the shoulders of his robe and began, slow and careful, reading from his notes; and then pushed them aside and began a sermon on that bit of a spear young Ewan Tavendale had found on the Kaimes. He’d brought the thing up in the pulpit with him, folk stopped in their sucking of sweeties and gaped.

And Robert told of the uses the thing had once had, in the hands of the carles of the ruined Kaimes; and the siege and the fighting and the man who had held it, desperate at last in the burning lowe as King Kenneth’s men came into the castle: and the blood that ran on this ruined blade for things that the men of that time believed would endure and be true till the world died; they thought they were fighting for things that would last, they’d be classed as heroes and victors forever. And now they were gone, they were not even names, their lives and their deaths we knew to be foolish, a clamour and babble on little things.

So might the men of the future look back, on this Segget here, not of antique times, and see the life of our mean-like streets ape-like chatter as the dark came down. For change, imperative, awaited the world, as never before men could make it anew, men of good will and a steadfast faith. All history had been no more than the gabble of a horde of apes that was trapped in a pit. Let us see that we clean our pit-corner in Segget, there is hatred here, and fear, and malaise, the squabbling of drunken louts in the streets, poor schools, worse houses—we can alter all these, we can alter then NOW, not waiting the world.

Robert had launched his campaign on Segget.

   

THAT SERMON FAIR raised a speak in the toun, as soon’s they got out Peter Peat said Faith! they’d fair made a mistake in getting this childe. You wanted a sermon with some body in it, with the hell that awaited the folk that were sinners, and lay on the Kaimes with their unwed queans, and were slow in paying their bills to a man. And what did he mean that Segget was foul? A clean little toun as ever there was, no, no, folk wanted no changes here.

Old Leslie said ’Twas Infernal, just, he minded when he was a loon up on Garvock—

Rob Moultrie said Well, what d’you expect? He’s gentry and dirt with his flat-patted hair; and speaking to God as though he were speaking to a man next door—and a poor man at that. Ay, a Tory mucker, I well may warrant, that would interfere in our houses and streets.

Will Melvin said Did you hear him preach against folk taking a dram now and then? And if he himself wasn’t drunk then I’m daft, with his spears and his stars and his apes and his stite.

That fairly got Hairy Hogg on the go. He cried Ay, what was all yon about apes? And him glaring at me like a thrawn cat. If he comes from the monkeys himself let him say it, not sneer at folk of a better blood.

Folk took a bit snicker at that as they went—damn’t, the minister had got one in there! And afore night had come the story had spread, the minister had said—you’d as good as heard him—that Hairy Hogg was a monkey, just.

Well, it made you laugh, though an ill-gettèd thing to say that of old Hairy Hogg, the Provost. Faith, he fair had a face like a monkey, the sutor of Segget and its Provost forbye. He’d been Provost for years, not a soul knew why, or how he’d ever got on for the job; or what was the council, or what it might do, apart from listening to Hairy on Burns. For he claimed descent from the Burneses, Hairy, and you’d have thought by the way he spoke that Rabbie had rocked him to sleep in his youth. His wife had once been at Glenbervie House, a parlourmaid there, and awful genteel; but a thirty years or so in old Hogg’s bed had fair rubbed gentility off of the creature, she was common and rough as a whin bush now, and would hoast out loud in the kirk at prayers till the bairns all giggled and old Hogg would say, loud enough for the pulpit to hear, Wheest, wheest, redd your thrapple afore you come here.

She would make him regret that when they got home, she’d little time for any palavers, her daughter Jean that was nurse in London, or Alec her son that clerked down in Edinburgh. Old Hogg he would blow like a windy bellows about Jean and the things she’d done as a nurse. For when the bit King took ill with a cough she was one of the twenty-four nurses or so that went prancing round the bit royalty’s bed, she carried a hanky, maybe, or such-like. But to hear old Hairy speak on the business you’d have thought she’d cured the King’s illness herself, and been handed a two-three thousand for doing it. Yet damn the penny but her wages she got, said Mrs Hogg; what could you expect? The gentry were aye as mean as is dirt and wasn’t the King a German forbye?

Young Hogg was at home now, on holiday like, he meant to attend the Segget Show. You had seen the creature, wearing plus fours, east-windy, west-endy as well as could be, forbye that he said he had joined the Fascists. Folk asked what they were, and he said they were fine, Conservatives, like, but a lot more than that; they meant to make Britain the same as was Italy. And old Hogg was real vexed, he cried But goodsakes! You’re not going to leave your fine job, now, are you, and take to the selling of ice-cream sliders? And Alec said Father, please don’t be silly; and old Hogg fair flamed: Give’s less of your lip. What could a man think but that you were set, you and your breeks and your Fashers and all, with being a damned ice-creamer yourself?

Alec said nothing, just looked at his quean, and she and him sniffed, she was real superior, a clerk like Alec himself down in Edinburgh. He’d brought her up on holiday to Segget, he called her his feeungsay, not just his lass: she wouldn’t be able to stay for the Show, and if any soul thought that a cause for regret, he’d managed to keep a good grip on himself. The first time they sat down to tea in Hogg’s house Alec finished his cup and looked round the table. Where’s the slop-basin, mother? he asked, to show his quean he was real genteel. But his mother was wearied with him and his airs. Slop it in your guts! she snapped as she rose, and less of your Edinburgh touches here!

  

SEGGET SHOW WAS held in a park that was loaned to the toun by Dalziel of the Meiklebogs. He blushed and looked shy, Oh ay, you can have it, when Hairy Hogg went out there and asked him. ’Twas a great ley park with a fringe of trees, the hills up above, the Kaimes to the left; and early on the evening afore Segget Show there were folk down there making out this and that, the lines of the tents and the marquees and such; the circle where the bairns would run their bit races and folk that thought they could throw the hammer could stand and show what their muscles were made of. Folk came to Segget Show far and about, from Fordoun and Laurencekirk, Skite and Arbuthnott, early on the Saturday Segget awoke to the rattle of farm carts up through East Wynd, down past the Manse, and so to the park, carts loaded with kail and cabbage and cakes, and hens and ducks in their clean straw rees, and birns of bannocks and scones for show, and the Lord knows what that folk wouldn’t bring to try for a prize at the Segget Show.

It was wet in the morning, folk looked out and swore, but by noon the rain had cleared off and soon, as the lines of folk held out from Segget, there came a blistering waft of the heat, men loosed their waistcoats, some took off their collars, and paid their shillings and went in at the gates, all except a crowd of the spinners. They suddenly appeared near the big marquee, and Sim Leslie, him that the folk called Feet, went over and looked at the bunch fell stern, he hadn’t seen them pay at the gate. But he wasn’t keen on starting a row, just looked at them stern: and the spinners all laughed.

There fair was a crush as the judges began, Hairy Hogg was one, the minister another, Dalziel of the Meiklebogs the third. They started in on the hens to begin with, a lot from MacDougall Brown’s of the post-office. MacDougall stood by, looking proud as dirt, he’d won first prize for his Leghorns for years. So he fell near fainted when he got a green ticket, the second prize only and not the red first; and he said to whoever stood by to listen that it was that minister had done this to him, he was scared at the way that MacDougall drew folk away from the Auld Kirk’s preaching and lies. But faith! his Leghorns looked none so well, he’d been mixing lime in their feed and the birds had a look as though they’d like to lie down and burst. But they daren’t, with MacDougall’s eye upon them, they stood and chirawked, as though kind of discouraged when they saw that they’d ta’en only second prize.

By then the judges were through with the hens, the ducks as well, a childe from a farm out near by Mondynes had ta’en every prize there was to be took. Syne the judges turned into the big marquee, to judge the baked stuff and the flowers and the like. The minister was speaking as they went inside; Hairy Hogg turned round to hear what he said; and prompt his elbow knocked over the dish that was set with the cakes of Mistress Melvin. The landlady of the Arms looked at the Provost as though she’d like to bash in his head, with a bottle, and syne carve him up slow with its splinters; but she daren’t say anything, seeing it was him, and he’d given the Melvins the catering to do.

So the Blaster and Blasphemer just smiled, genteel, and got down and picked up her cakes from the grass, the minister got down and helped her; and smiled; (what was the creature laughing about?). But Hairy Hogg said, for the marquee to hear, I want stuff set out plain and decent, not pushed right under my nose when I judge. He spoke as though he were the Lord God Almighty, and the bannocks sinners on the Judgement Day.

They couldn’t make up their minds on the pancakes, there were two fine lots, one rounded and cut, neat-shaped and fine as ever you saw, the other lot not of much shape at all, but bonnily fired, and the judges stopped, and each ate a bit, of the well-cut at first, they weren’t so bad, but looked better than they tasted. Syne the judges bit at the ill-cut cakes, they fairly melted in a body’s mouth, the minister had eaten up one in a minute, and Meiklebogs nodded, and Hairy Hogg nodded, and the Reverend Mr Colquohoun gave a nod. So old Jess Moultrie had the first prize, faith! that was fairly a whack in the face for that Mistress Geddes with her fine-shaped cakes, and her blethering of lectures at the W.R.I. She was daft on the W.R.I., Mrs Geddes, she said that folk in a village like Segget wanted taking out of themselves. So she and some others started the thing, they’d collect at all hours, the women of the place, and speak about baking and minding the bairns, and how to make pipes from the legs of old sofas: and hear lantern-lectures on Climbing the Alps. Well, damn’t! she’d have to do a bit climbing herself ere she learned to bake cakes like the Moultrie wife.

By three nearly everything there had been judged, most of the folk had scattered by then, to see the games in the ring that Ake Ogilvie had set up for nothing, the previous night. And well so he might, damn seldom he worked, you couldn’t get near to his joiner’s shop for the clutter of carts, half-made and half-broken, lying about, and the half of a churn, a hen-coop or so and God knows what—all left outside in the rain and sun while Ogilvie sat on a bench inside and wrote his ill bits of poetry and stite—he thought himself maybe a second Robert Burns. He was broad and big, a fell buirdly childe, and it seemed fell queer that a man like that couldn’t settle down to the making of money, and him the last joiner left in the place. But he’d tell you instead some rhyme or another, coarse dirt that was vulgar, not couthy and fine. He was jealous as hell of the real folk that wrote, Annie S. Swan and that David Lyall: you could read and enjoy every bit that they wrote, it was fine, clean stuff, not sickening you, like, with dirt about women having bairns and screaming or old men dying in the hills at night or the fear of a sheep as the butcher came. That was the stuff that Ake Ogilvie wrote, and who wanted to know about stuff like that? You did a bit reading to get away from life.

Well, Ake Ogilvie, him and his poetry and dirt, there he was, on the edge of the ring. And inside the ring, round about the hammer, were a pickle of those that would try a bit throw. And Feet cried Back, keep out of the way, and went shooing bairns at the ring’s far side; and folk clustered around fair thick to look on, old Leslie and Melvin the judges here.

The first to throw was a man from Catcraig, Charlie Something-or-other his name, and he swung himself slow and steady on his feet and syne took a great breath and leaped in the air, and swung, and syne as his feet came down his arms let go and the hammer flew out and flashed in the air and spun and then fell—ay, a gey throw, folk cheered him a bit. But one of his galluses had split with the throw and he blushed to the eyes and put on his coat.

Syne another childe threw, a farmer he was, the hammer went skittering out from his hand, he laughed in an off-hand way as to say he was just taking part to encourage the others. Syne folk saw that the third was that tink Jock Cronin, one of the spinner breed, he picked up the hammer and waited and swung, and louped, and the thing went a good foot beyond any of the earlier throws that were made. ’Twould be a sore business if the Cronin should win. His friends all shouted, That’s the stuff, Jock! they were fair delighted with their champion’s throw, with their rattling watch-chains and their dirty jokings, the average spinner knew as much of politeness as a polecat knows of the absence of smell. The worst of the lot, folk said, were the Cronins, they bade in West Wynd, a fair tribe of the wretches, old Cronin had once been a foreman spinner till he got his bit hand mashed up in machinery. He’d fair gone bitter with that, they told, and took to the reading of the daftest-like books, about Labour, Socialism, and such-like stite. Where would you be if it wasn’t for Capital? you’d ask old Cronin, and he’d say On the street—where the capitalists themselves would be, you poor fool. It’s the capitalists that we are out to abolish, and the capital that we intend to make ours. And he’d organized a union for spinners and if ever you heard of a row at the mills you might bet your boots a Cronin was in it, trying to make out that the spinners had rights, and ought to be treated like gentry, b’God!

The worst of the breed was that young Jock Cronin, him that had just now thrown the hammer. The only one that wasn’t a spinner, he worked as a porter down at the station, folk said that the stationmaster, Newlands, would have sacked him right soon if only he’d dared; him and his socialism and the coarse way he had of making jokes on the Virgin Birth; and sneering at Jonah in the belly of the whale; and saying that the best way to deal with a Tory was to kick him in the dowp and you’d brain him there. But Jock Cronin worked as well as he blethered, the sly, coarse devil, and he couldn’t be sacked; and there he stood with a look on his face as much as to say That’s a socialist’s throw!

It was Newlands, the stationmaster, himself that came next, you hoped he’d beat the throw of the porter. But faith, he didn’t, he was getting fell slow, maybe it was that or he wasted his breath singing at the meetings of MacDougall Brown, the hammer just wobbled and fell with a plop, if they didn’t do better at the second round and third it was Cronin the porter would grab the first prize.

But syne folk started to cheer, and all looked, ’twas the Reverend Mr Colquohoun himself, being pushed inside the ring by his wife. Ay, that was well-intended of him, now, you gave a bit clap and syne waited and watched. And the minister took off his coat and his hat and smiled at the childe that held out the hammer, and took it and swung, and there rose a gasp, he’d flung it nearly as far as the Cronin’s.

The second bout he landed well over Jock Cronin’s, plain it was between the spinner and him, the spinners stopped laughing, crying, Come on, then, Jock! You’re not going to let a mucking preacher beat you? The Reverend Colquohoun looked at them and laughed, and syne spoke to Cronin, and he laughed as well, not decent and low as a man would do that spoke to a minister, but loud out and vulgar, he wished folk to think that he was as good as any minister that ever was clecked. Then the childe with the galluses threw once again, but he’d never got over the blush or the galluses, he landed fell short and went off the field, and Else Queen, the maid at the Manse, was his lass, and she laughed out loud; and that was ill-done.

Syne Ake Ogilvie threw—ay, not a bad throw, but shorter than Cronin’s, Ake did it with a sneer. Syne Cronin again, and the hammer was flung with the whole of his weight and his strength and it fell, crack! a bare foot short of his very first throw. And as the minister stood up, arms bared, you knew well enough that he couldn’t beat that; and then everybody knew that he wasn’t going to try, he maybe thought it not decent for a minister to win, he swung the hammer to give it a good throw, but safe and not so far as Jock Cronin’s.

But the spinners had broken into the ring, a birn of them down at the farther end; and as the Reverend picked up the hammer and got ready to swing, one of them cried, you couldn’t tell which, Jesus is getting a bit weak in the guts.

The minister gave a kind of a start, you thought for a minute that he wouldn’t throw. But instead he suddenly whirled him about, and spun and swung and had flung the hammer, so quickly you hardly saw what he did. And the hammer swished and twirled through the air, like a catapault stone or a pheasant in flight, and landed a good three feet or more beyond the furthest throw of the Cronin: and struck on a great meikle stone that lay there, and stotted and swung, the handle swung first, into the middle of the spleiter of spinners.

They jumped and ran and the hammer lay still, and there rose such a yell from the folk that watched, your lugs near burst in the cheering and din. The minister’s face had reddened with blood, the veins were like cords all over his face; and then he went white as ever again, and put on his coat and went out of the ring, folk cried, That was a fine throw, minister, but he didn’t say a word, just went off with his wife.

Chris said, What’s wrong? Then she saw his hanky as he took it away from his lips; it was red. He said Oh, nothing. Gassed lungs, I suppose. Serves me right for trying to show off.

Chris said You didn’t; I thought you were fine. Robert said I’m afraid not, only a fool. There, I’m all right, don’t worry, Christine. Come on, we’ve to watch Ewan running his race.

The bairns’ races were the next things set. Ewan Chris watched lined up with the others, Geddes the schoolmaster in charge of the lot, disgusted as ever he looked with the job. They’d marked out a track through the middle of the ring, John Muir stood down at the further end, the bairns had to run to him and then back. Chris watched Ewan, he was eating a sweetie, calm as you please, his black mop blue in the sun, his eyes on the Dominie, he didn’t care a fig. But as soon as Geddes cried Run! he was off, he went like a deer, his short legs flying, the other bairns tailed off behind, and Εwan was first to reach Muir and go round him, swinging round gripping at John Muir’s trousers; and as he went by the place where Chris stood, he looked at her and grinned calmly as ever, and shifted the sweetie to the other side of his mouth, and looked back, and slowed down, no need to race. He was up at the Dominie first, at a trot, folk round about asked who he was, as black as all that, he was surely foreign?

Then somebody knew and saw Chris stand near, and cried out Wheest! but Chris didn’t care; she watched Ewan take the prize and say Thanks, calm still, and put the shilling in his pocket, and come walking back to look for her, and stand grave in front of her as she smoothed down his collar. Robert gave him a shake and he smiled at that (the smile that so sometimes caught your heart, the smile you had known on the lips of his father). Then Robert said Well, since we’ve won all the prizes, let’s go and look for tea in the tent.

And the three of them set out across the short grass, through the groupings and gatherings of folk here and there, the show was fairly a place for a claik, one gossip would now meet in with another she hadn’t seen since the last Segget Show, and would cry Well, now, it’s Mistress MacTavish! And Mistress MacTavish would cry back her name, and they’d shake hands and waggle their heads and be at it, hammer and tongs, a twelve months’ gossip, the Howe’s reputation put in through a mangle and its face danced on when it came through the rollers.

There was a great crush in the tent they entered, but Melvin came running and found them a table, the gabble of the folk rose all round about, they nodded to the minister and minded their manners, and reddened when they thought that he looked at them, and took a sly keek at the clothes Chris wore—faith! awful short skirts for a minister’s wife. Mrs Hogg was sitting at a table with her son, him that she’d told to slop slop in his guts, his quean had gone back, and folk saw the damned creature trying to catch the minister’s eye. But the Reverend Mr Colquohoun didn’t see, you were torn two ways with scorn of the Manse for being so proud, and with sheer delight at seeing the Hoggs get a smack in the face.

Then it was time for the band to begin, folk trooped out to see in the best of spirits, well filled with biscuits and baps and tea; but weren’t such fools as go over close to the board where John Muir and Smithie were standing, crying, Come on, folk, now, will you dance? Behind them the Segget band played up, Ake Ogilvie there at the head of it, fair thinking himself of importance, like, with Jim that served in the bar of the Arms and folk called the Sourock because of his face, tootling on his flute like a duck half-choked and Newlands the stationy cuddling his fiddle a damn sight closer than ever his mistress, or else she’d have had a bairn ere this—not that you blamed him, she’d a face like a greip, and an ill greip at that, though you don’t cuddle faces. And Feet was there, he was playing the bassoon, he sat well back to have room for his boots and looked as red as a cock with convulsions. God ay! it was worth going up to the board if only to take a laugh at the band.

But not a childe or a quean would venture up on the thing till at last Jock Cronin, that tink of a porter that came of the spinners, was seen going up and pulling up a quean. She laughed, and turned her face round at last, and folk fair had a shock, it was Miss Jeannie Grant, she was one of the teachers, what was she doing with a porter, eh?—and a tink at that, that called himself a socialist, and said that folk should aye vote for labour, God knew you got plenty without voting for’t. Socialists with queans—well, you knew what they did, they didn’t believe in homes or in bairns, they’d have had all the bairns locked up in poor-houses; and the coarse brutes said that marriage was daft—that fair made a body right wild to read that, what was coarse about marriage you would like to know? … And you’d stop from your reading and say to the wife, For God’s sake, woman, keep the bairns quiet. Do you think I want to live in a menagerie? And she’d answer you back, By your face I aye thought that was where you came from, and start off again about her having no peace, she couldn’t be sweir like a man, take a rest; and whenever were your wages going to be raised? And you’d get in a rage and stride out of the house, and finish the paper down at the Arms, reading about the dirt that so miscalled marriage—why shouldn’t they have to get married as well?

Well, there were Jock Cronin and Miss Jeannie Grant, they stood and laughed and looked down at the folk. Syne some spinners went up, as brazen as you like, giggling, and then a ploughman or so, syne Alec Hogg that was son of the Provost, he had up Cis Brown that went to the College, thin and sweet, a fell bonny lass, she looked gey shy and a treat to cuddle. So there were enough at last for a dance, and Ake waved his arms, and they struck up a polka. There was fair a crowd when the second dance came, you felt your back buttons to see were they holding, and took a keek round for a lass for the dance: and the queans all giggled and looked at you haughty, till you asked one, bold, and then she’d say Ay.

Charlie, the childe from Catcraig, went to Else, the maid from the Manse, and said Will you dance? and she said Can you? and he blushed and said Fine. Else was keen for a dance and she left Meiklebogs, he looked after her shy, like a shy-like stot, as she swung on the board, a fair pretty woman. God, you hardly saw her like nowadays, queans grown all as thin as the handles of forks, and as hard forbye, no grip to the creatures; and how the devil they expected to get married and be ta’en with bairns you just couldn’t guess, what man in his senses would want to bed with a rickle of bones and some powder, like?

Well, Else was up with the Catcraig childe, it was Drops of Brandy and the folk lined up, Else saw the minister, he smiled like a lad with the mistress herself further down the line. Ake waved his arms and you all were off, slow in the pace and the glide, then the whirl, till the brandy drops were spattering the sky, the board kittled up and the band as well, and you all went like mad; and Else’s time when she did the line she found the minister the daftest of the lot, he swung her an extra turn right round, and he cried out Hooch! and folk all laughed—ay, fairly a billy the new minister, though already he’d started interfering with folk, and he’d preached so unco, a Sunday back, that old Hairy Hogg was descended from monkeys…. Had he said that, then? Ay, so he had, old Hogg himself had told you the speak, it was hardly the thing to have said of the Provost, fair monkey-like though the creature was …. And just at the head of the dance as Else flew round in the arms of her Catcraig childe, he gave a kind of a gasp and his hand flew up to his waistcoat and Else cried What? And the childe let go and grabbed at his breeks, his other bit gallus had fair given way, he slipped from the board with his face all red, and went home fell early that evening alone, not daring to stay and take Else Queen home.

The teas were all finished and Melvin had opened up one of the tents for the selling of drams, folk took a bit dander up to the counter, had a dram, and spoke of the Show and looked out—at the board, the gloaming was green on the hills, purple on the acre-wide blow of heather. There was a little wind coming down, blowing in the hot, red faces of the dancers, you finished up your dram and felt fair kittled up; and went out and made for the board like a hare, damn’t! you might be old, but you still could dance, you hoped the mistress had already gone home.

There was old Smithie, well whiskied by now. He cried each dance till he got to the Schottische, he stuck fast on that and shished so long you thought the old fool never would stop, his whiskers sticking from his face in a fuzz, like one of the birns of hay he would steal. And just as he paused to take a bit breath his eyes lit down on his goodson, Bruce, and he stopped and said What the devil’s wrong with you, you coarse tink, that lives in my house, on my meal, and snickers like a cuddy when a man tries to speak? Bruce glunched up, dour, Be quiet, you old fool, and that fair roused the dander of Smithie to hear. Who’s a fool? By God, if I come down to you—and he made a bit step, just threatening-like, but he was over-near the edge of the board to be threatening, even, next minute he was off, on top of Ed Bruce, folk were fair scandalized and crowded about, snickering with delight to see the daft fools, old Smithie and Bruce, leathering round in the grass. But down came the minister and pushed folk aside, angry as could be, and folk stared at him. Get up there, confound you, the two of you! he cried, and in a jiffy had old Smithie up in one hand and Bruce in the other, and shook them both. Haven’t you more sense than behave like a couple of bairns! Shake hands and shut up!

And so they did, but before the night was well done the speak was all over the Howe of the Mearns that the new minister of Segget had come down and bashed Ed Bruce in the face and syne Smithie, and cursed at them both for ten minutes without stopping. And a great lot of folk went to kirk next Sunday that never went afore, and never went again, for no other purpose than to stare at the minister, and see if he’d be shamed of the coarse way he’d cursed.

Well, that was the Segget Show and Games, by eight and nine the older folk were crying ta-ta and talking away home, the farmers in their gigs spanked down by Meiklebogs, the Segget folk dandered home slow in the light, it lay like the foam of the sea on the land, soft, in a kind of blue, trembling half-mist, a half-moon, quiet, came over the hills and looked down on the board where the young still danced. Else sought out the mistress—should she take Ewan home? But the mistress shook her head, I’ll do that. Dance while you’re young, but don’t be too late; she smiled at Else the fine way she had, she looked bonny with that dour, sweet, sulky face, the great plaits of her hair wound round her head, rusty and dark and changing to gold, Else thought If I were a man myself I’d maybe be worse than the minister is—I’d want to cuddle her every damned minute!

Young Ewan was beside her, he stood eating chocolate, he had eaten enough to make a dog sick, as Else knew well, but he looked cool as ever, the funny bit creature, and said Ta-ta, Else. Will Mr Meiklebogs squeeze you under my window? Else felt herself flushing up like a fire, Maybe, if I let him, and Ewan said Oh, do, and would maybe have said more, for bairns are awful, but that the minister had hold of his arm—Come on, or I’ll squeeze YOU. Ta-ta, Else.

    

SO THE THREE went home through the night-quiet park, Robert and Chris the last of the elders to leave. It came sudden on Chris, with her feet in the grass, her hand in Ewan’s, that that’s what they were—old, she who was not yet thirty years old! Old, and still how you’d like to dance, out under the brightening coming of the moon, drop away from you all the things that clung close, Robert and Ewan and the Manse—even Chris—be young and be young and be held in men’s arms, and seem bonny to them and look at them sly, not know next hour who would take you home, and not know who would kiss you or what they would do…. Young as you never yet had been young, you’d been caught and ground in the wheels of the days, in this dour little Howe and its moil and toil, the things you had missed, the things you had missed! The things that the folk had aye in the books—being daft, with the winds of young years in your hair, night for a dream and the world for a song. Young; and you NEVER could be young now.

Like a sea you had never seen plain in your life, you heard the thunder and foam of the breakers, once or twice, far off, dark-green and salt, you had seen them play, spouting and high on the drift of the wind, crying in the sun with their crested laughters, hurrying south on the questing tides. Youth, to be young—

High up and over the Kaimes two birds were sailing into the western night, lonely, together, into the night Chris watched them fade to dots in the sky.

   

THE WHISPER WENT round the minister had gone, the ploughmen and spinners gave a bit laugh and took a bit squeeze at the queans they held; and some of the folk that were hot with their collars pulled the damned things off and threw them in the hedge. In Will Melvin’s bar was a roaring trade, old Hairy Hogg’s son and Dite Peat were there, the both of them telling the tale, you may guess, Alec Hogg of the things he had seen in Edinburgh, Dite Peat of the things he had done in London. God! ’twas a pity they’d ever come back. Meiklebogs came talking into the bar, near nine that was, folk cried: Will you drink? and he answered back canny, Oh, ay; maybe one; and had two or three, and looked shyer than ever. Dite Peat roared With that down under your waistcoat, you’ll be able to soss up the Manse quean fine. Meiklebogs looked a wee bit shyer than before, and gave a bit laugh, and said, Fegs, ay.

Else had danced every dance since the dancing began. When Charlie from Catcraig, the fool, disappeared, Alec Hogg had taken her up for a while, and half Else liked him and half she didn’t, he felt like a man though he spoke like a toff. He asked in his clipped-like way, You’re Miss Queen? as though he thought it should be mistake. Else answered careless, Oh, ay, so I’ve heard. You’re the son of old Hairy Hogg, the Provost? He grinned like a cat, So my mother says, and Else was fair shocked, a man shouldn’t make jokes about his own mother. So after a while she got rid of the creature, and the next dance she had was with Ogilvie the joiner, he’d left the band for Feet to conduct, he swung her round and round in a waltz, his own eyes half-closed near all that time. If he thought your face such a scunner to look at, why did he ask you up for a dance?

Then Feet cried The last, and there was John Muir, he’d grabbed Else afore any other could get near, and he danced right well, Else warmed up beside him, he cried out, Hooch! and she did the same, if he dug graves as well as he danced, John Muir, he should have had a job in a public cemetery. As Else whirled she saw the blue reek of Segget, and the dusk creep in, it was warm and blue, and the smell of the hay rose up in her face; there was the moon, who was taking her home?

She was over big and scared off the shargars; but one or two childes she knew keen enough for a slow-like stroll up to Segget Manse. But they looked at Dalziel, that was waiting by, and turned away and left Else alone. And the old fool said, with his shy-like smile, Ay then, will I see you home, Else lass?

Else said You may, since you’ve feared all the rest; but he smiled as canny as ever and said Ay, he didn’t seem to mind that she was in a rage. The dances were ended and the folk were going, streaming from the park as the night came down, the band with their instruments packed in their cases, and their queans beside them, them that had queans, them that had wives had the creatures at home, waiting up with a cup of tea to slocken the throats of the men that had played so well for Segget that afternoon. Here and there in the park a bit fight broke out, but folk paid little heed, they just gave a smile, that was the way that the Show aye ended, you’d think it queer in a way if you didn’t see a childe or so with his nose bashed in, dripping blood like a pig new knived.

Jock Cronin and his spinners had started a quarrel with the three fee’d men at the Meiklebogs. Jock Cronin said ploughmen should be black ashamed, they that once had a union like any other folk, but had been too soft in the guts to stick by it, they’d been feared by the farmers into leaving their union, the damned half-witted joskins they were. George Sand was the foreman at the Meiklebogs, a great meikle childe with a long moustache and a head on him like a Clydesdale horse. He said And what the hell better are the spinners? They’ve done a damn lot with their union and all? I sit down to good meat when the dirt are straving, and another Meiklebogs man cried the same, Ay, or a porter down at the station? What the hell has your union done for you? I’ve more money in my pouch right the now, let me tell you, than ever you had in your life, my birkie. I could show you right now a five and a ten and a twenty pound note.

Jock Cronin said sneering-like, Could you so? Could you show me five shillings? and the childe turned red, he hadn’t even that on him at the time, it had been no more than an empty speak, and he felt real mad to be shown up so. So he took John Cronin a crack on the jaw, by God it sounded like the crack of doom. Jock Cronin went staggering back among the spinners, and then the spinners and ploughmen were at it, in a minute as bonny a fight on as ever you saw in your life at Segget Show. You’d be moving off the Show-ground quiet with your quean, till you saw it start and then you’d run forward, and ask what was up, and not stop to listen, for it fair looked tempting; so you’d take a kick at the nearest backside, hard as you liked, and next minute some brute would be bashing in your face, and you bashing his, and others coming running and joining; and somebody trotting to Melvin’s tent and bringing out Feet to stop the fight.

He was well loaded up with drink by then, Feet, and he’d only a bit of his uniform on. But he ran to the fighters and he cried Hold on! What’s all this jookery-packery now? Stop your fighting and get away home.

But the coarse brutes turned on poor Feet instead, it was late that night when he crawled from the ditch and blinked his eyes and felt his head, the moon high up in a cloudless sky, the field deserted and a curlew crying.

   

ALL THE FOLK had gone long ere that, even the youngest and daftest of them gone, home from the Segget Show in their pairs, there were folk at that minute on the Laurencekirk road, a lad and his lass on their whirring bikes, the peesies wheeping about in the moon, the childe with his arm around the quean’s shoulder, the whir of the wheels below their feet, the quean with her cheek against the hand that rested shy on her shoulder, so, home before them but still far off; and the dark came down and they went into it, into their years and to-morrows, they’d had that.

Some went further in business, if less far in mileage. Near Skite a farmer went out to his barn, early next morning, and what did he see? Two childes and two lasses asleep in his hay. And he was sore shocked and went back for his wife, and she came and looked and was shocked as well, and if they’d had a camera they’d have taken photographs, they were so delighted and shocked to see two queans that they knew in such a like way, they’d be able to tell the story about them all the years that they lived on earth; and make it a tit-bit in hell forbye.

Cis Brown had asked her father MacDougall if she could stay on late at the dance; and he’d said that she might, his favourite was Cis; and so she had done and at the dance end she had looked round about and had blushed as she wondered would any one ask her to walk home to Segget? She was over young, she supposed, for all that, a college quean with her lessons and career, and not to waste her time on a loon. And she wished that she wasn’t, and then looked up and saw a spinner, a boy, beside her, about the same age as herself, she thought. He was tall like a calf, and shy and thin, he looked at her and he didn’t look—Are you going up home?

She said she was and she thought as she said it, What an awful twang those spinners speak! She was half-ashamed to walk home with one. But so they got clear of the stamash of the fighting, saying never a word as they went through the grass. Then the boy gave a cough, Are you in a hurry? and Cis said No, not a very great hurry, and he said Let’s go down by the Meiklebogs corn and home through the moor to the Segget road.

So she went with him, quiet, by the side of the park, the path so narrow that he went on ahead, the moon was behind them up in the Mounth, below them stirred the smell of the stalks, bitter and strange to a quean from Segget, she bent and plucked up one in the dark, and nibbled at it and looked at the boy. Behind them the noise of the Show grew faint: only for sound the swish of the corn.

Then the path grew broader and they walked abreast, he said sudden, but quiet, You’re Cis Brown from MacDougall’s shop, aren’t you? Cis said Yes, not asking his name, he could tell her if he liked, but she wasn’t to ask. But he didn’t tell, just loped by her side, long-legged, like a deer or a calf, she thought, leggy and quick and quiet They heard as they passed in that cool, quiet hour the scratch of the patridges up in the moor, once a dim shape started away from a fence with a thunderous clop of hooves in the dark, a Meiklebogs horse that their footsteps had feared.

Syne they came to the edge of the moor, it was dark, here the moon shone through the branched horns of the broom, the whins tickled you legs and Cis for a while couldn’t find her way till the boy said Wait. I know this place, I often come here. And his hand found hers and she felt in his palm the callouses worn by the spindles there, he’d some smell of the jute about him as well, as had all the spinner folk of the mills.

Water gleamed under the moon in a pool. Cis stopped to breathe and the boy did the same, she saw him half turn round in the moonlight and felt suddenly frightened of all kinds of things—only a minute, frightened and curious, quick-strung all at once, what would he do?

But he did not a thing but again take her hand, still saying nothing, and they went through the moor, the low smoulder of Segget was suddenly below them, and below their feet sudden the ring of the road. She took her hand out of his then. So they went past the Memorial up through The Close to the door of the house of MacDougall Brown; and Cis stopped and they boy did the same, and she knew him, remembered him, his name was Dod Cronin. And he looked at her, and looked away again; and again, as on the moor, queer and sweet, something troubled her, she had never felt it before for a soul—compassion and an urgent shyness commingled; sixteen herself and he about the same, daft and silly to feel anything like this! He slipped his hand slow up her bare arm, shy himself, he said something, she didn’t know what. She saw him flush as she didn’t answer, he was feared, the leggy deer of a loon!

And she knew at once the thing he had asked. She put up her hand to the hand on her arm, and next minute she found she was being kissed with lips as shy, unaccustomed as hers. And a minute after she was inside the door of MacDougall’s shop, and had the door closed, and stood quivering and quivering alone in the dark, wanting to laugh and wanting to cry, and wanting this minute to last forever.

   

ELSE QUEEN OF the Manse had held home with Dalziel. As they gained the road he turned round and said, with a canny glance back to where folk were fighting: Would you like to come ben the way for some tea? Else was still in a rage, she didn’t know why, or with whom, or how it began, so she snapped: No, I wouldn’t, then. Do you know what the hour is? Meiklebogs looked shylike—she knew that he did, she could guess the soft-like look on his face, she felt half inclined to take it a clout—and said: Oh ay, but I thought that maybe you would like to slocken up after the dancing about.

She might as well do as the old fool said, even though there’d be no one else at Meiklebogs. Oh ay, she had heard the gossip of Segget, about Dalziel and his various housekeepers, though he did his own cooking now, as folk knew: It was said that two hadn’t bidden a night, two others had come to the Meiklebogs alone and left in their due time, each with a bairn, a little bit present from the shy Meiklebogs. Well, that didn’t vex Else, the stories were lies, old Meiklebogs—he was over shy ever to find out what a woman was like, unless it was out of a picture book, maybe: and even then it was like he would blush the few remaining hairs from his head. And even were there something in the Segget gossip she’d like to see the cretaure alive that would take advantage of her—just let him!

So she nodded, All right, I’ll come up for a cup. Meiklebogs said Grand, and the two went on, the moon was behind them, in front was the smell from the coles out still in the hayfield, tall, they’d had a fine crop that year of the hay. As they came near the house there rose a great barking, and Meiklebogs ‘meikle collie came out, Meiklebogs cried Heel! and the beast drew in, wurring and sniffing as they passed through the close. In the kitchen ’twas dark and close as a cave, the window fast-snecked, the fire a low glow. Meiklebogs lit a candle, Sit down, will you, Else? I’ll blow up the fire and put on the kettle.

So he did, and Else took off her hat, and sat down and looked at the dusty old kitchen, with its floor of cement and its eight-day clock, ticking with a hirpling tick by the wall; and the photo of Lord Kitchener that everyone had heard of, over the fireplace, a dour-looking childe. ’Twas back in the War-years that Meiklebogs had got it, he’d cycled a Sunday over to Banchory, to a cousin of his there, an old woman-body: and she’d had the photo new-bought at a shop. Well, Meiklebogs had fair admired the fine thing, he thought it right bonny and said that so often that the woman-body cousin said at last he could have it. But it was over-big to be carried in his pouch, and the evening had come down with a spleiter of rain. But that didn’t bog Meiklebogs, faith, no! He took off his jacket and tied the damn thing over his shoulder with a length of tow; and syne he put on his jacket above it. And the cousin looked on, and nodded her head: Ay, the old devil’s been in a pickle queer places. But I’m thinking that’s the queerest he’s ever been in.

The dresser was as thick with dust as a desert, Else bent in the light of the candle above it, and wrote her name there, and Dalziel smiled shy. Will you get down two cups from the hooks up there?

Else did, and brought saucers as well, he gleyed at them: Faith, I don’t use them. I’m not gentry, like. Else said: Oh, aren’t you? Well, I am.

He poured the tea out and sat down to drink it. And faith! he found a good use for his saucer, he poured the tea in it and drank that way, every now and then casting a sly look at Else as though he were a mouse and she was the cheese. But she didn’t care, leaning back in her chair, she was tired and she wondered why she’d come here, with this silly old mucker and his silly looks; and why Charlie had made such a fool of himself. Meiklebogs took another bit look at her then, she watched him, and then he looked at the window, and then he put out a hand, canny, on to her knee.

It was more than the hand, a minute after that, he louped on her as a crawly beast loups, something all hair and scales from the wall; or a black old monkey; she bashed him hard, right in the eye, just once, then he had her. She had thought she was strong, but she wasn’t, in a minute they had struggled half-way to the great box bed. She saw once his face in the light of the candle, and that made her near sick and she loosed her grip, he looked just as ever, canny and shy, though his hands upon her were like iron clamps. She cried You’re tearing my frock, he half-loosed her, he looked shy as ever, but he breathed like a beast.

Ah well, we’ll take the bit thing off, Else.

   

ROBERT HAD GONE to moil at his sermon; Chris heard the bang of the door upstairs. Ewan was in bed and already asleep, hours yet she supposed ere Robert came down. The kitchen gleamed in the light of the moon, bright clean and polished, with the stove a glow, she looked at that and looked at herself, and felt what she hoped wasn’t plain to be seen, sticky and warm with the Segget Show. She’d have a bath ere she went to bed.

The stove’s red eye winked as she opened the flue, and raked in the embers and set in fresh sticks; and on these piled coals and closed up the flue. In a little she heard the crack of the sticks, and went up the stairs to her room and Robert’s, and took off her dress and took off her shoes, not lighting a light; the moon was enough. The mahogany furniture rose red around, coloured in the moonlight, the bed a white sea, she sat on the edge and looked out at Segget, a ghostly place, quiet, except now and again with a bray of laughter borne on the wind as the door of the Arms opened and closed. Far down in the west, pale in the moon, there kindled a star that she did not know.

She stood up and went over and looked in the glass, and suddenly shivered, cold after the dancing; and drew the curtains and lighted the lamp, and took off her clothes in front of that other who watched and moved in the mirror’s mere. She saw herself tall, taller than of old, lithe and slim still with the brown V-shape down to the place between her breasts, she could follow the lines of the V with her finger. And she saw her face, high cheekboned and bronze, quiet and still with the mask of the years, her mouth too wide but she liked her teeth, she saw them now as she smiled at the thought her mouth was too wide! She loosed the pins in her hair and it fell, down to her knees, tickling her shoulders, faith! it was worse than a mane, a blanket, she’d cut it one day, if Robert would let her. She caught it aside and suddenly remembered a thing she’d forgot, forgotten for years, and looked for the dimple she once had had, and found it, there still, and saw her face flush faint as she minded, now that she thought of the thing at all, she’d been told that first night two years ago that the dimple was there—

Funny and queer that you were with a man! You did this and that and you lay in his bed, there wasn’t a thing of you he might not know, or you of him, from the first to the last. And you could speak of these things with him, and be glad, glad to be alive and be his, and sleep with your head in his shoulder’s nook, tickling his chin, you supposed, with your hair—you could do all that and blush at the memory of a daft thing said on your wedding night!

Then she remembered she’d wanted a bath. She seemed to have stood there dreaming for hours, and found her dressing-gown and her slippers, and went down the stairs and turned on the taps. The water came gurgling out with a steam, she saw her face in the shaving glass, and stared at it—something happening to-night?

She splashed for a little thinking of that, the water about her stung quick at first; she saw herself fore-shortened and fragile, but fair enough still, so she supposed—yes, she would think that if she were a man! She lifted an arm and the water ran down it, little pellets, they nested under her cheek; and ’twas then she thought of the thing she would do. Yes, she would do it this very night! … And because that wouldn’t bear thinking about, here, she splashed herself and got out, Robert’s mirror blinded in a cloud of steam. She opened the bathroom door and listened, there was no one to hear or see for this once, she caught up her gear and ran quick up the stairs, in the moving pattern of splashed moonlight high from the window set in the gable, and gave a gasp as she felt a hand on her shoulder, the arm came tight, she was kissed. Robert coming down had seen the light splash as she opened the bathroom door.

She struggled away, I’ve no clothes on!

He said that he’d half suspected that, teasing her a minute, then let her go. Then he said he’d go down and get ready their supper, and went lightly down the stairs as a lad, it was Chris who now stood still and looked down, high in her breast her heart beating fast. She would, and this very night she would, in spite of what he had told her and taught her!

She dressed and went down through the quiet of the Manse, Robert popped his fair pow round the edge of the door, Supper in the kitchen, or shall we be grand? She said she would like the kitchen as well and pushed him into a chair as she spoke, and took off Else’s apron he’d draped on his trousers, and set to the making of supper herself. He sighed and stretched out and lighted his pipe, and drew at it, looking out of the window. There’s something in the night—or is it in you? He stood up and walked to the window and peered, and came back and looked at Chris for a while; and put out a finger upon her forearm. Funny to think that was once monkey-hair!

She said that it wasn’t, whatever his ancestors had been, hers were decent, like Hairy Hogg’s, hers (they’d both heard the story). Robert chuckled over that as he sat down again, the only result of his sermon so far to drop a blot on the Provost’s escutcheon. Hopeless, the Provost, and most of the others, Geddes, poor chap, had mislaid his guts; but he’d form that Segget League even yet, wait till this young Stephen Mowat came home!

Chris asked when that was but Robert didn’t know, he thought very soon, then grew puzzled again. Funny, there really IS something about, and Chris said Maybe, and keeked at him sly, as he sat there and puzzled, and restrained herself from suddenly and daftly cuddling him tight. When she opened the kitchen window wide there came a faint scent on the tide of the wind, from the garden, the jonquils and marigolds glowed faint and pale in the light of the moon.

Then Chris set the table and they both sat down, it was fine to work in her kitchen untrammelled, good though Else was as a general rule, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Manse was so big they could have done well without a maid here. She said that to Robert, he said Yes, I know, I feel that way myself—for to-night! As though I could turn our Segget myself into Augustine’s City of God …. Something in the night that’s making us like this, and stopped and stared, Why, Chris, you look different!

She said he was silly—or ’twas maybe the bath! Then she felt herself colour with his eyes upon her. He shook his head, An unusual bath!——A mental one? They’re uncommon in Segget.

He said That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you bitter, and she said she didn’t feel bitter, she was fine; and they washed up and dried in the moonlight quiet, together and content and yet more than that, once he brushed her shoulder as he went to and fro, carrying the dishes over to the dresser; and he stopped and scowled, sore-puzzled upon her, It must be that monkey-hair that’s electric!

And then they had finished and a mood came on Chris. Let’s go out in the garden. And they both went out in the honey-dark shadows that the hedgerow threw, warm, a little mist crept up from Segget, under the nets in the strawberry patches the berries were bending their heads full ripe, Chris knelt by a bed and found one that was big, and ate half herself, Robert the other, seeing it waiting there on her lips. And, as he laughed and kissed her for that, something caught them both to a silence, foolish and quiet by the strawberry beds. The rooks chirped drowsily up in the yews as they passed beneath to the sheltered wall where love-in-a-mist and forget-me-nots bloomed blue and soft even now in the night, under the wall that led to the kirkyard, just low enough for Chris to look over.

And so for a little she stopped and looked, that third Chris holding her body a while, how strange it was she stood here by Robert, so close that the warmth of his body warmed hers—when in such a short time she would die down there on a bit of land as deserted and left. They were gone, they were quiet, and the tears that were shed and the folk that came and the words that were said, were scattered and gone and they left in peace, finished and ended and all put by, the smell for them of forget-me-nots and the taste of a strawberry eaten at night and the kiss of lips that were hard and kind, and the thoughts of men that had held them in love and wondered upon them and believed in God. All that had gone by, now under the gold of the moon the grass rose from those bodies that mouldered in Segget, the curlews were calling up in the Kaimes, the hay lay in scented swathes in the parks, night wheeled to morning in a thousand rooms where the blood that they’d passed to other bodies circled in sleep, unknowing its debt. Nothing else they had left, they had come from the dark as the dustmotes come, sailing and golden in a shaft of the sun, they went by like the sailing motes to the dark; and the thing had ended, and you knew it was so, that so it would be with you in the end. And yet—and yet—you couldn’t believe it!

Robert teased, Choosing a place for your coffin? and Chris said Just that, but don’t plant me deep; and he said with a queer, sudden fear in his voice, he startled Chris and she turned to look, Lord God, how I’d hate to be ‘planted’ myself! If I die before you, Christine, see to that: that I’m sent for burning to a crematorium. I’d hate to be remembered once I am dead. Chris thought in a flash how Segget would take it, should he die and she get him a funeral like that, They’d say, most likely, that I’d poisoned you, Robert, and were trying to get rid of the evidence, you know. He laughed, So they would! and then laughed again, a second laugh that was dreary, Chris thought. My God, were there ever folk like the Scots! Not only THEM—you and I are as bad. Murderous gossip passed on as sheer gospel, though liars and listeners both know it is a lie. Lairds, ladies, or plain Jock Muck at the Mains—they’d gossip the heart from Christ if He came, and impute a dodge for popularizing timber when He was crucified again on His cross!

Chris said That’s true, and yet it is not. They would feed Christ hungry and attend to His hurts with no thought of reward their attendance might bring. Kind, they’re so kind…. And the lies they would tell about how He came by those hurts of His!——

And yet you don’t believe in a God. I’ve never asked you, but do you, Chris?

She bent her head as she answered, No, not looking at him; but his laugh was kind. You will sometime, however you find Him.

Then he looked at his watch, it was nearly midnight; and suddenly Chris forgot the sad things. She ran away from him and he came after, playing hide and seek, daft bairns both, in the play and wisp of the moonlight’s flow, till Chris lost breath and he caught her up: and she suddenly yawned and he said, Bedtime. And Chris minded now the thing she had planned, and lingered a minute behind his step, shy as a bride to go with him.

The room was in shadow, for the moon had veered, Robert moved about quiet and lighted the lamp, his close-cropped hair lay smooth on his head till his clothes ruffled it up as he pulled them off. He looked over at Chris, I’m not sleepy at all. And said in that voice that he sometimes used You look very sweet, Christine, to-night. Did you know?

She reached up then and put out the light, and changed in the dark though he laughed and asked why. She answered nothing, slipped in beside him between the cool sheets; and lying so, still, she heard her heart hammer.

He lay quiet as well, then the curtain flapped and bellied in the breeze, and you saw like a shadow the smile on his face, it was turned to you and you turned to him; and he said in a minute, Why, Christine! solemn, and his hands came firmly under your chin to hold you so and to kiss you, stern. And you knew that you stood on the brink of that sea that was neither charted nor plumbed by men, that sea-shore only women had known, dark, with its sailing red lights of storms, where only the feet of women had trod, hearing the thunder of the sea in their ears as they gathered the fruit on that waste, wild shore….

So: and his lips were in yours, and they altered, and you were gladder than you’d been for years, your arm went round his bared shoulder quick … and suddenly you were lying as rigid as death. Robert said, Tired out, after all, Christine?

For months after that she remembered that moment, her voice hadn’t come from her lips for a minute; then she said, Just a bit, and heard him draw breath, and she said again, soft, Not TOO tired, Robert, and had set her teeth fast after that, for an age, the thunder of that sea cut off by a wall, as she herself was, by a wall of fire; but she said not a word of either of these, stroked his hair where it clung to his brow; and he put his head on her breast and slept, after a while: and the house grew still.

She’d sleep soon herself, she’d put that dream by, the dream of a bairn fathered by Robert—not now, maybe never, but she could not to-night, not with memory of that scar that was torn across the shoulder of this living body beside her, the scar that a fragment of shrapnel had torn—but a little lower it would have torn this body, grunting, into a mesh of blood, with broken bones and with spouting blood, an animal mouthing in mindless torment. And she’d set herself to conceive a child—for the next War that came, to be torn like that, made blood and pulp as they’d made of Ewan—Oh, Ewan, Ewan, that was once my lad, that lay where this stranger’s lying the night, I haven’t forgotten, I haven’t forgotten, you’ve a Chris that lies with you there in France, and she shan’t bring to birth from her womb any bairn to die as you, for a madman’s gab….

Quiet, oh, quiet, greet soft lest he wake, who’s so kind and dear, who’s so far from you now. But you’ll never have a bairn of his for torment, to be mocked by memorials, the gabblings of clowns, when they that remained at home go out to praise the dead on Armistice Day.

   

FAITH, WHEN IT came there was more to remember in Segget that year than Armistice only. There was better kittle in the story of what happened to Jim the Sourock on Armistice Eve. He was aye sore troubled with his stomach, Jim, he’d twist his face as he’d hand you a dram, and a man would nearly lose nerve as he looked—had you given the creature a bad shilling, or what? But syne he would rub his hand slow on his wame, It’s the pains in my breast that I’ve gotten again; and he said that they fairly were awful sometimes, like a meikle worm moving and wriggling in there. Folk said he fair did his best to drown it, and God! that was true, the foul brute would go home, near every night as drunk as a toff, and fall in the bed by the side of his wife, she’d say You coarse brute, you’ve come drunken again; but he’d only groan, with his hand at his stomach, the worm on the wriggle like a damned sea-serpent.

Well, the Sourock and his mistress kept a pig, and the night of November the tenth Dite Peat closed up his shop and came over to kill it. He fair was a hand at a killing, was Dite, and the pig looked over its ree as he came, and knew fine what the knife and axe were for. So it started to scraich, and Dite grinned at the brute, Wait a minute, my mannie, I’ll let that scraich out. And the Sourock’s wife, that was standing by, felt queer as she saw that look on his face, she thought him a tink, but he fair could kill, not useless entirely like that gawpus Jim.

So she asked Dite in for a dram ere he started, and down he sat with his dram and his cake, and he drank down the one like a calf with its milk and ate up the cake like a famished dog. Syne he said it was over late to-night to cut up the beast out there in the ree, he’d come over the morn and see to that, Armistice Day would be a fine time to do a bit cutting about among flesh—Fegs, mistress, I’ve seen humans carved up like pigs, like bits of beef in a butcher’s shop, and it fair looked fine, as I often thought, you couldn’t wonder at those cannibal childes——

The Sourock’s wife asked if he’d like to see her sick, Dite said, Be sick as you like, I won’t mind; you’ve an uneasy stomach for a potman’s wife. And she broke down and grat then and said what a fool she had been to marry a creature like Jim, her that was a decent bit parlour-maid once, with her wages her own and her fine new clothes, Jim had sworn in those days he was fair tee-tee, now he drank like a drain and stank like one, too, he wouldn’t care a fig though he came of a night and found her lying dead in her bed. Dite thought, B’God, if he’d sense he’d dance! but he didn’t say that, he didn’t care a damn for the Sourock’s wife or the Sourock’s troubles, why should you care about any man’s troubles, there were damn the few that had cared for yours—not that you’d asked them, you could manage them fine.

So he rose up and said, Well, then, I’ll go out and have a bit play with that beast in the ree.

She asked if he’d manage the thing by himself, she was off for the night to her sister in Fordoun, soon’s she’d laid his supper for the Sourock: not that she supposed the sot would eat it, he’d come home and just stiter to his bed, as usual. Dite said he would manage fine on his own, and went out, and the Sourock’s wife a bit later heard the grunt of the pig turn into a scream, nasty to hear, and then it came shrill, and she put on her hat and took her bit bag and went out and down by the ree as she went, not wanting to look and see Dite at his work of killing her pig for the winter dinners. But something drew her eyes in over the ree, there was Dite Peat, he was covered with sharn, he’d tripped in a rush he had made at the pig, now he’d cornered it up at the back of the ree. Its mouth was open and its bristles on end, and it whistled through its open jaws like the sound of the steam from an engine in Segget station. So she didn’t look longer, went hurrying on, it had been a fine beast, the pig, she remembered, would stand on its trough with a pleased-like grumph as she scratched the bristles on its back and lugs, fair a couthy beast, though scared at the rats, it had once near tripped her as she stood in its ree, she thought the creature was making at her: but instead it had caught a glimpse of a rat and was trying to get behind her for safety. So she turned the corner by Moultrie’s shop and heard up in Segget the pig scream again, and she found herself hoast, like a fool of a bairn, with water in the nose—where was her hanky? And she suddenly thought of Dite Peat as a rat, a great rat with its underhung jaw and cruel eyes, creeping on the pig that was frightened at rats and had run once frightened to hide behind her—och, she was daft or soft or just both, and damn it! she couldn’t get at her hanky.

But Dite had cornered Jim’s pig at last, as it swithered its head he saw it set fine, and swung the bit axe, the blade of it up, the pig screamed again and fell at his feet with a trickle of blood from its snout and its trotters scraping and tearing at the sharn of the ree. So Dite turned the brute over, slow, with his axe, and took out his knife and cut its throat, slow, and held the throat open to let it bleed well. Syne he slung it on his shoulder and took it to the kitchen, and hung it on a hook and left it to drip.

It was fell dark then, as he slung the brute up, its flesh was still warm, and it minded him well of the bits of folk that a shell would fling Feuch! in your face with a smell of sharn, out in the War—He had liked it fine; there was something in blood and a howling of fear that kittled up a man as nothing else could. So he left the pig to drip in the dark, and it moved quick once, when the sinews relaxed, and Dite gave a laugh and gave it a slap.

’Twas near to ten when he took a bit dander back again to the Sourock’s house, a blatter of rain was dinging on Segget, sweeping and seeping up over the Howe, lying at night on the winter’s edge with its harvests in, its potato-crops with dripping shaws in the rigs of red clay. Dite pulled down his cap and lifted the sneck and went into the house of Jim the Sourock. He cracked a match and looked at the pig, it was getting on fine, had near finished to drip, he would leave it now till the morn’s night. And then—he was aye a coarse brute, was Dite Peat, though you couldn’t but laugh when you heard the tale—a grand idea came into his head, and he sat down and thought it all out and syne laughed, and took down the pig he had killed from its hook and slung it over his shoulder and went, ben to the bed the Sourocks slept in, a great box-bed that was half-covered in.

Dite threw back the blankets and put the pig down, the near side of the bed where the Sourock’s wife slept—all the wives of Segget slept at the front, a woman aye sleeps at the front of the bed where she can get quicker out than a man, that’s sense, for the lighting of the morning fire or getting up in the dark to be sick, as a woman will, when she’s carrying a bairn, and not disturbing her man from his rest.

So Dite dumped down the pig in the bed, and covered it up, careful and canny. And he took a bit dander up through Segget, to freshen himself, as he said, for the night; and syne he went home, for he was fell tired.

’Twas an hour or so later ere the Sourock came home, he’d had to clear up the bar in the Arms, and lock the doors and hand over the silver, and stoke up a fire for a traveller childe that was spending the night in the Arms’ best room. What with one thing and another that night, the drinks he had ta’en and the heat of the Arms, Jim came through Segget with a head fair spinning. As he crossed the Square he keeked at the angel, and damn’t! there were two of the things up there, he stared at the fairely stern for a while; not decent for angels to cuddle like that. But then he decided he was fell drunk, and shook his head, two angels still there, and went slithering up through the lurching East Wynd.

Well, he got home at last through the drift of the rain, there was hardly a light to be seen in Segget, it cuddled up close in its beds and slept, with its goodmen turned to the wall and its wives wearied with a day of bairns and of claik, the bairns lying three-four in a bed, though five or six among the tink spinners, they bred like lice and they slept like them, too, Ake Ogilvie said—an ill bit speak, a man couldn’t help the bairns that came, sometimes a woman was just of the kind that would take if you gave her no more than a squeeze, the next was cannier: you just couldn’t tell.

Well, Jim the Sourock had been lucky so far, a fell good thing, one Sourock enough; but he wasn’t thinking of that or aught else, for a while he couldn’t lay hands on his sneck. But he got it at last and let himself in, and sat down on the chair that stood by the door, and gave a great paich and rubbed at his middle.

Syne he loosened his boots, not bothering with a lamp, he knew better than that, he might fire the damned house; so he got his boots off and left them lie there, and made for the bedroom, holding to the wall, he would know the way in his sleep by now. Then the first thing happened that jaggered his night, his knees went bang ’gainst the side of a tub; he tumbled half-way into the tub, the bottom was full of some sticky soss, the Sourock swore and lurched up to his feet and wiped his hands on the seat of his breeks, he supposed that the wife had been washing fell late—the careless bitch to leave the tub there!

Well, he edged round about it and got to the door, and stitered inside and grumbled out loud, Do you know you’ve near broken my neck, eh, woman?

His wife said nothing, that wasn’t surprising, considering that she was a five miles off. But the Sourock had forgotten all about that, he went shoggling and stitering about the room, pulling off his breeks and his socks, nothing else, he aye slept in his drawers and kept fine and warm. Syne he made for the bed and went in by the foot, his left hand on the hump he took for his wife. So he pushed back the blankets and got in below, and felt about with his feet awhile to lay them on his wife and get himself warm. But damn the warmth could he find the night, so he reached out to give the creature a joggle—Jean, are you wake?

Well, the hump said nothing and the Sourock by then had his head a bit cleared through the fall in the tub. And he felt in a rage—Here, answer me, can’t you? What’s wrong with the like of you, eh, the night? And he put his hand under the blankets to feel her, so he did, and nearly shot out of the bed. Jean—God, Jean, but you’re awful cold!

She said nothing at all and he sudden felt ill. He put out his hand, she was cold as a stone—worse than that, the hair frozen hard on her skin, the Sourock was dribbling and yammering by then, Jean, Jean, waken up; you’re near frozen stiff! And at last he could bear the thing no longer, and got from his bed and found a match and lighted it up and pulled back the blanket. And he saw a great gaping throat in the light, and the spunk went out, his yell maybe blew it.

That was the story he’d tell to folk. For the rest, you gathered he pulled himself together, and went out to get some body go for the doctor: he was maybe a bit fuddled, but he knew what he wanted and was keeping quite calm, or so he would swear. That maybe was so, and maybe it wasn’t, ’twas strange anyway if he felt like that, that when Peter Peat heard a bellow and yammer and somebody beat on the door of his house like the angel of God on the Judgement Day—and Peter got from his bed and looked out, there was no angel but Jim the Sourock, in his sark, with no boots or breeks on either, his face and neck all covered with blood. And he yammered in the light of Peter Peat’s candle—Let’s in, Peter Peat. Oh, Christ, let me in!

But Peter wasn’t near such a fool as do that. Go home to your bed, he said, and keep quiet. Is this a time to disturb decent folk? Go home and sleep by your goodwife’s side—— And he couldn’t say more, the creature of a Sourock was fairly daft, he decided, for he yelped like a dog hard-kicked, and vanished from the range of Peter Peat’s eyes; and Peter closed down the window and went back, canty, to sleep by his meikle wife’s side, like a calf cuddling up to a haystack, folk said.

The Sourock was fair demented by then, he tried the house of old Hairy Hogg, and the Provost came down and keeked through the slit that was set in the door for letters, fair gentry. And the Sourock cried Let me in, oh, I’m feared. And old Hogg said In? To your sty; you drunkard! You’re a fair disgrace to Scotland and Segget. Go home like a decent man to your wife. The Sourock vanished so quickly at that that the Provost was fair convinced he’d obeyed—ay, there still were folk had the power to rule, them that came of the Burnes blood.

Well, where do you think that Jim ended up? Down in the house of MacDougall Brown. MacDougall let him in and heard his bit story, Cis got from her bed and came down to hear. MacDougall cried on her to go back, but she wouldn’t, she said All right, I won’t look—not decent for a lassie to look on a man when he hadn’t on breeks, or not at least till she’d married one herself, syne she’d think, said Ake Ogilvie, his breeks were fair the best bit of the bargain, and the Scythian childe that invented the things the greatest benefactor of the human race.

Well, Cis boiled some water to wash the Sourock, and MacDougall, it fair must have been a sore wrench, made tea for the creature and he drank it up, and his stomach for once didn’t turn at the taste. And he felt a bit better and washed his foul neck, telling how his wife lay with her throat cut out. MacDougall said, Ay, she has met the Lord, as you yourself one day must do. Repent and come to the arms of Jesus—that’s what he’d planned from the first, you gathered. Well, the Sourock said that he would, by God, he’d be fair tee-tee from that minute, he would; and MacDougall was pleased as punch and near kissed him, he was awful fend of bringing souls to God, was MacDougall, and threatening the souls with the pains of hell if they traded at any other shop but his.

So he loaned a pair of his breeks to the Sourock, and out the pair of them went together, and went canny up to the Sourock’s house and ben to the room where the red corpse lay, MacDougall carrying the lantern he’d lit. And he lifted the lantern and glowered at the thing that was lying there in the Sourock’s bed, and cried Hoots, man this is no the mistress and pulled back the blankets and showed Jim the pig. And the Sourock glowered at it, Well, then, I’m damned. Man, but it fair looked her image to me.

   

THEY WERE INTO Armistice Day by then, though neither MacDougall nor the Sourock cared, they shifted the pig and went to their beds, the rain held on through the night, and morning came soaking laired across the clay parks, the parks that begirdle Segget in red, in a wheep of gulls driven in from the coast, if you drove into Segget that day you’d have seen enough glaur around to make you believe the tale that they never took a good wash in Segget till the harvest was over and the bills all paid. That was no more than a speak, you knew, but it made a fine hit at the Segget folk, them so damned proud of their Burgh and Kaimes, and their new bit kirk that hadn’t a steeple, not so proud of their mills and the spinners that made up the most of their population. And faith! by the time Armistice was out, it was less proud than ever of its spinners, Segget.

The day had cleared by eleven o’clock, and folk came talking in round the angel that stood so bonny in Segget Square. Ay, fairly a gey bit gathering, impressive—except for the smell, Ake Ogilvie said. But he aye was sneering something like that, the coarse brute, why couldn’t he let folk a-be? And you saw him there in the midst of the lave, with his medals pinned on his waistcoat flap, and his hands in his pockets, looking at the angel as though he wouldn’t sleep with the lass though she tried to come down and crawl into his bed. Sim Leslie, the bobby, that folk called Feet, tried to form a half-circle here, the Provost to the right, all hair and horns, with his popping bit eyes and his ancestor Burns, he was telling how Burns was a patriot childe, aye ready to shed his blood for the land. Ake Ogilvie said Ay. He slew a fell lot of the French—with his mouth. He was better at raping a servant quean than facing the enemy with a musket. And Hairy Hogg said that was a foul slander, Ogilvie mad with jealousy, just, because the dirt that he wrote himself was worse than dirt, compared with the Bard; and Ake said he’d rather be just plain dirt than slush on a dung-heap, disguised as a flower; and young Alec Hogg, that was home from Edinburgh, cried Cannot you leave my father alone?

Ake looked him up and down with a long, cold stare. I never touch dung except with a fork, but give’s none of your lip, or I’ll break my rule. Alec Hogg cried Try it! and maybe in a minute there would have been a fine bit fight on the go, right there by the angel in Segget Square, folk round about looking shocked as could be and edging nearer for a better look, when they saw the minister coming from East Wynd, and the choir coming with him; and folk cried, Wheest!

’Twas him, the minister, that had started the thing and had you all out in the Square to-day, old Greig, that filled the pulpit afore him, hadn’t bothered to hold any service at all, he’d over-much sense to catch cold in the Square. But the Reverend Mr Colquohoun was fell keen, he’d badgered folk to close up their shops and gotten the mills to close down as well, he fair was a go-ahead billy, like, though some folk said he was more than that, he’d barely started interfering yet. ’Twas said he’d already the kirk session against him, with his preaching for this and that daft-like reform; and he’d badgered Hairy Hogg near from his wits—or what little wits were left the old Provost—about the town council and where it might meet, and what it could do, and who were the members, and why didn’t they light Segget at night, did they know the drains in West Wynd were bad, when were the mills inspected, and how? … Folk said the next thing you’d find him keen on would be shifting the Kaimes for a seat in his yard, ay, if the creature went on at this rate he’d soon have all Segget on his hands to fight.

A raw wind blew down the Howe through the Square and fluttered the minister’s robes as he prayed, his thin white face down-bent as he prayed, his prayer just said in an ordinary voice. It made a man kind of uneasy to hear the way that he spoke to God like that—not as any other ministers would do, as though they’d only half-swallowed their dinners and had the remainder still in their throats. No, no, the Reverend Colquohoun spoke plain, some liked it that way, you were damned if you did: and he asked the mercy of God on a world unawakened yet from a night that was past. And he said that God had made neither night nor day in human history, He’d left it in the hands of Man to make both, God was but Helper, was but Man Himself, like men he also struggled against evil, God’s wounds had bled, God also had died in the holocaust in the fields of France. But He rose anew, Man rose anew, he was as undying as God was undying—if he had the will and the way to live, on this planet given to him by God. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night—they had hung in the sky since the coming of men, set there by God for the standards of men, clouds and the shining standards of rain, the hosts of heaven for our standard by night…. A trumpet had cried and unsealed our ears: would it need the lightning to unseal our eyes?

And after a bit you stopped listening to that, you didn’t know much about preaching and the like, but was that the way a minister should speak? You were damned if you thought so: fair heathen it sounded. And you took a canny bit keek round about, at the throng of the Segget folk that were there—hardly a spinner, where were the dirt? There was Mrs Colquohoun, anyway, bonny in a way, with a sulky-like face, a common bit quean the minister had wifed, folk that had known her well in Kinraddie said she had once been as blithe as bonny; but now she was altered out of all manner, if they met her and spoke to her and cried, Chris! she would smile and speak and be friends enough, but different somehow—ay, she’d grown damned proud. Well, there she was, and her son as well, the son of her first bit man you had heard, with a cool, dark face, but not a bad bairn. Nearby was the Provost and next him his son, the Fasher, rigged out in his baggy breeks. MacDougall Brown was well to the fore, not that he’d fought in the War, but he’d sung; and Peter Peat, the tailor, a terrible patriot; and Dite, the foul tink; and Dominie Geddes, and the three women teachers; and the porters and stationy, Smithie and Ake. Will Melvin you could see near the Station folk, John Muir and Bruce and a birn of the like. Syne the minister held up his hand for quiet, and you knew that it was eleven o’clock.

And faith! The quiet would have been fell solemn, but for a great car that came swishing up, from the south, and turned, and went up East Wynd. Folk had stood still like stooks of rags, but they moved then and stared at the thing go by—all but the minister, he stood like a stone. Then he said, low and clear, We will now sing the hymn, ‘O God, our help in ages past’.

You cleared your throat and looked right and left, felt shy to be such a fool as stand there and sing without a bit organ to help; and the first few words were a kind of growl, till you heard the minister himself sing up. And just as folk were getting in the swing, the dirt of spinners came down to the Square.

They came marching down through the Close from West Wynd, a twenty or thirty of the ill-gettèd creatures, with their mufflers on, not in decent collars, their washy faces crinkled with grins, marching along there four by four. In front of the lot was that tink John Cronin, and over his shoulder he carried a red flag, and the spinners behind him were laughing and joking, two-three of them women, the shameful slummocks. Well, your mouth fell open, as it damn well might, you had never yet seen such a sight in Segget; and you stopped your singing, and so did some more, and some after that, till the only folk left were the Reverend Colquohoun, and his wife, and Cis Brown, and that gawpus Else Queen. And then Ake Ogilvie that hadn’t yet sung took a look round about and started to sing, as loud as could be, as though he’d new-wakened; he did it to be different from others, as usual.

But afore folk could pipe up again to the thing the spinners were close and Jock Cronin cried Halt! And they swung round about him and stood in a circle, and next minute they’d started singing themselves, loud as could be and fair drowning the hymn, a song about shrouding their dead in red, and about their bit limbs being stiff and cold: and God alone knows what kind of stite.

Well, that fairly finished the Memorial Service. The minister had turned as white as a sheet, he finished his singing and so did his wife, here and there a man in the crowd cried out, Have you no manners?—speaking to the spinners. And Feet, the policeman, went over to them, Now then, you’re causing a disturbance, he said, he was awful proud of that word, was Feet, that he’d got in a book on how bobbies should speak. But they took no notice, just stood round and sang, till he pushed through the ring round that tink John Cronin; then they stopped and Cronin said Well, Feet, what’s up?

Feet was fair roused, a patriot-like childe, he hadn’t been out to the War himself, they wouldn’t let him go with feet like that in case he might block up the trenches, folk said. But he’d fair been a one for the War all the same, and he wasn’t to see its memory insulted by a pack of tink brutes that didn’t wear collars—them and their song about flinching and sneering from a scarlet standard and God knows what. Who ever heard of a scarlet standard?—Just a tink way of calling their betters bloody…. So he said to Jock Cronin, Aren’t you black ashamed to break in on the War Memorial service? And Jock Cronin said No, we’re not, you see, Feet, we all had a taste of the War ourselves. Take a keek at our chests now, Feet my lad, and then have a look at your own and see if there’s anything on it the like of on ours!

And then you saw plain what he meant, he himself, and all of the spinners that had marched to the Square, had War-medals pinned on their jackets or waistcoats, they were all of them men who had been to the War: except the three women, and they wore medals sent on to them after their folk were dead. Well, that fair staggered Feet, and you felt sorry for him, especially as you had no medal yourself, you hadn’t been able to get to the War, you’d been over-busy with the shop those years, or keeping the trade going brisk in the Arms, or serving at Segget as the new stationmaster. And well you might warrant if the King had known the kind of dirt that those spinners were he wouldn’t have lashed out as he’d done with his medals.

But Jock Cronin pushed his way past Feet, and jumped on the pedestal under the angel, and cried out Comrades—not only mill folk, but others as well that I see down there: WE went to the War, we knew what it was, we went to lice and dirt and damnation: and what have we got at the end of it all? Starvation wages, no homes for heroes, the capitalists fast on our necks as before. They’re sacking men at the mills just now and leaving them on the bureau to starve—that’s our reward, and maybe it’s yours, that’s the thing we must mind to-day. Not to come here and remember the dead, they’ve a place that’s theirs and we’ll share it some time, they’re maybe the better compared with some that live here in Segget worse-fed than beasts. It’s the living that’s our concern, you chaps. Come over and join us, the Labour Party. You first, Mr Colquohoun, you were out there, you’ve sense.

And as the impudent brute ended up he waved his hand to the Reverend Colquohoun, and for a minute after that there was such a quiet you could near have cut it and eaten it in chunks, it was that damned solid, while all the folk stared. Syne the minister just turned his back and said, cool, I think we’ll go home, Chris, to his wife; and she nodded and said nothing, they were both cool and calm. It made a man boil to see them so meek, damn’t! if you had been a minister, would you let yourself be insulted like that? No, you wouldn’t; and neither would any minister in the days before the coming of the War, the War had fair been a ruination, letting tinks like the Cronins find out that their betters ate and smelt just the same as themselves.

Well, next there was near a fight broke out. Ake Ogilvie cried to Jock Cronin, Oh ay, and where the hell did YOU serve in the War? And Jock Cronin said Up in the front, my lad, not scrounging behind with the Royal Engineers. ——No, you hadn’t enough brain for them, you poor fool, Ake Ogilvie said, and would maybe have said more, if the minister hadn’t turned round and cried, Ogilvie! And Ake went off, and the spinners all laughed. Some folk stayed near to hear what they’d say, most decent bodies went over to the Arms and spoke of the things they’d have done to the spinners if they’d stayed behind in Segget Square.

   

CHRIS RAN NEARLY all the way from the Square, Mr Geddes and his teachers were coming for lunch (as they called it, but they ate it just as a dinner); and the meat was cooking in the Manse’s oven. Else you could see flying on in front, as anxious as you, you’d left Robert behind, he’d laughed and slowed down and lighted his pipe. But you ran up under the drip of the yews, through the Manse front door and through to the kitchen, and there was Else with her face like a fire, leaning panting up by the kitchen back door, and a burning smell from the open oven. Else cried Well, I was just in time! and pointed to the chicken out in its ashet, it had just begun to burn at the top. And you said That was fine, you’re a blessing, Else. Sit and rest a minute. Else took a look at herself in the glass, I’ve a face like that flag the spinners were carrying. Did you ever see such nasty brutes?

Chris said they hadn’t much manners, she thought. But she’d never before seen men with that flag, or heard them singing the song about it—hirpling and sad, but it caught you somehow, there was something in it that you knew was half-true, true with a truth that drew your mind back to Chae Strachan far in your younger days, who had said the mission of the common folk was to die and give life with their deaths forever…. Like Robert’s God, in a way, you supposed.

And maybe that was Robert’s own thought, Chris came on him in the sitting-room, standing and staring queerly at Segget, harsh-blue, rain-driven, in its clouded noon. Chris put up a hand on his shoulder, Not vexed? The service was fine, and I liked what you said. Robert squeezed her hand, My vanity’s vexed. That’s all, I suppose, and those spinner chaps—a perfect devil if they’re right, Christine. Chris said How right? and he said Their beliefs—a war of the classes to bring fruit to the War. Remember the Samson I preached that day I tried for the kirk of Segget, Christine? I suppose we saw him in the Square to-day, with a muffler on and a thin, starved look. If his betters won’t mend the world, HE may!

Then his gaze drew in, Lord, here they come. His betters—well, well. They’re just at the door.

Chris herself went and opened the door, Mrs Geddes came gushing in over the mat, Miss M’Askill behind, sharp as a needle, the second teacher at Segget school. She eyed Chris up and down as a ferret might, How d’you do, Mrs Colquohoun? Disgraceful exhibition down in the Square! Chris had heard of Miss M’Askill from Else, straight as a pole and nearly as bare, and she wore her hair in two great plaits, low down on her brow, and it gave her a look like a stirk with its head in a birn of hay; and whenever she saw a new man in the toun she’d stare at him till the man would blush, up and down in the line of her stare; and she’d give a bit sniff (or so said Else), as much as to say What, marriage with you?

But damn the soul had offered that yet, not even for a night at the furthest gait, Ake Ogilvie had said he would rather sleep with a Highland steer in the lee of a whin. Chris tried hard not to remember that, she would laugh if she did: and so she did not, but shook hands instead with Miss Ferguson next, her that they called The Blusher in Segget. And she started to blush as though someone had couped a jar of red ink on her head at that minute, the blush came thicker and thicker each second, till Chris felt so sorry she blushed as well. Then Miss Jeannie Grant, dapper and trig, with a fresh, fair face, Hello, Mrs Colquohoun! What did you think of the fun in the Square? Last, Mr Geddes, he looked at you bitter, as though he thought you poor stuff like the most of mankind, and shook your hand limp, and trailed after the others, his hands in his pockets, till he tripped on a toy of Ewan’s in the hall, a wooden horse, and it fell with a clatter and Εwan came running out to see why.

Mr Geddes had nearly fallen with the thing. Now he picked it up a great splinter of wood torn out of its side. Ewan said What a fool, man, why didn’t you look? and Chris cried Ewan! Mr Geddes grinned. He’s right enough, I suppose I’m a fool. I’m sorry, young man. Ewan said So am I.

Chris wanted to giggle, but again did not, instead looked solemn as a funeral, near—or two funerals if you counted one of John Muir’s; and separated the Dominie and Ewan ere worse came; and shooed Mr Geddes in after his wife.

Robert was there, he’d greeted them all, and was standing by with the sherry decanter. Mr Geddes had lost the smile plucked out for Ewan, like a last swede plucked from a frozen field, he said bitter as ever, A drop, Colquohoun, and sat down and looked round the room as though he thought damn little of any thing in it.

And then Ewan started to sing outside, in the moment when folk were sipping their sherry; and Miss M’Askill near dropped her glass. Chris got to her feet and felt herself blush, silly to do that, and she called out Ewan! and he cried back Yes? and opened the door. And Chris felt a fool, the whole room looking at her. Why were you singing that song just now?

Ewan said, polite, I like it, mother. I think it’s a bloody fine song, don’t you?

Else saved the situation, as usual. They heard her feet in the hall, Ewan vanished, and the door was snibbed with a sudden click. Miss M’Askill said it was dreadful, dreadful, those spinners corrupting even the children. Didn’t Mrs Colquohoun think the authorities ought to take steps to putting it down?

Miss Jeannie Grant was sitting by Robert, showing a fine length of leg, nice leg, she said What’s ‘it’? Put a stop to singing the Red Flag, do you mean? And Miss M’Askill said, Yes, that for one thing, there are plenty of others—the ongoings in general of those paid agitators. And Miss Jeannie Grant said, Well, I’m an agitator, but I get no pay. Where do the others get theirs? I’d like to apply! And Miss M’Askill looked at her so awful, ’twas a wonder she didn’t shrivel up there and then. But instead she just winked blithe at Chris, and drank up her sherry and had some more.

Syne they were all speaking of the scene in the Square, Geddes said bitter that the spinners had behaved as you would expect such cattle to do, neither better nor worse than other Scotch folk. All Scots were the same, the beastliest race ever let loose on the earth. Oh no, he wasn’t bitter, he’d got over that, he’d got over living amongst them, even: their gossip that was fouler than the seepings of a drain, there was hardly a soul in a village like Segget but was a murderer ten times over in word—they hadn’t enough courage to be it in deed. Spinners were no worse than the rest, or not much. As for this business of a Segget League, well, he voted Tory himself every time, and no League could remain non-political long. His advice: Colquohoun leave the lot alone, if there’s anything a hog hates it’s cleaning its sty.

Robert asked Miss Ferguson what she might think, Miss Ferguson blushed till Chris feared for her vest, her underthings would sure be on fire in a minute, she stammered that she didn’t know, for sure, some of the spinners’ children were cruel, they’d get a girl in the playground and tease her, or worse than that—and Miss Ferguson blushed some more, a torrent, till Chris in pity looked away, and thought herself of her own schooldays and those things that were worse in the reek of the playground, hot and still on a summer day and a crowd of loons round about you, laughing, with bright, hot eyes and their short, fair hair, and cruel, eager fingers … but she hadn’t much minded, she’d been able even then to look after herself, it needed a sudden twist of her mind to think, appalled, that Ewan might do that, might stand by some girl and pry beastly in things—

She switched to listening to the talk again, Mrs Geddes was having all the say now, the three teachers had no other course, very plain, but listen to the Dominie’s wife with attention. And Mrs Geddes said what was really wrong, with the whole of Segget, not only the spinners, was Refusal to Co-operate in Fellowship. But the W.R.I. was to combat that, and she really didn’t think that this League was needed. The W.R.I. was to organize socials, and teach the mothers all kinds of fresh things—basket work, now, that was very interesting…. And she shone and wobbled like a jelly from a mould, and Geddes’ look of contempt grew deeper. Miss Jeannie Grant put her sherry-glass down. I don’t see anything your League can do. But the Labour Party can here in Segget, if only we make the branch strong enough; and she looked as sweet as an apple as she said it, and young and earnest, and Chris half liked her, as though she stood on a hill and looked down on her own youth only beginning the climb, half-liking its confidence, pitying its blindness. But she thought for that matter, again and again (and more than ever since their coming to Segget) that she was older than most she met, older even than Robert himself—older than all but her own son Ewan!

Then they heard Else stamping out in the hall, and she rang the bell and they went through to dinner, Mrs Geddes calling it lunch, of course, she was so genteel Chris thought it a wonder she should ever open her mouth for food. But she fair put away a good plateful and more, for the chicken was golden and cooked to a turn, Robert sat and carved when he’d said the grace, the grace that Chris thought so childlike and kind:

God bless our food,

    And make us good,

And pardon all our sins,

    For Jesus Christ’s sake.

Syne Miss M’Askill was asking Chris, sharp, Are you fond of social work, Mrs Colquohoun? and Chris said Not much, if you mean by that going round and visiting the kirk congregation. Miss M’Askill raised up her brows like a chicken considering a something lying on the ground, not sure if it was just a plain empty husk, or an interesting bit of nastiness, like. Mrs Geddes said she was very disappointed, she’d hoped they’d have Mrs Colquohoun to help—with the work of the W.R.I., she meant; and why didn’t Mrs Colquohoun like visiting?

And suddenly Chris understood her and hated her—she minded the type, oh, well, well enough! So she smiled sweet at her and said Oh, you see, I wasn’t always a minister’s wife. I was brought up on a croft and married on one, and I mind what a nuisance we thought some folk, visiting and prying and blithering about socials, doing everything to help us, or so they would think—except to get out and get on with the work!

Robert’s face went queer, a half-laugh, a half-scowl, but Miss Jeannie Grant was delighted, she said And get off your backs, you could surely have added! You’re a socialist the same as I am, you know. Chris shook her head, she knew nothing about it, sorry already she had spoken like that, Mrs Geddes had gone quite white for a minute, Chris knew she had made an enemy in Segget. The Dominie stared at his plate with a sneer; Miss M’Askill looked at Robert, brows up; Miss Ferguson looked at her plate and blushed; only Ewan ate on, as calm as ever, except when he said, Can I go now, please?

Chris caught Miss M’Askill’s eye when he’d gone, it said, plain as plain, A very spoilt child. And you supposed that it really was true, the truth as she’d see it, who never had a child, who didn’t know the things that bound you to Ewan, as though his birth-cord still bound you together, he tugged at your body, your heart, at your womb, in some moments of pity it was sheer, sick pain that tore at you as you comforted him. But THAT you could never explain to a woman who’d never had a bairn, had never, you supposed, yet lain with a man, known all the shame and all the red splendour and all the dull ache and resentment of marriage that led to the agony and wonder of looking on the face, sweet and blind as the eyes of love, of a child new-born from your body’s harbour…. And Chris roused herself, Mr Geddes—pudding?

Robert was trying to keep the talk going, but some thing had spoiled the talk at the table—herself, Chris supposed, with telling the truth. And she thought They’re just servant-queans, after all, with a little more education and a little less sense—these, the folk Robert had thought could save Segget! It was hardly likely he thought so now: what would he do with his League and his plans? Still wait for young Stephen Mowat to come home?

Suddenly in the midst and mid of them all—the words she now used, the thoughts she thought, the clothes she wore and the things she ate—Chris would see her father’s face from long syne, the jutting beard and the curling lip—Come out of that, quean, with your dirt of gentry! And because she knew in a way it was true, the gentry that or but little more, sometimes she’d stop in the middle of a talk, in the middle of a walk, in the middle of a meal, and stare for so long that Robert would say, We’ve lost her again! Εwan, bring back your mother!

That feeling came over her later that day, when it brought Stephen Mowat to tea at the Manse. Though none of them guessed the fact at the time, it had been his car that passed the service at eleven o’clock in Segget Square: but ere well the car had reached Segget House the news had spread all around the toun, young Stephen Mowat had come home at last, from wandering about in foreign parts after leaving his English university. And his shover told as they passed the Square young Mowat had looked and seen the angel, and had groaned aloud, Oh Christ, even here—another bitch in a flannel shift! The shover said they’d seen birns of the statues as they motored up from England that week, lasses in bronze and marble and granite, dancing about on pedestal tops, he’d thought them bonny, Mr Stephen hadn’t, he said that Britain had gone harlot-mad, and stuck up those effigies all over the place, in memory no doubt of the Red Lamps of France.

And the shover said he should know about queans, young Mowat, considering the number he’d had since he’d left the college a six months back. No doubt he’d soon have them at Segget House, he intended to bide there and fee a big staff, and bring back the good old days to the toun. He was going to look after the mills for himself, the estate as well, and the Lord knows what.

Chris heard all this when the school-folk had gone, from Else, when she went to the kitchen to help. But Else needed no help, she’d a visitor there, Dalziel of Meiklebogs it was. He smiled shy and rose when he saw Chris come in, and she told him to sit, and Else poured out the news. Chris didn’t feel excited, but she thought Robert might. Well, that’ll be fine, no doubt, for Segget. Oh, have we made any cakes for tea?

Else said they hadn’t, but they damned soon would. Out of the way, there, Meiklebogs, now! and pushed him into a chair, he sat canny, his cap in his hands, and watched while she baked. Chris went back to Robert and told him the news.

He said Mowat home? It’s an answer to prayer. And just as I heard the black dog come barking! Let’s celebrate! And he caught Chris, daft, and twirled about the room in a dance. So they didn’t hear the knocking at the door, Else did, and went and brought Stephen Mowat in. They came to the door of the sitting-room and watched, till Chris saw them and stopped, and Robert did the same. And Else said, Mr Mowat, Mem, and vanished.

He’d a face that minded her of a frog’s, he was younger than herself by a good few years, with horn-rimmed spectacles astride a broad nose, and eyes that twinkled, and a way of speaking that in a few days was to stagger Segget. His brow went back to a cluster of curls, he was charming, you supposed, as a prince should be, and very likely damn seldom is; and he said he was pleased to be back in Segget, looking at Chris as though she were the reason, Chris had never met in with his like before, and stood and looked at him, cool, in surprise, taller than he was, he was to say later he felt he was stared at by Scotland herself. And once, when drunk, he was to say to the Provost that she couldn’t get over her blood and breed, she was proud as all the damned clodhoppers were, still thought in her heart they were the earth’s salt, and thought the descendant of a long line of lairds on the level with the descendants of a long line of lice. And he said by God, had it been a four hundred years back, he’d have tamed that look quick enough in his bed, maybe she lost something of her sulkiness there. And Provost Hogg boasted and said Not a doubt; and started to tell of his ancestor, Burns. And Mowat said, Who? Oh, Robbie Burns? A hell of a pity he couldn’t write poetry, and the Provost was vexed, but then, ’twas the laird, just joking-like; and he was the laird.

Chris heard of that later, she’d have needed second-sight to know of the gossip that would be in the future: she said she was glad to see him, she wasn’t, neither glad nor sad, a funny little thing, was this what Robert depended upon? Funny that the like of him for so long had lived on the rent of folk like hers. Syne she went to the kitchen to see how the cakes came, they were brown and steaming, set on the table, and Meiklebogs, shy, like a big, sly steer, was sitting and eating one by the sink. And because she just couldn’t thole him at all, he made her want to go change her vest, Chris smiled at him and was extra polite, and hoped that he’d stay to tea with Else; and helped Else pile the things on a tray; and they carried it through and found Robert and the laird already deep in the talk that was planned by Robert himself when he first saw Segget.

Mr Mowat’s English bray sounded so funny that Else gave a giggle and near dropped the tray. Is the creature foreign? and Chris said No; and Else said no more, but went solemnly in, and took only a keek or so at the creature, a little bit thing in baggy plus-fours. And he said Oh, thenks! and I say! and How Jahly! Else nearly giggled again, but she didn’t, till she got to the kitchen and there was Meiklebogs, and she gave him a poke, I say, how Jahly! You old devil, I’ve a good mind to make up to the laird. What would you do then, eh, would you say?

Meiklebogs smiled canny and said he would manage, and Else stared at him and wondered again why she’d ever allowed the old brute to come near her since she’d wept in his bed that night of the Show; she supposed she was still in a kind of a daze at finding the old brute as coarse as they’d said.

Chris sat in the sitting-room and listened to Mowat, and handed him tea, he said he’d come back to look after the mills and Segget in general, the curse of the age was its absentee landlords, not social conditions or unrest or suchlike. He was Jahly well sure he could buck up the village—didn’t Mrs Colquohoun approve of that, now? he’d want her approval ever so much. And he flashed her a long, bright, toothy smile, he’d fine teeth and knew it; and Chris said, I don’t know. I’ll wait and see what the bucking consists of. My father was a crofter and he used to say you should trust a laird just as far as you can throw him.

Stephen Mowat said he thought Mrs Colquohoun’s father Jahly, and glinted charming, and Chris gave him up, and cleared off the tea things and came back and listened. By then, so it seemed, Robert had told of his plans, and was sitting now harkening to Mowat’s reply. And the reply was: The thing that was needed everywhere was Discipline, hwaw? and order, and what not. The hand of the master—all the Jahly old things. He had been down in Italy the last few months and had seen things there, Rahly amazing, the country awakening, regaining its soul, its old leaders back—with a new one or so. Discipline, order, hierarchy—all that. And why only Italy; why not Scotland? He’d met other men, down from ’varsity of late, who were doing as he did, going back to their estates. Scotland a nation—that was the goal, with its old-time civilization and culture. Hwaw? Didn’t Mr Colquohoun agree?

But Chris had been listening, and now she must speak, she’d been trying to think as well as to listen, it was hard enough, but words suddenly came: they both turned round with a start as she spoke. And what’s going to happen when you and your kind rule us again, as of old, Mr Mowat? Was there ever the kind of Scotland you preach?—Happy, at ease, the folk on the land well-fed, the folk in the pulpits well-feared, the gentry doing great deeds? It’s just a gab and a tale, no more, I haven’t read history since I was at school, but I mind well enough what that Scotland was. I’ve been to Dunnottar Castle and seen there the ways that the gentry once liked to keep order. If it came to the push between you and the spinners I think I would give the spinners my vote.

Mowat said Rahly? staring at Chris, Robert stared as well at her down-bent face—suddenly she’d seen so much she didn’t say, all the pageant of history since history began up here in the windy Mearns Howe: the ancient rites of blood and atonement where the Standing Stones stood up as dead kings; the clownings and cruelties of leaders and chiefs; and the folk—her folk—who kept such alive—dying frozen at night in their eirdes, earth-houses, chaving from the blink of day for a meal, serfs and land-workers whom the Mowats rode down, whom the armies harried and the kings spat on, the folk who rose in the Covenant times and were tortured and broken by the gentry’s men, the rule and the way of life that had left them the pitiful gossiping clowns that they were, an obscene humour engraffed on their fears, the kindly souls of them twisted awry and veiled from men with a dirty jest; and this snippet of a fop with an English voice would bring back worse, and ask her to help!

And then that went by, she was suddenly cool. It was only a speak, a daft blether of words, whatever else happened to Segget, to Scotland—and there were strange things waiting to happen—there would never come back that old darkness again to torment the simple folk of her blood. Robert was speaking, he knocked out his pipe.

I’m afraid my wife and I think the same—as all folk worth their salt in Scotland must think. There are changes coming—they are imminent on us—and I once thought the folk of some teaching would help. Well, it seems they won’t—the middle class folk and the upper class folk, and all the poor devils that hang by their tails: they think we can last as we are—or go back—and they know all the while they are thinking a lie. But God doesn’t wait, or His instruments; and if these in Segget are the folk of the mills, then, whatever their creed, I’m on their side.

   

CHRIS STARTED AND moved, she nearly had frozen, leaning up here while the night went on, she ought to be down in her bed, she supposed. The rain had cleared and the stars had come out, frost was coming—there, bright down in Segget, was a mantling of grey where, the hoar was set, sprinkled like salt on the cant of the roofs. Beyond them there rose a red, quiet lowe, from the furnaces stacked for the night in the mills.

She stamped her feet and drew up her collar, watching that coming of the frost below. This impulse to seek the dark by herself! She had left Robert up in his study at work, Ewan in bed, young Mowat gone, and herself gone out for a walk through the rain that was closing in the end of Remembrance Day, wet and dank, as she’d seen it come. And it might be an age ere she came here again, too busied with living to stand looking at life, with Ewan at school and the campaign of Robert to conquer Segget for God and his dream.

A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

She raised her eyes and looked where the frost lay bright in the west, where the evening star wheeled down to midnight to lead her feet home.