by Nan Shepherd
In time he went to bed, but sleep did not come. Instead came fever and a new throng of disordered visions. He saw the solid granite earth, on which these established houses, the Weatherhouse and Knapperley, were built (less real, as he had said to Mrs Falconer, than the dissolution and mud of the war-swept country), melt and float and change its nature; and the people fashioned out of it, hard-featured, hard-headed, with granite frames and life-bitten faces, rude tongues and gestures, changed too, melted into forms he could not recognise. Then he perceived a boulder, earthy and enormous, a giant block of the unbridled crag, and behold! as he looked the boulder was his aunt. ‘You won’t touch me,’ she seemed to say. ‘I won’t be cut and shaped and civilised.’ But in an instant she began to move, treading ever more quickly and lightly, until he saw that she was dancing as he had caught her dancing on the night of his return. Faster and faster she spun, lighter of foot and more ethereal, and the rhythm of her dance was a phrase in the tune that had eluded him. And now she seemed to spurn the earth and float, and in the swiftness of her motion he could see no form nor substance, only a shining light, and he knew that what he watched was a dancing star.
It was already morning when he fell asleep, and he woke late, heavy-eyed and languid. Miss Barbara brought him a cup of tea—a visiting star, perhaps, but of peculiar magnitude. Thereafter she left him alone, and he lay swamped in lassitude and dozed again.
In the afternoon she went out. The house grew intolerably still. Not even a dog broke the uneasy quiet. He dozed, and struggled awake in a joyous clamour, a merry and tumultuous barking that did him good. Later he heard the stir around the ingle—sticks broken, fire-irons clattering, even, in the stillness of dusk, a sudden explosive crackle from the burning logs. He wanted food and a shave, the warmth and life of fire; speech, and the comfortable feel of paws and noses; and rising, he went downstairs.
To his surprise his aunt was just coming in. He had supposed her in the kitchen, where she, having seen the lamp lit, was supposing him. They pushed open the kitchen door together, and entered.
The fire was roaring on the hearth, the room was light and gay; dogs snuggled to the heat, tobacco smoke eddied on the air, the lid of the kettle danced and chattered and steam rose invitingly and bellied and wavered towards the chimney; and deep in Miss Barbara’s favourite chair there sat a little man, as abundantly at home as if the place were his. As Miss Barbara and Garry came in he was in act of rocking back his chair, stretching his arms with a luxurious content, and singing to a merry tune:
He took his pipes and played a spring
And bade the coo consider—
‘If it isna Johnnie Rogie!’ cried Miss Barbara. ‘Man, but you’re a sight for sair e’en.’
The little man turned in the chair, nodded gaily to Miss Barbara in time to his music, beat vigorously with his arms and continued to sing:
The coo considered wi’ hersel
That music wadna fill her—
Ay, ay, Bawbie, but I’ve the reek risin’ and the kettle on, an’ you shall hae your supper, lass:
And you shall hae your supper.
‘You’ll have a dram first, laddie,’ cried Miss Barbara. ‘I’ve aye a drappie o’ the real Mackay—none of your wersh war rubbish, dirten orra stuff.’
‘We’ll have it out, Bawbie.’
Miss Barbara fetched it running. She polished the tumblers and set them before her guest, who poured the whisky with the air of a god. Not more benignly did Zeus confer his benefits upon humanity than Johnnie Rogie the tramp handed Miss Barbara Paterson of Knapperley a share of her own whisky; and Miss Barbara took it with a gratitude that was divine in its acceptance, and called Garry to come forward and have his glass.
Unshaved, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes from which the sleep was not yet washed, Garry came to the fire.
‘Come awa’, my lad,’ cried Johnnie. ‘Sojers need a dram like the lave o’s.’ He poured the whisky and conferred it upon Garry. ‘Take you a’ you get an’ you’ll never want.’ And, raising his own glass, he let the golden liquor tremble to his mouth. ‘And sojers need to live and sojers need to pray. Live, laddie, live? Ay, sojers need to live mair than the lave o’s. Clean caup oot, like the communicants o’ Birse’—his head went back as he drained his glass—‘that’s the way a sojer needs to live. Tak’ you a’ that life can give you, laddie. Drink you it up, clean caup oot. It’s a grand dram as lang’s ye’re drinkin’ it, and ye’ll be a lang time deid.’ And seeing that Garry had not yet emptied his tumbler, he added, ‘But drink clean in, tak it a’ at ae gulp. Life’s a dram that’s better in the mou’ than in the belly.’
He poured himself another draught, and drank.
Apparently he found it good; for when he had swallowed it the sun-god himself was not more radiant, and when he spoke the words flowed out like song.
On Garry, too, unfed and over-strung, the golden liquor was having its effect. The shabby, under-sized man with the matted dingy hair and a little finger wanting, pouring the whisky and swaying his whole body to the rhythm of his chant, was hypnotising him, and with his will. He seemed a ministrant of life, bringing for a moment its golden energies within one’s grasp, making the visionary gleam look true. Garry thrust his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, talking eagerly. Miss Barbara was moving from room to room upstairs. When she came in again her face was aglow and she slapped Johnnie heartily on the shoulder.
‘And where have you been this long weary while?’
‘Where you could never follow, Bawbie.’
‘Nae to the wars,’ she mocked.
‘Just that.’
‘Eh? And you near sixty, and a cripple muckle tae and but the ae cranny.’
‘For a’ that, an’ a’ that, I’ve been wi’ the sojer laddies, Bawbie.’ He reeled off into a popular soldier song. ‘Ay, ay, the sojers need to live an’ the sojers need to sing. An’ wha wad sing to them if it wasna Johnnie? There’s nae a camp an’ nae a barrack but Johnnie’s been there. An’ whan the sojers are wearied an’ whan the sojers are wae, wha but Johnnie wad gar them can tie up, wi’ his auld fiddle an’ his auld true tongue?’
He quaffed the golden fire again: Medea’s fire, it made him young and reckless. He chanted more uproariously.
‘An’ mebbe whiles whan pay day cam, a sojer here, a sojer there, wad mind on singing Johnnie. Ay, ay, the sojer lads, they’re free wi’ their siller, the sojer lads, whan they ken the next march is the march to death. They’ve a lang road ahead o’ them, a lang road an’ few toons, the road to death; an’ lads that wadna pairt wi’ the dirt aneth their nails, in the ordiner ways of living, ’ll gang laughin’ doon to death an’ toss the siller fae them like a lousy sark. What’s the siller, what’s the siller, give’s a sang, they say.’
‘You’ll have a bonny penny in your pooch, Johnnie,’ commented Miss Barbara. ‘You’ll have made your fortune.’
‘Fient a fortune.’ The little man ascended again to prose. He drew himself together, sat up straight and squared his shoulders. The reckless fire died down, the cadence of his voice altered. He talked of supper, and Miss Barbara made haste to prepare it.
Supper over, the dogs set up a barking.
‘Did you hear a step?’ said Miss Barbara.
She rose and let in Francie Ferguson.
Francie stood sheepishly in the glow of light. ‘I didna ken ye had company, Miss Barbara. It was the lights. Yon’s a terrible blaze, ’umman. I was feart you would dae us some hurt.’
‘Ach!’ said Barbara sturdily. ‘What’s in a puckle candles?’
The soldier and the tramp had tilted back their chairs and with sprawling legs and arms flung easefully abroad, trolled out old tales, recitative and chorus. Johnnie had slid away again from prose. The boom of their laughter ceased when Francie entered. Now Garry rose from his seat, crying, ‘But hang it all, you know, aunt—’ and thereupon went off again in a round of laughter. Recovering himself he said, ‘I give you my compliments. He’s worth an illuminatio
n. Still, you know, noblesse oblige. There are weaker brothers—prime ministers and such-like fry.’
‘I’m a Paterson of Knapperley, my lad, a Paterson of Knapperley can please himself. It’s only your common bodies that need your laws and regulations, to be hauden in about. The folk of race have your law within themselves. Ay, ay, I’m a Paterson of Knapperley, but you’re Donnie Forbes’s grandson and seek to make yourself a politician. But go your ways.’
He went through the house, and found candle or oil-lamp burning in every window; and put them out: with a queer contraction of the heart as room after room was left dark and dead behind him. The war was putting this out too—this impetuous leap of exhilaration, this symbol of joy. When he returned to the kitchen Francie had been drawn into the charmed circle. He and Miss Barbara together were making lusty chorus to Johnnie’s song:
I saw an eel chase the Deil,
Wha’s fou, wha’s fou?
I saw an eel chase the Deil
Wha’s fou noo, ma jo?
I saw an eel chase the Deil
Roon aboot the spinnin’ wheel,
An’ we’re a’ blin’ drunk, bousin’ jolly fou, ma jo!’
Francie too, had drunk of fire, and was like one that prophesied. Warmed by the whisky, heartened by honest song, he began to talk of what sat closest to his own bosom: what but Bell his wife and her incomprehensible trick of not sitting close, of holding off. ‘He doesna seek to kiss me. I canna do with that kind o’ sotter,’ she had proclaimed abroad. A libel on a man. ‘A blazin’ lee,’ shouted Francie. ‘Doesna seek to kiss her. Doesna indeed.’ For what but that had he waited twenty years, to be thwarted in the end by a woman’s caprice: a woman who had the impudence to say, ‘Fingers off the beef, you canna buy,’ to her own lawful spouse. ‘But she’ll be kissed this very night,’ he shouted. He banged the table and swaggered home at last in glee. His habitual sheepish good-humour had turned to a more flaming quality. A man greatly resolved.
‘He needs all his legs,’ said Miss Barbara.
Garry went drunk to bed, but not with whisky. Again he had seen life essentialised. Its pure essence had been in Johnnie as he usurped the rites of hospitality and in Miss Barbara’s extravaganza of candles; in Francie too, revolting against a niggard life.
He was interrupted in his soliloquy by the opening of the door. Johnnie shambled in, without apology, and asked for money: which Garry gave, amusedly, too much exalted still to resent this degradation in the golden godling; finding it indeed no degradation, but a glory the more. So few people had the grace to take what they wanted with such unabashed assurance. Oh, if all the world would turn audacious—! He fell asleep at last to the sound of Johnnie’s voice on the other side of the wall:
There’s twa moons the night
Quo’ the auld wife to hersel.
Meanwhile for Lindsay the day had crawled. At every moment she had expected to see her mother arrive, and there would be an awkward moment when the ladies learned that the lover she had been sent here to forget was Garry Forbes. She detested the clandestine, yet merely to have sheltered from distasteful pleasantry was not a sign of guilt. She felt guilty nevertheless, and devised a score of speeches to convince her mother that the secrecy was not deceit. Her mother, however, did not come to be convinced.
Lindsay’s feverish anxiety increased. She was ready to defend Garry against anything her mother might say, but as the day wore on she found it increasingly hard to defend Garry against herself. Always her accusation was the same—he had wantonly exposed Louie to the clack of tongues, without any proof that what he alleged was true. If he thought evil so readily of one woman, what might he not think soon of another, of herself? The child tossed upon dark and lashing waters, and was afraid. It had been safe and very beautiful on shore.
As dusk drew down she stole from the house, not unobserved by Kate, and shortly afterwards a car panted up the hill, and Andrew Lorimer himself came in.
Mrs Lorimer, as Lindsay expected, put it down to deliberate deceit on her daughter’s part that they had not been told of Garry’s arrival. Andrew refused to be annoyed.
‘I’ll talk to her myself,’ he said. ‘To the young man, too, if I clap eyes on him.’
Andrew Lorimer was a burly, big-nosed man, more like a farmer to the eye than a lawyer, thrawn and conservative, devoted to his children, but determined that they should have their good things in the shape that he saw fit to give them. He was quite willing that his little linnet should ultimately go to Miss Barbara’s rough and rather ugly nephew, for he knew that the fellow had sound worth in spite of his execrable opinions; but the child was far too young. He wanted her for himself a long time yet.
‘A nice condition you’ve cast my wife into,’ he grumbled to the Weatherhouse ladies, ‘letting that daughter of hers run round the country with her sweetheart at her tails.’
There was consternation and surprise. Andrew liked to hector.
‘What,’ he cried, ‘you didn’t know? So she takes you in, does she—cheats her mother on the sly?’
Kate looked up calmly from her sewing.
‘There was nothing sly about it,’ she said. ‘Lindsay was perfectly frank. When she came at Christmas she told all there was to tell. And as we understood your objection was merely her age, what harm should we suppose in their meeting?’
And to Miss Theresa, who was still indignantly exclaiming, she said, with the same unmoved demeanour, ‘Perhaps you may not have heard, Aunt Tris, but it wasn’t because Lindsay didn’t tell.’
‘To be sure we knew,’ put in Miss Annie with a chuckle. She remembered the day Lindsay had dropped kisses in the nape of her neck. ‘And blithe we were to see the bairn so glad and bonny.’
Andrew Lorimer was in high feather. Theresa, disconcerted, took the check badly. He remembered how, from their childhood up, Tris had liked to be in the know, and he enjoyed her discomfiture. It was not unlikely that Kate also, calmly as she continued her needlework, with frank and placid eyes lifted to look at her aunt, relished the moment.
Theresa began to give Mr Dalgarno Forbes his character.
‘You can just hold by his doors, then,’ thundered Andrew.
Mrs Falconer sat stupefied. Her mind registered the incredible fact, but she could not feel it. And Kate, who on her own confession loved the man, sat there collectedly and sewed. She had known, even when she confessed, that Garry was Lindsay’s lover. Mrs Falconer’s dreams were dust.
Lang Leeb warbled from her corner. The fragile sounds were blown like gossamers about the room and no one heeded them, but Ellen moved her head impatiently as though they teased her face. Leeb sang:
My mother bade me gie him a piece,
Imphm, ay, but I wunna hae him,
I gied him a piece and he sat like a geese,
For his auld white beard was newly shaven.
Ellen turned and looked at her mother. The old eyes, bright and sharp, glittered like the reflection from a metal that has no inner illumination of its own. She was subtle and malicious, this old woman for whom life had ended save as a spectacle. Ellen, as she looked, read her mother’s mocking thought. Theresa too, had said to her, when she ran across the garden to bid Garry stay for tea, ‘Nell, you old fool.’ What did they think—that she was running after the boy for her own sake? Dastardly supposition, so vile that she blushed, went hot and cold by turns. But wasn’t it true? In a flash she realised it, that this sense of tragedy in which she had foundered came not from any grief for Kate, but for herself, because she loved the youth and wanted him near her. But it was life she wanted, strong current and fresh wind, no ignoble desire.
Theresa continued to sneer at the boy’s expense. Leeb changed her song. The mocking voice teased like a gnat round Ellen’s consciousness:
She wouldna slack her silken stays, sang Leeb.
What! Not be generous to this young man who had wakened her out of her unreal dreams? They could call her what kind of fool they liked, she would not be guilty of that cowa
rdice. She would give. She cut across Theresa’s denunciation with an incisive thrust.
‘He is a very fine young man.’
Andrew turned and looked at his cousin, whose long lean cheek was from him.
‘Very fine fiddlesticks. He’s a very ordinary decent fellow, with some high-falutin ideas that ought to have worn themselves out by now. Better, I grant you, than the low-falutin that seems to be the fashion nowadays. I’ve no objection to an idealist, always provided he can keep his own wife when he takes one. And what ails you at Bawbie?’ he added, swinging round again to disconcert Theresa. ‘Bawbie’s folk’s as good’s your own. A Paterson was settled in Knapperley as long since as the seventeen-thirties, and a Paterson was married on the son of an Earl, if you didn’t know it, in 1725. A collateral branch, that would be. Let me see, let me see, it was the same branch—’
The door was opened, and Lindsay thrust unceremoniously in by a little wiry wrinkled man who bounced rapidly after her.
‘It’s yourself, Mr Lorimer,’ said he, too excited even to greet the ladies into whose house he had thus bounded. ‘Then pass you judgment, Mr Lorimer.’ He rattled a tin pail under their noses. ‘Pass you judgment. Here’s me sortin’ up the shop with the door steekit, and what do I hear but the jingle-jangle of my pail, that was sittin’ waitin’ me on the step. So out I goes and sees my lady here makin’ away pretty sharp. “Ye’re nae away wi’ my pailie, surely,” I says. Bang goes the pail and away goes she. So I puts on a spurt and up wi’ her. “Ye needna awa’ so fleet, Miss Craigmyle,” I says. “I see you fine. You werena needin’ to send my pailie in ower the plantin’.” But losh ye! It’s nae Miss Craigmyle I’ve got a haud o’, but this bit craiturie. A gey snod bit deemie, I wouldna mind her for a lass.’ He turned the crunkled leather of his countenance towards Lindsay, in a wrinkled effort at a smile. ‘But she would have been up and off with my pailie, Mr Lorimer, and nyod man, see here, the cloor it’s gotten whan she flung it frae her into the plantin’.’