by Nan Shepherd
Andrew watched his daughter with amusement. Flushed, panting, near to tears, she stood in the middle of the room and threw defiant glances around.
‘Clap it on her head, Mr Gillespie,’ he answered to the indignant grocer, ‘and up on the faulters’ stool with her.’
‘She has a gey canty hat there of her own,’ said the grocer, whose wrath had fallen now that his grievance was recounted. ‘But,’ he added, glancing round the assemblage of ladies, ‘it was Miss Theresa there I thought I had a haud o’. We a’ ken she canna keep her hands off what she sees. She maun be inen the guts o’ a’thing.’
Andrew bellowed with delight. Didn’t he know the ancient habit of his cousin Tris, to appropriate all she fancied: failing roup, barter or purchase, then by simple annexation! The shades of sundry pocket-knives, pencils and caramels grinned humorously there above her ears. So the habit had not died, but was matter of common talk. To have seen his excellent cousin twice confounded in one evening was luck. He rose in fine fettle.
‘Well, well, Gillespie man, but we can’t let the lassie connach your goods like that.’
‘Na, na, Mr Lorimer, sir,’ answered the honest grocer, refusing the proffered money, ‘I dinna want your siller. The pailie’s nane the waur. It’ll serve as well wi’ a cloor in the ribs as wantin’ it.’ Mr Lorimer saw him out and came back to challenge Lindsay.
‘Well, my lady, what have you been up to?’
‘Daddy, I wasn’t going to steal his pail—you know that.’
‘What were you going to do, then?’
Lindsay looked round. They all awaited her answer. She wondered if they had been talking of Garry and her. Throwing her head proudly back, she answered, ‘It’s very silly. I don’t know what made me do it. But Knapperley was all blazing with light. I thought—I really thought for a minute it was on fire, and I had a sort of panic. I saw the pail and seized it and began to run. I know it sounds absurd—as though my little pail could have helped any if there really was a fire. There wasn’t, you know. The lights were blazing, right enough, but we saw them go out just after.’
‘There’s your Bawbie for you,’ Theresa flung at Andrew Lorimer. Theresa was in a black anger. Her slogan, A ga’in’ foot’s aye gettin’, had covered numerous petty assaults on property, never (as of course one would understand) of magnitude to be called theft; but the grocer’s calm recital of her obsession took her by surprise. She glared furiously at Andrew, and pounced triumphantly on Miss Paterson’s aberration as a shelter from her own.
‘Andrew’s wanting a word with Lindsay,’ Miss Annie interrupted in her pleasant way. ‘We all know Bawbie’s gotten a dunt on the riggin’, Tris. Leave her alone. Andrew, I’m getting stiffened up like a clothes rope after rain. I’m terrible slow. But we’ll all go through and let you talk to your lassie.’
‘Indeed no, Paradise. Daddy and I will go through.’
Andrew trolled a song in his deep strong voice as he went to the other room. He had quite enjoyed the little episode. Theresa’s exposure was part of the ruthless comicality of life. ‘O ay, he’s a comical deevil, your cousin Andrew,’ Lang Leeb had been wont to say. ‘He might laugh less if it was some of his own.’
One of his own was now involved. He had yet to deal with Lindsay’s affair.
‘Your mother,’ he said, ‘hasn’t made the acquaintance of your proposed aunt-in-law. On the whole, we’d better keep this dark. She doesn’t relish eccentricity in the family. What’s this about the lights? And fined, was she? Well, you keep that to yourself. Your mother needn’t know you were chasing round the countryside with the grocer’s pail.’
‘You’re a dear,’ said Lindsay.
‘And you’d better tell me what to say about this man of yours. All fair and square, I suppose?’
‘You bet.’
‘What’ll I say, then? Hurry up, I can’t stay here all night. What am I to say to your mother? Lord love you, bairn, don’t weep. Make up the triggest little tale you can.’
A burning tear splashed down upon his hand. Lindsay’s face was against his coat, and he felt the shaking of her sobs.
‘Daddy, daddy, I’m so miserable.’
‘Here, here, cheer up. It’s war-time, after all. Do you want to marry him?’
Lindsay raised her head and stared with blank eyes at her father.
‘We’ll bring your mother round,’ continued Andrew.
Lindsay wept the harder.
‘Well, well, that’s settled,’ said her father, drying her tears with his handkerchief, and he plunged exuberantly into talk of Theresa and the pail.
‘But daddy, what could Mr Gillespie have meant?’
‘Just what he said—your Cousin Theresa can’t go past a thing she wants.’
‘But taking things—? She’s perhaps beginning to get old. Old people do things like that.’
‘Don’t you suggest it. Tris won’t be thought old. No, no, it’s not a sign of her decrepitude. Tris wasn’t to be trusted with property at any time. If it was movable property that was concerned, she lee’d like a fishwife and thieved like Auld Nick.’ He began to entertain his daughter with tales from his youth. ‘But this won’t do. What am I to say to your mother?’
‘Why, daddy,’ said Lindsay, with very bright eyes, ‘it’s your business to make up explanations for people.’
‘What am I to say to your mother?’
‘Don’t eat me up! Are you to be everyone’s advocate but mine?’
‘What—’
‘Well, say then—oh, say that he’s a gruff old bear and you can’t get a word in edgeways and it wouldn’t have been safe to let her know that he was here. Say that he’s a terror to the neighbourhood, that he has enormous ears, the better to hear you with, my dear, and perfectly enormous teeth, the better to eat you up. Oh, say what you like, daddy, I leave it to you.’
She clung about her father’s neck, convulsively kissing the roughness of his coat.
Andrew fondled her.
‘Well, if we let you marry him—you’re not very old yet. Sure that you know your own mind? Quite sure you love the bear enough to spend your life with him? Eh?’
‘Quite.’
Andrew enjoyed the arrogant lift of her head.
But later, hunched on her pillow, she queried in the dark of Kate, ‘And you told daddy I was out with him, Katie?’
‘And weren’t you?’
‘I said no, didn’t I?’
‘But I supposed—’
‘You shouldn’t suppose.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry if I was wrong. But your father wasn’t very angry, was he?’
‘Oh, not particularly. It’s mother that thinks he is not good enough for us. We’re so grand, aren’t we? Daddy only says I mustn’t be turned into a woman too soon.’
‘Well, neither you must, Linny.’
‘Oh, you’re all the same. As if age—Louie’s the only one—’
‘What about Louie?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘But it will be all right, Linny, when you’re older? Your father won’t make objections?’
‘Oh, quite all right. It’s perfectly all right, isn’t it, not to make objections to an engagement that doesn’t exist?’
‘That doesn’t— But it will exist when they give their permission.’
‘I’ve broken it off.’
‘But whatever—’
‘Tonight. I wrote it. I was posting it when I was out, if you want to know.’
‘But Lindsay, this is terrible. Whatever for?’
‘Oh, for everything.’ She slipped under the bedclothes and lay rigid, her face hidden. ‘Don’t speak to me, please, Kate.’
Kate held her peace.
‘Katie.’
‘Yes.’
‘Life’s so terribly strange, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you think it strange, Katie?’
‘No, not particularly.’
Lindsay sat up again.
; ‘But truly, Katie? Have you never thought life was tremendously queer? One day one thing, and the next day all changed. Don’t you find yourself wanting one thing at one moment, and then in a trice you know that wasn’t what you wanted at all, but something different? Don’t you?’
‘No, I can’t say that I do.’
‘Then is it only me that’s unlike everyone else? How could I be anyone’s wife, Kate, if I’m like that?’
‘But—’
‘Oh, it wasn’t for that I broke it off. At least, partly that. He’s—he’s not what I thought quite, Katie, and I’m not what I thought, and I don’t know what to do. I wish I had been like other people, but I don’t know what to make of life. I don’t know what I want. It’s all so queer.’
‘Lindsay, you’re hysterical. Lie down and sleep. It’ll all be right in the morning.’
‘No, it won’t. You don’t understand. I don’t seem to be like other people, Katie. I’m queer. It must run in the blood.’ Kate smiled to herself at the thought of queerness running in the respectable Craigmyle-Lorimer veins. ‘Look at Cousin Theresa,’ continued the girl’s impatient voice. ‘That’s her that cavils at Miss Barbara for being queer. I was never so ashamed in my life as when that grocer man shouted, “You hold your hand, Miss Craigmyle, we know you like to nab a thing fine.”’
‘In the house-I know she claims all she wants as hers. But outside— And so Miss Barbara’s lights were up again, Lindsay? The police will be on her. She’s been fined already, you know. Crazy old thing. A public nuisance.’ Kate chatted on, in hope of distracting Lindsay’s mind and persuading her to sleep. But the girl flared out, ‘I don’t see why you’re all so bitter about it. I think she’s splendid. She knows what she wants, and wants it enough to have it, too. She’s magnificent. She’s herself. She can burn her house up if she likes.’
‘And it doesn’t matter if other people suffer?’
‘Not in the slightest. Oh, don’t let’s talk any more, Katie.’
Kate was silent as she was bid.
The night air grew colder. Lindsay tossed restlessly. The wind rose. A sough ran through the pines. Blinds shook, and somewhere in the house a door rattled. Lindsay shivered. How cold the night was now!
‘Don’t tell them I’ve broken it off, Katie. You see—we don’t know yet what he may say.’
‘Very well. Now sleep. It will be all right tomorrow.’
In the next room, preparing for bed, Theresa rapped out, ‘Sleekit bessy she’s been. And such a bairn to look at. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And Kate’s no better, Ellen, let me tell you that. To think of the two of them, and them up to such a cantrip.’
‘They’ve done no wrong.’
‘Ask Mrs Andrew as to that.’
‘I can decide for myself without any Mrs Andrew.’
‘Well, if you don’t think it wrong, I’m sure—! Sleekit, I call it. And raking about with him like yon after dark—you never know what harm she might take.’
‘Oh, pails are easy to come by,’ said Ellen.
Theresa held her tongue and got into bed.
‘Hist ye and get that light out,’ she commanded in a while. Ellen raised her eyes from her Bible and said nothing. ‘Your chapter’s lasting you long tonight.’
Ellen dropped her eyes, but did not speak. She had read no chapter. One uncompleted sentence only: the sentence with which she had been wont, in her hours of abasement, to scourge her fleeing fancy. ‘Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of the Lord.’
Imaginations! It mattered nothing to her what the commentators said, the word for her summed up those sweet excursions into the unreal that had punctuated all her life. She thought she had forsworn them, fired as she was by the glimpses that Garry had provided of man’s real travail and endeavour. But all she had achieved was a still more presumptuous imagination; and as she saw the ruins of her palace lie around her, she realised how presumptuous, and at the same time how desirable it had been. Now she would never open the door of her dwelling to youth and arrogant active life. Desolation came upon her. The cold wind searched her and made her shudder. Her prayer was a long and moaning cry, ‘Me miseram. I have sinned. I have sinned.’
ELEVEN
Garry and his Two Fools on the Housetop
Mrs Falconer awoke suddenly and could not remember what had occurred.
She knew that she had been hurt. Her mind was aware of its own suffering, but could not find the cause. She lay very still, grappling with memory. This impotence was horrible. It gave one a sense of calamity too huge for the mind to master. Her eyes went straying, and across the window she saw the passage of a falling star; then another, and another. ‘That’s someone dead,’ she thought; but instantly came recollection. Her mind cleared and the weight of disaster lifted. Stars did not fall from heaven in the course of ordinary living; one’s pain had other sources. Kate loved a man she would not marry: that was all. Kate— But Kate remained unmoved. The blackness of desolation was not for that, but was born of shame and of despair. There was no escape for her from unrealities to the busy world of men, and when she sought to break away she did shameful and presumptuous things. The gnat-bites of her mother’s song had swollen now, poisonous and hateful seats of pain.
Outside, the shooting stars were still falling across the window. They could not be stars—so many, so continual. They eddied and fluttered. Mrs Falconer raised herself and stared. Sparks! Something must be on fire. She was fully awake now and her mind was alert and vigorous; as she got out of bed and crossed to the window she reviewed in a flash the whole story of the preceding days. ‘There’s no good not confessing it,’ she thought. ‘I do love that boy. I want to live the kind of life he would approve, to fight with real opponents for a real cause. I want to find the dimension that he said was lacking in our lives.’ And then she thought, ‘I can at least help him to expose the falsehood about that betrothal. That is something real I can help to do.’
Even if her fond dreams of his saying to her, ‘Mother, no one understands what I mean like you,’ could meet with no fulfilment, she must still do all she could to fight the evils he detested.
All this passed through her mind as she hastened to the window, at the same time as she was thinking, ‘Can the fire be in this house?’
When she reached the window she saw that the air was full of large, floating flakes of snow. A shaft of light lay across them and made them glow like tongues of fire. And now a voice rose from the garden. Mrs Falconer leaned out, and saw Francie Ferguson standing in the whirl of snowflakes, moving a lantern.
‘Ay, ye’re there, are you? Ye’re grand sleepers, the lot of you, nae to hear a body bawlin’ at your lug.’
‘But what’s the matter, Francie?’
‘A dispensation of Providence, Mistress Falconer. Ay, I tell’t you whan a’ that lights was bleezin’ to the heaven, I tell’t you the Lord would visit it upon her heid. Knapperley’s up in a lowe, Mistress Falconer—’
‘What! But are you sure?’
‘As sure’s a cat’s a hairy beast. Ay, ay, I’ve twa e’en to glower wi’ an’ I’m gey good at glowerin’. And thinks I, Miss Craigmyle’ll never ca’ ower it if there’s a spectacle and she’s nae there to see. So I e’en in about to let you know.’
‘But surely, in that snow—surely it won’t burn.’
‘The snaw’s new on.’
Mrs Falconer roused Miss Theresa.
‘What’s that? Knapperley? It’s just the price of her.’
Theresa was out of bed on the instant. As Francie knew, she would have counted it a personal affront to be left out from a nocturnal fire. Mrs Falconer too, put on her garments, with trembling and uneasy fingers.
‘What can we do, Tris? We’ll only be in the way.’
But though she offered a remonstrance, she was drawn by some force beyond herself to complete her hasty dressing and follow Theresa to the garden.
As they went out the snow cea
sed falling and they could see that dawn had come. The sky cleared. Francie put out his lantern, and in a while the sun rose in splendour, touching the leafless tangles of twigs, filigreed with snow, to a shining radiance. Snow coated the ground and the shadows cast along it by the sun glowed burning blue. Francie and Miss Theresa talked, but Mrs Falconer walked on through the sharp vivid morning, and the thoughts she was thinking were pungent like the morning air. ‘All is not lost,’ cried a voice within her heart. ‘If I have been a fool in my imaginings, why, to be a fool may be the highest wisdom. If I have been a fool it was because I loved. To love is to pass out beyond yourself. If I pass beyond myself into the service of a cause, surely I can bear the stigma of fool.’ And she was elated, walking rapidly over the melting snow. ‘The thing,’ she thought, ‘is to find how I can help him to prove that Louie affair.’
At Knapperley there was shouting and confusion: but, thanks to the fall of snow, the flames had been mastered. A part of the roof had fallen in. Miss Barbara stood with her legs planted apart, hands in her jacket pockets, contemplating the destruction with an infinite calm. Garry emerged from the building, half-clad, pale and weary, the gauntness of his face emphasised by the black streaks and grime that smoke and charred wood had left on it. He came out brushing ash from his clothing with his hands and spoke in an anxious tone to Miss Barbara.
‘Can’t find a sign of him. Looks as though it began in that room, too. The bed’s destroyed. But not a sign of the man.’
‘Ach,’ said Miss Barbara, unperturbed. ‘He’s been smoking in his bed again. He’ll be far enough by now, once he saw what he had done. Many’s the time I’ve said to Johnnie, “Smoke you in my beds again and we’ll see.”’
Garry gave vent to a whistling laugh. ‘Well, we’ve seen.’ He returned to his labour among the debris. The little crowd that had collected ran hither and thither, talking and making suggestions. Miss Barbara stalked upstairs. Garry thrust his head from the gap where an upper window had been. From beneath, with his blackened face and protuberant ears, he had the appearance of a gargoyle.