She opened her eyes in bed the next time, sick and weak with the May light high and pouring into the room in a flood, somebody she didn’t know near the bed. Then the somebody turned and looked and Chris knew her, she whispered It’s Else! and Else said Shish! You mustn’t move, Mem, and crinkled her face as though she would cry. Chris would have laughed if she hadn’t been weak, so she closed her eyes for another rest, maybe another day, maybe a minute, and woke, and the dark was close outbye, the first thing she heard as she came from the dark the rake and tweet of the rooks in the yews. She looked round about and saw Robert and Ewan, Robert was over by the window, hunched, with his shoulders and head black-carved in the light, Ewan was sitting by the side of her bed, a hand on his knee, his head down-bent, looking at a little flint in his hand. She coughed: and both of them turned at the sound, and she coughed again and saw with surprise the stuff that spilt from her mouth on the sheet, not red, it was brown, and she suddenly saw, vividly clear and distinct, it was awful, horror and horror in Robert’s face.
NIGHT, WITH a setting of stars, all alone, in the May time dark, she knew it still May. There was a hiss of rain on the roof, light rain, and all the house set in silence but for that whisper of the falling rain. She lay and suddenly knew the Thing close, a finish to the hearing of rain on the roof, a finish to knowing of that hearing at all, the world cut off, she felt free and light, strung to a quivering point of impatience as she waited and waited and the night went by—ready and ready she waited, near cried, because the Thing didn’t come after all. And grew tired and slept; and the Thing drew back.
Lord, Chris, you’ve given us a devil of a time!
She lay and looked at him and suddenly she knew, wakened wide, she said And what happened to my baby? Robert said You mustn’t worry about that. Get well, my dear—he was thin as a rake, and near as ungroomed, his hair up on end, she asked if Maidie had been doing the cooking, for him and Ewan—and where was Ewan? He said that Ewan was at school today, seeing the doctor had found her much better. As for Maidie, she’d proved no use at all, and he’d sent for Else, Else had done fine ….
So it hadn’t been a dream Chris lay and knew as the hours went by, and Robert went out and Else came in; and later the doctor and all fussed about her; below the sheets her body felt flat, ground down and flat, with an empty ache; and her breasts hurt and hurt till they saw to them, she hadn’t cried at all when she knew what had happened, till it came for them to see to her breasts, for a minute she nearly was desperate then. But that was just daft, she’d given plenty of trouble, said the Chris that survived all things that came to her. So she gave in quietly, and they finished at last, and she slept till Ewan came back from the school, and came up after tea, and looked in and smiled.
Hello, mother, better?
He came to the bedside and suddenly cuddled her; for a minute she was hurt with the weight of his head on her breast, though she put up her arms about him. Then something hot trickled on her breast, and she knew what—Ewan to cry! that was dreadful. But he did it only a minute while she held him, then drew away, and took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and sat down, calm, but she didn’t care, reaching out and touching his hand as he sat. Funny she should ever have feared she would lose him, that already she’d done so, him no longer a baby, remote from her thoughts or from thought of her. How nearer he was than any there were! She said You must tell me, Ewan, what happened. When was the baby born, was it dead?
So he told her the baby was born that morning after the spinners went to blow up the brig. Robert had gone for the doctor and Ewan had stayed at home and tried to look after her, though he didn’t know much of the things he should do: as for Maidie, the girl was a perfect fool. At last the doctor and Robert arrived, Robert sent off a wire to Else at Fordoun, and they put Ewan out of the room—he was glad, even though it was Chris, he’d a beast of a headache. The baby had been born then, it wasn’t born dead, though it died soon after, or so Ewan heard. Else said that it was a boy, like Robert, but Ewan hadn’t seen it: that was days ago, two or three days before the Strike ended.
Chris remembered: What, is it ended, then? Who won? and Ewan said the Government, Robert raved the leaders had betrayed the Strike, they’d been feared that they would be jailed, the leaders, they had sold the Strike to save their skins. Robert hadn’t believed the news when it came, that was the morning that Chris was so bad and the two of them had sat in her room—
Chris lay still and said Thank you, Ewan, with a little ghost of a laugh inside to know that he called her Chris in his thoughts, as she’d thought he did; and soon, wearied still, she slept again, sleeping till supper-time, it brought Else up with a tray and hot bottle, and all things needed, she cried, right pleased, You’re fine again, Mem? and Chris said she was, she had to thank Else with others for that.
Else said Devil a thanks—if you’ll pardon a body mentioning Meiklebogs’ cousin in a Manse. I liked fine to come ’stead of biding in Fordoun, with the old man glunching at me and my bairn. Chris asked how the baby was, and Else kindled, Fine, Mem, and fegs you should see how he grows. And then suddenly stopped and punched up the pillows, and set Chris up rough, and began to chatter, like a gramophone suddenly gone quite mad, with her ears very red and her face turned away.
Chris knew why she did it, she’d thought of that baby she’d carried out dead from this room a while back, she was feared that Chris might take ill again were anything said to mind her of babies. But Chris had never felt further from weeping, appalled at the happening to Robert, not her.
Else told how the Strike had ended in Segget, folk said that the spinners who went out that night and tried to blow up the brig would be jailed. But there was no proof, only rumours and scandal, and the burnt grass in the lee of the brig. Sim Leslie, him that the folk called Feet, had come up to the Manse like a sow seeking scrunch, but the minister had dealt with him short and sharp and he taiked away home like an ill-kicked cur. The spinners and station folk wouldn’t believe it when the news came through that the Strike was ended, they said the news was just a damned lie, John Cronin said it, and they wouldn’t go back, he and the minister kept them from that till they got more telegrams up from London. And Mr Colquohoun and Ake Ogilvie the joiner, John Muir and some spinners had organized pickets to keep Mr Mowat’s folk from getting to the Mills. Syne they heard how the leaders had been feared of the jail, and the whole thing just fell to smithereens in Segget. Some spinners that night went down the West Wynd and bashed in the windows of the Cronin house, and set out in a birn to come to the Manse, they said the minister had egged them on, him safe and sound in his own damned job, and they’d do to the Manse as they’d done to the Cronins.
But coming up the Wynd they met in with Ake Ogilvie, folk said that he cursed them black and blue; and told them how Chris was lying ill and wouldn’t it have been a damned sight easier for Mr Colquohoun to have kept in with the gentry, instead of risking his neck for the spinners? The spinners all sneered and jeered at Ake, but he stood fast there in the middle of the road, and wouldn’t let them up, and they turned and tailed off. A third were on to the Bureau again, and Jock Cronin sacked from his job at the station, and Miss Jeannie Grant hadn’t gone to the school, through all the nine days she’d been helping the spinners: and when she went back Mr Geddes said No, and folk told that she would get the sack, too.
Chris said So it ended like that? Else—was my baby born dead, and was it a boy? Else went white and wept a little at that, Chris lay and watched and Else peeked at her, scared, she looked strangely un-ill with that foam of bronze hair, and the dour face thin, but still sweet and sure. Else said that it wasn’t, it lived half an hour, the minister came up and baptized it Michael, a bonny bairn, tiny and quiet, it yawned and blinked its eyes just a minute—oh, Mem, I shouldn’t be telling you this!
Chris said But you should. Where is it buried? and Else said ’twas out in the old kirkyard, there were only the minister and Muir and herself, the minister carried the coff
in in there, and read the service, bonny he did it, if it wasn’t for that fool John Muir that stood by, like a trumpet, near, blowing his nose. And when the minister came to the bit about Resurrection—I don’t mind the words—
Chris said I do, and heard her own voice tell them with Else near weeping again: I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.
Else gulped and nodded. And after he said that—he didn’t know what he was saying, Mem, with his bairn new dead and his Strike as well—he said and who shall believe? quiet and queer…. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but oh! you’ll have to hurry and get well for him!
COMING OUT OF those memories given to the years, Chris moved and looked at the waiting Segget, quiet in the lazy spray of June sun, the same land and sun that Hew Monte Alto had looked on that morning before Bara battle. You were waiting yourself in a halt before battle: all haltings were that, you thought, or would think if you weren’t too wearied to think now at all.
But that would pass soon, you’d to get better quick— quick and quick for the sake of Robert. Better, and take him out of himself, Ewan would help, maybe Segget even yet—
She rose slowly to her feet and smiled at herself, for that weakness that followed her when she stood up, with the drowse of the June day a moment a haze of little floating specks in her eyes. Then that cleared, and a cold little wind came by, she looked up and saw a thickening of clouds, rain-nimbus driving down upon Segget.
FOUR
Nimbus
NOW, WITH THE coming of the morning, the stars shone bright and brittle on the Segget roofs, the rime of the frost Chris saw rise up, an uneasy carpet that shook in the wind, the icy wind from the sea and Kinneff. Under her feet the dark ground cracked, as though she were treading on the crackle of grass, and she passed through the Kaimes’ last gate—far up, in the dimming light of the stars, there fell a long flash from the arc of the sky, rending that brittle white glow for a moment, its light for a second death-white on the hills. Then she saw the sky darken, and the corpse-light went: behind the darkness the morning was coming.
So, walking quick to keep her feet warm, and because she’d but little time left for this ploy, she gained the Kaimes and halted and looked—not at them, but up at the heights of the hills, sleeping there on the verge of a dawn. Nothing cried or moved, too early as yet, but a peewit far in a hidden hollow, she minded how it was here she had come—almost at this very hour she had come—the very first night she had lain in Segget. And here she climbed from those ten full years, still the same Chris in her heart of hearts, nothing altered but space and time and the things she had once believed everlasting and sure—believed that they made her life, they made her! But they hadn’t, there was something beyond that endured, some thing she had never yet garbed in a name.
She put up her hand to her dew-touched hair, she’d climbed bare-headed up to the Kaimes, she had seen a grey hair here and there last night. But it felt the same hair as she felt the same self, its essence unchanged whatever its look. Queer and terrible to think of that now—that all things passed as your life went on, but the little things you had given no heed.
The wind goeth towards the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
That was Ecclesiastes, she thought; stilled; the dawn pallid on her coiled, bronze hair.
In Segget below a cock crew shrill, she turned and looked down at the shining of frost, remotely, and saw it gleam and transmute, change and transmute as though Time turned back, back through the green and grey of the years till that last time here when she’d climbed the Kaimes, her baby new dead and herself a live ache—
SHE HAD SHOWN as little of the ache as she might, in spite of the waste, she had hated that. So she told to Robert and he laughed and said You sound like a woman in an Aberdeen joke, his eyes with the beast of the black mood in them. Waste? Good God, do you think that is all?
He flung away from her and walked to the window, beyond it the smell and blow of the hay in the sleeping parks of Dalziel of Meiklebogs. Then suddenly he turned—Christine, I’m sorry. But I’m weary as well, let’s not speak of it more.
And she left it at that, he’d drawn into himself, lonely, he sat for hours in his room, with impatience for either her pity or help. So she buried herself in the work of the house, and sought in her pride a salve for the sting of the knowledge she counted for little with Robert, compared with his cloudy hopings and God. She could be strange and remote as he could ….
And it came with hardly an effort at all, they were hurrying nods that met on the stairs and went to bed at uneven hours; yet sometimes a hand seemed to twist in her heart as she watched him sit at his meat in silence, or at night when she woke and he lay asleep, with it seemed the tug of lips on her breasts and the ghostly ache of her empty womb—silent the yews in the listening dark.
SEGGET CROWDED THE kirk the first Sunday in May after the General Strike collapsed, to hear what that cocky billy Colquohoun would say of his tink-like socialists now. But he never mentioned the creatures at all, he preached a sermon that maddened you, just, he said there was nothing new under the sun: and that showed you the kind of twister he was. Hairy Hogg, the Provost, came out of the kirk, and said that the man was insulting them, sly, trying to make out that the work they had done to beat the coarse Labour tinks was a nothing. Instead, now the Strike was ended so fine, you’d mighty soon see a gey change for the good, no more unions to cripple folks’ trade, and peace and prosperity returning again; and maybe a tariff on those foreign-made boots.
But damn the sign of either you saw as that year went on and the next came in, there was little prosperity down at the Mills, they were working whiles, and whiles they were not, young Mr Mowat went off to London and syne from there he went off on a cruise, as a young gent should; but he fair was real kind. For he wrote that he’d soon be back home again, and would see about pushing the Segget trade, that would mean more men—but no union men.
It wasn’t his wyte that he had no work, in spite of the spinners and their ill-ta’en grumblings. For they grumbled still, though their union was finished—faith! that was funny, for you’d got from the papers that the men would be fine if it wasn’t the unions—the Tory childes nearly broke down and wept on the way the unions oppressed the workers. The Cronins had all been sacked from the Mills and no more of a Sunday you’d hear them preach about socialism coming, and coarse dirt like that. Jock Cronin, that had once been a railway porter, was down now in Glasgow, tinking about, it fairly was fine to be rid of the brute. Folk said that that Miss Jeannie Grant had gone with him, some childe had seen her, down there at a mart, all painted and powdered, she’d ta’en to the streets, and kept Jock Cronin, he lived off her earnings. Ay, just the kind of the thing you’d expect from socialists and dirt that spoke ill of their betters, and yet powdered and fornicated like gentry.
But young Dod Cronin, that was a mere loon, he heard the news, he worked out at Fordoun, and he went to the smiddy and tackled old Leslie, with the sweat dripping down from his wrinkled old chops. And Dod said What’s this you’ve been saying of my brother? and old Leslie said What? And who are you, lad? And Dod said You know damn well who I am. And if ever I hear you spreading your claik about my brother or Miss Jeannie Grant, I’ll bash in your old face with one of your hammers.
Old Leslie backed nippy behind the anvil and said Take care, take care what you say! I’m not a man you must rouse, let me tell you. And he told later on that never in his life had he heard such impudence—’twas Infernal, just, he’d a mighty sore job to keep himself back from taking that Cronin loon a good clout. Now, when himself was a loon up in Garvock— And you didn’t hear, more, for you looked at your watch, and said you must go, and went at a lick; and left him habbering and chapping and sweating.
Young Dod was as mad as could be on the thing, he went up to the Manse and clyped to Colquohoun; and Else Quee
n, that was back there again as the maid, told that the minister said he was sorry, but what could he do? Young Cronin shouldn’t worry, you could only expect a smell from a drain.
Else said the minister was referring to Leslie: and folk when they heard that speak were real mad. Who was he, a damned creature that sat in a Manse, to say that an honest man was a drain? There was nothing wrong with old Leslie, not him, he’d aye paid his way, a cheery old soul, though he could sicken a cow into colic with his long, dreich tales and his habberings of gossip.
He’d aye been good to his guts, the old smith, and faith, he grew better the longer he lived. At New Year he took a bit taik down the toun, into the shop of MacDougall Brown; it was late at night and what could Brown do but ask the old smith to come ben for a drink—not of whisky, you wouldn’t find that at MacDougall’s, but of some orange wine or such a like drink, awful genteel, though it had a bit taste as though a stray pig had eased himself in it. Well, Leslie went ben, and there sat the creash, MacDougall’s wife, and Cis, the fine lass, and the other bit quean that folk teased and called May-bull. Mrs Brown was right kind and poured out the wine, syne she went and took out a cake from the press, there was more than half of the cake on the plate, and Mistress Brown cut off a thin slice, genteel, and held out the plate to the smith.
And what did he do but take up the cake, not the slice, and sit with it there in his hand, habbering and sweating like a hungered old bull, and tearing into MacDougall’s cake, MacDougall watching him boiling with rage—faith! speak about washing in the blood of the Lamb, he looked as though he’d like a real bath in the smith’s.
A Scots Quair Page 49