‘I’d like fine,’ I said, ‘to explore Guthrie’s gallery.’
They all stared; I’ve always found that the less one says the more it’s attended to. ‘And forbye,’ I said, ‘I’d like to know what were the verses the man was chanting that night.’
They stared more at that and the stationy said he didn’t see how Guthrie’s bit poetry could be a relevant factor.
‘Maybe you don’t,’ I said, speaking in the cryptic-like way the stationy himself likes to employ.
Rob Yule gave a bit laugh at that and said perhaps I could tell them what was in Guthrie’s mind: was Will right in thinking he had opened up Erchany for fear of the Americans?
‘I think it fell unlikely that the American cousins are fretting any more about Guthrie, or he about them.’ And at that I knocked out my pipe and prepared to dander home.
Reader, there’s ever a judgement waits on arrogance. I had got to the door of the private when it opened that briskly I had to jump back from it and in came a strange quean in motoring clothes. ‘Am I interrupting?’ she asked, and seemed fell certain she wasn’t, marching straight to the bar and speaking crisp-like but friendly to Mistress Roberts. ‘The postmistress can’t be found and I’ve just no time to look for her. Would you very much mind telephoning this? I’ll have a sherry.’ And out of her pocket the quean pulled a paper and a bit silver.
I don’t doubt we all gowked at the girl as if she had been a two-headed calf. But she never minded us but just stood, a slip of a young creature and yet with something extra-purposeful to her, drinking her sherry while the Roberts wife went through and telephoned her telegram to Dunwinnie. Syne she turned round and had a look at us, brief and concentrated, as if we were something with a couple of asterisks against us on a Cook’s tour. Then when Mistress Roberts came ben she took her change, said a word of thanks and was out of the Arms in a winking. Half a minute later came the sound of her car making off up the road as if it didn’t think to stop this side of Inverness.
There was silence for a bit. We were all thinking it unco that just as we had been talking of America and Newfoundland in should step an American lassie – for that she was that no one who had ever been to the Dunwinnie picture palace could doubt. Mistress Roberts stood polishing glasses behind the bar, and there was a gleam in her eye that didn’t come just from the effort of scouring the mortal sin of beer from them. She had the news now and she knew it.
Presently Rob had a try at her. ‘It would be a telegram, Mistress Roberts, the quean was sending?’
‘It was that,’ said Mistress Roberts, and gave the rest of her whistle to breathing hard on a pint pot.
‘To book her a room for the night up the road, maybe?’
‘Maybe aye and maybe no, and it’s nobody’s business but her own,’ said the Roberts wife, virtuous-like. She hadn’t yet forgiven Rob for the way he’d treated Carfrae’s Non-Injurious. But it was plain she was fair bursting all the same; for two–three minutes she polished her glasses as if she were trying to take the black from the face of the Devil. Then ‘Faith,’ she said, ‘I was right stammagasted!’
This time Carfrae tried, and we knew he was much liker to get round her. ‘There was something unco in the message, mistress?’
‘Maybe aye and maybe no again. If you must know it was to someone in London and it just said Hope to have important news soon.’
Will Saunders got up and joined me by the door. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that there’s much occasion for what Carfrae calls evil idle talk in that.’
‘Maybe no and maybe aye. But I’ll tell you this. Mr Bell there ought to be real interested in the signature.’ And at that she banged down the last of her glasses and turned to give a bit stir to her teapot.
‘The signature?’ I said, puzzled.
‘Just that, Mr Bell. The lassie’s signature was Guthrie.’
8
And now there’s only what the author lad in Edinburgh will call the Testimony of Miss Strachan and I’ll be coming to Christine – Christine who you may think will be the heroine of his book. You’ll remember Miss Strachan is the schoolmistress, her that wrote a paper on Visual Education. Maybe it was no bad subject for her; she’s a peering body by nature, hungry in other people’s affairs, and joins a sharp eye to a long nose. And no doubt it was the inquisitiveness of her that took her the long way round to visit her auntie at Kildoon.
Every week-end Miss Strachan cycles over to visit her auntie, an old body with a hantle silver put by that a niece would naturally be fell attentive to. Most times she holds down the highroad to Dunwinnie and turns off short at Thompson’s Mains, Kildoon being but a rickle of houses two–three miles over the moor from there. But whiles in summer, being given to what she calls the lure of the wanderer, she makes away up the glen past Erchany and then bumps and rattles her machine over the braes until she strikes a bit shepherd’s track that takes her down to the bridle-path through Glen Mervie. Toilsome it must be and none so chancy at the best of times; the schoolmistress tells you she’s near skite on the Athletic Ideal, and none can say she’s not right tough and stringy. But that it was just the lure of the wanderer that should take her up Glen Erchany in a quick thaw after a first winter snow was a thing fell hard to believe, forbye it being just the time all the speak was going round about the affairs at the meikle house. Some said it was the lure of Tammas was working on her and that for one with small chance of a lad in his right senses the news of how the daftie had briskened uplike must be fell attractive. But there’s no need to enquire into the woman’s motives; it’s enough that in the last weekend of November up the glen she went.
The Drochet was green and leaping with the snows from Ben Cailie and the fir trees were still and dripping in the still thaw, only whiles a whisper of wind stirring them would send a scatter of drops across the path of the schoolmistress as she pedal-pedalled her bit boneshaker through the slush and up the brae. It was only when she was near the glen head, which is to say on the tail of the Ben itself, that she saw the storm coming from over the loch, east away, the beginning of the great storm that came with that thaw. Dark and sullen and secret the loch would be in its frame of dark snow-weighted trees, then far to the east the surface would break and stir, the whole surface would tremble, would leap to points of foam, over the working foam-flecked surface great shadows scurrying and sweeping in sudden washes of stormy light and shade, syne the gale, sweeping up the braes from the long funnel of the loch, would catch at the drooping branches of the trees and toss them, showering now their icy drips, up the darkening lift where the storm clouds would be massing in sudden tremendous triumph round Ben Cailie.
It must have been a daunting sight to the schoolmistress did she think to make Kildoon by her mountain paths that night. But if her eye was on Erchany the storm came fell convenient; within miles and miles around was no human dwelling save the meikle house and the deserted home farm hidden among the larches away below. So when the full blast came down, fit to blow the bit things from off her as she rode, she held on past her usual track and was presently dropping down to the biggins of Erchany farm.
More than half-way she’d got and could see through the smurr of the storm the shuttered windows and silent cattle court, right desolate in that savage desolate place, when over a dip and towards her, white and hurrying like it had been an uneasy ghost, came the slim figure of a quean. Next minute the schoolmistress saw it was Christine herself – indeed it couldn’t well be another in that remote spot – and she thought Christine must have seen her from down by the farm and was hurrying to meet her, friendly-like, in the storm. So she gave a wave, and a bit call that was straight snatched from her lips by the wind, and hurried down the path as fast as the machine she was wheeling would let her. But syne it came with a bit shock to the schoolmistress that Christine hadn’t seen her after all; the quean was holding up the brae slantwise away now, climbing fast with the long loon’s limbs of her and with nothing against the blast but some light woollen thing that was soaked alre
ady and clinging as she strode. Real alarmed for her, Miss Strachan said she was; maybe she was a bit alarmed for herself too, for with the storm coming down she was in sore need of welcome at Erchany and now the Gamleys were gone only Christine Mathers was certain not to shut the door on her. Anyway, she dropped her bicycle by the side of the path and half walked, half ran to intercept Christine as she climbed. And presently she came full in front of her and called out: ‘Miss Mathers, Miss Mathers, isn’t it awful weather to be out?’
This time the schoolmistress could hardly believe that the quean had failed to hear her – but hearing or not she strode straight on unheeding. The schoolmistress stopped in her tracks, right taken aback and not knowing whether to be affronted or alarmed, she wondered was Christine sleep-walking or was she gone clean skite with the awfulness of Erchany and the laird. And at that her heart near louped into her mouth, for at the thought of Guthrie she saw – and it was as if a flash of lightning had split the driving storm clouds above her – the Guthrie in Christine. That was what had ever stammagasted the gossips – that the quean showed nothing of the Guthrie stamp on her – and now here she was striding out as if she would scale Ben Cailie, looking neither to right nor left but gowking at the middle air, her cheeks whitened to real pallor and with flaming spots of colour to them, her lips moving as if it were in some prayer or chant. Just so, like a creature possessed, would Guthrie himself go by, you might speak to him if you dared but devil the answer would you get.
Miss Strachan’s revelation, the judicious reader will think, would count for little in a court of law, being but the fancy, in a dramatic moment, of a body whose head was choke full of scandal and prejudice. But certain she was that struck with the thing had come to her she made fient the effort to stop Christine again, but stood and watched her in her uncouthy course until she was fair lost in the drive of the storm. And fair lost the schoolmistress must have felt herself, for the wind was rising and rising, the fall of night wouldn’t be long, and sleet was coming down enough to sore damp the Athletic Ideal of a whole Olympic Games. The home farm, where syne she got a cup tea from Mistress Gamley, was, she well knew, deserted; and with Christine gone off on her mad rampage there would be none at the meikle house but Guthrie and Tammas and the creature Hardcastle with his doddered old wife. And attractive as the mystery of the dark ancient place may have seemed from the snug security of the Kinkeig schoolhouse, it was something she found she had little stomach for now: we may take leave to think the silly body stood there in the sleet and cursed the lure of the wanderer roundly. But that didn’t help her to as much as the lithe of a dyke or a bit dry straw. As the stationy might have said, she could distinguish three alternatives: she could stay where she was, or she could go on and break her neck as Christine was surely like to do, or she could struggle down to Erchany and the doubtful hospitality of Ranald Guthrie. And it came to her then, poor soul, what a fell awful place the meikle house was and how ill the douce quean Isa Murdoch had fared there, so that almost she decided to struggle on and try find Glen Mervie. Then from somewhere came a rush of good sense to her head, she went back for her bit machine and syne faced the old wives’ horrors of Guthrie and his eye and swords and gallery.
That resolution lasted her till she was up with the home farm; then she minded what a grand loft the Gamleys had had, Geordie and Alice had used to sleep there and awful fun they’d known, the two nickums, on the outside stair that climbed to it in the lithe of the cattle court. Like enough, she thought, the Gamleys had left behind the pallets the weans had slept on; could she get up there she’d be snug enough till morning, her having two–three cakes of chocolate with her such as wanderers and them that go in quest of Scotland and such stite always carry. So she made into the court and pushed her mucky bicycle into a byre and mounted the long stone outside stair, slushy and unchancy as it was. She tried the sneck of the door, sure enough nobody had thought to lock it, and sure enough there were the pallets, right cosy seeming after the snell wind and the louring lift. She’d be better here on her lone, she thought, than seeking the company of the uncanny folk at Erchany.
She was soaked to the skin despite the fine mackintosh she had, and going to the far end of the dim-lit loft she started to get out of her clothes. She was near stripped, she says – and you’ll notice there must always be a bit nakedness in Kinkeig gossip – she was near stripped when suddenly it darkened in the loft. The door must have blown right to, she thought, and she turned to keek at it and what did she see but the figure of a man in horrid silhouette against the waning daylight. More, she recognized that spare figure. It was Ranald Guthrie himself.
So you see the schoolmistress had got herself into a situation not unlike wee Isa Murdoch’s: I don’t know but what the author lad will scent some danger of monotony here. But certain Miss Strachan was far from feeling the position monotonous; she gave a yelp that would have startled the laird as much as he had startled her if he hadn’t at that moment banged to the door and thrust home a great bolt on the outside. For fient the thing had he seen of the dripping Bethsabe at the far end of the loft, nor maybe would his reactions have been much like King David’s if he had; he was only concerned to make the place fast against the storm, and a minute later the schoolmistress heard his feet going slush-slush down the stair again.
Syne when she’d recovered a bit from her start she saw the position wasn’t so bad if only Guthrie would go away. She wasn’t hopelessly a prisoner; there was a trapdoor down from the loft to the house, only never used and with no loft ladder to it, forbye she had her clothes and the pallets and she could still maybe swarm down an improvised rope-ladder like she had used to do at the training college when they were dinging the Athletic Ideal into her. And once down she could surely get out by one window or another when she wanted to. Meantime she huddled on her wet clothes again, there seemed nothing else to do with a man about the place.
And certain enough Guthrie was still about; she could hear him through the thin flooring of the loft pacing about the one storey house much as he must have paced about his gallery. She wondered what the laird was doing out from the castle in the storm, almost it seemed he must be waiting for someone, and that thought was no sooner in her head than as if in answer to it Guthrie cried out in a loud voice: ‘Come in!’
There was silence on that, as if he had cried out to the air or as if the words had startled him they were spoken to into a momentary stillness. Then again came the laird’s voice, and Miss Strachan swore there was something mocking to it.
‘Come in, man!’
Again there was a pause, and then the sound of a door thrown open with a strong thrust that might have been a reply to that mockery in Guthrie’s voice. Then another pause and Guthrie’s voice again, so quiet and different this time that it scarce came up through the old cracked flooring.
‘So it’s you.’
The schoolmistress, whether because of the wringing clouts on her or because of something in the way the words were spoken, shivered in her soggy shoes. But you may be sure her long nose was twitching by now, and her sharp eye searching in the gloom for a good crack to lay her ugly lug to. And syne came the voice of Guthrie’s unknown visitor, young and strong and defiant, a voice that the schoolmistress couldn’t put a name to.
‘Where’s Christine?’
‘It’s not Christine you’re seeing today, Neil Lindsay. Nor any day henceforth, now I’ve found you out, the two of you.’
So that was who. Neil Lindsay was little more than a name to Miss Strachan, half-English from Edinburgh as she was, but she knew enough of the lads about to understand there would be fur flying if a Lindsay had been thinking to court Christine Mathers. It was like to be flying now in the long farm kitchen below her.
‘Where is she, Guthrie?’
Defiant the repeated question and the calling Guthrie so, Lindsay but a crofter chiel as he was; fine he knew, though, he had history to license him, as you’ll hear. And now the schoolmistress heard Guthrie answer, ri
ght dry and quiet: ‘I chanced to follow Christine and found her finding your message. I sent her back to the house and waited here myself. Was I wrong? Do you complain?’
‘She’s her own mistress.’
‘Not if you’re seeking to make her yours.’
The schoolmistress liked this fine; she strained her ears and heard what might have been Lindsay taking a swift step towards the laird. Then he seemed to check himself and his voice came, carefully controlled, desperately earnest: ‘I want to marry her, Guthrie.’
The laird said: ‘It can’t be.’
‘She wants to marry me.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘We’re marrying, Guthrie, and it’s not you can stop us.’
‘That I can, Neil Lindsay.’
‘For how?’
‘Christine is under age, and you know it.’
‘That will mend. And there’s another question.’
‘Indeed?’
‘What is Christine to you?’
They were wasting no words, the two of them, in hammering out what lay between them. And the schoolmistress was in an ecstasy; snug and unsuspected in her loft, she was hearing what would make Isa Murdoch’s story pale round every teapot in Kinkeig. So she reached for a bittock chocolate and only wished she could risk lighting a cigarette: a right coarse habit in a woman. Then she put her lug to the floor again to hear what Guthrie should find to reply.
But she was reckoning without the winter ways of Glen Erchany. The storm, that had been but spitting and girning till now, burst all in a moment into its full fury, the wind howling – a thing it does less often in nature than in books – and the sleet, now turned to rain, dashed in gusts against the slates like bursts of machine-gun fire. Guthrie and young Lindsay might be singing Auld Lang Syne together for all she could hear, or – what was more like – they might be fair murdering each other. She was right anxious, she said, for both of them: real solicitous-like is Miss Strachan.
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