A Scots Quair (19 page)

They ate it together and Chris took off her hat, she felt hot and uncouth in her sad black clothes. And suddenly, for no reason, she thought of a time, years before, when she'd been trampling blankets for mother a fine summer day in May, and had taken off her skirts and her mother had come out and laughed at her,
You'd make a fine lad!
It was as though she heard mother speak, she looked up and around, daftly, dazed-like a moment, but there was not a soul near but Ewan Tavendale lying on an elbow, looking at the sea, the sun in his face, young and smooth with its smouldering eyes. And she found she didn't mislike him any longer, she felt queer and strange to him, not feared, but as though he was to say something in a moment that she knew she couldn't answer. And then he said it, blushing, but his smouldering eyes didn't waver,
Chris, do you like me a bit?

Can't thole you at all, that's why we're out lazing in this place
together.

But a nervousness came on her, not that she feared him, she'd known all along she was safe with Ewan as Mollie with Will in those long-gone days of the court at Drumlithie. Only, it was as though her blood ran so clear and with such a fine, sweet song in her veins she must hold her breath and heark to it; and for the first time she knew the strange thing her hand was, held there dripping sand, it seemed as though all her body sat a little apart from herself, and she looked at it, wondering. So it was that she knew she liked him, loved him as they said in the soppy English books, you were shamed and a fool to say that in Scotland. Ewan Tavendale—that it should be him! And then she minded something, it didn't matter at all, but she wanted to know for all that,
Ewan, was
it true that story they told about you and old Sarah Sinclair?

It was as though she had belted him in the face. He went white then, funnily white leaving brown the red tan in
the little creases of his face that the coarse field weather had made; and he sat up, angrily, and glowered at her, the great black cat, so sleekéd and quick to anger. And the feeling she'd had for him, that dizziness that made earth and sea and her heart so light, quite went from her. She said
Oh, I don't
want to know,
and began to hum to herself; and then Ewan reached out his hand and gripped her arm, it hurt, he said
Damn well listen now that you've asked me.
And it was awful, awful and terrible, she didn't want to listen to him, covering her face with her hands, he went on and on and then stopped at last—
Now you're frightened, frightened that a woman should
feel like that, maybe some day you'll feel it yourself

She jumped to her feet then, angry as him, forgetting to feel shamed.
Maybe I will, but when I do I'll get a better man
than you to serve me!
And before he could answer that she had caught up her hat and was up the cliff path so quick she didn't know how she did it, her fingers and feet were nimble and sure, she heard Ewan cry below her and paid no heed. He was barely half-way up when she reached the top and looked down, and then the rage quite went from her, she leaned over the edge instead, holding down her hand, and he caught it and smiled, and they stood and panted and smiled one at the other, fools again as they'd been in the market-square of Stonehaven.

But suddenly Ewan whipped out his watch,
God, it must
be getting fell late,
and as he said it the sunshine went. Chris raised her head and saw why, they'd been sitting down there in the last of it, the gloaming was down on the countryside and the noise of the gulls rising up through the mirk. Ewan caught her hand and they ran by the cliff-edge of the gloaming-stilled parks, there were great dappled kye that stopped their grazing to look; and up in front, dark and uncanny, they saw Dunnottar rise on its rock. And then they reached the main road and slowed down, but she still left her hand in Ewan's.

And in Stonehaven they caught by the skin of the teeth the six o'clock train, the mart was long over and folk gone home. In the carriage were only themselves all the way to
Kinraddie, Ewan sat on the opposite seat, she liked him sit there, liked him not wanting to hold her hand, she'd have hated him touch her now. And they didn't say a word till they neared Kinraddie, and then he said
Chrissie! Tired?
and she said
Losh, no, and my name's Chris, Ewan.
Then she saw him blush again in the flicker of the gaslight; and a strange, sweet surge of pity came on her, she leant over and patted his knee, he was only a boy in spite of his Sarah Sinclair.

BUT SHE THOUGHT
of Sarah all the same that night, lying listening in bed to the coming of the rain again, a wet winter it promised the Howe. So women were like that when they didn't have the men they wanted?–many of them maybe like that, hiding it away even from themselves till a summer of heat drove one here and there to such acts as affronted Kinraddie. But she didn't feel affronted, it was maybe because she was over young, had read over many of the books, had been the English Chris as well as this one that lay thinking of Ewan; and the old ways of sinning and winning, having your own pleasure and standing affronted at other folk having theirs, seemed often daft to her. Sarah Sinclair might well have obliged her and met with some other lad than Ewan that August night; but then she wasn't to know Chris Guthrie would ever lie and think of him in her bed, hearing the batter of the rain against her window and the swish of the great Blawearie trees.

It was then, in a lull of the swishing, she heard the great crack of thunder that opened the worst storm that had struck the Howe in years. It was far up, she thought, and yet so close Blawearie's stones seemed falling about her ears, she half-scrambled erect. Outside the night flashed, flashed and flashed, she saw Kinraddie lighted up and fearful, then it was dark again, but not quiet. In the sky outside a great beast moved and purred and scrabbled, and then suddenly it opened its mouth again and again there was the roar and the flash of its claws, tearing at the earth, it seemed neither house nor hall could escape. The rain had died away, it was listening—quiet in the next lull, and then Chris heard her Auntie
crying to her
Are you all right, Chrissie?
and cried back she was fine. Funny Uncle Tam had cried never a word, maybe he was still in the sulks he'd plumped head-first in when he'd heard of the old woman that Semple was sending to help keep house in Blawearie. They were off to Auchterless the morn, and oh! she'd be glad to see them go, she'd enough to do and to think without fighting relations.

The thunder clamoured again, and then she suddenly sat shivering, remembering something—Clyde and old Bob and Bess, all three of them were out in the ley field there, they weren't taken in till late in the year. Round the ley field was barbed wire, almost new, that father had put up in the Spring, folk said it was awful for drawing the lightning, maybe it had drawn it already.

She was out of bed in the next flash, it was a ground flash, it hung and it seemed to wait, sizzling, outside the window as she pulled on stockings and vest and knickers and ran to the door and cried up
Uncle Tam, Uncle Tam, we must take in
the horses!
He didn't hear, she waited, the house shook and dirled in another great flash, then Auntie was crying something, Chris stood as if she couldn't believe her own ears. Uncle Tam was feared at the lightning, he wouldn't go out, she herself had best go back to her bed and wait for the morning.

She didn't wait to hear more than that, but ran to the kitchen and groped about for the box of matches and lighted the little lamp, it with the glass bowl, and then found the littlest lantern and lighted that, though her fingers shook and she almost dropped the funnel. Then she found old shoes and a raincoat, it had been father's and came near to her ankles, and she caught up the lamp and opened the kitchen door and closed it quick behind her just as the sky banged again and a flare of sheet lightning came flowing down the hill-side, frothing like the incoming tide at Dunnottar. It dried up, leaving her blinded, her eyes ached and she almost dropped the lantern again.

In the byre the kye were lowing fit to raise the roof, even the stirks were up and stamping about in their stalls. But they
were safe enough unless the biggings were struck, it was the horses she'd to think of.

Right athwart her vision the haystacks shone up like great pointed pyramids a blinding moment, vanished, darkness complete and heavy flowed back on her again, the lantern- light seeking to pierce it like the bore of a drill. Still the rain held off as she stumbled and cried down the sodden fields. Then she saw that the barbed wire was alive, the lightning ran and glowed along it, a living thing, a tremulous, vibrant serpent that spat and glowed and hid its head and quivered again to sight. If the horses stood anywhere near to that they were finished, she cried to them again and stopped and listened, it was deathly still in the night between the bursts of the thunder, so still that she heard the grass she had pressed underfoot crawl and quiver erect again a step behind her. Then, as the thunder moved away—it seemed to break and roar down the rightward hill, above the Manse and Kinraddie Mains,–something tripped her, she fell and the lantern-flame flared up and seemed almost to vanish; but she righted it, almost sick though she was because of the wet, warm thing that her body and face lay upon.

It was old Bob, he lay dead, his tongue hanging out, his legs doubled under him queerly, poor brute, and she shook at his halter a minute before she realised it was useless and there were still Bess and Clyde to see to. And then she heard the thunder and clop of their hooves coming across the grass to her, they loomed suddenly into the light of the lamp, nearly running her down, they stood beside her and whinnied, frightened and quivering so that her hand on Bess's neck dirled as on the floor of a threshing-machine. Then the lightning smote down again, quite near, though the thunder had seemed to move off, it played a great zig-zag over the field where she stood with the horses, and they pressed so near her she was almost crushed between them; and the lantern was pressed from her hand at last, it fell and went out with a crash and a crinkle of breaking glass. She caught Bess's bridle with one hand, Clyde's with another, and the lightning went and they began to move forward in the darkness, she thought she
was in the right direction but she couldn't be sure. The next flash showed a field she didn't know, close at hand, with a high, staked dyke, and then she knew she had gone utterly wrong, it was the dyke on the turnpike.

The thunder growled satisfiedly and Clyde whinnied and whinnied, she saw then the reason for that, right ahead was the waving of a lantern, it must be Uncle come out to look for her at last, she cried
I'm here!
and a voice cried
Where?
She cried again and the lantern came in her direction, it was two men climbing the dyke. The horses started and whinnied and dragged her forward and then she found herself with Chae Strachan and Ewan, they had seen to their own horses on Upperhill and the Knapp, and had met and had minded hers on Blawearie; and up they had come to look for them. In the moment as they recognised one the other the lightning flared, a last sizzling glow, and then the rain came again, they heard it coming far up in the moors, it whistled and moaned and then was a great driving swish. Chae thrust his lantern upon Ewan,
Damn't man, take that and the lass and run for the
house! I'll see to the horse!

Ewan caught Chris under the arm, he swung the lantern in his other hand, they ran for a gate that led to the turnpike, the horses galloped behind them, Chae dragging at their halters and cursing them; and the rain overtook them as they gained the road, it was a battering wet hand that beat at them, Chris was soaked to the skin in a moment.

But in another they'd gained the new biggings of Peesie's Knapp, there shone a light in the kitchen, Ewan opened the door and pushed Chris in,
Bide here and I'll off and help
Chae!
He disappeared into the blackness, the door closed behind him, Chris went forward into the kitchen and the glow of the fire. She felt daft and deaf in the sudden silence and out of the rain, in the stillness of the new kitchen with its meikle clock wagging against the wall, and its calendars and pictures all spaced about, it looked calm and fine. Then she realised how wetted she was and took off the raincoat, it rained a puddle on the kitchen floor, she was dressed below only in knickers and vest, she'd not remembered that!

There came a rattle and clatter outside in the close as the men ran to the house, Chris slipped on the coat again and was tugging at the buttons as the two came stamping in. Chae cried,
Damn't, Chris, get out of that coat, you must fair
be soaked. Here, I'll stir up the fire, the old wife's in bed, she'd
sleep through a hundred storms.

He bent over the fire then, poking it up, Chris found Εwan beside her, his hair black with the rain, the great cat, to help her off with her coat. She whispered,
I can't, Εwan,
I've nothing on below!
and he blushed as red as a girl himself, and dropped his hands, and looked like a foolish boy so that she lost her own shyness at once, and told the same thing to Chae when he turned him round. He laughed at her with his twinkling eyes,
What, nothing at all?—Well, not very much,
Chae.–Then come ben and I'll get you a coat of the wife's, you
can slip into that.

The rain was pelting on the roof as she followed him through to Mistress Strachan's new parlour, it sounded loud enough to wake the dead let alone her that had been Kirsty Sinclair. Chae opened the wardrobe and brought out a fine coat, Mistress Strachan's best for the Sunday, lined and fine and smelling of moth-balls; and then a pair of her slippers.
Get out of your things, Chris lass, and bring them to dry. I'll have
something warm for you and Εwan to drink.