A Scots Quair (25 page)

A fire burned bright in the fireplace, they had thought the place would be black and cold, but Mistress Melon had seen to that. And there was the bridal bed, pulled out from the wall, all in white it was, with sheet and blanket turned back, the window curtains were drawn, and in the moment they stood breathing from their climb of the stairs Chris heard the sound of the snow that stroked the window, with quiet, soft fingers, as though writing there.

Then she forgot it, standing by the fire getting out of her blue things, one by one. She found it sweet to do that, so slowly, and to have Ewan kiss her at last when there was no
bar to his kisses, lying with him then, with the light put out and the radiance of the fire on the walls and ceiling. And she turned towards him at last, whispering and tender for him,
We're daft, we'll catch cold without anything on!
and then she saw his face beside her, solemn and strange, yet not strange at all. And he put his left hand below her neck, and he took her close to him, and they were one flesh, one and together; and far into the morning she woke, and was not cold at all, him holding her so, and then she heard again the hand of winter write on the window, and listened a moment, happy, happy, and fell fast asleep till morning brought Mistress Melon and two great cups of tea to waken Ewan and herself.

SO THAT WAS HER
marriage, not like wakening from a dream was marrying, but like going into one, rather, she wasn't sure, not for days, what things they had dreamt and what actually done—she and this farmer of Blawearie who would stir of a morning at the jangle of the clock and creep from bed, the great cat, and be down the stairs to light the fire and put on the kettle. She'd never be far behind him, though, she loved even the bitterness of those frozen mornings, and a bitter winter it was, every crack and joist of the old house played a spray of cold wind across the rooms. He'd be gone to the byre and stable as she came down and sought out the porridge meal and put it to boil, Blawearie's own meal, fine rounded stuff that Ewan so liked. She'd leave it to hotter there on the fire and then bring the pails from the dairy and open the kitchen door on the close and gasp in the bite of the wind, seeing a grey world on the edge of morning, the bare stubble of the ley riding quick on the close, peering between the shapes of the stacks, the lights of the lanterns shining in byre and stable and barn as Ewan feeded and mucked and tended horses and kye.

And the byre would hang heavy with the breaths of the kye, they'd have finished their turnips as she came in, and Ewan would come swinging after her with a great armful of straw to spread them in front, he'd tickle her neck as she sat to milk and she'd cry
You're hand's freezing!
and he'd
say
Away, woman, you're still asleep. Up in the morning's the
thing!
and go whistling out to the stable, Clyde and Bess stamping there, getting fell cornfilled and frolicsome, they more than wanted exercise. She would carry the milk back herself most mornings, and make the breakfast, but sometimes Ewan would come with her, so young and daft they were, folk would have laughed to see them at that, both making breakfast and sitting them close to eat it. Then Ewan would light his pipe when he'd done and sit and smoke while she finished more slowly; and then he'd say that he'd meat the hens, and she'd tell him not to haver, she'd do that herself, and he'd argue, maybe sulk, till she kissed him back to his senses again. Then he'd laugh and get up and get down John Guthrie's gun, and be out and up in the moors till eleven, sometimes he'd bring a great bag and Chris would sell the spare rabbits to the grocer that came on Tuesdays.

There was little to be done, such weather on Blawearie. Ewan tidied the barn they'd danced in, it seemed years ago since that night, and got ready plough and sock and coulter for the time when the weather would break. And then he found the bruised corn running low in the great kist there, that was his first out-going from the place since his marriage, Chris watched him go, sitting in the front of the box-cart, Clyde in the shafts, the cart loaded down with corn for the Mill, and Ewan turning to wave to her from the foot of Blawearie brae. And all that afternoon he was away she fretted from room to room, oh! she was a fool, there was nothing could happen to him! And when at last he came back she ran out to him, fair scared he was at the way she looked, and thought her ill, and when she cried she had missed him so he went white and then blushed, just a boy still, and forgot to unyoke Clyde left in the cold, he was kissing Chris instead. And faith! for the bairns of farmers both they might well have had more sense.

But, and it crept into her mind that night and came often in the morning and days that followed, somehow that going of Ewan's to the Mill had ended the foolishness that shut
them in fast from Kinraddie and all the world, they two alone, with all the gladness that was theirs alone and her kisses the most that Ewan'd ever seek and his kisses ending days and nights, and almost life itself for her. Kinraddie came in again, something of her own cool reliance came back, the winter wore on to its close, and mid-February brought the sun, weather that might well have come out of a May. Looking out from her window as every morning still she did, Chris saw the steam of the lands below the house, it was as though the earth had swung round the fields of Kinraddie into the maw of the sun, a great furnace, and left them there to dry. The hills marched their great banners of steam into the face of each sunrise and through the whisper and wakening and shrouding of the morning came presently the moan of the foghorn at Todhead, a dreadful bellow, like a sore-sick calf, it went on and on, long after the mist had cleared, it rose and faded into the sun-dazzle overhead as great clouds of gulls came wheeling in from the sea. They knew what was toward on Kinraddie's land, Chris heard the call of them as she went about the day's work, and looked out on the ley field then, there was Ewan with the horses, ploughing his first rig, bent over the shafts, one foot in the drill, one the rig side, the ploughshare, sharp and crude and new, cleaving the red-black clay. The earth wound back like a ribbon and curved and lay; and the cloud of gulls cawed and screamed and pecked on the rig and followed at Ewan's heels again.

All over Kinraddie there were horse-pairs out, though none so early as Ewan's, it seemed, folk had stayed undecided about the weather, they'd other things to do, they'd say, than just wait about to show off like that young Blawearie. But, when the day rose and at nine Chris set her a jug of tea in a basket, and set by it scones well buttered and jammed, and carried out the basket to Ewan
wisshing
up the face of the rig, Chae Strachan, far away and below, was a-bend above his plough-shafts at the tail of his team, Upperhill had two pairs in the great park that loitered up to the larch-wood, and there was Cuddiestoun's pair, you guessed it him and his horses,
though they never came full in sight, their heads and backs just skimmed the verge of the wood and hill.

Spring had come and was singing and rilling all over the fields, you listened and heard, it was like listening to the land new wake, to the burst and flow of a dozen burns in this ditch and that; and when you turned out the cattle for their first spring dander, in case they went off the legs, they near went off the face of the earth instead, daft and delighted, they ran and scampered and slid, Chris was feared that the kye would break their legs. She tried driving them down to the old hayfield, but the steers broke loose and held down the road, and Εwan saw them and left his plough and chased them across the parks, swearing blue murder at them as he ran; and faith! if it hadn't been for the postman meeting them and turning them at the end of the road they might well have been running still.

Chris had known then mazes of things to do in that bright coming of the weather, the house was all wrong, it was foul and feckless, Εwan unyoking at midday would come in and make hardly his way through the kitchen, heaped high with the gear of some room, Chris saw her long hands grow sore and red with the scrubbing she did on the sour old walls. Εwan said she was daft, the place was fine, what more did she want? And she said
Less dirt;
and that maybe he liked dirt, she didn't; and he laughed
Well, maybe I do, I like
you right well!
and put his arm round her shoulders and they stood and kissed in the mid of the heaped and littered kitchen—awful to be like that, said Chris, they could hardly be sane.

IN MARCH THE
weather broke, the rain came down in plashing pelts, you could hardly see a hand's-length in front of your face if you ran through the close. Εwan sat in the barn, winnowing corn or tying ropes, or just smoking and swearing out at the rain. Chae Strachan came up for a talk on the second day, all in oilskins he came; and he sat in the barn with Ewan and said he'd seen it rain like this in Alaska, and the mountains move when the snows were melting.
And Ewan said he didn't care a damn though Alaska moved under the sea the morn, when would it clear on Blawearie? Munro came next, then Mutch of Bridge End, they'd nothing on their hands but watch the rain and shake their heads and swear they were all fair ruined.

But at last it went, the unending rain of a fortnight went, and that morning they woke and found it fine, Ewan took him a look at the land from the bedroom window and prompt lay back in the bed again.
Damn Blawearie and all that's on't,
let's have a holiday the day, Chris quean
. She said
I can't, I'm
cleaning the garret,
and Ewan got angered, she'd never seen him angry like that before, Highland and foreign then, spitting like a cat.
Are you to spend all your days cleaning damned
rooms? You'll be old and wizened and a second Mistress Munro
before you're well twenty. Off on a holiday we're going to-day.

And, secretly glad, she lay back, lying with her hands under her head, lazy, and looking at him, thinking how different he was from that lad she'd tramped to Dunnottar with, so close she knew him now, the way he thought and the things he liked and his kindness and slowness to take offence, and the bitter offence, how it rankled in him, once it was there! Like and not like what she'd thought and wanted in those days before they had married. Spite of their closest moments together, Ewan could still blush at a look or a touch of hers; she touched him then to make sure, and he did! He said
Hold off! you're a shameless limmer, for sure, and not
nineteen yet. Come on, let's get out and get off.

So they raced through the morning's work and by nine were down at the Peesie's Knapp, and borrowed Chae's gig and heard Chae promise to milk and take in Blawearie's kye. Then out they drove and swung left through Kinraddie, into the Laurencekirk road, the sun shining and the peewits calling, there were snipe in a loch they passed, the North Sea was gloom-away by Bervie as the sholtie trotted south. You could see then as the land rose higher the low parks that sloped to the woods and steeple of Drumlithie, beyond that the hills of Barras, the Reisk in its hollow among its larch-woods. West of that rose Arbuthnott, a fair jumble of bent and brae,
Fordoun came marching up the horizon in front of them then, and they were soon going through it. Εwan said if he bided in Fordoun he'd lay his neck on the railway line and invite the Flying Scotsman to run over it, so tired he'd be of biding in a place that looked like a barn painted by a man with nothing but thumbs and a squint in both eyes.

But Chris liked the little place, she'd never seen it before and the farms that lay about it, big and rich, with fine black loam for soil, different from the clay of bleak Blawearie. Εwan said
To hell with them and their fine land too, they're not
farmers, them, only lazy muckers that sit and make silver out of
their cotters;
and he said he'd rather bide in a town and wear a damned apron than work in this countryside. And then they were near Laurencekirk, the best of weather the day held still, Laurencekirk looked brave in the forenoon stir, with its cattle mart and its printing office where they printed weekly the
Kincardineshire Observer
, folk called it
The Squeaker
for short. It had aye had a hate for Stonehaven, Laurencekirk, and some said that it should be the county capital, but others said God help the capital that was entrusted to it; and would speak a bit verse that Thomas the Rhymour had made, how ere Rome–

And when Laurencekirk folk heard that they would laugh, not nearly cry as they did in Drumlithie when you mocked at their steeple, or smile sick and genteel as they did in Stonehaven when you spoke of the poverty toffs. Ewan said it was a fine town, he liked Laurencekirk, and they'd stop and have dinner there.

So they did, it was fine to eat food that another had cooked. Then they looked at the day and saw how it wore and planned to drive over to Edzell Castle—
There's nothing to see there but a
rickle of stones
, said Ewan,
but you'll like them fine, no doubt.

So they did as they'd planned, the afternoon flew, it
was golden and green. Under Drumtochty Hill they passed, Ewan told that in summer it came deeper with the purple of heather than any other hill in Scotland; but it hung dark and asleep like a great cloud scraping the earth as they trotted past. There was never a soul at the castle but themselves, they climbed and clambered about in the ruins, stone on stone they were crumbling away, there were little dark chambers in the angle walls that had sheltered the bowmen long syne. Ewan said they must fair have been fusionless folk, the bowmen, to live in places like that; and Chris laughed and looked at him, queer and sorry, and glimpsed the remoteness that her books had made.