A Scots Quair (28 page)

Whether or not
she
was, there could be never a doubt about the Reverend Gibbon. For the next Sabbath day, when another great crowd came down to the kirk to hear him preach, they got all the patriotism they could wish, the minister said that the Kaiser was the Antichrist, and that until this foul evil had been swept from the earth there could be neither peace nor progress again. And he gave out a hymn then,
Onward, Christian Soldiers
it was, and his own great bull's voice led the singing, he had fair become a patriot and it seemed likely he thought the Germans real bad. But Long Rob of the Mill, when he heard the story, said it was a sight more likely that he thought the chance of losing his kirk and collections a damned sight worse than any German that was ever yet clecked.

For, and it grew a fair scandal all through the Howe, you could hardly believe it, it was funny enough, Long Rob of the Mill didn't hold with the war. He said it was a lot of damned nonsense, those that wanted to fight, the m.p.s and bankers and editors and muckers, should all be locked up in a pleiter of a park and made to gut each other with graips: there'd be no great loss to the world and a fine bit sight it would make
for decent folk to look on at. But for folk with sense to take part in the soss and yammer about King and country was just plain hysteria; and as for Belgium invaded, it got what it needed, what about the Congo and your Belgians there? Not that the Germans weren't as bad, they were all tarred with the same black brush.

But, though folk weren't patriots as daft as Chae Strachan, that didn't look when he was being laughed at, they knew right well that Long Rob couldn't lie like that, the long, rangy childe, without being pro-German, as the papers called it. For all the papers were full of pro-Germans then, British folk that thought that the German rascals were right; and in England folk went and smashed in their windows, such a rage they were in with the pro-Germans for being so coarse. There was little danger that they's smash Rob's windows, there were few that cared to tackle the childe except Chae Strachan that was training in Perth. So the whole stour might well have blown over, Rob was a well-liked billy and you needn't heed h his s blithers, if the Reverend Gibbon hadn't taken to the business and preached a sermon about tinks and traitors, and a lot he preached about a jade called Jael, fell unchancy she'd been, right holy, though, and she'd killed a childe Sisera that she couldn't thole, because he was coarse to the Jews. And the Reverend Gibbon boomed out she was fine, a patriot and a light unto Israel she'd been, and we in like manner must act the same, right here in our midst were traitors that sided with the Antichrist, shame on Kinraddie that it should be so!

Folk listened to the sermon and fair got excited, and after dinner that Sabbath a horde of billies, some came from Kinraddie though most did not, but Upperhill's new foreman was there, and an awful patriot childe just like Gordon himself, they went down to the Mill, and there was Long Rob sitting out by his door, smoking at his pipe and reading in a book, coarse stite about God and God knows what. And the Upperhill foreman cried out
Here's the Kaiser's crony,
let's duck the mucker!
and the lot made a run at Rob and got him gripped in their hands, Rob thought it some joke
and he laughed at them, setting by his bit book. But they soon let him know they were serious enough, they were clean worked up about the sermon and Long Rob the Antichrist's friend, and they started to haul Rob over to the mill-course then, where the water was sparkling and raging from a good bit spate in the hills.

Syne at last Rob knew they meant what they said, folk told that he gave a great cry that wasn't a curse and wasn't a shout, it was both together; and as they dragged him he lifted his foot, real coarse-like, and he kicked the foreman at the Upperhill right in the private parts then, and the foreman at the Upperhill he screamed like a fell stuck pig; and God! folk laughed right well when they heard about that. Well, the next thing that happened was that Rob got a hand free then, and he took a childe near him, a meikle man from the Mains, a clout in the ear that stretched him flat; and then Rob was free and he ran, all the rest at his heels, for the house. But he could run right well, could Rob, and fair outdistanced the pack, and he leapt inside and he barred the door.

So they threw some stones and rammed at the door with their shoulders, half-shamed by then at the stour they were raising, and maybe they knew they'd feel fools by Monday; and they might have gone home in another bit minute if it hadn't been that the meikle Mains man, him that Rob had couped on the ground with a clout in the ear, crawled up to his feet and picked up a great stone; and crack! through the kitchen window it went with a bang and a splinter inside!

Next minute the door flung open, they turned and looked and there was Long Rob, a gun in his hand and his face fair grey with rage. Some cried
Take care, man, now, put down
that gun!
but they edged away back for all that. And Rob cried out
Smash in my window you would, then, would you,
you scum?
and he swung the gun at the nearest billy and let drive at him. The pellets sang past the billy's head and he'd had enough of the war, he turned and ran like a rabbit; and the others scattered and ran as well, and Long Rob ran after them, and his gun went bang! again and again, you could hear it all over Kinraddie. Folk ran to their doors,
they thought the Germans had landed and were looting the Mearns; Chris, who had run across the Blawearie cornyard, shaded her eyes and looked over the country and at last she saw them, the running figures, like beetles in the distance, they fanned out and ran from the Mill as focus. And behind ran another that stopped now and then, and a puff of smoke went up at each stopping, and there came the bang of the gun. Mist was coming down and it blinded the battlefield, and through it the attacking army ran in an awful rout, Chris saw them vanish into its coming and Long Rob, still shooting, go scudding in chase.

So that was the result of the Reverend Gibbon's sermon, Kinraddie fair seethed with the news next day, all about the attack on the Mill and how Rob had chased the childes that came up against him, some could hardly sit down for a week after that, so full were their backsides with pellets. And some said that Long Rob was a coarse tink brute, if he was willing to fight like that at the Mill it was him that should go out to France and fight; but others, though they weren't so many, Chris and Ewan were among them, liked Long Rob and sided with him, and said it was a damn poor show for Scotland if her patriots aye ran as they had at the Mill. That had been the Sunday, but on Wednesday was another happening, and God knows what mightn't have come of
it
but for the interfering of the daftie Tony, him that bided at Cuddiestoun.

He'd been stitering along the Denburn road, had Tony, when he rounded a bend and there, on the road outside the Mill, was the Reverend Gibbon, his bicycle was lying in the stour and Long Rob had him gripped by the collar, and if he wasn't in danger of a bash in the face appearances were sore deceptive. For Long Rob had seen the minister come riding in the distance and knew his black coat and stopped the Mill and ran down to the road to ask what the hell the Reverend had meant by saying he was friends with the Antichrist. And the Reverend Gibbon turned red with rage and cried
Stand
out of my way there, Rob
, and Rob cried
Stand still you first,
my man, for we've a bit bone to pick!
and as the minister tried to ride him down Rob caught the handles and twisted them
sore, and off the minister came, like a sack of corn, right flump in Rob's hands.

And Rob gave him a bit shake and asked
Who's pro-Ger
man?
and the minister swore himself blue and made at Rob, and Rob shook him like a futret a rabbit, and syne stood back and looked close at his face, and made up his mind that he'd smash in the minister's bit nose right then, he'd seen that kind of thing done before and it fair sossed up a pretty man, you just struck and struck till the bone gave way. So Rob was just starting to mash up the minister childe when round the bend with a funny bit screech came the daftie Tony, he scraiched like a hen with a seed in its throat and ran and caught at Rob's arm.
He's only a half-witted cleric, Rob, you'll
dirty your hands on him
, he cried, and both Rob and minister, sore astounded, stopped from their fighting and stared at the creature, the impudence of him with his wee red beard, and him only a daftie, like. But he nodded to the minister
Get
while the going's good and your hide's still intact
, he said: and if you'd believe it the minister louped on his bicycle without a word, and off he rode; and Long Rob turned and asked the daftie where he'd hidden his sense all the time they'd known him, but Tony stood still like a stock of rags, a daft-like look on his face. And when Rob spoke to him again he just smiled like a gowk, and went shuffling away through the stour.

Some said that if all things were true that wouldn't be a lie, but Rob swore to it, he wasn't boasting what he'd done to the minister, he said, he was just so astonished at Tony he'd to tell them the story to make Tony's part plain. Cuddiestoun swore 'twas a lie from beginning to end, the thing you'd expect from a damned pro-German, like; but he didn't say that to Long Rob, he was over coarse in the feet, Munro, to run as fleet as the other billies had when Rob got in action. But he stopped his trade with Long Rob and he carted his corn for crushing and bruising over to the mill at Mondynes, syne Mutch of Bridge End did the same. Ah well, they might do that if they liked, folk as a rule were hardly so daft as leave the best miller for miles around just because of his saying that all the Germans could hardly be
tinks. Maybe, you know, there was something in what the man said, coarse devils though most of the Germans were.

BUT CHRIS DIDN'T
care, sitting there at Blawearie with young Ewan at her breast, her man beside her, Blawearie theirs and the grain a fine price, forbye that the stirks sold well in the marts. Maybe there was war and bloodshed and that was awful, but far off also, you'd hear it like the North Sea cry in a morning, a crying and a thunder that became unending as the weeks went by, part of life's plan, fringing the horizon of your days with its pelt and uproar. So the new year came in and Chris watched young Ewan change and grow there at her breast, he was quick of temper like his father, good like his mother, she told Ewan; and Ewan laughed
God, maybe you're right! You could hardly be wrong
in a thing after bringing a bairn like that in the world
. And she laughed at him
But you helped a little!
and he blushed as red as he always did, they seemed daft as ever in their love as the days wore on. It was still as strange and as kind to lie with him, live with him, watch the sweat on his forehead when he came from tramping a day in the parks at the heels of his horses; still miracle to hear beside her his soundless breathing in the dark of the night when their pleasure was past and he slept so soon. But she didn't herself, those nights as the Winter wore to March, into Spring: she'd lie and listen to that hushed breathing of his one side of her, the boy's quicker breath in his cradle out by—content, content, what more could she have or want than the two of them, body and blood and breath? And morning would bring her out of her bed to tend young Ewan and make the breakfast and clean out the byre and the stable, singing; she worked never knowing she tired and Long Rob of the Mill came on her one morning as she cleaned the manure from the stable and he cried
The Spring of life, eh, Chris quean? Sing it and
cherish it, 'twill never come again!

Different from the old Rob he looked, she thought, but thought that carelessly, hurried to be in to young Ewan. But she stopped and watched him swing down the rigs to Ewan
by the side of his horses, Ewan with his horses halted on the side of the brae and the breath of them rising up like a steam. And she heard Ewan call
Ay, man, Rob
, and Rob call
Ay, man, Ewan
, and they called the truth, they seemed fine men both against the horizon of Spring, their feet deep laired in the wet clay ground, brown and great, with their feet on the earth and the sky that waited behind. And Chris looked at them over-long, they glimmered to her eyes as though they had ceased to be there, mirages of men dreamt by a land grown desolate against its changing sky. And the Chris that had ruled those other two selves of herself, content, unquestioning these many months now, shook her head and called herself daft.

That year's harvest fell sharp away, but the price of corn made up for it, other prices might rise but farming folk did well. So it went in the winter and into the next year too, Ewan took in a drove of Irish steers to eat up the lush green grass of nineteen-sixteen. They grew fat and round in the shortest while, Chris proud to see them, so many beasts had Blawearie. You'd hardly believe 'twas here father had chaved and fought for a living the way he did; but that was before the War.

For it still went on, rumbling its rumours like the thunder of summer beyond the hills. But nobody knew now when it would finish, not even Chae Strachan come home, a soldier all the way from the front, as they called it; in the orra- looking khaki he came, with two stripes sewn on his arm, he said they had made him a corporal. He came up to Blawearie the night he got home and scraped his feet on the scraper outside and came dandering into the kitchen as aye he had done, not knocking but crying through the door
Ay, folk,
are you in
?

So there was Chae, Chris gave a loud gasp to see him, Chae himself, so altered you'd hardly believe it, Chae himself, thin, his fine eyes queered and strained somehow. Even his laugh seemed different, hearty as it was, and he cried
God,
Chris, I'm not a ghost yet!
and syne Chris and Ewan were shaking his hands and sitting him down and pouring him a
dram and another after that. And young Ewan came running to see and cried
soldier!
and Chae caught him and swung him up from the floor and cried
Chris's bairn
—
God, it can't be, I
mind the day he was born, just yesterday it was!