A Scots Quair (34 page)

Sweat on his hair as sweat on Ewan's. She stared at that and held out the telegram, he wiped slow hands and took it and read it, while she clung to the door-post and whispered and whispered
What is it I do now, John? Have I to go out to
France?
And at last he looked up, his face was grizzled and hot and old, he wiped the sweat from it, slow.
God, mistress
,
this is sore news, but he's died like a man out there, your Ewan's
died fine
.

But she wouldn't listen to that, wanting to know the thing she must do; and not till he told her that she did nothing, they could never take all widows to France and Ewan must already be buried, did she stop from that twisting of her hands and ceaseless whisper. Then anger came,
Why didn't you tell
me before? Oh, damn you, you liked tormenting me!
and she turned from him into the house and ran up the stairs to the bed, the bed that was hers and Ewan's, and lay on it, and put her hands over her ears trying not to hear a cry of agony in a lost French field, not to think that the body that had lain by hers, frank and free and kind and young, was torn and dead and unmoving flesh, blood twisted upon it, not Ewan at all,
riven and terrible, still and dead when the harvest stood out in Blawearie's land and the snipe were calling up on the loch and the beech trees whispered and rustled. And she knew that it was a lie

He wasn't dead, he could never have died or been killed for nothing at all, far away from her over the sea, what matter to him their War and their fighting, their King and their country? Kinraddie was his land, Blawearie his, he was never dead for those things of no concern, he'd the crops to put in and the loch to drain and her to come back to. It had nothing to do with Ewan this telegram. They were only tormenting her, cowards and liars and bloody men, the English generals and their like down there in London. But she wouldn't bear it, she'd have the law on them, cowards and liars as she knew them to be!

It was only then that she knew she was moaning, dreadful to hear; and they heard it outside, John Brigson heard it and nearly went daft, he caught up young Ewan and ran with him into the kitchen and then to the foot of the stairs; and told him to go up to his mother, she wanted him. And young Ewan came, it was his hand tugging at her skirts that brought her out of that moaning coma, and he wasn't crying, fearsome the sounds though she made, his face was white and resolute,
Mother, mother!
She picked him up then and held him close, rocking in an agony of despair because of that look on his face, that lost look and the smouldering eyes he had.
Oh Ewan, your father's dead!
she told him the lie that the world believed. And she wept at last, blindly, freeingly, for a little, old Brigson was to say it was the boy that had saved her from going mad.

BUT THROUGHOUT
Kinradie the news went underbreath that mad she'd gone, the death of her man had fair unhinged her. For still she swore it was a lie, that Ewan wasn't dead, he could never have died for nothing. Kirsty Strachan and Mistress Munro came up to see her, they shook their heads and said he'd died fine, for his country and his King he'd died, young Ewan would grow up to be proud of his father. They
said that sitting at tea, with long faces on them, and then Chris laughed, they quivered away from her at that laugh.

Country and King? You're havering, havering! What have
they to do with my Ewan, what was the King to him, what their
damned country? Blawearie's his land, it's not his wight that
others fight wars!

She went fair daft with rage then, seeing the pity in their faces. And also it was then, and then only, staring through an angry haze at them, that she knew at last she was living a dream in a world gone mad. Ewan was dead, they knew it and she knew it herself; and he'd died for nothing, for nothing, hurt and murdered and crying for her, maybe, killed for nothing: and those bitches sat and spoke of their King and country…

They ran out of the house and down the brae, and, panting, she stood and screamed after them. It was fair the speak of Kinraddie next day the way she'd behaved, and nobody else came up to see her. But she'd finished with screaming, she went quiet and cold. Mornings came up, and she saw them come, she minded that morning she'd sent him away and she might not cry him back. Noons with their sun and rain came over the Howe and she saw the cruelty and pain of life as crimson rainbows that spanned the horizons of the wheeling hours. Nights came soft and grey and quiet across Kinraddie's fields, they brought neither terror nor hope to her now. Behind the walls of a sanity cold and high, locked in from the lie of life, she would live, from the world that had murdered her man for nothing, for a madman's gibberish heard in the night behind the hills.

AND THEN CHAE
Strachan came home at last on leave, he came home and came swift to Blawearie. She met him out by the kitchen door, a sergeant by then, grown thinner and taller, and he stopped and looked in her frozen face. Then, as her hand dropped down from him, he went past her with swinging kilts, into the kitchen, and sat him down and took off his bonnet.
Chris, I've come to tell you
of Ewan
.

She stared at him, waking, a hope like a fluttering bird in her breast.
Ewan? Chae–Chae, he's not living?
And then, as he shook his head, the frozen wall came down on her heart again.
Ewan's dead, don't vex yourself hoping else. They can't
hurt him more, even this can't hurt him, though I swore I'd tell
you nothing about it. But I know right well you should know
it, Chris. Ewan was shot as a coward and deserter out there
in France
.

CHAE HAD LAIN
in a camp near by and had heard of the thing by chance, he'd read Ewan's name in some list of papers that was posted up. And he'd gone the night before Ewan was shot, and they'd let him see Ewan, and he'd heard it all, the story he was telling her now—
better always to know
what truth's in a thing, for lies come creeping home to roost on
unco rees, Chris quean. You're young yet, you've hardly begun
to live, and I swore to myself that I'd tell you it all, that you'd
never be vexed with some twisted bit in the years to come. Ewan
was shot as a deserter, it was fair enough, he'd deserted from the
front line trenches
.

He had deserted in a blink of fine weather between the rains that splashed the glutted rat-runs of the front. He had done it quickly and easily, he told to Chae, he had just turned and walked back. And other soldiers that met him had thought him a messenger, or wounded, or maybe on leave, none had questioned him, he'd set out at ten o'clock in the morning and by afternoon, taking to the fields, was ten miles or more from the front. Then the military policemen came on him and took him, he was marched back and court-martialled and found to be guilty.

And Chae said to him, they sat together in the hut where he waited the coming of the morning,
But why did you do it,
Ewan? You might well have known you'd never get free
. And Ewan looked at him and shook his head,
It was that wind
that came with the sun, I minded Blawearie, I seemed to waken
up smelling that smell. And I couldn't believe it was me that
stood in the trench, it was just daft to be there. So I turned and
got out of it
.

In a flash it had come on him, he had wakened up, he was daft and a fool to be there; and, like somebody minding things done in a coarse wild dream there had flashed on him memory of Chris at Blawearie and his last days there, mad and mad he had been, he had treated her as a devil might, he had tried to hurt her and maul her, trying in the nightmare to waken, to make her waken him up; and now in the blink of sun he saw her face as last he'd seen it while she quivered away from his taunts. He knew he had lost her, she'd never be his again, he'd known it in that moment he clambered back from the trenches; but he knew that he'd be a coward if he didn't try though all hope was past.

So out he had gone for that, remembering Chris, wanting to reach her, knowing as he tramped mile on mile that he never would. But he'd made her that promise that he'd never fail her, long syne he had made it that night when he'd held her so bonny and sweet and a quean in his arms, young and desirous and kind. So mile on mile on the laired French roads: she was lost to him, but that didn't help, he'd to try to win to her side again, to see her again, to tell her nothing he'd said was his saying, it was the foulness dripping from the dream that devoured him. And young Ewan came into his thoughts, he'd so much to tell her of him, so much he'd to say and do if only he might win to Blawearie…

Then the military policemen had taken him and he'd listened to them and others in the days that followed, listening and not listening at all, wearied and quiet.
Oh, wearied and
wakened at last, Chae, and I haven't cared, they can take me out
fine and shoot me to-morrow, I'll be glad for the rest of it, Chris
lost to me through my own coarse daftness. She didn't even come
to give me a kiss at good-bye, Chae, we never said good-bye; but
I mind the bonny head of her down-bent there in the close. She'll
never know, my dear quean, and that's best — they tell lies about
folk they shoot and she'll think I just died like the rest; you're
not to tell her
.

Then he'd been silent long, and Chae'd had nothing to say, he knew it was useless to make try for reprieve, he was only a sergeant and had no business even in the hut with the prisoner. And then Ewan said, sudden-like, it clean took Chae by surprise,
Mind the smell of dung in the parks on an
April morning, Chae? And the peewits over the rigs? Bonny
they're flying this night in Kinraddie, and Chris sleeping there,
and all the Howe happéd in mist
. Chae said that he mustn't mind about that, he was feared that the dawn was close; and Ewan should be thinking of other things now, had he seen a minister? And Ewan said that an old bit billy had come and blethered, an officer creature, but he'd paid no heed, it had nothing to do with him. Even as he spoke there rose a great clamour of guns far up in the front, it was four miles off, not more; and Chae thought of the hurried watches climbing to their posts and the blash and flare of the Verey lights, the machine-gun crackle from pits in the mud, things he himself mightn't hear for long: Ewan'd never hear it at all beyond this night.

And not feared at all he looked, Chae saw, he sat there in his kilt and shirt-sleeves, and he looked no more than a young lad still, his head between his hands, he didn't seem to be thinking at all of the morning so close. For he started to speak of Blawearie then and the parks that he would have drained, though he thought the land would go fair to hell without the woods to shelter it. And Chae said that he thought the same, there were sore changes waiting them when they went back; and then he minded that Ewan would never go back, and could near have bitten his tongue in half, but Ewan hadn't noticed, he'd been speaking of the horses he'd had, Clyde and old Bess, fine beasts, fine beasts—did Chae mind that night of lightning when they found Chris wandering the fields with those two horses? That was the night he had known she liked him well—
nothing more than
that, so quick and fierce she was, Chae man, she guarded herself
like a queen in a palace, there was nothing between her and me
till the night we married. Mind that—and the singing there was,
Chae? What was it that Chris sang then?

And neither could remember that, it had vexed Ewan a while, and then he forgot it, sitting quiet in that hut on the edge of morning. Then at last he'd stood up and gone to the window and said
There's bare a quarter of an hour now, Chae,
you'll need to be getting back
.

And they'd shaken hands, the sentry opened the door for Chae, and he tried to say all he could for comfort, the foreshadowing of the morning in Ewan's young eyes was strange and terrible, he couldn't take out his hand from that grip. And all that Ewan said was
Oh man, mind me when next you
hear the peewits over Blawearie—look at my lass for me when you
see her again, close and close, for that kiss that I'll never give her
. So he'd turned back into the hut, he wasn't feared or crying, he went quiet and calm; and Chae went down through the hut lines grouped about that place, a farm-place it had been, he'd got to the lorry that waited him, he was cursing and weeping then and the driver thought him daft, he hadn't known himself how he'd been. So they'd driven off, the wet morning had come crawling across the laired fields, and Chae had never seen Ewan again, they killed him that morning.

THIS WAS THE
story Chae told to Chris, sitting the two of them in the kitchen of Blawearie. Then he moved and got up and she did the same, and like one coming from a far, dark country, she saw his face now, he'd been all that time but a voice in the dark. And at last she found speech herself
Never
vex for me or the telling me this, it was best, it was best!

She crept up the stairs to their room when he'd gone, she opened the press where Ewan's clothes were, and kissed them and held them close, those clothes that had once been his, near as ever he'd come to her now. And she whispered then in the stillness, with only the beech for a listener,
Oh,
Ewan, Ewan, sleep quiet and sound now, lad, I understand!
You did it for me, and I'm proud and proud, for me and
Blawearie, my dear, my dear—sleep quiet and brave, for I've
understood!

The beech listened and whispered, whispered and listened, on and on. And a strange impulse and urge came on Chris Tavendale as she too listened. She ran down the stairs and found young Ewan and kissed him,
Let's go a jaunt up
to the hill
.