A Scots Quair (36 page)

Old Sinclair, he was nearly ninety and blind, he stared at her like a stirk at a water-jump, and then cried for his wife. And Sarah told them she meant what she said, Dave Brown, the Gourdon childe, would marry her the morn if they'd Peesie's Knapp to sit down in.

And she got her way, but she didn't get the land, old Sinclair pastured his sheep on it, and Dave stayed on as a Netherhill ploughman. So Sarah was married off at last and taken to bed in the house that had been her sister's. She soon had her man well in hand, had Sarah, folk said she'd to take him to bed by the lug the first night, but there are aye coarse brutes to say things like that. And damn it, if before a twelvemonth was up she didn't have a bairn, a peely-wally
girl, but a bairn for all that. It wasn't much, but still it was something, and when old Sinclair heard the news he got it all mixed, he was in bed by then and sinking fast, he thought it was Kirsty's first bairn that they told of, and all the time he kept whispering
Chae!
he wanted his good-son, Chae, that had married Kirsty long syne.

But Chae had been gone long ere that, he was killed in the first fighting of Armistice Day, an hour before the guns grew quiet. You minded him well and the arguings he'd have with Long Rob of the Mill; he'd have been keen for the Labour candidate, for Rich and Poor were as far off being Equal as every they'd been, poor Chae. Ay, it struck you strange that he'd gone, fine childe he had been though a bit of a fool that you laughed at behind his back. In his last bit leave folk said he'd been awful quiet, maybe he knew right well he would never come back, he tramped the parks most of the time, muttering of the woods they'd cut and the land that would never get over it. And when he said good-bye to Kirsty it wasn't just the usual slap on the shoulder and
Well
,
I'm away!
He held her and kissed her, folk saw it at the station, and he said
Be good to the bairns, lass
. And Kirsty, the meikle sumph, had stood there crying as the train went out, you'd have thought she'd have had more sense with all the folk glowering at her. And that was the last of Chae, you'd say, except that in the November of nineteen-eighteen they sent home his pocket-book and hankies and things; and they'd been well washed, but blood lay still in a pouch of the pocket-book, cold and black, and when Kirsty saw it she screamed and fainted away.

Women had little guts, except one or two, said Munro of the Cuddiestoun, as though he himself had been killing a German for breakfast every day of the War. And maybe that's what he'd liked to think as he chased the hens and thrawed their necks for the hospital trade, or swore at the daftie, Tony, over this or that. Feint the much heed paid Tony, though, he'd just stand about the same as ever, staring at the ground and driving Mistress Munro fair out of her
tor or raise it up in another. For it was more than likely the creature would do clean the opposite of what he'd been told, and syne stand and glower at the ground a whole afternoon till somebody came out to look for him and would find every damned egg hard-boiled or stone cold, as the case might be. Some said he wasn't so daft, he did it for spite, but you'd hardly believe that a daftie would have the sense for that.

But nobody could deny the Munros had got on, they'd clean stopped from farming every park except one to grow their potatoes in, all the rest were covered with runs and rees for the hens, they'd made a fair fortune with their poultry and all. You'd never hear such a scraich in your life as when night-time came and they closed up the Cuddiestoun rees, it was then that Mistress Munro would nip out a cockerel here and an old hen there and thraw the creature's neck as quick as you'd blink and syne sit up half the night in the plucking of the birds. They'd hardly ever a well-cooked meal in the house themselves, but if their stomachs had little in them their bank books knew no lack, maybe one more than consoled for the other. But Ellison said that they made him sick, the only mean Scotch he'd ever met, and be damned if they didn't make up for all the free ones.

Though that was only the kind of speak you'd expect from an Irish creature, he still spoke like one, fell fat he'd grown, his belly wabbled down right near to his knees and his breeks were meikle in girth. When the Trustees sent out their notice to buy, folk wondered what he'd do, there'd be an end to Ellison now, they said. But sore mistaken they found themselves, he bought up the Mains, stock and all, he bought up the ruins of Kinraddie House, and he bought Blawearie when there were no bids, he got it for less than two hundred pounds. And where had he got all that money except that he stole it?

Fair Kinraddie's big man he thought himself, faith! folk laughed at him and called him the waiter-laird, Cospatric that killed the gryphon would have looked at him sore surprised. He spoke fell big about tractors for ploughing, but then the slump came down and his blowing with it, he
bought up sheep for Blawearie instead. And that was the way things went in the end on the old bit place up there on the brae, sheep baaed and scrunched where once the parks flowed thick with corn, no corn would come at all, they said, since the woods went down. And the new minister when he preached his incoming sermon cried
They have made a desert
and they call it peace;
and some had no liking of the creature for that, but God! there was truth in his speak.

For the Gibbons had gone clean out of Kinraddie, there'd be far more room and far less smell, folk said, Stuart Gibbon had never come back from the War to stand in the pulpit his father had held. Not that he'd been killed, no, no, you might well depend that the great, curled steer had more sense in him than that. But the gentry liked him in Edinburgh right well in his chaplain's uniform, and syne he fell in with some American creatures that controlled a kirk in New York. And they asked him if he'd like to have that kirk, all the well-off Scots went to it; and he took the offer like a shot and was off to America before you could wink, him and that thin bit English wife of his and their young bit daughter. Well, well, he'd done well for himself, it was plain to see; no doubt the Americans would like him fine, they could stand near anything out in America, their stomachs were awful tough with all the coarse things that they ate out of tins.

As for the father, the old man that had had such an ill-will for the Germans, he'd grown over-frail to preach and had to retire; and faith! if the British armies had killed half the Germans with their guns that he did with his mouth it would have been a clean deserted Germany long ere the end of the War. But off he went at last and only two ministers made try for the pulpit, both of them young, the one just a bit student from Aberdeen, the other new out of the Army. There seemed little to choose between the pair, they'd no pulpit voices, either of them, but folk thought it only fair to give the soldier billy the chance.

And it was only after he headed the leet, Colquohoun was his name, that the story went round he was son to that old minister from Banff that made try for Kinraddie before the
War and was fair out-preached by the Reverend Gibbon. You minded him, surely?—he'd preached about beasts and the Golden Age, that the dragons still lived but sometime they'd die and the Golden Age come back. Feuch ay! no sermon at all, you might say. Well, that was him and this was the son, thin and tall, with a clean-shaved face, and he lectured on this and he wrote on that and he made himself fair objectionable before he'd been there a month. For he chummed up with ploughmen, he drove his own coal, he never wore a collar that fastened at the back, and when folk called him the Reverend he pulled them up sharp—
reverent, I am, no more,
my friend
. And he whistled when he went on a Sunday walk and he stormed at farmers for the pay they paid and he helped the ploughmen's Union; and he'd preach just rank sedition about it, and speak as though Christ had meant Kinraddie, and folk would grow fair uncomfortable.

You couldn't well call him pro-German, like, for he'd been a plain soldier all through the War. Folk felt clean lost without a bit name to hit at him with, till Ellison said that he was a Bolshevik, one of those awful creatures, coarse tinks, that had made such a spleiter in Russia. They'd shot their king-creature, the Tsar they called him, and they bedded all over the place, folk said, a man would go home and find his wife commandeered any bit night and Lenin and Trotsky lying with her. And Ellison said that the same would come in Kinraddie if Mr Colquohoun had his way; maybe he was feared for his mistress, was Ellison, though God knows there'd be little danger of
her
being commandeered, even Lenin and Trotsky would fair be desperate before they would go to that length.

Well, that was your new minister, then; and next there came scandalous stories that he'd taken up with young Chris Tavendale. Nearly every evening of the week he'd ride up to Blawearie, and bide there all the hours of the night, or so folk said. And what could he want with a common bit quean like the Tavendale widow? Ministers took up with ladies if they meant no jookery-packery. But when Munro said that to old Brigson the creature fair flew into a rage; and he said
that many a decent thing had gone out of Kinraddie with the War but that only one had come in, and that was the new minister. Well, well, it might be so and it mightn't; but one night Dave Brown climbed up the hill from the Knapp, to see old Brigson about buying a horse, and he heard folk speaking inside the kitchen and he took a bit keek round the door. And there near the fire stood Chris herself, and the Reverend Colquohoun was before her, she was looking up into the minister's face and he'd both her hands in his. And
Oh, my dear, maybe the second Chris, maybe the third, but Ewan
has the first forever!
she was saying, whatever she meant by that; and syne as Dave Brown still looked the minister bent down and kissed her, the fool.

Folk said that fair proved the stories were true, but the very next Sunday the minister stood up in the pulpit, and, calm as ever, read out the banns of Upperhill's foreman and his quean from Fordoun, and syne the banns of
Robert
Colquohoun, bachelor of this parish, and Christine Tavendale,
widow, also of this same parish
. You could near have heard a pin drop then, so quiet it was in the kirk, folk sat fair stunned. And there'd never been such a claik in Kinraddie as when the service was over and the congregation got out—ay, Chris Tavendale had feathered her nest right well, the sleek
¬
èd creature, who'd have thought it of her?

And that made the minister no more well-liked with Kinraddie's new gentry, you may well be sure. But worse than that came: he'd been handed the money, the minister, to raise a memorial for Kinraddie's bit men that the War had killed. Folk thought he'd have a fine stone angel, with a night-gown on, raised up at Kinraddie cross-roads. But he sent for a mason instead and had the old stone circle by Blawearie loch raised up and cleaned and set all in place, real heathen-like, and a paling put round it. And after reading out his banns on that Sunday the minister read that next Saturday the Kinraddie Memorial would be unveiled on Blawearie brae, and that he expected a fine attendance, whatever the weather—
they'd to attend in ill weather, the folk that
fell
.

FINE WEATHER
for January that Saturday brought, sunny, yet caller, you could see the clouds come sailing down from the north and over the sun and off again. But there was rain not far, the seagulls had come sooming inland; for once the snipe were still. Nearly every soul in Kinraddie seemed climbing Blawearie brae as the afternoon wore on, a fair bit stir there was in the close, the place was empty of horses and stock, Chris would be leaving there at the term. Soon she'd be down at the Manse instead, and a proud-like creature no doubt she'd be.

Well, up on the brae through the road in the broom there drew a fell concourse of folk, Ellison was there, and his mistress, and the Gordons and gentry generally, forbye a reischle of ploughmen and queans, lying round on the grass and sniggering. There was the old circle of the Standing Stones, the middle one draped with a clout, you wondered what could be under it and how much the mason had charged. It was high, there, you saw as you sat on the grass and looked round, you could see all Kinraddie and near half the Howe shine under your feet in the sun,
Out of the World and into
Blawearie
as the old speak went. And faith! the land looked unco and woe with its woods all gone, even in the thin sun- glimmer there came a cold shiver up over the parks of the Knapp and Blawearie, folk said that the land had gone cold and wet right up to the very Mains.

Snow was shining in the Grampians, far in the coarse hills there, and it wouldn't be long ere the dark came. Syne at last the minister was seen coming up, he'd on the bit robes that he hardly ever wore, Chris Tavendale walked by the side of him and behind was a third childe that nobody knew, a Highlander in kilts and with pipes on his shoulder, great and red-headed, who could he be? And then Ellison minded, he said the man had been friend to young Ewan Tavendale, he'd been the best man at Ewan's marriage, McIvor his name was.

The minister held open the gate for Chris and through it she came, all clad in her black, young Ewan's hand held fast in hers, he'd grown fair like his father, the bairn, dark-like
and solemn he was. Chris's face was white and solemn as well except when she looked at the minister as he held the gate open, it was hardly decent the look that she gave him, they might keep their courting till the two were alone. Folk cried
Ay, minister!
and he cried back cheerily and went striding to the midst of the old stone circle, John Brigson was standing there with his hands on the strings that held the bit clout.

The minister said,
Let us pray
, and folk took off their hats, it smote cold on your pow. The sun was fleering up in the clouds, it was quiet on the hill, you saw young Chris stand looking down on Kinraddie with her bairn's hand in hers. And then the Lord's Prayer was finished, the minister was speaking just ordinary, he said they had come to honour the folk whom the War had taken, and that the clearing of this ancient site was maybe the memory that best they'd have liked. And he gave a nod to old Brigson and the strings were pulled and off came the clout and there on the Standing Stone the words shone out in their dark grey lettering, plain and short: