A Scots Quair (42 page)

SOMETIMES A BLACK
, queer mood came on Robert, he would lock himself up long hours in his room, hate God and Chris and himself and all men, know his Faith a fantastic dream; and see the fleshless grin of the skull and the eyeless sockets at the back of life. He would pass by Chris on the stairs if they met, with remote, cold eyes and a twisted face, or ask in a voice that cut like a knife,
Can't you leave me alone, must you always follow?

The first time it happened her heart had near stopped, she went on with her work in a daze of amaze. But Robert came from his mood and came seeking her, sorry and sad for the queer, black beast that rode his mind in those haunted hours. He said that the thing was a physical remembrance, only that just, and Chris not to worry; and she found out that near the end of the War he'd been gassed by an awful gas that they made, and months had gone by ere he breathed well again, and the fumes of that drifting Fear were gone. And sometimes the shadows of that time came back, though his lungs were well enough now, he was sure, though 'twas in the months of his agony he'd known, conviction, terrible and keen as his pain, that there was a God Who lived and endured, the Tortured God in the soul of men, Who yet might upbuild the City of God through the hearts and hands of men of good faith.

But also Chris found it coming on Robert that here he could never do good or do ill, in a countryside that was dying or dead. One night he looked at Chris and said,
Lord! But for you, Christine, I was daft to come here. I'll
try for a kirk in some other place, there's work enough to be
done in the towns
. And thought for a while, his fair head in his hands.
Would you like a town?

Chris said,
Oh, fine
, and smiled reassurance, but she bit at her lips and he saw, and he knew.
Well, then, not a town.
I'll try to find something betwixt and between
.

So he did ere a month was out, news came from Segget its minister was dead, Robert brought the news home:
I'm
to try for his kirk
. And Chris said,
Segget?
and Robert said
Yes
, and Chris quoted the bit of poetry there was, somebody they said in Segget had made it:

Robert laughed,
We'll make them both civil and clean
, Chris said,
But you haven't yet gotten the kirk
, and he said
Just wait
,
for I very soon will
.

Three Sundays later they set out for Segget, Robert to preach there and Chris to listen, it was April, quiet and brown in the fields, drowsy under a blanket of mist that cleared as the sun rose, leaving the hills corona'ed in feathery wispings of clouds, Chris asked their name, and Robert said,
Cirrus. They bring fine weather and they're
standing still. There's little wind on the heights to-day
.

And Chris on her bicycle suddenly felt young, younger far than she'd felt for years, Robert beside her on his awful bike, it made a noise like a threshing machine, collies came barking from this close and that; but Robert ground on and paid them no heed, scowling, deep in his sermon, no doubt. But once he swung round.
Am I going too fast?
and Chris said,
Fast? It's liker a funeral
, and he came from the deeps of his thoughts and laughed,
Oh, Chris, never change
and grow English-polite! Not even in Segget, when we settle
in its Manse!

Syne he said of a sudden, a minute or so later, they were past Mondynes and Segget in sight:
Do you mind
how Christ was tempted of the devil? And so was I till you
spoke just now. I'd made up my mind I'd butter them up, in
the sermon I preached—just for the chance of getting out of
Kinraddie, settled in Segget, and on with some work. Well, I
won't…. By God, I'll give them a sermon!

THE OLD MINISTER
had died of drink, fair sozzled he was, folk said, at the end; and his last words were, so the story went,
And what might the feare's prices be to-day?
No doubt that was just a bit lie that they told, but faith! he'd been greedy enough for his screw, with his long grey face and his bleary eyes and his way that he had of speaking to a man, met out in the street or down by the Arms, as though he were booming from the pulpit itself:
Why didn't I see you
in the kirk last Sabbath?
And a billy would redden and give a bit laugh, and look this way and that, were he one of New Toun. But more than likely, were he one of the spinners, he'd answer:
Maybe because I wasn't there!
in the awful twang that the creatures spoke; and go off and leave old Greig sore vexed, he'd never got over the fact that the spinners cared hardly a hoot for kirk session or kirk.

Ah well, he was a dead and a two-three came to try for his pulpit, more likely his stipend, two old men came, each buttered up Segget, you'd have thought by the way the creatures blethered the Archangel Michael could have come to Segget, and bought a shop, and felt at home as he sat at the back and sanded the sugar. Folk took that stite with a dosing of salts, then the third man came and some stories came with him, 'twas the Reverend Robert Colquohoun of Kinraddie, he'd been down there only a bare two years, and half his congregation had gone, they'd go anywhere but listen to him, he was aye interfering and preaching at folk that had done him no harm, couldn't he leave them a-be? Forbye that he'd married a quean of the parish, and if there's a worse thing a minister can do than marry a woman that knows the kirk folk, it's only to suck sweeties under the pulpit in the time he's supposed to be in silent prayer.

Well, Mr Colquohoun, he didn't suck sweets, but he did near everything else, folk said, and most of Segget, though it thronged to hear him, had no notion to vote for the creature at all.

But when he was seen stride up to the pulpit, and he
leaned from the pulpit rails and he preached, the elders were first of all ta'en with his way, and the old folk next with the thing that he preached, not the mealy stuff that you'd now hear often, but meaty and strong and preached with some fire—and man! he fairly could tell a bit tale!

For he took his text from a chapter in Judges, his sermon on Gath and the things that that Jew childe Samson did, how at last the giant was bound to a pillar, but he woke from the stupor and looked round about, and cried that the Philistines free him his bonds; and they laughed and they feasted, paying him no heed, sunk in their swine-like glaurs of vice. Their gods were idols of brass and of gold, they lived on the sweat and the blood of men, crying one to the other,
Behold, we are great, we endure, and not earth itself
is more sure. Pleasure is ours and the taste of lust, wine in our
mouths and power in our hands;
and the lash was heard on the bowed slave's back, they had mercy on neither their kith nor their kin. And Samson woke and looked round again, he was shorn of his hair, bound naked there, in the lights of the torches, tormented and chained. And then sudden the Philistines felt the walls rock and they looked them about and saw the flames wave, low and sharp in a little wind; and again about them the great hall groaned, and Samson tore down the pillars of the roof, and the roof fell in and slew him and them…. And Samson was rising again in our sight, threatening destruction unless we should change, and free both him and the prisoners chained in the littered halls of our secret hearts.

And maybe it was because it was Spring, new-come, the sun a long, drowsy blink in the kirk, and folk heard the voice of the Reverend Colquohoun like the wind they'd hear up under the hills, fine and safe as they listened below, and who could he mean by Samson but them, ground down by the rents they'd to pay the Mowats? Maybe it was that and maybe it was because folk aye had prided themselves in Segget in taking no heed of what others said, that they licked up the sermon like calves at a cog; and a fair bit crowd watched Robert Colquohoun, him and his wife, she seemed decent and quiet, mount on their bikes and ride home to Kinraddie.

ROBERT SAID TO
Chris,
That's the end of my chance. But
I'm glad I preached what I felt and thought
. But Chris had a clearer vision than his,
They liked the sermon and I
think they liked you. They hadn't a notion what the sermon
meant—themselves the Philistines and someone else Samson
.

Robert stared.
But I made it plain as plain
. Chris laughed,
To yourself; anyhow, we'll see
. And they rode to Kinraddie, and the days went by, Robert didn't believe he would head the leet. But he found out, for fun, all he could about Segget, from papers and Else and lists and old books, there was less than a thousand souls in Segget, and most of them lost, if you trusted Else. Half of the Segget folk worked at the mills—the spinners, as the rest of Segget called them; the others kept shops or were joiners or smiths, folk who worked on the railway, the land, the roads, and the gardens of Segget House. Robert found an old map of the place and renewed it, playing as a boy with a toy town.

Chris leaned on his chair and looked over his shoulder, his fingers nimble in limning New Toun (where the folk had gone when the spinners came), Old Toun and its winding jumble of lanes that bunched and clustered around the West Wynd. South was the Arms, in the Segget Square, the East Wynd dotted with a joiner's, a school, a tailor's shop, a grocery, a sutor's—
and the Lord knows what
, Robert said as his pen swopped down the Wynd to the Segget Square. Then it wheeled about and went up The Close to the post-office-grocery-shop combined, dotted the Segget smiddy beyond, and syne lost itself in the Segget slums…. Chris saw on the northern outskirts of Segget two dots for the Manse and the steepleless kirk, and over to the west another one still, Segget House, where the Mowats lived, the old mill-owner new-dead, said Else, and his son, young Stephen, at an English college.

And Robert would whistle as he looked at his map—
What mightn't a minister do in Segget, with the help of young
Mowat or the folk of the schools? And sutors are atheists
,
bound to have brains, and extremely religious, all atheists are
.
One could do great things with a village League…

Then he would laugh,
Just playing with bricks! Εwan,
where are those toys you've outgrown?

The news that he'd topped the leet at the poll was brought to Robert by an elder of Segget, it was Else who opened the door for the creature, she knew him well, but she didn't let on. It was wee Peter Peat, the tailor of Segget, his shop stood mid-way the wind of East Wynd, with his house behind it, he thought it a castle. And he spoke right fierce, and he'd tell a man, before you were well in the lithe of his door, that he made a fine neighbour to those that were good, the best of friends to his friends, he was, but God pity the man that fell out with him, he'd never forgive an injury, never. And he was the biggest Tory in Segget, the head of the Segget Conservative branch, and an awful patriot, keen for blood; but he'd loup in his shoes as he heard his wife, Meg Peat that was slow and sonsy to look at, come into the shop, she'd cry
Peter, I'm away. Mind the fire and have tea
set ready;
and he'd quaver,
Ay Meg
, like an ill-kicked cur. But soon's she was gone he'd look fierce as ever, ready to kill you and eat you forbye, and running his tape up and down your bit stomach as though he were gutting you and enjoying it.

Well, here he was standing, fierce as a futret.
Is the
Reverend Mr Colquohoun indoors?
And Else said,
I'll see;
what name shall I tell him?
And he said
Gang and tell him
Peter Peat's here
.

Else went and found the minister in his study, and the minister said
Peat?
and looked at the mistress; and the mistress smiled in the quiet way she had, and shook her head, and the minister shook his.
Still, kindling or peat, I
suppose I'd best see him!

Else went down the stairs to where Peter stood.
Come
in, and wipe your feet on the mat
. He looked as though he'd have liked to wipe them on
her
, but he came in, fierce in his five feet two, the minister was waiting and rose when he came.
I've come from Segget
, Else heard the thing say, and the minister answer as she closed the door,
Oh, yes?
Well, won't you sit down, Mr Peat?

And then, a half hour or so after that, Chris heard the closing of the Manse front door and syne the scamper of feet on the stairs, she thought it was Ewan come in from his play. But instead it was Robert, he burst into the room,
his face was flushed and he caught her arms, and plucked her up from the chair she sat in, and danced her half round the great-windowed room. She gasped,
What is't?
and he said
What, that? Peter Peat, the tailor of Segget, of course
. Then he dropped in the chair from which he had plucked her, and sat there panting, still holding her hands.
Christine,
you're now looking at Segget's minister. And he's promised that
never as long as he lives he'll pray for All-but the Prince of
Wales!

HE TOLD THE
story he'd gotten from Peter, and Chris heard it later amended by Else, a warning that folk in a pulpit speak plain. He was fell religious, wee Peter Peat, an elder of the kirk and twice every Sunday he'd nip up and down the pews with the bag; and look at you sharp to see what you put in. And once he cried out to Dalziel of Meiklebogs, that was stinking with silver but fair was right canny,
No, no, I'll not have a button from you!
And Meiklebogs reddened like a pig with rash, and dropped a half-crown in the bag by mistake, he was so took aback and affronted-like. That was back a good while, in the days of old Nichols, the last minister but one, he was, as proud and stuck-up as a hubbley-jock, English, and he never learned to speak right; and his prayers at first had fair maddened Peat. For when he came to the bit about Royalty, and he'd pray for the birn with might and with main, he'd finish up
And all but the Prince of Wales
. Now Peat he was Tory and fond of the Prince, he went home to his wife in a fair bit stew,
What the hell ails him at the Prince of Wales that he
blesses all but him, I would like to know?
And at last he tackled old Nichols on the matter, and the creature gave a bit sniftering laugh, and said to Scotch ears he supposed that
All-but
was how it sounded when he said
Albert
. And he spoke this slow, in a sneering bit way, as though he thought Scotch ears were damn poor ears, mostly bad in the need of a clean—when manners were being given out he hadn't even the manners to stay and receive his, Peter Peat said.