A Scots Quair (53 page)

The day had cleared by eleven o'clock, and folk came talking in round the angel that stood so bonny in Segget Square. Ay, fairly a gey bit gathering, impressive—except
for the smell, Ake Ogilvie said. But he aye was sneering something like that, the coarse brute, why couldn't he let folk a-be? And you saw him there in the midst of the lave, with his medals pinned on his waistcoat flap, and his hands in his pockets, looking at the angel as though he wouldn't sleep with the lass though she tried to come down and crawl into his bed. Sim Leslie, the bobby, that folk called Feet, tried to form a half-circle here, the Provost to the right, all hair and horns, with his popping bit eyes and his ancestor Burns, he was telling how Burns was a patriot childe, aye ready to shed his blood for the land. Ake Ogilvie said
Ay. He slew a fell lot of
the French—with his mouth. He was better at raping a servant
quean than facing the enemy with a musket
. And Hairy Hogg said that was a foul slander, Ogilvie mad with jealousy, just, because the dirt that he wrote himself was worse than dirt, compared with the Bard; and Ake said he'd rather be just plain dirt than slush on a dung-heap, disguised as a flower; and young Alec Hogg, that was home from Edinburgh, cried
Cannot you leave my father alone?

Ake looked him up and down with a long, cold stare.
I
never touch dung except with a fork, but give's none of your lip,
or I'll break my rule
. Alec Hogg cried
Try it!
and maybe in a minute there would have been a fine bit fight on the go, right there by the angel in Segget Square, folk round about looking shocked as could be and edging nearer for a better look, when they saw the minister coming from East Wynd, and the choir coming with him; and folk cried,
Wheest!

'Twas him, the minister, that had started the thing and had you all out in the Square to-day, old Greig, that filled the pulpit afore him, hadn't bothered to hold any service at all, he'd over-much sense to catch cold in the Square. But the Reverend Mr Colquohoun was fell keen, he'd badgered folk to close up their shops and gotten the mills to close down as well, he fair was a go-ahead billy, like, though some folk said he was more than that, he'd barely started interfering yet. 'Twas said he'd already the kirk session against him, with his preaching for this and that daft-like reform; and he'd badgered Hairy Hogg near from his wits—or what little wits were left the old Provost—about the town council and where it might meet, and what it could do, and who were
the members, and why didn't they light Segget at night, did they know the drains in West Wynd were bad, when were the mills inspected, and how? … Folk said the next thing you'd find him keen on would be shifting the Kaimes for a seat in his yard, ay, if the creature went on at this rate he'd soon have all Segget on his hands to fight.

A raw wind blew down the Howe through the Square and fluttered the minister's robes as he prayed, his thin white face down-bent as he prayed, his prayer just said in an ordinary voice. It made a man kind of uneasy to hear the way that he spoke to God like that—not as any other ministers would do, as though they'd only half-swallowed their dinners and had the remainder still in their throats. No, no, the Reverend Colquohoun spoke plain, some liked it that way, you were damned if you did: and he asked the mercy of God on a world unawakened yet from a night that was past. And he said that God had made neither night nor day in human history, He'd left it in the hands of Man to make both, God was but Helper, was but Man Himself, like men he also struggled against evil, God's wounds had bled, God also had died in the holocaust in the fields of France. But He rose anew, Man rose anew, he was as undying as God was undying—if he had the will and the way to live, on this planet given to him by God.
A pillar of cloud by day and
a pillar of fire by night
—they had hung in the sky since the coming of men, set there by God for the standards of men, clouds and the shining standards of rain, the hosts of heaven for our standard by night…. A trumpet had cried and unsealed our ears: would it need the lightning to unseal our eyes?

And after a bit you stopped listening to that, you didn't know much about preaching and the like, but was that the way a minister should speak? You were damned if you thought so: fair heathen it sounded. And you took a canny bit keek round about, at the throng of the Segget folk that were there—hardly a spinner, where were the dirt? There was Mrs Colquohoun, anyway, bonny in a way, with a sulky-like face, a common bit quean the minister had wifed, folk that had known her well in Kinraddie said she had once been as blithe as bonny; but now she was altered
out of all manner, if they met her and spoke to her and cried,
Chris!
she would smile and speak and be friends enough, but different somehow—ay, she'd grown damned proud. Well, there she was, and her son as well, the son of her first bit man you had heard, with a cool, dark face, but not a bad bairn. Nearby was the Provost and next him his son, the Fasher, rigged out in his baggy breeks. MacDougall Brown was well to the fore, not that he'd fought in the War, but he'd sung; and Peter Peat, the tailor, a terrible patriot; and Dite, the foul tink; and Dominie Geddes, and the three women teachers; and the porters and stationy, Smithie and Ake. Will Melvin you could see near the Station folk, John Muir and Bruce and a birn of the like. Syne the minister held up his hand for quiet, and you knew that it was eleven o'clock.

And faith! The quiet would have been fell solemn, but for a great car that came swishing up, from the south, and turned, and went up East Wynd. Folk had stood still like stooks of rags, but they moved then and stared at the thing go by—all but the minister, he stood like a stone. Then he said, low and clear,
We will now sing the hymn, ‘O God
,
our help in ages past'
.

You cleared your throat and looked right and left, felt shy to be such a fool as stand there and sing without a bit organ to help; and the first few words were a kind of growl, till you heard the minister himself sing up. And just as folk were getting in the swing, the dirt of spinners came down to the Square.

They came marching down through the Close from West Wynd, a twenty or thirty of the ill-gettèd creatures, with their mufflers on, not in decent collars, their washy faces crinkled with grins, marching along there four by four. In front of the lot was that tink John Cronin, and over his shoulder he carried a red flag, and the spinners behind him were laughing and joking, two-three of them women, the shameful slummocks. Well, your mouth fell open, as it damn well might, you had never yet seen such a sight in Segget; and you stopped your singing, and so did some more, and some after that, till the only folk left were the Reverend Colquohoun, and his wife, and Cis Brown, and
that gawpus Else Queen. And then Ake Ogilvie that hadn't yet sung took a look round about and started to sing, as loud as could be, as though he'd new-wakened; he did it to be different from others, as usual.

But afore folk could pipe up again to the thing the spinners were close and Jock Cronin cried
Halt!
And they swung round about him and stood in a circle, and next minute they'd started singing themselves, loud as could be and fair drowning the hymn, a song about shrouding their dead in red, and about their bit limbs being stiff and cold: and God alone knows what kind of stite.

Well, that fairly finished the Memorial Service. The minister had turned as white as a sheet, he finished his singing and so did his wife, here and there a man in the crowd cried out,
Have you no manners?
—speaking to the spinners. And Feet, the policeman, went over to them,
Now then,
you're causing a disturbance
, he said, he was awful proud of that word, was Feet, that he'd got in a book on how bobbies should speak. But they took no notice, just stood round and sang, till he pushed through the ring round that tink John Cronin; then they stopped and Cronin said
Well,
Feet, what's up?

Feet was fair roused, a patriot-like childe, he hadn't been out to the War himself, they wouldn't let him go with feet like that in case he might block up the trenches, folk said. But he'd fair been a one for the War all the same, and he wasn't to see its memory insulted by a pack of tink brutes that didn't wear collars—them and their song about flinching and sneering from a scarlet standard and God knows what. Who ever heard of a scarlet standard?—Just a tink way of calling their betters bloody…. So he said to Jock Cronin,
Aren't you black ashamed to break in on the War Memorial
service?
And Jock Cronin said
No, we're not, you see, Feet,
we all had a taste of the War ourselves. Take a keek at our chests
now, Feet my lad, and then have a look at your own and see if
there's anything on it the like of on ours!

And then you saw plain what he meant, he himself, and all of the spinners that had marched to the Square, had War-medals pinned on their jackets or waistcoats, they were all of them men who had been to the War: except the three
women, and they wore medals sent on to them after their folk were dead. Well, that fair staggered Feet, and you felt sorry for him, especially as you had no medal yourself, you hadn't been able to get to the War, you'd been over-busy with the shop those years, or keeping the trade going brisk in the Arms, or serving at Segget as the new stationmaster. And well you might warrant if the King had known the kind of dirt that those spinners were he wouldn't have lashed out as he'd done with his medals.

But Jock Cronin pushed his way past Feet, and jumped on the pedestal under the angel, and cried out
Comrades—not
only mill folk, but others as well that I see down there:
we
went to the War, we knew what it was, we went to lice and dirt
and damnation: and what have we got at the end of it all?
Starvation wages, no homes for heroes, the capitalists fast on
our necks as before. They're sacking men at the mills just now
and leaving them on the bureau to starve—that's our reward,
and maybe it's yours, that's the thing we must mind to-day. Not
to come here and remember the dead, they've a place that's theirs
and we'll share it some time, they're maybe the better compared
with some that live here in Segget worse-fed than beasts. It's the
living that's our concern, you chaps. Come over and join us, the
Labour Party. You first, Mr Colquohoun, you were out there,
you've sense
.

And as the impudent brute ended up he waved his hand to the Reverend Colquohoun, and for a minute after that there was such a quiet you could near have cut it and eaten it in chunks, it was that damned solid, while all the folk stared. Syne the minister just turned his back and said, cool,
I think
we'll go home, Chris
, to his wife; and she nodded and said nothing, they were both cool and calm. It made a man boil to see them so meek, damn't! if you had been a minister, would you let yourself be insulted like that? No, you wouldn't; and neither would any minister in the days before the coming of the War, the War had fair been a ruination, letting tinks like the Cronins find out that their betters ate and smelt just the same as themselves.

Well, next there was near a fight broke out. Ake Ogilvie cried to Jock Cronin,
Oh ay, and where the hell did
you
serve
in the War?
And Jock Cronin said
Up in the front, my lad,
not scrounging behind with the Royal Engineers. ——No, you
hadn't enough brain for them, you poor fool
, Ake Ogilvie said, and would maybe have said more, if the minister hadn't turned round and cried,
Ogilvie!
And Ake went off, and the spinners all laughed. Some folk stayed near to hear what they'd say, most decent bodies went over to the Arms and spoke of the things they'd have done to the spinners if they'd stayed behind in Segget Square.

CHRIS RAN NEARLY
all the way from the Square, Mr Geddes and his teachers were coming for lunch (as they called it, but they ate it just as a dinner); and the meat was cooking in the Manse's oven. Else you could see flying on in front, as anxious as you, you'd left Robert behind, he'd laughed and slowed down and lighted his pipe. But you ran up under the drip of the yews, through the Manse front door and through to the kitchen, and there was Else with her face like a fire, leaning panting up by the kitchen back door, and a burning smell from the open oven. Else cried
Well, I was
just in time!
and pointed to the chicken out in its ashet, it had just begun to burn at the top. And you said
That was
fine, you're a blessing, Else. Sit and rest a minute
. Else took a look at herself in the glass,
I've a face like that flag the spinners
were carrying. Did you ever see such nasty brutes?

Chris said they hadn't much manners, she thought. But she'd never before seen men with that flag, or heard them singing the song about it—hirpling and sad, but it caught you somehow, there was something in it that you knew was half-true, true with a truth that drew your mind back to Chae Strachan far in your younger days, who had said the mission of the common folk was to die and give life with their deaths forever…. Like Robert's God, in a way, you supposed.

And maybe that was Robert's own thought, Chris came on him in the sitting-room, standing and staring queerly at Segget, harsh-blue, rain-driven, in its clouded noon. Chris put up a hand on his shoulder,
Not vexed? The service was
fine, and I liked what you said
. Robert squeezed her hand,
My vanity's vexed. That's all, I suppose, and those spinner
chaps—a perfect devil if they're right, Christine
. Chris said
How right?
and he said
Their beliefs—a war of the classes
to bring fruit to the War. Remember the Samson I preached that
day I tried for the kirk of Segget, Christine? I suppose we saw
him in the Square to-day, with a muffler on and a thin, starved
look. If his betters won't mend the world
, he
may!