A Scots Quair (54 page)

Then his gaze drew in,
Lord, here they come. His
betters—well, well. They're just at the door
.

Chris herself went and opened the door, Mrs Geddes came gushing in over the mat, Miss M'Askill behind, sharp as a needle, the second teacher at Segget school. She eyed Chris up and down as a ferret might,
How d'you do, Mrs
Colquohoun? Disgraceful exhibition down in the Square!
Chris had heard of Miss M'Askill from Else, straight as a pole and nearly as bare, and she wore her hair in two great plaits, low down on her brow, and it gave her a look like a stirk with its head in a birn of hay; and whenever she saw a new man in the toun she'd stare at him till the man would blush, up and down in the line of her stare; and she'd give a bit sniff (or so said Else), as much as to say
What, marriage
with you?

But damn the soul had offered that yet, not even for a night at the furthest gait, Ake Ogilvie had said he would rather sleep with a Highland steer in the lee of a whin. Chris tried hard not to remember that, she would laugh if she did: and so she did not, but shook hands instead with Miss Ferguson next, her that they called The Blusher in Segget. And she started to blush as though someone had couped a jar of red ink on her head at that minute, the blush came thicker and thicker each second, till Chris felt so sorry she blushed as well. Then Miss Jeannie Grant, dapper and trig, with a fresh, fair face,
Hello, Mrs Colquohoun! What
did you think of the fun in the Square?
Last, Mr Geddes, he looked at you bitter, as though he thought you poor stuff like the most of mankind, and shook your hand limp, and trailed after the others, his hands in his pockets, till he tripped on a toy of Ewan's in the hall, a wooden horse, and it fell with a clatter and Εwan came running out to see why.

Mr Geddes had nearly fallen with the thing. Now he picked it up a great splinter of wood torn out of its side. Ewan said
What a fool, man, why didn't you look?
and Chris cried
Ewan! Mr Geddes grinned. He's right enough
,
I suppose I'm a fool. I'm sorry, young man
. Ewan said
So
am I
.

Chris wanted to giggle, but again did not, instead looked solemn as a funeral, near—or two funerals if you counted one of John Muir's; and separated the Dominie and Ewan ere worse came; and shooed Mr Geddes in after his wife.

Robert was there, he'd greeted them all, and was standing by with the sherry decanter. Mr Geddes had lost the smile plucked out for Ewan, like a last swede plucked from a frozen field, he said bitter as ever,
A drop, Colquohoun
, and sat down and looked round the room as though he thought damn little of any thing in it.

And then Ewan started to sing outside, in the moment when folk were sipping their sherry; and Miss M'Askill near dropped her glass. Chris got to her feet and felt herself blush, silly to do that, and she called out
Ewan!
and he cried back
Yes?
and opened the door. And Chris felt a fool, the whole room looking at her.
Why were you singing
that song just now?

Ewan said, polite,
I like it, mother. I think it's a bloody fine
song, don't you?

Else saved the situation, as usual. They heard her feet in the hall, Ewan vanished, and the door was snibbed with a sudden click. Miss M'Askill said it was dreadful, dreadful, those spinners corrupting even the children. Didn't Mrs Colquohoun think the authorities ought to take steps to putting it down?

Miss Jeannie Grant was sitting by Robert, showing a fine length of leg, nice leg, she said
What's ‘it'? Put a stop to
singing the Red Flag, do you mean?
And Miss M'Askill said,
Yes, that for one thing, there are plenty of others—the
ongoings in general of those paid agitators
. And Miss Jeannie Grant said,
Well, I'm an agitator, but I get no pay. Where do
the others get theirs? I'd like to apply!
And Miss M'Askill looked at her so awful, 'twas a wonder she didn't shrivel up there and then. But instead she just winked blithe at Chris, and drank up her sherry and had some more.

Syne they were all speaking of the scene in the Square, Geddes said bitter that the spinners had behaved as you would expect such cattle to do, neither better nor worse than
other Scotch folk. All Scots were the same, the beastliest race ever let loose on the earth. Oh no, he wasn't bitter, he'd got over that, he'd got over living amongst them, even: their gossip that was fouler than the seepings of a drain, there was hardly a soul in a village like Segget but was a murderer ten times over in word—they hadn't enough courage to be it in deed. Spinners were no worse than the rest, or not much. As for this business of a Segget League, well, he voted Tory himself every time, and no League could remain non-political long. His advice: Colquohoun leave the lot alone, if there's anything a hog hates it's cleaning its sty.

Robert asked Miss Ferguson what she might think, Miss Ferguson blushed till Chris feared for her vest, her underthings would sure be on fire in a minute, she stammered that she didn't know, for sure, some of the spinners' children were cruel, they'd get a girl in the playground and tease her, or worse than that—and Miss Ferguson blushed some more, a torrent, till Chris in pity looked away, and thought herself of her own schooldays and those things that were worse in the reek of the playground, hot and still on a summer day and a crowd of loons round about you, laughing, with bright, hot eyes and their short, fair hair, and cruel, eager fingers … but she hadn't much minded, she'd been able even then to look after herself, it needed a sudden twist of her mind to think, appalled, that Ewan might do that, might stand by some girl and pry beastly in things—

She switched to listening to the talk again, Mrs Geddes was having all the say now, the three teachers had no other course, very plain, but listen to the Dominie's wife with attention. And Mrs Geddes said what was really wrong, with the whole of Segget, not only the spinners, was Refusal to Co-operate in Fellowship. But the w.r.i. was to combat that, and she really didn't think that this League was needed. The w.r.i. was to organize socials, and teach the mothers all kinds of fresh things—basket work, now, that was very interesting…. And she shone and wobbled like a jelly from a mould, and Geddes' look of contempt grew deeper. Miss Jeannie Grant put her sherry-glass down.
I don't see anything
your League can do. But the Labour Party can here in Segget
,
if only we make the branch strong enough;
and she looked as sweet as an apple as she said it, and young and earnest, and Chris half liked her, as though she stood on a hill and looked down on her own youth only beginning the climb, half-liking its confidence, pitying its blindness. But she thought for that matter, again and again (and more than ever since their coming to Segget) that she was older than most she met, older even than Robert himself—older than all but her own son Ewan!

Then they heard Else stamping out in the hall, and she rang the bell and they went through to dinner, Mrs Geddes calling it lunch, of course, she was so genteel Chris thought it a wonder she should ever open her mouth for food. But she fair put away a good plateful and more, for the chicken was golden and cooked to a turn, Robert sat and carved when he'd said the grace, the grace that Chris thought so childlike and kind:

Syne Miss M'Askill was asking Chris, sharp,
Are you fond
of social work, Mrs Colquohoun?
and Chris said
Not much, if
you mean by that going round and visiting the kirk congregation
. Miss M'Askill raised up her brows like a chicken considering a something lying on the ground, not sure if it was just a plain empty husk, or an interesting bit of nastiness, like. Mrs Geddes said she was very disappointed, she'd hoped they'd have Mrs Colquohoun to help—with the work of the
W.R.I.
, she meant; and why didn't Mrs Colquohoun like visiting?

And suddenly Chris understood her and hated her—she minded the type, oh, well, well enough! So she smiled sweet at her and said
Oh, you see, I wasn't always a minister's wife
.
I was brought up on a croft and married on one, and I mind
what a nuisance we thought some folk, visiting and prying and
blithering about socials, doing everything to help us, or so they
would think—except to get out and get on with the work!

Robert's face went queer, a half-laugh, a half-scowl, but Miss Jeannie Grant was delighted, she said
And get off your
backs, you could surely have added! You're a socialist the same
as I am, you know
. Chris shook her head, she knew nothing about it, sorry already she had spoken like that, Mrs Geddes had gone quite white for a minute, Chris knew she had made an enemy in Segget. The Dominie stared at his plate with a sneer; Miss M'Askill looked at Robert, brows up; Miss Ferguson looked at her plate and blushed; only Ewan ate on, as calm as ever, except when he said,
Can I go now
,
please?

Chris caught Miss M'Askill's eye when he'd gone, it said, plain as plain,
A very spoilt child
. And you supposed that it really was true, the truth as she'd see it, who never had a child, who didn't know the things that bound you to Ewan, as though his birth-cord still bound you together, he tugged at your body, your heart, at your womb, in some moments of pity it was sheer, sick pain that tore at you as you comforted him. But that you could never explain to a woman who'd never had a bairn, had never, you supposed, yet lain with a man, known all the shame and all the red splendour and all the dull ache and resentment of marriage that led to the agony and wonder of looking on the face, sweet and blind as the eyes of love, of a child new-born from your body's harbour…. And Chris roused herself,
Mr Geddes—pudding?

Robert was trying to keep the talk going, but some thing had spoiled the talk at the table—herself, Chris supposed, with telling the truth. And she thought
They're just
servant-queans, after all, with a little more education and a little
less sense
—these, the folk Robert had thought could save Segget! It was hardly likely he thought so now: what would he do with his League and his plans? Still wait for young Stephen Mowat to come home?

Suddenly in the midst and mid of them all—the words she now used, the thoughts she thought, the clothes she wore and the things she ate—Chris would see her father's face from long syne, the jutting beard and the curling lip—
Come out of that, quean, with your dirt of
gentry!
And because she knew in a way it was true, the gentry that or but little more, sometimes she'd stop in the
middle of a talk, in the middle of a walk, in the middle of a meal, and stare for so long that Robert would say,
We've
lost her again! Εwan, bring back your mother!

That feeling came over her later that day, when it brought Stephen Mowat to tea at the Manse. Though none of them guessed the fact at the time, it had been his car that passed the service at eleven o'clock in Segget Square: but ere well the car had reached Segget House the news had spread all around the toun, young Stephen Mowat had come home at last, from wandering about in foreign parts after leaving his English university. And his shover told as they passed the Square young Mowat had looked and seen the angel, and had groaned aloud,
Oh Christ, even here—another bitch in
a flannel shift!
The shover said they'd seen birns of the statues as they motored up from England that week, lasses in bronze and marble and granite, dancing about on pedestal tops, he'd thought them bonny, Mr Stephen hadn't, he said that Britain had gone harlot-mad, and stuck up those effigies all over the place, in memory no doubt of the Red Lamps of France.

And the shover said he should know about queans, young Mowat, considering the number he'd had since he'd left the college a six months back. No doubt he'd soon have them at Segget House, he intended to bide there and fee a big staff, and bring back the good old days to the toun. He was going to look after the mills for himself, the estate as well, and the Lord knows what.

Chris heard all this when the school-folk had gone, from Else, when she went to the kitchen to help. But Else needed no help, she'd a visitor there, Dalziel of Meiklebogs it was. He smiled shy and rose when he saw Chris come in, and she told him to sit, and Else poured out the news. Chris didn't feel excited, but she thought Robert might.
Well, that'll be
fine, no doubt, for Segget. Oh, have we made any cakes for tea?

Else said they hadn't, but they damned soon would.
Out
of the way, there, Meiklebogs, now!
and pushed him into a chair, he sat canny, his cap in his hands, and watched while she baked. Chris went back to Robert and told him the news.

He said
Mowat home? It's an answer to prayer. And just as
I heard the black dog come barking! Let's celebrate!
And he
caught Chris, daft, and twirled about the room in a dance. So they didn't hear the knocking at the door, Else did, and went and brought Stephen Mowat in. They came to the door of the sitting-room and watched, till Chris saw them and stopped, and Robert did the same. And Else said,
Mr Mowat, Mem
, and vanished.

He'd a face that minded her of a frog's, he was younger than herself by a good few years, with horn-rimmed spectacles astride a broad nose, and eyes that twinkled, and a way of speaking that in a few days was to stagger Segget. His brow went back to a cluster of curls, he was charming, you supposed, as a prince should be, and very likely damn seldom is; and he said he was pleased to be back in Segget, looking at Chris as though she were the reason, Chris had never met in with his like before, and stood and looked at him, cool, in surprise, taller than he was, he was to say later he felt he was stared at by Scotland herself. And once, when drunk, he was to say to the Provost that she couldn't get over her blood and breed, she was proud as all the damned clodhoppers were, still thought in her heart they were the earth's salt, and thought the descendant of a long line of lairds on the level with the descendants of a long line of lice. And he said by God, had it been a four hundred years back, he'd have tamed that look quick enough in his bed, maybe she lost something of her sulkiness there. And Provost Hogg boasted and said
Not a doubt;
and started to tell of his ancestor, Burns. And Mowat said,
Who? Oh, Robbie Burns? A hell of a pity he
couldn't write poetry
, and the Provost was vexed, but then, 'twas the laird, just joking-like; and he was the
laird
.