A Scots Quair (59 page)

Chris asked what else he was moving to-day? He said
Everything
and set to on the bed, she sat down and didn't offer to help. His hair fell over his eyes as he tugged, funny to look at, funny to think he had been your baby, been yours, been you, been less than that even—now sturdy and slim, with his firm round shoulders and that dun gold skin he got from yourself, and his father's hair. He stopped in a minute and came where she sat:
I think that'll do. I'll
dust after dinner
.

So the two of them went down and had dinner alone, Ewan said he'd have everything moved in his room ere the New Year came and Chris asked why. He said
Oh, I like
a new angle on things
, and then he said
Mother, you wanted
to laugh. What about?
and Chris said
You, I suppose! You
sounded so grown-up like for a lad
.

He said nothing to that, but went on with his meat, they didn't say grace when Robert wasn't there, that was funny when you came to think of the thing, Robert knew and knew that you knew he knew. But he was too sure to vex about that, sure of himself and his God and belief, except when the angry black moments came—seldom enough in this last three years. Once he'd raved
Religion—A Scot know
religion? Half of them think of God as a Scot with brosy morals
and a penchant for Burns. And the other half are over damned
mean to allow the Almighty even existence. You know which
half you belong to, I think
. Hate and fury in his face as he said it, the day after the killing of Meiklebogs' horse. Chris had looked at him cool and remotely then, as she'd learned with the years, and he'd banged from the room, to return in an hour or so recovered.
What a ranter and raver I am,
Christine! I think you'll outlast me a thousand years!

And now, on a sudden impulse, she said,
Do you ever think
of religion, Ewan?

He never said
What?
or said your last word the way other boys of his age would do; he looked up and shook his head,
Not now
. She asked when he had and he said, long ago, when he was a kid and hadn't much sense, he used to be worried when Robert was preaching. Chris said
But he never tried to
fear you
, and Ewan shook his head,
Oh no, it wasn't that. But
I hated the notion God was there, prying into every minute of my
life. I wanted to belong to myself, and I do; it doesn't matter a
bit to me now
. She understood well enough what he meant, how like her he sometimes was, how unlike!
So you think
God doesn't matter, then, Εwan?
and he said,
I don't think
He's worth bothering about. He can't make any difference to the
world—or I should think He'd have made it by now
.

The evening came down before it was four, up in the Mounth the snow came thick, sheeting hill on hill as it passed on the wings of the howling wind from the haughs. But the storm passed north of Segget, lying lithe, Chris in the kitchen looked out at it pass, she was making cakes and pies for the morn, Maidie tweetering about like a bird
Eh, Mem,
but that's
rich,
that'll be a fine one!

Chris said
Then be sure you eat a good share, you're still thin
enough since you came to the Manse. Are you sure you are well?
And Maidie said
Fine
. She blushed and stood like a thin little bird, Chris looked at her quiet, a thin little lass—what did she think, what did she do in her moments alone, had she a lad, had she ever been kissed—or more than that, as they said in Segget? Not half the life in her that poor Else had; what would Else Queen be doing to-day?

Dark. As they took their tea together, Ewan and Chris, they left the blinds drawn and could see the night coming stark outbye, growing strangely light as the daylight waned and the frost, white-plumed, walked swift over Segget. Ewan sat on the rug by the fire and read, his blue head down-bent over his book, Chris stared in the fire and tired of that and finished her tea, and wandered about, and went to the window and looked at the night. Then she looked at the clock. She would go and meet Robert.

She turned to the door and Ewan jumped up, she said not to bother, she was going to walk. He said absent-mindedly,
See you keep warm
, and his eyes went back again to his book.

Outside, she went hatless, with her coat collar up, she found at the door of the Manse a wind, bright, keen, and edged like a razor-blade, the world sleeping on the winter's edge, about her, dim-pathed, wound the garden of summer, she passed up its aisles, the hoar crackled below her, all Segget seemed held in the hand-grip of frost. A queer thought and memory came to her then and she turned about from
going to the gate, and went back instead by the side of the Manse, up through the garden where the strawberry beds lay covered deep in manure and straw, to the wall that girded the kirkyard of Segget.

Here the wind was still, in the Manse's lithe, she put out a hand on the hoar of the dyke, it felt soft as salt and as cold as steel; and idly, standing, she wrote her name, though she couldn't see it by then in the dark,
CHRISTINE COLQUOHOUN
in great capital letters. And she minded how once she had stood here before, four years or more, after Segget Show; and she and Robert were there together and she'd thought of the vanished folk in the yard, and planned to add to those that supplanted. And the War-time wound that was seared on Robert had seared that plan from her mind as with fire….

It seemed this night remote from her life as the things she'd dreamt as a quean in Blawearie, when she was a maid and knew nothing of men, the kind of play that a bairn would play: for her who stood here with life in her again, unexpected, certain, Robert's baby and hers.

And she found it strange in that icy hush, leaning there warm, her hair bare to the cold, to think how remote was that life from her now, even bairn for the thing that lay under her heart was a word that she'd hardly used a long time, thinking of it as a baby, in English—that from her books and her life in a Manse. She seemed to stand here by the kirkyard's edge looking back on the stones that marked the years where so many Chrises had died and lay buried—back and back, as the graveyard grew dim, far over those smothered hopes and delights, to that other Chris that had been with child, a child herself or so little more, and had known such terror and delight in that, young and raw and queer and sweet, you thought her now, that Chris that had been—the Chris far off in that vanished year who had lain in terror as nights came down with knowledge of the thing that moved in herself, the fruit of her love for the boy she had wed, Ewan sleeping so quiet and so sound in her bed. Remote and far to think she was
YOU
!

Quiet in the dark she wrote with her finger another name across that of her own, on the kirkyard dyke, and heard as
she wrote far up in the Kaimes a peesie wheep—maybe a lost memory from those years in Kinraddie, a peesie that had known that other Chris! She heard a long scuffling through the long grass, silver beyond the rim of the dyke, some rabbit or hare, though it made her heart jump; and slowly she felt her finger rub out the name she had written in hoar on the dyke—ill-luck to have done that, she minded folk said.

A month ago since she'd known for sure, had puzzled for days with the second no-go. Robert would frown,
What
on earth's gone wrong? You're dreaming, Christine!
and smile, and she'd smile, and puzzle again when he'd left her alone. So it came on her in the strangest places, she stood in MacDougall Brown's to shop, and MacDougall asked thrice what thing she might want—
Now, Mem
—and she said—
Did I want it at all?
and then came to herself at his cod-like stare. So she gave her order and went out and home, she supposed MacDougall would manage to make out that was another proof of her pride!—all Segget for some reason thought her proud, maybe because she had taken to thinking, not stayed as still as a quean in a book or a quean in a bothy, from year unto year.

And when once Stephen Mowat came down to see Robert, and she gave them supper and sat by to listen, Mowat broke off the talk to say
Rahly, Mrs Colquohoun, do tell us the joke!
She said
What joke?
And he said
The one that's making you
smile in that charming way
. She'd said
Oh, I suppose I am full
up of supper!
And he'd said he thought that a Jahly untruth, joking, polished as a mart-day pig.

So at last she had known and woke one day sure; and lay and dreamt; and Robert got up—
Feeling all
right?
—and she had said
Fine. Robert, we're going to have
a baby
. He stared—
We?
—the thing had staggered him, she lay and watched, something moved in her heart, laughter for him, a queer pity for him—oh, men were funny and just boys to be pitied!
Well, I am
, she'd said,
but
you had a share
. He was standing half-dressed, with his fair hair on end, he sat on the bed and stared and then smiled, slowly, with that crinkling about the eyes she had loved near the very first time she met him.
Really and honest-
to-God
that we are?
And she'd said it was real enough, how did
it happen? And he'd said he hadn't the least idea, and that struck them as funny, they giggled like children; and after 'twas Robert that went into long dreams. She'd say
What
again?
and he'd say
But Christine! A baby—Good Lord,
I hope it's a girl! What does it feel like being as you are—a
nuisance, just, or tremendous and terrible?
And Chris had said that it made you feel sick, now and then, and Robert had laughed at that, he wasn't so easily cheated as Mowat.
Oh
Chris Caledonia, I've married a nation!

Now, standing beside the dyke in the dark, she minded that, it was true enough, somehow you did hide away the great things, Scots folk had always done that, you supposed—in case they'd go blind in their naked shine, like a soul in the presence of Robert's great God—that God he followed unfaltering still, and was getting him deeper in dislike than ever, with his preaching in Segget the cause of the Miners. These were the folk that were going on strike, in May, unless their wages were raised. Robert said their case was a testing case, the triumph of greed or the triumph of God. Chris herself had hardly a thought in the matter because of that nameless doubt that was hers—doubt of the men and method that came to change the world that was waiting change—all the mixed, strange world of the Segget touns, with its failing trade and its Mills often idle. The folk of the Mills would hang round the room where their dole was paid by a little clerk, they'd laze there and snicker at the women that passed, and yawn, with weariness stamped on each face; and smoke, and whistle, and yawn some more. Once she'd passed and heard some of them quarrelling out loud, she had thought it must surely be over politics; but instead 'twas the chances of a football match! She'd told Robert that and he'd laughed and said
Demos!—didn't
you know that the chap was like that? But we'll alter these
things forever in May
.

May: and the baby wouldn't come till July, a good enough month for a baby to be born, though Robert said if they had planned it at all they would surely have planned it better than that. July might be far too hot for comfort. But he didn't fuss round her, stood back and aside, he knew it her work and that he'd little help—oh, different as could be from the
Εwan long ago, the frightened boy who had so fussed about her—how they'd quarrelled, how wept, how laughed in that time of the coming of that baby that was now in the Manse—a boy, grown up, remote from it all, remote enough with his books and his flints, far enough off from being a baby, rather like a flint himself in some ways, but of a better shape and grain, grey granite down to the core, young Ewan, with its flinty shine and its cool grey skin and the lights and the flashing strands in it. Different from that, Robert's baby and hers—

She stamped her feet and woke from her dreaming as down through the dark she heard on the shingle the coming footsteps of Robert himself.

AND NEXT MORNING
he said,
Let's go out a walk, up in
the hills somewhere—are you keen?
Chris said she was and well before eight they were off, they met with Ewan in the hall as they went, he said nothing at all about going out with them, he always knew when he wasn't much wanted. Chris kissed him and said they'd be back for dinner; syne she and Robert went up by the Kaimes, and Ewan stood and looked after them—you could hardly believe that Chris was so old.

Underfoot the frost held hard and firm in the rising sun of the New Year's Day, that sun a red smoulder down in the Howe, the hoar was a blanching on post and hedge, riming the dykes, far up in the Mounth the veilings of mists were draping the hills, except that now and then they blew off and you saw the coarse country deep in the haughs, remote with a flicker of red on the roofs of some shepherd's sheiling high in the heath. Robert was walking so fast that Chris for a while could hardly keep up with his stride, then she fell into that and found it easy, the Kaimes was past and above it the path opened out through the ragged fringe of the moor that came peering and sniffling down at Segget as a draggled cat at a dish out of doors, all the country-side begirdled with hills and their companions the moors that crept and slept and yawned in the sun, watching the Howe at its work below.

They passed a tarn that was frozen and shone, Chris tried the edge with her stick and it broke, and she saw herself for a
minute then, with the looped-up hair and the short-cut skirts and the leather jacket tight at her waist, high in the collar; and the blown bronze of her cheeks and hair and the stick in her hands and the fur-backed gloves, she smiled at herself, for this Chris that she'd grown. Robert stopped and looked back and was puzzled, and came, and stood by her side and looked down at that Chris that smiled remote in the broken ice.
Yes, not at all bad. See the childe by her shoulder? Do you
think the two can be decently married?