A Scots Quair. Lewis Grassic Gibbon

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СКАЧАТЬ his sister-in-law, the daft old trollop. And maybe he’d have settled things canty and fine but that he came on Ewan at the wrong bit minute, he was sitting outside the bothy door with the rest of the bothy billies; and when Chae came up there rose a bit snigger, that fair roused Chae, he stopped bang in front of them and asked what the hell they were laughing at? And Sam Gourlay said Little, damned little, looking Chae from head to foot; and Ewan said he felt more in the way of weeping than laughing at such a sight, and he spoke in a slow, impudent way that fair roused Chae’s dander to the boiling point. So, being a fell impatient man, and skilly with his hands, he took Sam Gourlay a clout in the lug that couped him down in the stour and then before you could wink he and Ewan were at it, ding-dong, like a pair of tinks, all round the Upperhill close; and Upprums came running in his leggings, the creature, fair scandalised, but he got a shove in the guts that couped him right down in the greip where once his son Jock had been so mischieved; and that was the end of his interfering. In a minute or so it was plain that Ewan, fight though he might, was like to have the worst of the sett, he was no match for that madman Chae. So the rest of the bothy lads up and went for Chae; and when he got back to Peesie’s Knapp he’d hardly a stitch on his back. But Ewan, the coarse, dour brute, had a cut in the face that stopped his mouth for a while, and a black eye big enough to sole the boots on Cuddiestoun’s meikle feet, folk said.

      And faith! if it shouldn’t be Cuddiestoun himself that began the next story, running into the middle of it himself, you might say, going up to the Manse to get a bit signature on some paper or other for his lawyer man. But Mr Gibbon they told him wasn’t at home, Mistress Gibbon herself came out to tell him that, kind and fine as she was, but he didn’t like her, the English dirt. So, fair disgruntled he turned from the door, maybe the poor brute’s big sweating feet were fell sore already with a hot day’s stooking. But just down at the end of the Manse’s garden, where the yews bent thick above the lush grass their boughs that had sheltered the lost childe Wallace in the days before the coarse English ran him to earth and took him to London and there hanged and libbed him and hewed his body in four to hang on the gates of Scotland—there, in that grass in the half-dark was a rustling and squealing as though a drove of young pigs was rootling there. And Cuddiestoun stopped and picked up a handful of gravel from the minister’s walk and flung it into the grass and cried Away with you! for maybe it was dogs in heat that were chaving there, big collies are none so chancy to meet when the creatures are set for mating. But instead of a collie up out of the grass rose the Gourdon quean, her that old Mistress Sinclair had fee’d for the Manse; and Munro saw her face then with a glazed look on it, like the face of a pig below the knife of its killer; and she brushed the hair from her face, daft-like, and went trailing past Munro, without a word from her, as though she walked half-asleep. But past him, going into the Manse, she began to whistle, and laughed a loud scraich of a laugh—as though she’d tried right desperately for something, and won, and beaten all the world in the winning of it. So it seemed to Cuddiestoun, and faith! you couldn’t put that down to imagination, for he’d never had any, the ugly stock; so fair queer it must well have been, he stood and stared after her, dumbfoundered-like, and was just turning at last, to tramp down to the road, when he found Mr Gibbon himself at his elbow.

      It had grown fell dark by then but not so dark that Cuddiestoun couldn’t see the minister was without a hat and was breathing in great deep paichs as though he’d come from the running of a race. And he barked out, Well, speak up, man, what do you want? Munro was sore took aback at hearing a fine childe like the minister snap at him that way. So he just said Well, well, Mr Gibbon, you’ve surely been running a bit race? and then wished he hadn’t, for the minister went by him without another word, and then flung over his shoulder If you want me, come to-morrow.

      And into the Manse he went and banged the door with a clash that fair made Cuddiestoun loup in his meikle boots. So there was nothing for him but to taik away home to Mistress Munro, and faith! you might well believe the story lost nothing in the telling she gave it, and soon every soul in Kinraddie had a different version, Long Rob’s was cried to John Guthrie as he went by the Mill. He never spread scandal about folk, Long Rob—only horses, was the joke they told of him—but maybe he classed ministers lower than them.

      It seemed like enough to John Guthrie, the story, though he’d no coarse notions like Rob and his Ingersoll, the world was rolling fast to a hell of riches and the old slave days come back again, ministers went with it and whored with the rest. For the bitterness had grown and eaten away into the heart of him in his year at Blawearie. So coarse the land proved in the turn of the seasons he’d fair been staggered, the crops had fared none so bad this once, but he saw in a normal year the corn would come hardly at all on the long, stiff slopes of the dour red clay. Now also it grew plain to him here as never in Echt that the day of the crofter was fell near finished, put by, the day of folk like himself and Chae and Cuddiestoun, Pooty and Long Rob of the Mill, the last of the farming folk that wrung their living from the land with their own bare hands. Sign of the times he saw Jean Guthrie’s killing of herself to shame him and make of his name a by-word in the mouths of his neighbours, sign of a time when women would take their own lives or flaunt their harlotries as they pleased, with the country-folk climbing on silver, the few, back in the pit, the many; and a darkness down on the land he loved better than his soul or God.

      AND NEXT IT WAS Will himself that started the claiks of Kinraddie, him and his doings in Drumlithie. But Chris met the story ere it reached Kinraddie, she met it in Drumlithie itself, in the yard of the gardener Galt. The tink had been gone from Blawearie that day she set out with her basket, no sign of the rain showed even then, the heat held still as the white, dull heat from a furnace door. Down in the turnpike the motor-cars went whipping by as she set her feet for Mondynes, there where the battle was fought in the days long syne. Below the bridge went the wash of the burn west to the Bervie Water, bairns cried and splashed in the bridge’s lithe, they went naked there when they dared, she saw them glance white and startled in the shelter of the stones. Soon the heat grew such that she took off her hat and swung that in her hand and so climbed the road, and there to the left rose Drumlithie at last, some called it Skite to torment the folk and they’d get fell angry at that in Skite. No more than a rickle of houses it was, white with sunshine below its steeple that made of Skite the laugh of the Howe, for feint the kirk was near it. Folk said for a joke that every time it came on to rain the Drumlithie folk ran out and took in their steeple, that proud they were of the thing, it came from the weaver days of the village when damn the clock was there in the place and its tolling told the hour.

      So that was Skite, it rose out of its dusts and its ancient smells, the berries hung ripe in the yard of the gardener Galt and he looked at Chris in a queer kind of way when he heard her name. Syne he began a sly hinting and joking as he weighed her berries, a great sumph of a man the creature was, fair running with creash in that hot weather, you near melted yourself as you looked at him. And how’s Will? he asked, We haven’t seen much of him here of late—faith, the roses are fair fading from Mollie Douglas’ cheeks. And Chris said Oh? right stiff-like, and then And I’ll have two pounds of your blackberries too. So he packed her that, hinting and gleying like a jokesome fat pig, she could have taken him a clout in the face, but didn’t, it would only stir up more scandal, there seemed enough and to spare of that. Whatever could Will have been doing; and what had he done to his quean that he’d left her?

      Right glad she was to be out from the stink of Skite with the road of Mondynes in front of her. Then she heard the bell of a bicycle far down the road behind and drew to one side, but the thing didn’t pass, it slowed down and somebody called out, timid-like, Are you Will Guthrie’s sister? Chris turned and saw her then, knew her at once Will’s quean, young and white-faced and fair, and heard her own voice near troubled as the eyes that looked at her as she answered, Yes; and you’ll be Mollie Douglas?

      The face of the girl blushed slow at that, slow and sweet, and she looked away back at the steeple of Skite as though she feared the thing spied on them: and then suddenly, near crying, she was asking Chris to tell Will he must ride over and see her again, come again that night, she couldn’t СКАЧАТЬ