A Scots Quair. Lewis Grassic Gibbon

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СКАЧАТЬ drained off from her face in a minute and then came back, it seemed to Chris she must be blushing all over under her clothes, right down to the soles of her feet as she herself sometimes blushed. But she cried Oh, you think that, like all of them, but it isn’t true! Staring at her surprised and shamed Chris found she just couldn’t speak up and deny that that was indeed what she’d thought, what else was a body to think? Then she found Mollie Douglas’ face bent close to hers, sweet and troubled and shamed as her own. And Mollie tried to look at her and then looked away, blushing as though she’d sink into the ground, such a fool of herself she was making. It’s not that at all, only I love him so sore I can’t live if I don’t see Will!

      So there they were in the middle of the road, so shamed to look one at the other they’d nothing to say; and then a gig came spanking along from the station, at sight of it Mollie jumped on her bicycle again, and wheeled it about, and looked over her shoulder with a smile you couldn’t forget, and stammered and cried Ta-ta!

      But Chris couldn’t forget that look in her eyes, she went home with that in her mind and at supper that night couldn’t take her own eyes from Will. She saw him then for the first time in years, almost a man, with his fair hair waving across his head and spreading to his cheeks in a rust-red down, like the down on a new-hatched chick; and his eyes blue and dark as a quean’s, and kind when they looked at her, sulky when they turned on father. Not that they turned there often, there was never a word between Will and father unless they were clean compelled to it; like dumb folk working and eating together that needed no speech for hate.

      Father ate his supper and climbed down the hill with his gun, Will loitered from door to window, whistling and idle, till he saw right across the Howe, up on Drumtochty hills, something that rose and coiled ash-grey and then darker against the autumn sky, a great shape like a snake there in the quiet of the evening air, with its tail a glimmer that wasn’t the sunset, burning up red in the lithe of the hills. Whin-burning, he called to Chris, they’re burning the whins up Drumtochty way, come on up the moor and have a try at ours. They’re damned sore in the need of it—But I’ve my jelly to make, you gowk!—Oh, to hell with your jelly, well soon be jelly and bones in a grave ourselves, come on!

      So she went, they gathered great piles of old papers for twisting in torches, and made up the brae to the moor. They sat down on the grass and breathed a while, Kinraddie below them all cut and close-stooked, waiting the coming of the night, the lowe of the Bervie lights as the glow of another whin-burning there by the sea. There they spread out to left and right below the moor-gate, Chris held to the left and ran through the whins, stopping to kick holes down close to the ground wherever a meikle bush rose up. Then far round the knowe Will cried he was starting, she saw him a long way off with the sky behind him, and called back All right! and knelt by the biggest bush she’d struck; and kindled her torch and set its light to the crackling dryness of the grass.

      It whoomed in an instant, the whin, she set her torch into it and ran to the next and fired that: and so in and out, backwards and forwards worked round the brae, you’d to speed quick as your legs could carry you to fire the frontward bushes when those behind raged out with their flames and smoke at your hair. In the dry, quiet evening the fire crackled up and spread and roared through the bushes and caught on the grass and crept and smoked on quick, searching trains to bushes unlit, and fired them, half you thought those questing tongues alive and malignant as they lapped through the grass. By the time Chris met with Will at the moor-gate there spread before them a park like an upland sea on fire, sweeping the hill, now the sun had quite gone and the great red roaring beast of a thing hunted and postured unchallenged, all Kinraddie was lit with its glare.

      Will was black as a nigger, his eyebrows scorched, he pulled Chris down to rest on the grass. By God, I hope the fire doesn’t catch on the fence up there, else old Guthrie will be casting me out of Blawearie for bringing his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave!

      He said that sneering-like, mocking at father’s Aberdeen- shire voice, and Chris stirred half-angry, and sighed, and then asked What would you do if he did put you out? and Will said Go—Would you get a fee?—Damn the fears of that.

      But he didn’t sound over-confident, Chris knew right well that he’d find it none so easy if it came to the push, with the harvest over now in the Howe. And then, for she’d clean forgot her in the excitement of the fires, she minded the quean Mollie Douglas—it was as though she saw her white face by Will’s in the firelit dark. I met Mollie Douglas in Drumlithie to-day, she asked me to ask you to go down and see her.

      He sat stock-still, he mightn’t have heard, she pushed at his elbow Will! And at that he shook off her hand, Oh, I hear. What’s the good? I can’t have a quean like other folk—I haven’t even a fee.—Maybe she doesn’t want your fee, just you. Will, they’re saying things about her and you in Drumlithie—Galt and coarse tinks like that.—Saying things? What things?—What they aye say—that she’s with a baby to you and you’re biding away from her now.—Galt said that?— Hinted at it, but he’ll do more than hint when he’s not speaking to a sister of yours.

      She’d never heard him swear as he did then, jumping to his feet with his fists tight-clenched. That about Mollie—they said that, the orra swine! I’ll mash that bloody Galt’s head till his own mother won’t know it! But Chris told him that wouldn’t help much, folk would just snigger and say there was something, sure, in the story of Mollie’s condition. Then what am I to do? Will asked, raging still, and Chris blushed and said Wait. Do you love her, Will? But she might have known well enough how he’d take that question, maybe he blushed himself in the lithe of the dark, he threw down the paper torches he’d saved and muttered I’m away to Drumlithie, and was running down the hill before she could stop him.

      Maybe, as he told Chris later, he went with no other intention than seeing his Mollie herself. But as luck would have it, who should he near run down with his bicycle outside the Drumlithie Hotel but Galt himself, the great creash, gey drunk, and Alec Mutch in his company. And Alec cried, Fine night, Will, but Galt cried Don’t take her out to-night, Will lad, the grass is overwet for lying on. Will stopped and jumped off and left his bicycle lying in the road and went up to Galt—Speaking to me? And the fat creash, panting like a sow in litter and sweating all down the great face of him, hiccoughed drunken-like Who else?—Well take that then, Will said and let drive at the great belly of Galt; but Mutch caught his arm and cried Young Guthrie, you’ve fair gone daft, the man’s old enough to be your father. Will said if he’d a father like that he’d kill him and then go and drown himself; and tried to break away from Mutch and get at the Galt creash again. But Galt was right unkeen for that, in a minute he’d turned, for all his fat, and made off like a hare up the Drumlithie lanes, real swack with his girth and all, and was out of sight in a second.

      Well, sure you may be there were claiks enough in Skite for Mutch to get all the story and drive home with it to the Bridge End. In a day or so it was all about the place, Will was the laughing-stock of Kinraddie. Father heard it first from the postman, who waved him down to the road to tell him, and soon’s he heard it John Guthrie went back to Will stooking in the yavil field and said What’s this that I hear about you and some orra tink bitch in Drumlithie?

      Now Will had been in a fair fine temper all that day from seeing his Mollie again: and she’d made him swear he’d not fly in a rage or go making a fool of himself if he heard their coarse hinting at her. So he just went on with the stooking and said What the devil are you blithering about? Father shot out his beard and cried Answer my question, Will! and Will said Put a question with sense in it, then. How am I to know what you’ve been hearing? I’m not a thought-reader, and father said Damn’t to hell, you coarse brute, am I to stand СКАЧАТЬ