Lament for a Maker

7

When Isa came to it was to find Guthrie gone and the rats nibbling her fingers. Right painfully she got to her knees and then to her feet, hardly would the stocky legs of the quean carry her, and groped her way from that awful gallery and to her room. There she wasted no time but cast a splatter of cold water, shivering as she was, over her face, and got from that the strength to pack her box and the clear-headedness to pen a bittock note for Christine. Syne she crept to the kitchen and got herself a piece, fair famished she felt after her vigil, and at keek of dawn was out of the castle, her box on her head like it had been a basket of clouts, and keeping a wary eye for Tammas in his barn. Fell glad she was when she had rounded the loch and the dark larches closed upon the grey house, gruesome it seemed to her now, and she was away and down the tail of Erchany brae and on the long glen road to Kinkeig. At full dawn the snow began to fall and toilsome and bitter though it made the road she was the blither for it; it seemed to cast a white carpet of oblivion between her and the murk of that night.

You may be sure that Isa’s story wasn’t long in getting round Kinkeig – the old wives, as I’ve said, making a great thing of it in that idle winter weather. And like all tales that run round a Scottish village it lost nothing in the telling; it got about that wee Isa had been forced to hide behind the dowps of two great idols and that syne Guthrie had come and prayed before them stark naked – idols he’d dug up from the camps of the coarse Romans, no doubt, and prayers that he’d had of his study of heathen runes. Or if it wasn’t Guthrie was naked it was Tammas – Isa’s story, though unco surely, being not quite scandalous enough to please some. It must be said that Isa herself behaved douce and decent considering the fuss was made over her; she told her tale readily enough, but without, as you might expect, a bit fresh embroidery each time. There were but two additions she made that might have been fact or fancy. She minded, she said, like as if she had heard it in a dream, Guthrie calling out something about America and Newfoundland, and that was mixed in her head with two names: Walter Kennedy and Robert Henderson – fient the idea she had of who they were, nor Kinkeig either except Will Saunders said he minded there had once been a Walter Kennedy, a crofter, away down the loch, but long since departed he was, and like enough to America or Newfoundland. And the other thing she thought she minded in some half-conscious moment after her swoon was Guthrie crouched down over a table and poring over something, book or paper belike, she had no memory of what. That was the sum of Isa’s tale. Kinkeig chewed on it a whole week, and I won’t say I didn’t chew on it myself: it’s a catching thing gossip and little comes in to sutor when there’s snow on the ground.

Isa’s leaving the meikle house was almost the end of news from up the glen. Two–three times in the thaw that followed the first snows the creature Hardcastle came down about his business, and once he went on to the junction and shut himself up in the wee telephone box there. The news of that fair affronted the postmistress, Mistress Johnstone, it was as much as to say anything he put through from her bit office she’d sure go claiking round with, her sworn to secrecy by the king as she was. Right aggravating she felt it, for didn’t folk ever think they had a right to a bit news from the postmistress over their cup tea and blame her unreasonably for an uncompanionable body when there was none to give? Howsoever, Jock Yule the station lad, who had never a thing to do all day but sweep out what he called the waiting-room and whiles help truck a few sheep, got a keek at Hardcastle in the box; he was reading from a pack papers into the mouth of the thing, and that meant, certain, he was sending telegrams direct through the Dunwinnie exchange. The laverocks might be in fear of the skies falling, folk said, if those at the meikle house were taking to spend their silver like that.

The next thing was that when the week’s freight came in Jock found he had half a lorry-load of cases to get up to the castle, hampers and the like from Mackie’s and Gibson’s and two-three other great shops in Edinburgh. It seemed fell clear that Guthrie, who sent down once a year to Kinkeig, folk said, for a pound of tea and a packet of kitchen salt, had taken final leave of his senses at last. Jock himself was that scunnered he wouldn’t have been surprised had the laird tipped him half a crown on delivery and offered him a dram forbye. But all the laird did, after Jock had had an unco time getting his lorry up the glen in the thaw, was himself to check the cases into the house against an invoice and then haggle a bit over the cartage; not so daft, in fact, after all. And Jock said that, unthanked as his task had been, he felt half sorry for the man: sleepless he looked and old – and forbye bewildered, like a man in two minds.

Well, it was as good as a Christmas box to many in Kinkeig to hear that Guthrie was in a right fash; if the laird was fretting folk were real content to hear it, whether they could plumb to the reason of it or no. But plenty tried their hand at an explanation and plenty more at controverting them that did the explaining. The stationy got a good deal of respect by saying he could distinguish alternative hypotheses: it’s wonderful how a couple incomprehensible words will impress folk little acquaint with letters.

One bit speak I can mind at the Arms, if but by the unco happening that put an end to it.

Once in a while, you must know, I take a look over to the private bar – most of the better-thought-of folk of the parish think it a decent enough place for a bit crack of an evening. Will Saunders was there, and Rob Yule, and whiles in came the stationy, still with a hypothesis, so to speak, in each pocket – for it was ever his way to seem holding back a bit inner knowledge: to hear him talk on politics you would think he held in with the editors of the Scotsman and The Times themselves. And behind the bar was Mistress Roberts, banging the pots about to show she was real unfriendly to the liquor and had never thought to come to the serving of it; a sore trial she was to Roberts but not undeserved, folk said, for all the time of their courting had she not been slipping him wee tracts about the poisonous action of alcohol on the blood-stream, and might a publican not have taken warning from that? Mistress Roberts said never a word until in came wee Carfrae, the greengrocer. Carfrae never touches, only he comes into the private for a gossip and Mistress Roberts keeps him a special ginger beer; at one time she put a row of the stuff behind the bar with a notice: Sparkling, Refreshing and Non-Injurious, but at that Roberts put his foot down, everything had its place, he said, and the place for a notice like that was in the sweetie-shops. As I say, wee Carfrae came in for this dreich drink of his, and it was him restarted the speak about Guthrie.

‘Mistress,’ he said, giving a sad look over at Yule and Saunders and myself, ‘I’m thinking there’s a power of evil idle talk in this parish.’

‘There is that for certain, Mr Carfrae, and has been ever since the failure of the Local Option.’ And Mistress Roberts made a great rattle with a pile empty bottles of stout.

‘No doubt we’ve some control of our tongues here in the private,’ said Carfrae with another ill look at us in the corner, ‘but out there in the public are two–three ignorant billies claiking away fair scandalous about the laird.’

‘Poor soul!’ cried Mistress Roberts, ‘he has much to thole, I’m sure’ – and she cast her eyes up to heaven like a hen after a bit drink. ‘It’s right disgusting what they find to say about him and that strange quean Christine.’

‘Shameful,’ said Carfrae, licking his lips as if the ginger had been extra tasty; ‘and the more shameful to speak of since it seems like enough to be true. Bred up to it from a wean, poor lass, the same as you might breed up a sow.’

It’s this kind of speak makes me times doubt the blessings of Reformation and agree with those that say the muck-rake came to Scotland along with presbytery. But Dr Jervie – and I think he’s in the right of it – says No, that’s a false thought: it’s the tough land and the short leases, the long-grey lift and the chill raw haar seeping to the heart, that robs us of half our right sensuous life and sends us to warm and stir ourselves before the fires of evil speaking and whispered lust. I’ve learnt long since to hold my whisht when folk unbridle their tongues so, and I held my whisht now. But Rob Yule, for all that his silver has long lain cold in his cellars, has a warm heart and a quick temper, and forbye he had ever liked Christine. So he rose now to the creature Carfrae’s bait. ‘Is the old lie about the quean,’ he said, ‘wearing that thin that there’s a new one needed?’

You must know that Christine was Guthrie’s ward and bore his mother’s name. She had come to the miekle house as an infant – the child, it was explained, of Guthrie’s mother’s brother, who had been killed with his young wife in a right terrible railway accident abroad. I can remember well enough that none doubted the story until just such a white idle winter as this I’m writing of; it was then that the wee speak grew that what had been given out was no true part of Christine Mathers’ story and that Ranald Guthrie was more to her than uncle. But it was only the secretiveness and the ill name of the laird, the few sensible bodies in Kinkeig ever thought, that gave gradual colour to the claiking: when the quean was never sent to school folk said it was because Guthrie was ashamed of his natural daughter. That was what Rob Yule was calling the old lie – and now here was the wee man Carfrae, sure enough, with another. Fine, he said, you could understand Guthrie turning away Neil Lindsay: wasn’t he jealous of his young mistress, the dirty old stock that he was?

The Roberts wife rinsed a glass. ‘You mean she’s not his daughter at all?’

Carfrae hesitated and looked warily over at us. ‘It’s just the talk,’ he said. And then he gave a bit snicker into his Sabbath School cordial.

Mistress Roberts made a shocked-like click with her tongue and poured herself out a cup of tea: she ever has a great teapot at her elbow in the private and anyone comes in she’ll like enough over a cup to, gratis; it makes Roberts fair wild. The Thoughtful Citizen said Faith, these were terrible lax times for sure and it was a real pity they’d stopped the papers publishing the full revelations of the Divorce Courts; there was nothing kept people more moral than reading those awful-like examples of fast life among the English. And as for Guthrie, it was just awful to think he might have brought up the quean not out of duty as his natural daughter but to make a mistress of her.

Carfrae snickered again at this, and hummed and hahed and hinted and at last the stationy saw what he was driving at, and however much he’d read of fast life among the English I think he was decent enough to be honestly shocked. He looked quite stern at Carfrae and ‘Are you suggesting,’ he said, ‘that these are not mutually exclusive propositions?’

I doubt if the wee greengrocer man understood this – but certain he understood Rob Yule. For Rob walked over to him and took the glass of ginger beer from his hand and emptied it, careful-like, in Mistress Roberts’ nearest aspidistra. ‘Carfrae,’ he said, ‘the Non-Injurious is wasted on you, man. It’s over late for such precautions: you’re nought but a poison-pup already.’

It wasn’t what you could call an ugly situation, for the greengrocer was far from the sort would put up a fight against Rob Yule, there was just no dander to rouse in him. But it was fell uncomfortable; Carfrae was looking between yellow and green, like one of his own stale cabbages, the stationy was havering something about its being technically an assault, and Mistress Roberts had taken up her teaspoon and was stirring furious at the teapot – which was what she ever does when sore affronted. And then Will Saunders, who had been holding his whisht the same as myself, thought to cut in with a bit diversion. ‘Faith,’ cried Will, ‘and look at the aspidistra!’

I don’t believe the plant had really suffered any harm from the Non-Injurious, but the way Will spoke and his pointing to the poor unhealthy thing in its pot fair gave the impression it had wilted that moment. I mind I gave a laugh overhearty to be decent maybe in a man of my years and an elder of the kirk forbye. Rob gave a great laugh too and then we saw that this time Mistress Roberts was real black affronted, she rattled her teapot like mad, herself making a noise like a bubbly jock with the gripes. After all, the Non-Injurious was some sort of symbol to the wife of her struggle against Roberts and the massed power of darkness that was the liquor trade she’d married into. And it was to placate and distract the old body, no doubt, that Will thought to cry out: ‘Mistress Roberts, could we have a look at your grand atlas and see Newfoundland?’

Both the Roberts loons are at sea, and their mother right proud of the great atlas they gave her to follow their wanderings in. So, ill-thoughted though she is against those that are helping keep the roof over her by drinking a decent pint of beer, she couldn’t resist that invitation; away she went and was presently back with the atlas, and a fresh pot tea forbye.

So we all – except the greengrocer Carfrae, who was still chewing over the insult to him – had a keek at the map, and Will asked Would Newfoundland be in America? I said it was as much in America as Canada was and no more; you could say it was in the Americas maybe. And then Will wondered Where was it Guthrie’s American cousins lived, the creatures that syne tried to have him proved skite?

Mistress Roberts was that delighted she forgot Will’s tink joke on her aspidistra and offered tea all round; even when Rob Yule said No, he’d have another pint thanks and pay for it she drew it without as much as a sour look. She thought Will had found for certain what was troubling the laird and why he had cried out to Isa’s hearing about Newfoundland and America. Myself, I wasn’t that impressed.

But Will said that was why Guthrie was opening Erchany; the cousins had near got him in the asylum on the strength of his meanness and solitariness, and now he had heard they were plotting at him again and it was driving him to make some show of sane liberality: no doubt he’d bring Christine to witness he was in the habit of cracking a bottle of wine for her. And if we knew the name of the cousins, which we didn’t, certain enough it would be Kennedy or Henderson, the same that Isa minded him calling out in his gallery. At this the stationy said there was a great fascination, sure, in amateur detection, and Rob Yule said that might be, but there was more sense in a bit solid knowledge; if Will didn’t know the name of the American cousins he did, and it was nothing but plain Guthrie. He had been but a wean when the younger Guthrie lads went out to Australia but he minded well his father saying they’d near gone to America instead, their father’s brother’s sons were there, and that they didn’t go was said to be because there was bad blood between the families.

‘There,’ cried Will, ‘blood!’ The greengrocer gave a start, as if it was his blood was being called for, and Mistress Roberts paused with her teapot in the air, bewildered. But Will was thinking he’d fitted a bit more into his picture. ‘Wasn’t Guthrie havering to himself that night about something being in the blood? And wouldn’t it be the malice of the American Guthries he was thinking on, those that have tried to dispossess him and are maybe at it again?’

The stationy said it was highly colourable. And wee Carfrae, who had been glowering in his corner but just couldn’t resist joining in the speak again, said Maybe – but there had been others besides the American creatures at feud with the Guthries of Erchany. Wasn’t there Neil Lindsay, now, that dark chiel with his mind buried in the dim past and believing for certain that he and his were enemies to the Guthrie for ever? And at that the stationy said he didn’t see Guthrie fashing himself over a mad Nationalist loon; still, it was right to explore every avenue.

‘I’d like fine,’ I said, ‘to explore Guthrie’s gallery.’

They all stared; I’ve always found that the less one says the more it’s attended to. ‘And forbye,’ I said, ‘I’d like to know what were the verses the man was chanting that night.’

They stared more at that and the stationy said he didn’t see how Guthrie’s bit poetry could be a relevant factor.

‘Maybe you don’t,’ I said, speaking in the cryptic-like way the stationy himself likes to employ.

Rob Yule gave a bit laugh at that and said perhaps I could tell them what was in Guthrie’s mind: was Will right in thinking he had opened up Erchany for fear of the Americans?

‘I think it fell unlikely that the American cousins are fretting any more about Guthrie, or he about them.’ And at that I knocked out my pipe and prepared to dander home.

Reader, there’s ever a judgement waits on arrogance. I had got to the door of the private when it opened that briskly I had to jump back from it and in came a strange quean in motoring clothes. ‘Am I interrupting?’ she asked, and seemed fell certain she wasn’t, marching straight to the bar and speaking crisp-like but friendly to Mistress Roberts. ‘The postmistress can’t be found and I’ve just no time to look for her. Would you very much mind telephoning this? I’ll have a sherry.’ And out of her pocket the quean pulled a paper and a bit silver.

I don’t doubt we all gowked at the girl as if she had been a two-headed calf. But she never minded us but just stood, a slip of a young creature and yet with something extra-purposeful to her, drinking her sherry while the Roberts wife went through and telephoned her telegram to Dunwinnie. Syne she turned round and had a look at us, brief and concentrated, as if we were something with a couple of asterisks against us on a Cook’s tour. Then when Mistress Roberts came ben she took her change, said a word of thanks and was out of the Arms in a winking. Half a minute later came the sound of her car making off up the road as if it didn’t think to stop this side of Inverness.

There was silence for a bit. We were all thinking it unco that just as we had been talking of America and Newfoundland in should step an American lassie – for that she was that no one who had ever been to the Dunwinnie picture palace could doubt. Mistress Roberts stood polishing glasses behind the bar, and there was a gleam in her eye that didn’t come just from the effort of scouring the mortal sin of beer from them. She had the news now and she knew it.

Presently Rob had a try at her. ‘It would be a telegram, Mistress Roberts, the quean was sending?’

‘It was that,’ said Mistress Roberts, and gave the rest of her whistle to breathing hard on a pint pot.

‘To book her a room for the night up the road, maybe?’

‘Maybe aye and maybe no, and it’s nobody’s business but her own,’ said the Roberts wife, virtuous-like. She hadn’t yet forgiven Rob for the way he’d treated Carfrae’s Non-Injurious. But it was plain she was fair bursting all the same; for two–three minutes she polished her glasses as if she were trying to take the black from the face of the Devil. Then ‘Faith,’ she said, ‘I was right stammagasted!’

This time Carfrae tried, and we knew he was much liker to get round her. ‘There was something unco in the message, mistress?’

‘Maybe aye and maybe no again. If you must know it was to someone in London and it just said Hope to have important news soon.’

Will Saunders got up and joined me by the door. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that there’s much occasion for what Carfrae calls evil idle talk in that.’

‘Maybe no and maybe aye. But I’ll tell you this. Mr Bell there ought to be real interested in the signature.’ And at that she banged down the last of her glasses and turned to give a bit stir to her teapot.

‘The signature?’ I said, puzzled.

‘Just that, Mr Bell. The lassie’s signature was Guthrie.’