Lament for a Maker

3

It was the young lawyer Stewart back from Dunwinnie. We had quite forgotten him; and finding closed doors he had applied himself to the bell in the courtyard. With him was the minister, Dr Jervie.

We had gone down to the door in a compact, nervous group and I think they must have read in our faces as we stood in the wavering shadows of the hall that the mystery of the place had undergone some violent revolution. But both were curiously silent and it was only when Gylby had kindled a fire in the schoolroom – a thing we might well have done long before – that Stewart said. ‘You have news?’

Wedderburn replied. ‘The strangest news. Ranald Guthrie is still alive.’

Stewart was staggered. But my interest was more in Dr Jervie. He had sat down and was staring into the first leaping flames on the hearth; and I think I have never seen a sadder face. At Wedderburn’s words he looked up for a moment like one who turns from meditation to accept some fact on an indifferent plane.

‘Guthrie is alive? Then I suppose I saw no ghost.’

‘You saw the ghost!’

‘Yes. Perhaps your informant didn’t mention me? It would be taken for granted, you know, that the ghost would appear to the minister. What else is the minister paid for, idle havering old fool that he is, than to hold in with such-like daftness and bogle talk?’ The face remained calm, but the words, parodying Scottish village talk at its least beautiful, were startling in their bitterness. Not, I thought, a chronic mood; rather the momentary product of shock. But not, it seemed, the shock of Ranald Guthrie’s continued existence.

Jervie made a gesture at once of weariness and apology. ‘Can we have your strange story,’ he said, ‘– first?’