Lament for a Maker

2

When the speak came down Glen Erchany that Ranald Guthrie had taken his own ungodly life there was little grieving in Kinkeig. A coarse man he was known to be for all his years and gentry, who had lived nigh solitary like a crow as long as most could remember: a recluse, the last minister called him. And there was a story how the minister, years back, had made way up the glen to call on Guthrie and beg a subscription to a work of charity. Some said Guthrie, thinking the minister had come to chide him over the aye-empty great pew in the kirk, fired off a rusty gun at him. And some said he had but let loose the dogs – and some said the rats, for the Erchany rats were more famous in that land than all the rats of Hamlin town. And whether gun or dogs or rats all Kinkeig laughed, for the minister – him that was before Dr Jervie – was ill liked. But if folk disliked the minister they fair hated Ranald Guthrie. And that was unco at a first thinking, for while the minister was ever about folk’s houses, crying out ‘Is any of you indoors?’ and next moment stepping over the door-sill with his havering and expecting a dram for-bye, Guthrie was far enough away and himself plagued none. But folk hated his very name, he was that near-going.

Guthrie was the nearest-going man in all the lands about, and there were some that were near-going enough. Rob Yule, who farmed the fine parks down the Drochet and had more silver than most, would walk behind the cart that brought his meal home from the mill, crying to the lad to go warily; and he had a bit grocer’s shovel and when a handful of meal coupt from the cart he’d be down with his shovel and scraping it up from the glaur. And Fairbairn – him at Glenlippet whose wife was crippled with rheumatism, and such a church-worker that she made him keep a motor so she could be sure always to get to the Dorcas and such – Fairbairn took out the motor licence by the quarter – her being by ten years the older, and him being ever in hope. But neither Rob Yule nor Fairbairn could hold a candle in meanness to Ranald Guthrie – Guthrie who was as well set-up among the gentry as Rob was among the tenant-folk, and who had been a great scholar too, men said, in his day. Of all the dwellers in the glens about it was only of Ranald Guthrie you could honestly say he was as mean as an Englishman. Most in Kinkeig had suffered through him, for he owned the lands far round and his factor, the creature Hardcastle, took kindly to the pinching and screwing he was employed in. When the word got round Kinkeig that Guthrie had done himself a fatal mischief there were many that were right glad and a few that were sorry. The many were glad, hoping surely for a better laird. But the few with a spark of imagination were sorry, for to them the pity came that Guthrie had not thought to take the coarse creature Hardcastle with him, to do his pinching and screwing for him when he was set-up – as syne he’d be sure to be – among the propertied souls in hell. But Hardcastle’s neck was as sound as the day his mother first scraiched at the ill sight of him; and there was that look in his eye – Laurie the policeman said – you could tell he expected to come fair comfortable and well-feathered out of the tragedy. When folk heard there had been a strangeness in Guthrie’s end and that the sheriff himself was coming to Kinkeig to get the truth of it there were tongues enough to prophesy that Hardcastle would soon be gaoled; and when the strangeness grew with the daft gossip of what had befallen the corpse, so that the hanging of young Neil Lindsay was on the lips of every gawpus and bap-faced old body in the parish, there were plenty that would still have Hardcastle involved as well. Old Speirs the stationy, him they called the Thoughtful Citizen because he was ever blethering out of the English newspapers, went about saying that for certain Hardcastle was an accessory before the fact and would be held on suspicion as sure as sure. Full of criminal law was old Speirs ever since he started stocking Edgar Wallace for Dr Jervie’s loons, and would air his views every night at the Arms, with a pack of bothie billies listening to his stite as if it were the wisdom of Solomon. But there – I’m losing my thread again.