Читать книгу Land Of The Leal - James Barke - Страница 11

After the farmers (though they in turn were in the grip of the landlords) the church was the most dominating force in the land. But church services were short. Owing to the long distances the farmers and their labourers had to travel, and since many of them could only be spared with difficulty from the dairy farms where work differed little on the Sabbath from the weekdays, there was only one service: at eleven o’clock in the morning. The service seldom lasted more than an hour.

The Reverend John Ross was the parish minister in Kirkcolm and his two leading elders were Sam MacKitteroch, the schoolmaster, and Andrew Ramsay, the drystone dyker.

In the hands of this trio the church declined in influence and authority – although, when prompted or bullied by the Laird of Kirkcolm, Sir Thomas MacCready, Mr. Ross could exercise his authority.

But it was not religion so much as common intellectual interest that bonded the three in friendship.

The Reverend John always preached a thorough-going sermon suitably shot through with fire and brimstone. He dealt largely with the Devil and always spoke with something like fervour about Hell. The threat of eternal damnation was the thread of all his discourses.

In all this the Reverend John was a firm believer. Yet the moment the service was over and the congregation had departed, he hung up his beliefs with his sorely worn robes. He had done his duty: and a man – even of God – can do no more. In the vestry he was joined by Sam and Andrew. After the collection was counted, pipes were lit, the bottle was produced and, in winter, they gathered round the fire.

It was a unique gathering. The afternoon was theirs and they guarded the privilege jealously. For years now they had never missed their Sunday afternoon’s foregathering in the vestry.

On this particular Sabbath they had much to discuss. As the result of the storm that had wrecked The Dolphin, two steamers had been wrecked near Corsewall Point. In addition to this there was a fresh crop of scandals to discuss. The rise in the illegitimate birth-rate was causing some concern to Sir Thomas and he had been chiding the minister.

The Reverend John, who was a powerful stocky-built man with a cherubic countenance, introduced the less important topic first.

‘That makes the third illegitimate born this week.’

Andrew Ramsay nodded gravely.

Sam MacKitteroch coughed.

‘We had a brave and early spring, John: and that always has an effect on young blood. They’re nearly all first-borns – or I’m gravely mistaken.’

‘And now that MacCosh is leading the entire we can look for nocht else.’

The Reverend John nodded gravely.

‘Still Andra: you wouldn’t expect that to be the prime source?’

‘Well, you couldn’t just say no, John.’

‘And they’re all serving lassies: it’s bound to give a parent a sore heart.’

Andrew Ramsay thought of his own daughters. He wondered how long he might be spared such domestic humiliation. Two of them were courting. It would probably be easy enough to get them married. But if not—? He poured himself a large whisky and listened for a moment to the rain drumming on the high vestry window. It was a grand day to be indoors: their thoughts should flow pleasantly.

Though neither of them were of a licentious turn of mind they liked to discuss, in a masculine way, the details of adultery and fornication in the parish.

The Reverend John, though a bachelor, kept a good-looking serving lass. The long winter nights in the manse were dreary enough even with the additional comfort and companionship of a woman. The trouble with the Reverend John was that he did not enjoy the companionship of women. He loved books and drink. He realised that he should never have taken up the ministry for his forthright opinions on certain matters of politics did not ensure his popularity with the influential members of his congregation. He felt himslf held in uncomfortable restraint. Only with his colleagues did he unburden himself.

To-day he was rather testy on the adulterous excesses of his parishioners. He would require to make visits and be stern and full of righteous wrath. And he would much rather be with his Latin poets. Strangely enough he was an excellent Latin scholar. He had just managed to pass at college. It was not till he had settled down in the manse and had decided against marriage that he developed a passion for classical literature. But withal he remained a misfit. He disliked the world into which he had been born. He disliked the Galloway farmers for their greed and their ignorance: he disliked their labourers for their ignorance and wretched poverty. There was nothing he could do in his world but preach and censure. There was little he could praise. Politically he tended towards radicalism. But his radicalism was sterile. He had no faith in the people: he had no faith in the government. But he was always ready in the secrecy of the vestry to champion the cause of any one who was spirited enough to enter the lists against authority.

Samuel MacKitteroch was no great Latinist: nor was he a scholar in any strict sense. He had once been the captain of a trading schooner. But a painful accident in which both his legs had been broken and carelessly set rendered him unfit for sea life. So he had retired to his native villlage and set up as schoolmaster.

The school was held in an old barn of John MacMeechan’s. His fees consisted of a peat which each scholar brought him. The laird and a few of the farmers contributed a small sum of money towards his expenses for he taught the farmers’ sons to read and write and apply the science of numbers to their daily work.

It was Sam MacKitteroch and not John Ross who taught the children the Shorter Catechism and instructed them in the ways of the Lord. But his schoolmastering was a thankless job. Pupils came when they liked and went when they liked: he had no control or authority over them. He realised the farmers needed their labour and that their parents needed the few coppers they earned. Because of this Sam too was embittered and disillusioned. His great fear was war. He preached in season and out of season the inevitability of war. Some day the coloured races would rise up and the white man would be annihilated. His sailing had brought him in contact with the black and yellow races and he had seen how the white man treated them. They were robbed and beaten … but there would be a day of retribution …

Andrew Ramsay was the wisest and sanest man of the three. But he was the least discreet. He could not make his peace with authority whether farmer or laird. He considered he was better than either. But in the end they had broken him as they had broken his father.

His father, David Ramsay, had been a stone-mason of no mean ability: but he had been of a quarrelsome independent disposition. He had quarrelled violently with the laird over the building of a new house and had finally destroyed what he had begun of the house because the laird thought he knew better than the mason as to how the work should proceed. But David Ramsay would not yield and he lost more money than he could afford. He had ended his days as a dry-stone dyker – a trade he had passed on to his son.

The son was as excellent a craftsman as his father but he had also inherited his father’s temperment. He liked, above all, to be his own master: least of all did he like the interference of ignorant and greedy farmers.

An unhappy marriage had not eased his lot and early in life he had come to look upon drink as the only solace in a mean and hard-bitten world. But he was a keen political thinker, much more realist in his thought than either of his companions.

Their common tragedy was drink: it was drink that finally caused them to acquiesce in their lot. It was drink that enabled them to live from one week-end to another.

The parish of Kirkcolm was more advanced than the parishes of Stoneykirk and Kirkmaiden. Kirkcolm was nearer the Port of Stranraer, nearer the comings and goings of the civilised world. Many men went to sea from the district – even if few returned to settle down. But relatively they were isolated and backward. For men of any spirit there was little to lighten the endless round of monotonous days.

And so the curious ceremony in the church vestry had come to be established and accepted.

The routine seldom varied. First they discussed the gossip of the parish and then they proceeded to affairs of state – basing their discussions on the current issue of the North British Daily Mail – a Scottish news-sheet of Radical tendencies.

But however the discussion went, the drink never ceased to go round: so that after an hour’s hard drinking they were more or less bemused. It was at this stage that Andrew Ramsay was liable to become eloquent. At this stage his respect for John Ross’s cloth sunk very low.

The Reverend John became more and more lugubrious as he drank. He found pleasure in his depression. His troubles became less personal: took on a more universal aspect.

As for Sam MacKitteroch, being much the oldest member, he quickly reacted to the potency of the spirit and contented himself with occasional – and sometimes witty – interjections.

As the three of them sat looking into the bright vestry fire the rain drummed and battered on the long narrow window and spattered in the wide chimney; the wind moaned and sighed round the high gables of the small grey stone church and groaned among the grey stones in the surrounding church-yard. The grey daylight was already fading over the rain-sodden land, blending in dismal harmony with the restless grey heaving of the waters of Loch Ryan. Inside the vestry the darkness hung softly in the corners and from the oaken roof tree. The shadows crept ever nearer the fire, whose dancing light, seen across the men’s faces, served to heighten their effect and significance. The face of the minister glowed red and high-lights glistened on his shiny cheeks. Andrew’s face seemed heavy and deeply lined though his greying beard seemed black and lustrous as a youth’s. Old Sam’s face caught in slightly drunken profile seemed suffused with a deep inward saintly spirituality. His face was wrinkled and kindly. His snow-white beard gave him that final touch of other-worldly reverence.

And then the schoolmaster raised his glass of whisky, exposing his yellow stumps of teeth for a moment before draining it off.

‘You don’t think these iron ships are less safe than the wooden ones, Andra?’

Andrew shook his head slowly.

‘No: the steam engined iron ship will drive the wooden barques and schooners off the sea. Don’t you agree, Sam?’

‘The sailing days are far from finished, Andra. But the steam boat’s quicker even if she’s dirtier and more uncomfortable. What does it matter any the ways o’t? The owners’ll send men to sea in anything nowadays providing they’re well covered with insurance. There’s many a ship they send out in the hope she’ll never reach port.’

‘You’ve said it, Sam. Human life’s cheap nowadays. I’m all for progress and invention. But man should come before progress. The farmers have turned men into beasts o’ burden. Life was hard enough, God knows, when the men had their bit o’ land. But he was his own master as well as his own servant. My father often told me of the common land there was here not so many years back. You ken fine how cattle were grazed on what is now Sir Thomas’s Park. It was a sad day for Scotland and a sad day for Galloway when the peasants were robbed of their land. I tell you, when the folk lost the right to live on the land they lost their liberty and independence.’

‘Fine do we know that, Andra. But is the age of machinery that’s upon us now going to improve this?’

‘John: the industrialists could never have brought their schemes to anything if they hadn’t cleared the folk off the land first. The folk lost their power to live. It was only then that they got them submitted to their slavery – just as the farmers have enslaved the folk here.’

‘And yet they seem to submit to their slavery as you call it without protest.’

‘Aye … but the day of reckoning will come and it will be a day when the tyrant will wish he had never been born.’

‘You are anticipating the Day of Judgment, Andra.’

‘There’s another day for that. Do you think folk will submit forever to be driven like beasts and worse than they dare drive any beast? Who’s John MacMeechan that my bairns should sweat their blood out for him?’

‘John MacMeechan will roast in Hell yet, never fear, Andra.’

‘Maybe, John: but I’d rather see him getting a taste of roasting before he gets there. And he’ll get it. He’s no’ out o’ this world yet. Folks are beginning to get their eyes opened. I see in the Mail that the jail’s packed out in Greenock because the sailors refuse to sail in their coffin ships. That spirit will spread. It’ll spread all over the world till Black man, White man. Red man and Yellow man throw the tyrants off their backs. Maybe I’ll never live to see the day. But I know that day will come just as Rabbie knew that day would come. And if Rabbie could sing that the day was coming yet for a’ that, I’d be a coward to deny his words.’

But Sam MacKitteroch shook his ancient head. He knew the Black man and the Yellow man.

‘The coloured races will never unite with the white races, Andra. It’s the heathen Chinese that’ll rule the world yet. The heathen in his blindness may bow down to wood and stone; but he never forgets … never forgets. There’ll be a bloody war one of these days, the like of which the world has never seen and will never see again.’

The glasses were filled and once again silence brooded heavily in the vestry. Each was busy with his own thoughts – and all their thoughts were gloomy.

The Reverend John’s were gloomiest of all. Rome had seen its day of splendour and Rome had seen that splendour laid in the dust. The savage Barbarians had descended in their furious thousands eager for blood and vengeance and they had smashed the idols from their pedestals and pulled the pillars from the temples. And darkness and ignorance and cruelty had come upon the earth and for many long years Christendom had travailed in pain and misery. And then Jehovah had caused the darkness and the Middle Ages to pass away before the light of His word.

But to what purpose? Men had again turned and embraced the darkness of sin and lust and cruelty. Again the tyrant was mighty in the land worshipping his iron engines in place of the Golden Calf, crushing the life from the fatherless child and showing no mercy to the defenceless widow.

It was indeed a black and cruel world. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe the heathen yellow hordes would rise and swarm the earth hungry as a plague of locusts, savage as a pack of wolves. And darkness once more would come upon the earth and the voice of the Lord would be heard afar off crying: ‘Woe unto them that will not worship Me nor obey My commandments.’

And yet: was there not also something in what Andra believed? That men would one day rise in their wrath and destroy even as they had been destroyed?

But either way the vision was a gloomy one for the Reverend John Ross and the dread of being alone with his thoughts in the stillness and gloom of the Sabbath night gnawed at his vitals. His hand went out unsteadily for the bottle. Auld Jamie, the beadle, would come only too soon.

And indeed old James the beadle was already on his way, his oilskin cape draped round his hunched shoulders. He envied the minister and his companions their drunken oblivion on such a night. But his envy was mild and lacked all bitterness. He had assisted them home every Sunday now for over fifteen years. No one thought much of it; drunkenness was not a social crime.

It was not every Sabbath, of course, that his services were required to assist the minister and the elders home. As the drink was the minister’s, he was usually the worst. After he was assisted across to the manse, old James saw to Sam MacKitteroch who lived in a crude but-and-ben off the straggling village street – if the winding cart track that served the handful of oddly placed houses could be described as a street.

Andrew Ramsay could usually manage home himself – even if he slept off some of his liquor in somebody’s peat stack on the journey.

Old James entered the portal of the Auld Kirk and shook the rain from his tweed cap. It was a sair night. The portal was dark and cold but it did provide shelter from the rain. The darkness was over the land – a wet impenetrable darkness. Only a small square of light shone from the kitchen window of the manse. It was too dark to see the light from Achgammie farmhouse – but maybe it wasn’t the darkness so much as the light would be dim and feeble. For though the lighting there was by tallow candles, John MacMeechan in his Presbyterian carefulness never allowed more than one candle to be lit at a time.

But James had known of clear nights when that light had been seen from the door of the Auld Kirk and his eye went in that direction.

Aye: it was a sair night. And a sair day it would be in the fields to-morrow. He was thankful that his old age and bent spine prevented him using the flails now. To-morrow there would be a threshing in the barn at Achgammie and the chaff and the dust would be flying and making the air a pain in the lungs causing a man to cough and spit and hoast for days afterwards.

At the thought, old James’s tongue licked the back of his odd stumps of black-green teeth. He cocked his head towards the vestry door. But there was still a faint drowse of talk. He would need to wait a bit yet before he got his dram …

He forked out his stump of clay pipe. Aye, aye: a sair night – but a grand night to be drunk in.

Inside the vestry, consciousness of the night had long vanished. Listening to Andrew Ramsay’s drunken eloquence – an eloquence he half envied – John Ross came to forget his own black thoughts. But a strange idea began to take possession of his mind. The idea had come to him often before – but vaguely, shrouded in the vapours of liquor. Now the idea took firmer shape. What would happen if he sold himself to the Devil? The thought could not have come to maturity, could not have developed in his sober mind, but drunk, it had possibilities.

Andrew Ramsay saw that they had paid no heed to him. This would not have concerned him had he not been so uncomfortably sober while they seemed so comfortably drunk. He turned his head and looked at the bottle on the table: it was almost empty: barely a dram left for auld Jamie. And the fire was burning low. Ah well: time he was pushing away home. The session had not been as successful as it might have been.

He rose stiffly from his chair.

‘Good-night, John. Good-night, Sam: it’s time I was home. Will I send auld Jamie in?’

But John Ross shook his head. He could not escape from the dark passages of his thought process. Sam MacKitteroch was beginning to snore.

Andrew Ramsay spoke a few words to the beadle and stepped out into the rain and darkness. The light from the manse window was very low. But he scarcely required its guidance. He knew his way by instinct.

There was no love in his home-going. His wife would be ailing and complaining; the house would be wearisome with the burden of his family; his sons brought him no joy; he could not converse with them. What wit they might have had had been dulled and blunted by their labour on the Achgammie fields. He regretted that circumstance had compelled them to go into the world without education for without knowledge they would be slaves to the land and the men who owned the land all the days of their lives.

What a difference there was in the life he now lived from what he had imagined in his youth and even in the first days of marriage!

His step became slower on the road. It was nothing but sheer necessity, the compulsion of food and shelter that drove him towards the Suie. And yet, as he thought of his family, there was one touch of promise – his youngest son. He thought he recognised about the lad David a suggestion of brightness and alertness he had not seen in his other children, with the exception of Richard who was at sea.

Only the thought of David, his youngest born, brought Andrew Ramsay any satisfaction on his way through the Sabbath night of darkness and rain. But when at last he came within sight of his kitchen window he found himself warming to it: for the wind coming in from the loch was biting and cold and the sough of it in the darkness was unspeakably lonely.