Читать книгу The Wind that Shakes the Barley - James William Barke - Страница 15

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The sultry autumn afternoon became oppressive. The sky dulled to darkness and the sun was blotted out. There was a sudden brilliant flash of lightning. Great blobs of rain spattered down on the barley. As if the earth was being torn apart, the thunder came tearing out of the west and crashed down upon Mount Oliphant with colossal reverberations.

William hunched his shoulders against the expected deluge. But it didn’t come. He looked over to the house, huddled below the leaden sky, and thought of Nancy who had such a fear of thunder. He let his gaze wander over the barley rigs, still thick with the thistles he had been thinning. Indeed there were more thistles than barley.

There was another flash of lightning. William trudged along the rig-end using the reversed thistle cutter as a staff.

When he came into the house he found Agnes nursing the baby and Nancy clutching her skirt in terror. William lifted her in his arms and went over to his seat and placed her on his knee.

“Now, now: what has my pet lamb to be afeared of? There is nothing but noise in the thunder: nothing but noise. And a noise cannot hurt anybody. Nothing but noise and a bright light; and the bright light’s far, far away even though it looks so near. Far, far away, my pet, and nothing can touch you when you’re sitting on my knee... And Robin and Gilbert are away down to get the pony shod at the smiddy; and they’ll be safe down there... There’s your mother there; and see! William’s not afeared the least bit...”

His tone was so soft and gentle that Agnes stopped her low crooning and watched him with strange fascination.

Nancy had her head pressed against his breast. She quivered with spasmodic sobs. Soon all her terror was gone. Despite the rolling and crashing of the thunder she went to sleep in her father’s arms.

When the storm had broken and passed over and the sun began to shine in the little window, William wakened her gently and took her by the hand and went out to the end of the barn. There behind them, towards Balsarroch, stood a rainbow in all its unique and harsh splendour.

“There,” said William, “is the promise of Almighty God that never again will He destroy the world.”

As he looked at the rainbow William made up his mind. He went in to Agnes.

“There is nothing else for it, Agnes: I will go down to Mr. Fergusson and tell him that I will be keeping on Mount Oliphant for another six years.”

But William did not see Fergusson. The Laird of Doonholm and ex-provost of the town of Ayr was too ill to see anybody.

William put off the matter of renewing the lease, hoping that his old master would soon be well enough to give the business his attention.

But Fergusson died; and soon thereafter William was summoned to Doonholm to meet a very different person in the shape of one Mr. Ebenezer Elphinstone, an Edinburgh lawyer, who had been appointed to administer the Fergusson estate.

Ebenezer was lanky, wolf-faced and yellow of tooth and complexion. He was brusque and businesslike.

William disliked him intensely. He came back to Mount Oliphant fuming with impotent rage. Agnes never remembered seeing him so ungovernably angry.

He told her how he had been treated. Not as man to man, but as servile debtor to lordly creditor. Mr. Elphinstone had been looking through the late Mr. Fergusson’s books: in future there would be no days of grace either for payment of rent or repayment of loan. All monies would have to be paid on the due dates. If not ...

William did not like this “if not.”

“You would think I was some beggar off the roads, the way he talked to me. But I’ll show him. A grasping ignorant man with the mind and manners of a scrivener. Clever enough maybe at hounding the law on to a poor broken man. But I am not a broken man—and with the help of God never will be. I will wear out the rest of the lease here; but I’ll show him—and all who are like him. Threatened me too! Aye ... threatened me. Said I had a very bad record with regard to my payments. And when I told him I had an arrangement with Mr. Fergusson he had the shame to say that the law took no notice of a dead man’s word unless it was set out in due legal form... But I haven’t been broken yet... I’ll go into Ayr and consult a lawyer...”

But for all his irascible fuming and raging, William feared that the jaws of circumstance were closing in on him.

In anguish of heart and mind and body, Agnes took to her bed and gave birth to her last child.

In the evening William Burns took down the Book and inscribed below the name of John: Had a daughter, Isabella, 27th June, 1771.