Читать книгу The Song in the Green Thorn Tree - James William Barke - Страница 9

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Gilbert, who still slept with Robin, sat in their attic bedroom making preliminary calculations for the farm accounts which he intended to keep in scrupulously accurate detail.

The bedroom was reasonably comfortable. It had a rough wooden floor and the walls were partly lined. It provided adequate head-room since the thatched roof had a very steep rake. And it had the glorious boon of a four-paned glass window in the gable wall.

The window faced towards Machlin and it was possible, through the beech tree branches, to catch a glimpse of the Machlin lum-reek drifting against the background of distant hills.

Through the wooden partition was a smaller bedroom occupied by cousin Bob Allan and Willie Burns. Access to the bedrooms was gained by a wooden stairway set along the inside wall of the kitchen and this made for warmth, privacy and convenience.

Gavin Hamilton had made an excellent job of his alterations to the old farm-house and, by comparison, Lochlea seemed a miserable house. The kitchen and the spence, divided by a full partition, were bigger and brighter and there wasn’t another tenant-farmer in the West who could boast a better house—or poorer soil.

Gilbert set down the principal items in his labour cost. Rob and himself, not counting any perquisites, at £7 per annum. Robert Allan at £5 10/- (Allan would have bed and board, a suiting of hoddin grey, two pairs of brogans, three fair and two fast-day holidays in the year); Nancy and Bell would be entered at £4 10/- each; Isa at £2; Willie would get £4 for his first year and the orra lads, John Blane, David Hutchieson and William Patrick, he set down at 30/-, 25/- and 20/- respectively. As perquisites they had their bed in the stable loft, food, suitings, stockings and footwear.

A wages bill coming up for £40 was a heavy liability—and there would be extra help needed at harvest. They would need to practise a strict economy and everyone would need to pull their weight. For the first five years things would be difficult...

Gilbert put away his papers in a stout wooden box and went downstairs for his supper.

His mother was sitting at her usual place by the fire knitting. The girls were busy sewing (Isa was crimping the linens for the Sabbath visit to Machlin Kirk); John was whittling away with a piece of ash in a half-hearted attempt to fashion a plough-handle; Willie Patrick, bright-eyed and red-cheeked, a stocky little fellow of nine summers, was peeling potatoes for the morrow’s dinner.

“Come on now, Willie: hurry up with the tatties and get across to your bed. If you don’t get to your bed you canna expect to get up in the morning.”

“Aye, Mr. Gilbert. D’you think I’ve enough tatties done noo, Mistress Burns?”

“They’ll dae fine, son—on you go. You can tak’ a farrel o’ bannock wi’ ye.”

Willie put past the potatoes (the big pot was left on the hearth ready for the chain in the morning), grabbed his bannock from the table, and with a civil good-night escaped to the stable loft.

Mrs. Burns looked up from her knitting to Gilbert, who had taken the stool Willie Patrick had vacated.

“I suppose Rab’ll be awa’ doon to Machlin?”

“I suppose so.”

“He hasna taen Willie wi’ him?”

“It’s no’ likely. Robin’s got business in Machlin. I’ll wait a bit for Willie. If Robin’s not back I’ll do the Reading myself.”

“That’s right, son: your father never missed a Reading as long as he was able.”

“Aye ... but there’s nobody I’ve heard can do the prayer like Robin... Put by that stick, John: you’re only making a hash of it.”

“Rab said the last one I made was a’ richt.”

“Well ... if it pleases him...”

Isa placed a freshly-crimped linen bonnet on her head. She peered in the narrow mirror. The action annoyed Gilbert. He rose up.

“I’ll see to the horse,” he said and went out.

As he approached the stable he heard the boys’ shrill laughter. He quickened his pace, threw open the door and shouted: “Quiet there! Get to sleep.”

Back came Robin’s voice.

“Please for laughing, Mr. Gilbert.”

When he came down the ladder he found Gilbert in a black mood.

“Don’t annoy yourself, man. The laddies need a bit o’ fun—they’ll only be young once.”

“You’re spoiling them. How d’you expect me to order them about their work when you’re aye playing the goat wi’ them?”

“Man, Gibby, dinna get notions like that into your head. You’ll win more work out of them wi’ kindness than ever you’ll do wi’ a harsh word.”

“You know best, I suppose. We’re waiting on you for the Reading.”

“Oh, bide your hurry: I’m no’ forgetting. How about the tale of Joseph and his brethren?”

“I wish you’d be serious, Robin.”

“It’s easy to be serious, Gibby: any damned dolt can be serious. Listen, Gibby: I’ve written a whole series of songs ... the best I’ve done. Come on, let’s get the Reading over and I’ll sowth them over to you.”

“I’ve a damned sight more to worry me.”

“You can worry the morn—all day if you like. Listen! When lyart leaves bestrow the yird, or, wavering like the bauckie-bird, bedim cauld Boreas’ blast; when hailstanes drive wi’ bitter skyte, and infant frosts begin to bite in hoary cranreuch drest...”

“Oh, come on then: let’s get on with the Reading.”

The reading of the scripture chapter over, they were back once more in the steading.

“What’s your sang about this time?” asked Gibby.

“It’s a collection of songs and verses—a cantata, I suppose you would describe it. The theme is love and liberty; so Love and Liberty will be the title of it.”

“Let’s hear the verses.”

“Not so fast, Gibby. Jamie Smith and I went into Poosie Nancie’s one night——”

“Poosie Nancie’s! That was an ill place to visit. No decent body would think of venturing in there. The place smells bad enough frae the outside——”

“The inside smells a damned sight worse. You can see the smell. If the place was ever quiet enough, I’ll warrant you could hear it too. But what a life goes on in there, Gibby! Aye, there’s all kinds of riff-raff and scoundrels; blackguards and bitches; and maybe worse. But there’s something else there too, Gibby. The unfortunate are there—the rejects and the misfits o’ human society. Yet, Gibby, that’s no’ the half o’ it. There’s liberty there. A curious kind of liberty: perverse you might think. But liberty for a’ that. Men and women there have chosen that way of life, the gangrel, begging life, because it’s the only way of life that gives them freedom. The freedom to live as they want to live, as their hearts and minds dictate or prompt; and that’s liberty. And liberty is ever a glorious feast. You may say that it’s liberty at its lowest level. I’m not prepared to gainsay that. But liberty has got to begin at some level. You and me, Gibby! What do we ken about liberty? It’s no more to us than a word, an ideal, an aspiration: something we like to dream about... Something we hope to attain some day, somewhere. But the best o’ the gangrels yonder have gotten it here and now, while they live and as they live—and they live it to the hindmost challenge of their blood; and where the spirit calls they allow no cold prudence to restrain...

“And why should they? The bare doup of existence is all there is atween them and death; and the crust of life has to be snatched and eaten in the flight of the moment.”

Gilbert was becoming deeply interested. When Robin was in a rare mood like this, it was entrancing to listen to the quick, nervous flow of his thought. But often the thought passed too quickly into words; and then Gilbert had to interject in order that he might understand.

“But surely, Robin, your gangrels dinna think about liberty as you do? Are you not thinking things for them?”

“Aye! But there you’ve hit it, Gibby my boy! It’s the poet’s task—and privilege—to think things out for folk that canna think them out for themselves.

“But for all that, the gangrels have their thoughts. You can tell that from their songs. Even if they hadna songs you could tell their thoughts from their actions...

“I watched them wi’ Wee Jamie. And God, Gibby, but it was glorious watching. They danced, they sang, they drank, they whored, they fought and quarrelled... They even made speeches! But broken or maimed, or hirpling to the grave they knew how to enjoy life, how to relish the flavour of existence. I even danced wi’ them myself, for you ken how music fires my blood and sends me leaping, light-foot, to the measure——”

“You danced wi’ gangrels!”

“You’ve seen me enjoying a crack wi’ Jean Glover as she passed by on her way to Tarbolton or Killie: would you dance wi’ Jean if you got the chance and the fiddler was snapping sparks frae the thairms?”

“Jean Glover’s a byornar woman, Robin. You would hardly class her as a gangrel.”

“You could class Jean Glover as a thief and a whore. She tells me she’s seen a wheen o’ the correction-houses i’ the West here for being no less... But it’s no’ how folks are classed by their supposed betters that matters: it’s what folk are.”

“I understand that fine; but what has all this to do wi’ your cantata?”

“Just this, Gibby. Out o’ the lowin fire o’ life that was blazing on the hob o’ Poosie Nancie’s, I caught the red-hot embers of the thought that kindled it—Love and Liberty! I’ve blown the embers into glowing words and music so that they who can read and can sing may kindle the fire o’ love and liberty in themselves.”

“That’s the greatest idea you’ve ever had, Robin. I doubt if you could have a greater. Come on! I’m impatient to hear what you’ve made of it all.”

“Listen then! Ae night at e’en a merry core o’ randie, gangrel bodies in Poosie Nancie’s held the splore, to drink their orra duddies: wi’ quaffing and laughing they ranted an’ they sang, wi’ jumping an’ thumping the vera girdle rang.

“First, niest the fire, in auld red rags ane sat, weel braced wi’ mealy bags and knapsack a’ in order; his doxy lay within his arm; wi’ usquebae an’ blankets warm, she blinket on her sodger. An’ aye he gies the tozie drab the tither skelpin kiss, while she held up her greedy gab just like an aumous dish: ilk smack still did crack still like ony cadger’s whup; then, swaggering an’ staggering, he roared this ditty up:—

“And you ken the tune o’ this ditty as well as I do: Soldier’s Joy.

“I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, and show my cuts and scars wherever I come: this here was for a wench, and that other in a trench when welcoming the French at the sound of the drum.

“Of course, Gibby: wi’ a lal de daudle chorus. And note how the three crotchets o’ the same note—dum, dum, dum—fit the sound ‘of the drum.’ Then back on to the verse again.

“My prenticeship I past, where my leader breathed his last, when the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram; and I servèd out my trade when the gallant game was played, and the Moro low was laid at the sound of the drum.

“The castle o’ El Moro, Gibby, Santiago de Cuba, stormed in ’sixty-two.

“I lastly was with Curtis among the floating batt’ries, and there I left for witness an arm and a limb; yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me I’d clatter on my stumps at the sound of the drum.

“And now, tho’ I must beg with a wooden arm and leg and many a tattered rag hanging over my bum, I’m as happy with my wallet, my bottle and my callet as when I used in scarlet to follow a drum.

“What tho’ with hoary locks I must stand the winter shocks, beneath the woods and rocks oftentimes for a home? When the t’other bag I sell, and the t’other bottle tell, I could meet a troop of Hell at the sound of a drum.

“He ended; and the kebars sheuk aboon the chorus roar; while frighted rattons backward leuk, an’ seek the benmost bore: a fairy fiddler frae the neuk, he skirled out Encore! But up arose the martial chuck, an’ laid the loud uproar.

“And now, Gibby, for a great song sung by the Martial Chuck to that haunting melody—for it is something more than a tune—Sodger Laddie! I confess it’s a melody that aye brings the tear to my eye. And I’ve written words worthy, I think, o’ the lilt. The Martial Chuck was there in Poosie’s. A great figure of a woman: even in the wreck of her days. A woman, grey-haired and hag-worn though she was, who still carried herself with pride and spoke with greater pride of how she had been born in the barracks and how, of all the loves she had ever known—and her unashamed confession was that she’d kenned many—her greatest and fondest love would ever be her sodger laddie—or maybe ony sodger laddie!

“You might think, Gibby, as I thought when I first clapped eyes on her, that it was sad to see such a woman reduced to such straits and such company. But damn the fear! She didna feel degraded and she didna feel sorry for herself, and she was far from bewailing her lot. I’m only sorry now that I didna get more o’ her story. There were a thousand love songs in that woman, for I could well believe that she had had a thousand lovers. She must have loved many a son of Mars, for her features bore the ravaged traces o’ Venus’s battlefield... Ah! but a glorious and gallant old warrior-dame, the Martial Chuck. Listen to her song.

“I once was a maid, tho’ I cannot tell when, and still my delight is in proper young men. Someone of a troop of dragoons was my daddy: no wonder I’m fond of a sodger laddie!”

Gilbert had long ceased to be aware of time. He seemed to tread a timeless air as he dandered slowly by his brother’s side listening to him chanting the words in a soft cadence to the tune’s wistful measure. He could see the Martial Chuck almost as clearly as Robin had seen her; and he thrilled to her tale though he knew only too well that had he seen her for himself, and not as she was transformed by Robin’s genius, he would probably not have given her another glance.

And even as he listened enraptured, Gilbert marvelled at this strange gift of genius that had somehow been so richly bestowed on his brother. No wonder he could so transform everyday creatures when he transformed himself in the process. What a transformation there was from the man who, but two hours ago, had been sky-larking with the bits of orra laddies in the stable loft!

But there he was at his cantata again—the song about the sailor without any ears...

They had walked so far that when they saw the lights glowing in the small windows of the Tarbolton buts and bens they knew it was time to retrace their steps. Till now, they hadn’t been conscious of the distance they had travelled.

As it was, Robin was on his last verse.

“This is the grand final chorus, Gibby. See the smoking bowl before us! Mark our jovial, ragged ring! Round and round take up the chorus, and in raptures let us sing: A fig for those by law protected! Liberty’s a glorious feast. Courts for cowards were erected: churches built to please the priest!”

“You’ll get hung for that, Robin.”

“Damn the fear! That’s how to write, Gibby; that’s how to sing! If that doesn’t make the blood leap in your veins you should give up living. Come on, man: what d’you think? I know it’s good: let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

“Robin ... I’ve told you before ... you’re a genius ... God Almighty there’s never been stuff written like that. How do you do it?”

“How? I don’t know, Gibby. It comes to me... Oh, there’s plenty to do to take off the rough edges ... that’ll come: I may work on this cantata for years... It’s when the mood’s on me... I’m free now to say what I like: to sing like the lark. There’s nothing to hold me back now... Aye, and I work the better for this, Gibby: twice as well.”

“Aye ... you’ve worked well. Bob Allan told me the other day that he was sure you shoved the plough harder than the pownies drew it.”

“To hell: I wouldna see the brutes in my gait when the mood’s on me. It’ll be a bad day for you, Gibby, when I stop my verses.”

“I’m sorry, Robin, if I sometimes speak a bit harsh——”

“Ah, for Godsake: maybe somebody’s got to speak wi’ authority. I’ll leave that to you: I’ve been doing that since ever we came here. When they ask me: ‘Will I do this or that’ I say: ‘You’ll better see my brother.’”

“So I’ve noticed... I wonder, Robin, if we’re going to pull through here?”

“Of course we are. As long as we keep our health and strength, what’s to hinder us?”

“Nothing, I suppose.”

“Aye... But maybe like me you get a cold shiver sometimes? Whenever things begin to go well you’re always wondering when Fate’s coming along to dang you down—is that it?”

“Something like that. I canna escape into poetry like you.”

“Escape? Maybe that’s what it is. But it’s not a foolish escape, Gibby. If I could only believe that one day I could win through to print—guid black print... But maybe that’s not to be... And yet when I think on Bob Fergusson...”

“Still, Robin ... poetry’s a chancy thing; and a man never got his bread by it. We’ve set our hand to the plough here on Mossgiel——”

“Right! I’ll never go back on that. I’ll not let the verses run away with my sense. I made the resolution when I came here that I would say farewell to the muse. Maybe that was a bit drastic. Damnit, man, I feel the better of writing. I get a strength by it. I’ve been more intoxicated with my own thoughts than ever I have been with Tarbolton nappy or Pigeon Johnnie’s Kilbagie...”

“You havena had much Kilbagie?”

“No... I’ve little stomach for hard drinking, Gibby.”

“And we’ve less money.”

“I can enjoy a pint of ale ... and maybe an odd drop o’ Kilbagie. But once I go over that my stomach revolts... The truth is, Gibby—though I know you don’t believe me—I don’t like drinking. And yet it’s only in the howff that folk can forget the bluidy slavery o’ their days—and give vent to their free thoughts. And if some o’ them have to swallow a good gill or two o’ Kilbagie afore they thaw—well, that’s how it is. There’s no good in thinking that we can live here like hermits, Gibby, even though we may have to work like galley slaves. You’ll need to come down to Machlin and get acquaint with some of the lads there. Aye, and some of the lassies too. Wee Smith has a fine-looking sister... But, damnit, Machlin’s full of fine hizzies as you’ve seen at the kirk—a damned sight better nor Tarbolton.”

“We’ll not be in any position to get married for a long time, Robin—mind that.”

“Mind? Am I ever likely to forget? But that’s no reason for denying yourself female company. You see what’s happened to our own sisters...”

“Are you still keeping up with Lizzie Paton?”

“I see her back and forwards ... how?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Oh?”

“Just wondering... I’ve said nothing and I mean nothing.”

“I’ve nothing to hide. I like Betty and she was a damned good lass to us in Lochlea.”

“I never said she wasn’t.”

They lapsed into silence.

Robin was worried about Gilbert’s reference to Lizzie Paton. He had seen quite a lot of Lizzie recently and he was sure no one had seen them. Now he was wondering how much the canny Gilbert knew.

There had been times when he had worried about Lizzie. As long as William Burns had lived they had not consummated their love. But once he had got settled into Mossgiel there had been no cause for restraint; and consummation had taken place.

It was difficult to analyse the peculiar sense of freedom he felt now that his father was dead, now that he was head of the house and answerable only to himself for his actions. But that he felt free in a way he had never felt was not to be denied. His relationship with Lizzie was an earnest of this new sense of freedom.

And now that he had got over the first flush of writing his cantata on Love and Liberty he was conscious of a surge of spiritual strength.

Freedom and strength were flowing in him; whether he ploughed the sour acres of Mossgiel or broke stones by the roadside it mattered not. He had a world to conquer; and he would conquer it or die in the attempt.

The world that opened to him now was the poet’s world, the world of Nature and of Man awaiting artistic recreation—even as he had recreated the world of Poosie Nancie’s howff.

There had been moments when he had doubted his powers though he had never doubted his vision. Now he doubted neither.

He hadn’t been deceiving Gilbert when he had said he would work. He would work as he had never worked—harder than he had worked after his failure at Irvine. But he would work at his poetry too. He would turn everything he saw and felt into poetry. And he would enjoy himself in the process.

He would succeed. He would show Gilbert, show his mother, show Lizzie Paton and John Rankine and Willie Muir ... aye, and Gavin Hamilton and his good friends in Ayr ... show all of them the real Rab Burns that had too often been diffident and shy and self-doubting—deferring always to those who were older and supposedly better learned. There was more than one light hiding under his bushel... Hadn’t he held his own and more than his own in his debates with Gavin Hamilton and Doctor John MacKenzie? He had out-talked them, out-argued them in politics, religion, philosophy and literature. And they knew it. Smith and Richmond were fine fellows and the best of cronies—but he could wind the two of them round his pinkie—and they knew it. Oh, he wasn’t conceited about it. He had a better brain than any of them: why should he make any attempt to deny this to himself?

Aye, and he could win any lass he set his heart on. Only now he was beginning to comprehend all he had learned in the arms of Jean Glover. He had a way with the lassies; and there was no sense in denying this either.

No good in denying the fact that women meant as much to him as food and shelter. He was a man now. It was time for him to play a man’s part.

Yes: life was good no matter what kind of jad fortune turned out to be. He would only live once: so he would make the most of it.

Strange, though, how he hadn’t really fallen in love with a lass. He could love them all. But was this normal? Maybe he had loved Jean Gardner: maybe Annie Rankine. No ... for a time he’d loved Jean Gardner; but Jean meant nothing to him now: so his love for her couldn’t have been very deep. Annie Rankine? He would always have a warm side to Annie. And yet he had no twinge of regret that Annie was getting married to some far-out relation and would presently be settling down as Mrs. John Merry in the change-house at New Cumnock. Good luck to her—she was one in ten thousand...

Maybe some day his heart would tell him when he had met the woman he would love beyond all other women? John Rankine had said his heart would tell him. Maybe John Rankine would be proved right in this as he had so often proved right...

Meantime there was Betty Paton; kind sweet sonsy Bess! with a body that warmed the blood and a heart that was as kindly and warm as it was innocent of guile.

Betty! But already there was Lizzie Miller. And Lizzie beckoned in a different way from Betty.

Ah, but damnit, they were all different—and all desirable. And he desired them all.

Was love something to be chained to one woman—and for all time? Could love be real love and confine itself to one human heart? Was not love an emotion that grew on what it fed?

And what of the douce ones who sneered at this as mere libertinism? To the devil with them! Senseless asses, the lot of them. Solomon, the wisest man in the old world, had loved the lassies. Hence his wisdom...

When a man had done his day’s darg and the sun went down into the west and the gloaming-hour was stealing over the land, what more natural than a man should seek out a maid to take to his bosom? That was blood drawing to blood...

But not blood alone. A man had a brain as well as a coursing of red blood. And there were things you could say to a lass in the canny hour of evening you could say to no other being. Tender passionate words came to a man then—and they had to be said or whispered as much as any other words that came to the tongue.

Life ranged from the midden-heap to the silent moon and back again. The blood hammered and pulsed on the gates of the brain and the brain fired the blood and sent it surging through the body. Then the body sent it back again more urgent, more clamant than ever till there was only one end to the struggle—and the struggle ended in a woman’s arms: ended, began, and ended and began all over again. Thus it had been in Eden’s bonnie yard and thus it had been down the long trail of history ... and it would be so to the end.

Of course that’s how it had always been and that’s how it was now. Babylon or Jerusalem; the well of Machlin or the well of Bethsheba. The daughters of Jerusalem or the daughters of Coila.

Robin was glad he was achieving clarity on these matters: a clarity glowing with conviction. Where before he had known hesitation he was now bold in his certainty. And this certainty and conviction gave him boundless strength and unlimited mental energy.

Why! he had spun out the essential web of Love and Liberty in a day’s ploughing and got it down on paper in a couple of nights’ writing! True, there were thoughts there that had lain in his mind since the days as a boy on Mount Oliphant he had watched the beggars in their flapping rags tramping bare-footed the dusty summer loanings. But it had taken that night with Smith in Poosie Nancie’s to bring it all forth in a gushing of words and music.

It was but three months since his father had been laid in Alloway Kirkyard. Only a few days ago he had been boasting how he had laid poetry aside, how he never read any books but farming ones. And here he was with a set of verses that made everything he had written look like the babblings of a bairn.

As they entered the brooding courtyard of Mossgiel and his collie came bounding to meet him, Robin said:

“I’m determined on being a good farmer, Gibby. And I’m determined on being a good poet.”

“You’re both already, Robin. I’ve been thinking: coming along the road. I’ve been thinking you’ve got gifts Fergusson never had—and Allan Ramsay wasn’t fit to lick Fergie’s shoon. And I’ve been thinking Shenstone and Beattie and Pope are no’ worth bothering about. I’ve been thinking a lot of things, Robin. I’ve seen a change come over you since we left Lochlea——”

“Since we buried William Burns?”

“Aye... You and I have had our words, Robin. Sometimes I just didna see the road you were travelling... After all, Robin, I have my own road to travel and I’ll have to travel it my own way. But I’ve said it afore; and if I’m saying it again it’s because I’ve more conviction now than ever I had. You’re a great poet, Robin ... and I’m proud o’ you. And if there’s a better farmer for your age in Kyle or Cunninghame I’ve yet to hear about him. And I’m no’ forgetting that, but for you, we’d no’ be in Mossgiel the night. God alone knows where we’d have been... I’m saying all this, Robin, because I know you and me’s no’ always going to see eye to eye.”

“How’s that?”

“Because you’re you and I’m me. Only I want you to mind that though we do differ about many things, below it all I’m proud you’re my brother.”

“Well ... Gibby: you’ve got me speechless. But, damnit man, what have I done to deserve all this?”

“Plenty. But I’ve been thinking—and I had to speak while I had the courage.”

“Courage?”

“Aye: you’re no’ an easy man to speak to, Robin.”

“Me?”

“You, Robin. When you get your brows down I’d sooner meet wi’ Auld Nick. You might as well face that, Robin, and it’ll maybe save a lot o’ misunderstanding later on. Don’t think you’re an easy man to get on with. You see, very often your thoughts are no’ with us. And when they’re no’ it would be worth anybody’s life to try and find out where they were. Do you know there’s weeks on end you never speak to your mother?”

“Hardly that ... but often there’s nothing much to talk about. Mother’s no’ a talkative woman.”

“No? She can talk plenty. However, I’ve had my say, Robin—said more than I ever meant to say. But ... I’m glad I said it.”

“Thanks, Gibby: so am I. What you’ve said’s fully interesting: aye, fully interesting. Away up to bed: I’ll take the dog a turn to the top of the ridge: I’ve a notion to see the moon coming up over the moors.”