Читать книгу The Grampian Quartet - Nan Shepherd - Страница 29

Martha went to the Graduation. She had intended to go, and though the sap and savour were gone from every avocation and she was indifferent as to how she spent the days, it was easier to drift on the stream of former intentions than to force herself to new. Besides, Harrie Nevin was graduating, with Honours in English Language and Literature. She realized with a shock how little she had seen of Harrie recently and how seldom she had visited her thoughts. Of course she must see Harrie capped! But it was a stimulated interest.

For a time she continued to sleep out of doors, though there was no joy in the changing lights or the many voices of the country. She could no longer surrender herself and be lost in the world’s loveliness. She would as willingly have slept in the bedroom beside Madge; she was quite indifferent to where she slept, and it was easier to stay in the bedroom; but that would have provoked comment and question. Anything rather than that! But she was not sorry when the weather broke and she was compelled to stay within.

At the turn of July there was already a hint of autumn. The skies were heavy grey; everything closed in unexpectedly; the wind blustered and squalls of rain broke upon the country, laying the corn in patches. The hips and rowan berries were dull brown that sharpened every day. Soon, the barley was russet. An antrin elm-leaf yellowed. Birds gathered; suddenly on a still day a tree would heave and reeshle with their movement, a flock dart out and swoop, to settle black and serried on the telegraph wires; and after a little rise again in a flock and disappear within the tree. In the wood and among the grasses gossamers floated, tantalizing the face, invisible, but flaring as they caught the sun like burnished ropes of light. Moors and hillsides, railway cuttings and banks beside the roads, glowed with the purple of heather. In a blaze of sun its scent rose on the air and bees droned and hummed above the blossom. Strong showers dashed the sun and the scent. Hairst began. They were cutting the barley. Scythes were out and the laid patches cut patiently by hand. Sometimes a whole field had been devastated, and through the yellow of the heads there gleamed the pink of exposed stalks. Winds rose and dried the grain. Stooks covered the fields. Nights grew longer and sharper. One morning the nasturtiums and potato tops were black. Leaves floated down. At every gust a light rain of preens blew through the firwood. The bracken and the birches turned golden and golden trails swayed from the laburnum trees, a foolish senile mimicry of their summer decoration. Gales brandished the half-denuded boughs and whirled the leaves in madcap companies about the roads. The whole world sounded. A roaring and a rustle and a creak was everywhere; and dust and dead leaves eddied in the gateways.

But long ere these things Martha’s path had turned. Late in August she was appointed to a school at Slack of Mar, some ten miles across country towards the Hill o’ Fare. There being no direct conveyance, it was not so near that she could stay at home, though not so far but that at weekends she could cycle back and fore. From Monday morning till Friday night, and later when the nights grew longer and darker from Sunday night till Saturday morning, she lodged in a cottage near the school.

‘A gey quaet missy − terrible keep-yersel’-tae-yersel-kin’,’ the folk around said of the new teacher. The other teachers in the school tried to draw her out, but she refused their advances. She was thankful to be left alone. Her inner life was too turbulent, too riotous, and absorbed her energies too fully to leave much possibility of interest in the external world.

Martha had discovered that she was by no means done with passion. The numbness of exhaustion worn off, she found herself delivered again to its power. She let herself go to it. Only in its flame did she feel herself alive. She luxuriated even in the black depths of pain to which her craving surrendered her. They were the earnest of an intensity of life beside which all else in the world was mean and flat. She lived for the incidence of those cyclones of desire that lifted her and drove her far beyond herself, to dash her back bruised, her very flesh aching as though she had been trampled. There were times when she felt the presence of Luke so close and vivid that the things she touched with her hands and saw with her eyes were as shadows. These were the times when she had been accustomed to pour herself out for him. Since the day when, dripping wet from the pelt of rain that had overtaken her, she had crouched on her bedroom floor and felt for the first time in absence of her spirit in immediate communion with his, she had satisfied by this means love’s imperative demand to give. Her life had seemed to pass out from her and be received in his.

But love’s imperative demand was now to take. She wanted Luke, his presence, his life, his laughing vitality; and it seemed to her, crouching mute upon the floor with the mood upon her, that reaching him she could draw his very life away and take it for her own. ‘I mustn’t. I mustn’t,’ she thought. It was like rape. And her exultant clutching was followed by an agony of shame. But next time the mood possessed her she clutched again. ‘He is mine. I can hold him. I can have his life in me.’ And she felt like a dabbler in black magic, the illicit arts. There had been nothing illicit in her loving Luke, nor in the outpouring of her spirit upon him; but this reckless grabbing was like a shameful and beloved vice. She fought frantically against it, only to succumb to a blacker and more gluttonous debauchery. Reason, that had been the adversary in her effort to give, mocking her with the ultimate inability of the mind to know that what she felt as true was actually so, was now her triumphant ally. ‘You cannot know,’ reason whispered, ‘that you really touch him. It is only idea.’ And as long as she could not be sure, she could not exert her will to check her thieving. Afterwards she was hagridden, with strained miserable eyes. The hollows had come again in her cheeks. Her face was hungry.

At home she was merrier and more vivacious than she had ever been. Mirth was her hiding-place. Anything rather than have them guess she had been hurt, and how! But she hated the effort it demanded and was thankful that the larger part of that winter was spent away from home.

The road from Slack of Mar to Wester Cairns ran through Crannochie, and every weekend as she passed on her bicycle, Martha paid Aunt Josephine a visit; but preoccupied with herself she failed to notice, what the neighbours round about Crannochie were noticing that spring, that Miss Leggatt was less alert than she had been. Her straight shoulder and steady foot were failing her. She sat too often and too long by the ingle, forgetting time; sometimes, she forgot to rise; her blind was not drawn up, her door was not opened, till far on in the day; but always she had a ready word for a visitor, and Martha, for whom Aunt Josephine had been just the same since ever she could remember her, went on perceiving the familiar image and missed its alteration.

‘Yer Aunt Josephine hasna come in aboot this lang while,’ said Emmeline one Sunday in February. ‘Is she weel eneuch?’ If it was long since Aunt Josephine had been to Wester Cairns, it was longer since Emmeline had been to Crannochie. Emmeline, in the parlance of the neighbourhood, was like a house-side. Walking was not for her. The mountain could not go to Mahomet, and Emmeline was dependent on her daughter for news of Miss Leggatt.

‘She was all right on Friday,’ said Martha, staring out at the weather. A storm had broken the day before and she did not relish her ten miles’ cycle run to the Slack.

‘It’s nae near han’ by,’ said Emmeline, peering out over her shoulder. ‘See to that roarie-bummlers.’

Glittering bergs of cloud knocked against the south-east horizon, and turned and floated on again, and gave place to others; or stayed and piled themselves in toppling transient magnificence.

‘The sooner I’m off the better,’ said Martha. The ground was coated with a powdery snow; not enough seriously to impede progress, had it not been for the wind. Through the lifted snowclouds a ferocious wind seethed and twisted. One could watch its form in the writhing powder as one watches the reflection of branches broken in a pool. A dragon-shaped wind. With the sifted snow stinging her cheek and clogging on her spokes, Martha was glad enough to see Crannochie; and too grateful for Aunt Josephine’s fire and cup of tea to pay overmuch attention to Aunt Josephine’s appearance. On the Friday of that same week, however, she could not be blind to the alteration of the old lady.

The cold snap had gone, giving place to a muggy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, days without spirit or smeddum. But here was a day for you, blue as a kingfisher, pungent as tang’l! − tonic. Martha sprang on her cycle and came to Crannochie flushed and towsled with the spring.

Aunt Josephine sat in her chair, dull-eyed, dowie, indifferent. She was without enthusiasm and without food. Even from the cup of tea that Martha prepared she turned away her head. Aunt Josephine refuse a cup of tea! But when one has been sick for days −

Martha persuaded her to go to bed.

‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll come back and stay with you. I’ll run home first and tell them.’

By light of Saturday she saw everywhere the evidences of Aunt Josephine’s unfitness. The house was grey with dust, clothes smelly with dirt were flung in a corner, on the pantry shelf she found a dish with scraps of stinking meat, hairy-moulded. Scunnered, she turned the contents into the fire and carried the dish hastily to the door. Peter Mennie the postie was coming up the path.

‘But the dish smells still,’ she said, ‘even though I’ve washed it. Throw it away for me, Peter.’

‘Bury it, lassie, bury it in the earth,’ answered Peter, ‘the earth’s grand at cleanin’.’

And thrusting on her the bundle of letters he was holding, he took the cause of offence in his hand and strode with it round the end of the house.

‘It’s in ahin the white breem buss,’ he said when he returned. ‘You dig it up in twa-three weeks an’ it’ll be as sweet’s the earth itsel’. There’s mair buried in the earth nor fowk kens o’.’

With a spasm of dismay, an hour or two later, Martha was wondering whether Aunt Josephine might not soon be laid there too. Plainly she was very ill. There was hurrying back and fore … by night Miss Leggatt had been carried to the infirmary. They operated thrice in all before they sent her home, haggard, shrunken, a ghost of herself; and with the knowledge that shortly she must die.

‘They should ’a’ lat me dee in peace,’ she said, weary of hospital routine, of chloroform and the knife and all the elaborate paraphernalia by which science prolongs a life that is doomed like hers. ‘They canna cure an’ I micht ’a’ been deid ere now an’ laid in the bonny grun’, an’ nae trouble to naebody. Weel, weel, but here I am.’ And contemplating herself in her own bed among her own belongings, she cantled up and looked around her with a shining pleasure. ‘It’s rale fine nae to be deid,’ she pronounced. She cantled up a little farther when Aunt Jean, who had accompanied her from the hospital, began to tell her the arrangements made for looking after her. ‘A nice body that had been a nurse, nae ane o’ the hospital kind, ye ken −’ ‘Nurse!’ quoth Miss Josephine; and with that she perked up and there was no more word of dying. Never a nurse would Aunt Josephine have, no, nor any hired woman. A pretty pass things were come to, if she had to take a hired woman under her roof, she who had relished her jaunty independence through so many years. Oh, she knew there were unpleasant necessities, her wound to dress and so forth, but the district nurse was coming in about every morning to do that; and for the rest −

‘There’s Matty there,’ she said, ‘’ll bide wi’ me. That would be mair wiselike nor a stranger body, surely. She can easy get ower to the Slack on her bicycle. An’ it’s little that a craitur like me’ll want an’ brief time that I’ll want it.’

Aunt Jean approved the suggestion. Quite right for Matty to make herself useful.

Martha was undergoing at the moment one of her fierce revulsions from a bout of passion. She wanted to dash up out of the waters that had engulfed her, to stand high and dry on common ground; and it seemed to her that the more hard work she had to perform, plain and ordinary tasks that would use her up, the freer she would become. ‘Even more than I’ve strength for,’ she thought, ‘so that I’ll be tired out always and never have time to think.’ There would be an astringent quality in days that included an eight miles’ cycle run night and morning through all weathers, the tending of an old woman stricken with cancer and the keeping of her house, in addition to the day’s teaching in school: something antiseptic to draw out from her what at the moment she felt as poison. An ounce of civet, good apothecary.

‘Of course I will stay with you,’ she said; and to her father, who demurred a little at the arrangement, though conceding, ‘Ye’ll hae to pleesure her. It canna be for lang,’ she repeated, ‘Of course I’ll stay with her. I can easily manage.’

Later, when the sharpest of her revulsion had worn off and she no longer thirsted to scourge herself, she had a sagging of the heart over what she had undertaken. ‘Shall I be able?’ she queried: and with the insidious creeping in again of desire she thought, ‘I shan’t have time enough for Luke.’ To gather her forces and pour them out on him seemed just then the only worthy use in life: though in her heart she knew that the outpouring would turn, as it always did, to grasping. She wanted time too. … But it had never been in her nature to step aside from necessary labour and she held steadily to her task, stifling the impulses that sometines she counted madness and sometimes the noblest sanity she knew.

Aunt Josephine made an astonishing patient. As Peter the postie said, ‘I never saw her in twa minds. She’s aye grand pleased wi’ hersel’.’ Pain, sickness, comfort, the kindliest of attentions, the most wearisome of waiting, a clean house or a dirty, won from her the same divine acquiescence. On her worst days of pain she said, ‘Weel, weel, ye canna mak a better o’t. There’s fowk waur nor me.’ ‘If you knew where to find them,’ Martha said once. She was humbled by Aunt Josephine’s shining gratitude for attentions that were often, tired as she was by the time she arrived back at evening, scanted and hasty. ‘That’s richt, ma dear,’ Aunt Josephine would say, when Martha had not time to shake the mats or lift the ornaments and dust behind them. ‘They’ll wait fine till the morn. A lick an’ a promise, that’ll dae grand.’

‘A dicht an’ a promise − it’ll serve my day,’ she often said. Yet as the weeks slipped by and summer came in, she seemed far indeed from dying. Every day she took a firmer grip again of life. She left her bed, sat most of the day in her chair; then moved about the room doing odd jobs herself; by and by could take a turn in the garden.

‘I’m a bittie better ilka day,’ she proclaimed delightedly. ‘I’ll seen be tae the road again at this rate.’ And jubilation shining from her countenance, ‘I’ll nae keep sorrow langer nor sorrow keeps me,’ she said.

Did she really think she was recovering, Martha queried of herself. If she still talked of what would serve her day, in the tone of resignation that suggested a brief day and a bounded, it was only, Martha noted, in phrases where to speak so had become a habit. When she was not simply making use of a phrase, Miss Leggatt’s talk was all of life. No worms, nor graves, nor epitaphs had entry there. She had turned her back on the incredible folly of dying and was setting again about the excellent business of living with all the astuteness she could muster. ‘Does she understand?’ Martha thought. A few months at the most, the doctors had said. And she pondered whether she ought not to recall the old lady’s galloping ideas. Was it kind to let her deceive herself, build false hopes that could have no foundation?

Miss Leggat understood well enough. She knew that she was dying: but she was not going to smirch what was left of her life by any graveyard considerations. And she said to Martha, ‘It’s high time the kail was planted out.’

‘Kail!’ Martha thought, with a queer contraction of the heart. ‘Where will she be by winter? − But if it makes her any happier, where’s the harm?’ And she planted out the kail.

The old woman’s gallant endurance of pain astounded her. ‘But it’s less awful than spiritual pain,’ she said to herself hastily, ashamed a little of her own cowardice in face of her black nights of craving; and ashamed a little farther at the self-excusing, she would turn to Aunt Josephine with some tender ministration. She was not always tender. Passion, that seeks self very abundantly, left her at times a poor leisure for the concerns of other folk. When the crave was on her, it was dull companionship she gave Miss Leggatt. Luckily, however, Miss Leggatt had other companions. Peter Mennie, whether he had a letter for her or not (and Miss Josephine had no great correspondence), put his head every day round the cheek of the door and cried her good morning. Clem, from Drochety Farm, the rough country lass who since the death of Mrs. Glennie had been mistress in all but name of Drochety’s establishment, and held her empire with an audacious hand, ran in on any pretext, or none at all, and bandied high jests with Miss Josephine.

‘Ye’re a great case,’ Miss Josephine would say, gleaming in spite of her nauseating pain at some of Clemmie’s audacities. Clem was a thorough-paced clown. She had an adaptable body. She could squint at will and her limbs were double-jointed. She would descend rapturously upon Miss Josephine with ‘eyes that werena neebors an’ feet at a quarter to three,’ and take off again ‘bow-hoched,’ her tongue lolling; while the old lady sat in her chair and beamed with pleasure.

‘She’s a tongue in her heid an’ she can use it tae,’ she would tell Martha. ‘She’s some terrible up-comes. She’s a caution, is Clem. A cure.’

A cure she was. The bluffert of her presence did Miss Josephine good. The very sound of her voice, strident and exuberant, carrying across the fields, was companionship in the long lonely days; and when Clemmie made jam, she gave Miss Josephine a taste; when she baked she brought her a scone for her tea.

And Stoddart Semple shambled in once or twice with his dambrod and gave the old lady a game; but she was ‘tired some seen’ for the game to be much of a success. ‘We maun jist tire an’ fa’ tae again,’ she said, ‘that’s fat we maun dae. Tire an’ fa’ tae again.’ They fell to again, Stoddart having ample leisure to await her convenience and in his glum fashion enjoying the stir.

Mary Annie, too, old widowed Mrs Mortimer, would look in, hastily and deferentially, upon her friend. Her visits were conditioned. With the years Jeannie Mortimer had become increasingly peremptory and inquisitorial. She had carried her habit of bigotry from her religion into the minutest affairs of daily life; and surer every hour of her own salvation, grew proportionately contemptuous of the remnant of mankind. For Miss Leggatt in particular, who said straight out exactly what she thought of such a misanthropic variety of religion (‘I’m ane like this,’ Miss Leggatt would proclaim, ‘fatever I think I say.’ And she thought, and said, that Jeannie Mortimer was a besom. ‘She’s blawn up nae handy in her ain conceits. Religion’s nae for plaguin’ ye. A bit prayer’s richt bonny in its ain time an’ place, but yon’s fair furth the gate. She’s nae near han’ soun’.’), for Miss Leggatt in particular Jeannie entertained an unconcealed distaste.

‘I canna bide,’ Mrs. Mortimer would tell Miss Josephine. ‘It’s an offence if I bide awa’ ower lang.’

But when Jeannie’s back was turned, Mrs. Mortimer, with her head poked forward, in her curious mode of progression that was half a walk and half a run, would sneak in by to Miss Leggatt. Some mornings she would arrive a little after ten o’clock.

‘Jeannie’s tae the toon, Miss Josephine,’ she would say. And, jubilantly, ‘I’ve on the tatties. I dinna need muckle breakfast, but I maun hae ma dinner. I’m nae nane o’ yer gentry kind o’ fowk. I’m jist the common dab. I jist eat whan I’m hungry.’

‘The gentry has jist three meals a day,’ Miss Josephine would answer. ‘It’s the common dab that has five or sax an’ jist eat whan they’re hungry.’

‘I dinna ken’ − all her old anxiety was in Mary Annie’s voice and countenance − ‘I dinna ken. I’m jist plain Geordie Williamson.’

And she would trot away, between a walk and a run, to eat gleefully of smoking hot potatoes and salt; and then pick and fidget at the meal she shared with Jeannie.

‘I dinna need muckle mate, an auld body like me,’ she said.

June was a hot and heavy month. Martha found the eight miles to Slack of Mar a little longer every morning. There came a morning when, nauseated by the odour that clung about Aunt Josephine’s room, she sickened and could eat no breakfast. She climbed on her bicycle nonetheless and set off up the road.

‘She has her ain a-dae wi’ they littlins,’ Aunt Josephine was saying somewhat later to the doctor, who chanced to call that morning.

It did not occur to her that Martha might have her own ado in Crannochie as well. How could she be a trouble to anyone, sitting there so quietly in her chair, with never a word of complaint upon her lips?

Quarter of an hour later the doctor came on Martha herself, sitting by the side of the road where she had stumbled from her bicycle, her head sunk in her hands.

‘If you could take me on to the Slack −’ she said.

‘The Slack!’ quoth he. ‘It’s slack into your bed that you’re going.’

And to Miss Josephine he said, ‘You’ll have to get a woman in to notice you, or I’ll be having two patients instead of one.’

‘Weel, weel,’ said Miss Josephine, ‘what we canna help we needna hinder. We’ll jist e’en hae to dae’t.’

But that evening as she sat in her chair her mouth was a little grim. A woman in to notice her indeed! What noticing did she require? It was not as though she were raivelled, as her old mother had been, poor body, or Miss Foubister of Birleybeg, who had been a terrible handful for years before she died, getting up and dressing herself in the middle of the night and trotting away down the road to the yowie woodie in search of a sweetie shop to buy her peppermints; or clearing the dirty dishes off the table into her apron and flinging them like so much refuse on the grate, where they smashed to smithereens. No, indeed, she was not like that. And a stranger body, too, meddling among her things, preventing herself perhaps from going and doing as she pleased. Her mouth was still a little grim in the morning.

‘I’m fine, auntie,’ Martha insisted. ‘I’m quite all right today. Really I am.’

‘Wi’ a face like that!’ said Miss Leggatt. ‘Like a deuk’s fit.’

Martha laughed. ‘I’ve been waur mony a day an’ nae word o’t,’ she said, giving Miss Leggatt back one of her own sayings.

The old lady’s mouth relaxed a little.

‘I shan’t go to school today,’ said Martha, ‘but by tomorrow, wait till you see, I’ll be as right as ever. The house can do without cleaning today.’

The mouth relaxed a little farther.

‘The doctor thinks ye’ve some muckle to dae,’ said Aunt Josephine. ‘“Hoots, awa’, doctor,” I says, she’s managin’ grand.” “O ay, grand, “he says, “but ye’d better get a woman in to notice you.”’

‘If only she would,’ thought Martha swiftly. ‘O God, I’m tired.’ But she read the note of entreaty in Aunt Josephine’s voice.

‘We don’t want a woman, do we?’ she said.

The grimness went quite away from Miss Josephine’s mouth.

‘It gings clean by my doors,’ she said, ‘fat’n a way fowk can like to hae strangers aboot them. They’re like the craws amang the wifie’s tatties. I mind fine, fan I was stayin’ wi’ that cousin o’ yer grandpa’s, her that was terrible ill, there was twa fee’d weemen in the hoose − a cook an’ a hoosemaid. I crocheted a cap to the hoosemaid, but nae to the cook. I didna dae richt. I should ’a’ gi’en her a cap tae. But she was sic a discontented besom. She micht ’a’ been mair contented if she had gotten a cap.’

Its natural pleasant line was restored to Aunt Josephine’s mouth. She talked gaily on of the fee’d woman of half a century before and forgot the project to fee a woman on her own behalf.

‘Matty and me’ll jist scutter awa’,’ she said to the doctor. ‘Her play’ll seen be here. We’ll manage grand.’

He looked at the girl’s sunken eyes. They were not sunken because of Aunt Josephine, nor yet on account of the bairns at Slack of Mar: but that was her own affair.

‘Term’s nearly over,’ she said. ‘Of course we’ll manage.’

‘It can’t be for long,’ he told her as she saw him out.

But they had said that so often. The holidays came and Miss Leggatt was still smiling and serene, and viewed her growing kail plants with satisfaction; and Martha drew in her lip and wondered what was to happen about her visit to Liverpool. That visit had been promised for a year, and for a year she had luxuriated in the thought of it. Now − ? Aunt Jean and Aunt Leebie came occasionally to Crannochie, though Aunt Leebie was fragile now and ailing nearly all the time. ‘Leebie’ll dee first o’ us a’,’ Aunt Josephine had always said; and Leebie herself accepted the probability as a distinction. It was a melancholy business for her to come and look on Josephine usurping, as it were, her right. She came but seldom. Aunt Jean came, brusque and brief, and found rust on the pan lids. Aunt Margot came, once only, harassed with flesh. But none of them offered to relieve Martha, and she was too proud to ask.

‘She could get a body in for a whilie, surely,’ said Emmeline, who knew of the invitation to Liverpool.

‘She wouldn’t like it,’ Martha said.

‘Oh well, ye’ll need to humour her. She’s gey far on her way,’ Emmeline responded, and thought no more about it.

‘There’s mair last in her nor a body wad ’a’ thocht,’ said Geordie, who did not know of the Liverpool project but had overheard the last few words between his wife and his daughter before the latter left again for Crannochie. He was wanting his daughter home. Matty might have her head stuffed with queer notions, but he liked her presence about the doors.

‘Fat way wad she nae get a wumman?’ he asked Emmeline. ‘Has she nae the siller?’

‘O ay, she has the siller, but she has mair, she has the sense to keep it. What ill-will hae ye at Matty’s bidin’ wi’ her?’

‘O, nane ava’, but that the lassie wad need her holiday.’

‘Holiday eneuch for her to be awa’ fae the geets, surely to peace,’ said Emmeline. Remembering a disclosure Martha had inadvertently made anent Aunt Josephine’s marketing, however, she added, ‘But she’s funny wi’ her cash.’

‘We’re a’ funny wi’ something,’ Geordie answered, stretching his legs out in the sun. Matty, he reflected, was funny with her notions about book-learning, and sleeping in the field − ‘like the nowt,’ he thought − and now there was Madge trying on the same caper; and Emmeline was funny with her notions about other folk’s bairns. There he paused, ruminating.

Emmeline had designs upon another baby boy.

Unfair, Geordie pondered, to bring another bairn there without even telling Matty. It was for Matty’s sake the others had been sent away, and Matty, it was to be expected, would not be long an absentee from home.

On Martha’s next visit home, meeting her in the field on her way to the house, he told her of her mother’s intention.

Martha’s anger blazed. She broke out upon her mother.

‘Where are you getting him?’ she asked, after having intimated her displeasure. Some illegitimate outcast, she supposed.

‘Hingin’ on a nail i’ the moss,’ said Emmeline shortly.

Martha could be conclusive too.

‘Well, mind,’ she said, ‘if you bring that child here and you fall ill again, I won’t look after him. So you can please yourself. I mean it, mind.’

‘Ye’re terrible short i’ the trot the day,’ said Emmeline.

Martha’s anger blazed again.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I want to know what my bed’s doing out in the field.’

‘Oh, is’t oot? That’s Madge, the randy. Fancy nae bringin’ it in a’ day. That’s her sweirness −’

‘Do you mean to tell me that Madge is sleeping in my bed?’

‘Weel, fat’s a’ the temper for? Ye did it yersel! Why sudna she?’

‘It’s my bed,’ cried Martha passionately. ‘She can take her own bed outside.’

‘Yon lumber o’ a thing −’

‘And she’s had my sheets. Hasn’t she? I know she has −’

‘The sheets’ll wash, surely to peace.’

‘I’ll never sleep in them again after her.’

‘Weel, dinna, then. Ye wad think she was a soo.’

‘She’s worse,’ cried Martha in a transport of rage; she had no idea that she hated Madge so much; and the girl herself coming in at the moment, she emptied out the cataracts of her wrath.

Madge gave her a contemptuous stare and began to spread a bit of oatcake with jam. She did not trouble herself to answer back. There was something horrible in her self-possession.

‘Mind you about that infant, mother,’ said Martha, swinging round on Emmeline. ‘I won’t touch it, I won’t look at it. If you’re ill it can starve, for all I care.’ And she made off up the field. A fortnight of her six weeks’ holiday was already gone and there seemed no nearer hope of reaching Liverpool; and she had realized, in a ferocity of anger against herself, that through the whole year that had elapsed since Luke’s departure, she had been living for the moment of reunion. ‘I need him,’ she cried desperately to the night. ‘I must have him. I’m only really alive when I’m with him. If I can’t see him now I’ll die. I’ll never go through another year without him. Without seeing him. Being revitalized by him. It’s by his life I live.’ And in daylight, taking the ashes from the grate, ‘Good God,’ she thought, ‘am I such a slave as that?’ She wanted to kick out at the whole world to prove how free she was.

‘Fatever ails her?’ said Emmeline, as she swung herself away from the family conclave. ‘I hinna seen sic a tantrum sin’ she was a bairn.’

‘She’s richt eneuch aboot the loonie,’ Geordie said. ‘If you werena weel again it wad be a gey trauchle for her.’

‘O weel,’ said Emmeline, ‘I wunna bring him.’

In spite of aching muscles after a long day’s work among the hay, Geordie walked to Crannochie that night to tell his daughter that the child was not to come.

‘O, I’m not caring,’ said Martha peevishly.

What did anything matter if she was not to see Luke?

But the next time she came home Emmeline was seated by the fire with a bundle cradled in her arms.

Martha’s rage had fallen. She was toneless, apathetic. Three weeks of her vacation had gone.

‘So you brought him after all, mother,’ was all she said.

Emmeline had been in secret a little afraid of what Martha might say. She blurted, apologetically,

‘Ye sud ’a’ seen the girl’s face whan I said I cudna tak him, Matty. … Besides, I’m rale fond o’ the craiturs. I’ve been used to them a’ ma days an’ it’s rale lanesome-like wi’ you and Madge an’ yer father awa’ a’ day lang an’ me used to a hooseful. I like a bairn aboot to get the clawin’s o’ the pots.’

Martha said nothing. Encouraged by the silence, Emmeline drew aside the shawl that wrapped the child.

‘Did ye ever see sic an imitation?’ she said, displaying the baby. ‘Ye cud haud him i’ the lee o’ yer hand. But he hadna a chance − the lassie was that sair grippit in.’

Martha glanced incuriously at the child.

‘Sax months an’ mair,’ said Emmeline. ‘An’ ye wadna think he was three.’

Six months and more, Martha was thinking. Six months and more till she would see Luke. Half her holiday was gone. Aunt Jean had visited Aunt Josephine the day before and Martha, desperate, had gulped that she was invited to Liverpool. Aunt Jean had not seemed to realize that Martha could not go to Liverpool unless someone else stayed at Crannochie. She had not made the slightest motion towards help. She had said, ‘Oh. Fa’s there?’ ‘I’ve friends,’ Martha had said. In Aunt Jean’s presence it had seemed an utterly senseless proceeding to have friends of her own outside the family cognisance. But perhaps later Aunt Jean would realize the position, and write.

At the end of another week Aunt Jean had not written. Martha wrote. She wrote to Liverpool and told them that she would never be able now to get away.

Three days later Peter Mennie, calling out cheerfully from the garden so that they might know he was coming, strode into the kitchen and struggled with something in the letter bag.

‘Is’t a parcel?’ asked Miss Josephine, all agog with interest.

‘There ye go!’ he said triumphantly, dragging out from the bag first one and then another huge potato. ‘A makin’ o’ ma new potatoes to you. Arena they thumpers?’ And while Miss Josephine exclaimed upon their beauty, he held a letter out to Martha.

‘O ay, they’re a terrible crop the year,’ he said, striding to the door again; and stepping out cried over his shoulder to Martha:

‘Ye’ll be awa’ to Liverpool ane o’ these days.’

The postmark of her letter was Liverpool: doubtless Peter had taken a shrewd glance at it before he gave it up. Clemmie had trained him well in such habits of observation: especially in regard to the letters that were delivered before he came to Drochety.

Obeying a sudden impulse, Martha blurted out her bitterness of spirit to Peter.

Twenty minutes later Drochety’s Clem burst open the door. ‘Foo’s a’ wi’ ye the day?’ she shouted to Miss Josephine, and, lugging Martha outside the door:

‘Dinna you fret, lassie,’ she said, ‘awa’ wi’ ye an’ hae yer holiday. I’ll come in-by an’ sleep aside Miss Josephine an’ dae her bits o’ things. There’s nae need to hae onybody in.’

Martha looked at her coldly.

She resented Clemmie’s interference in her affairs. She had almost instantly regretted her impulse of confession to Peter and was furious that he had gone straight and told Clem. She might have known! − He told Clem everything. Every day as eleven o’clock approached, she watched for his coming and had his cup of cocoa ready when he arrived; and while he sat in the big armchair in Drochety kitchen and drank it, Clemmie relieved him of the bundle of letters he was holding. … Hence her unique mastery of the affairs of the neighbourhood.

‘But she doesn’t need to know mine,’ thought Martha angrily: and she was short with Clem; refusing her offer in brief politeness. It was only when Clemmie insisted − ‘Ye’re lucky fond, lattin’ them a’ ride ower ye that gait,’ she said. ‘Yer play’ll be up or they tak ony notice o’ ye. O, I ken yon Mrs. Corbett. It tak’s her a’ her time an’ a lot mair to see that her cap’s set straught. An’ Mrs. − the little ane − the Leebie ane − she’s aye that sair made wi’ hersel, ye wadna think ony ither body had an ill ava.’ She wad be a sicht waur gin onything ailed her. Jist you tak yer ways awa’ an’ never heed them. Miss Josephine’ll dae grand wantin’ ye’ − it was only then that Martha had the grace to tell the truth.

‘It’s awfully good of you, Clem,’ she said, with an effort upon herself, ‘but it’s too late now. My friends are going off to Spain this week.’

Dussie had written, in the very letter that Peter had handed to her that morning, ‘We’re frightfully sorry you can’t come, but since you can’t we’re to take our holiday at once. It suits Luke better. We’re going to Spain.’

A couple of hours later Clem came running back with a plateful of scones. Clem was the most generous of mortals, with Drochety’s goods. Since Drochety’s ailing wife had died, a twelve-month after Clem had taken over the rule of the place, she had slowly and very securely gathered the power into her own hands. All the countryside knew that Peter had speired her more than once, but Clemmie had always an off-putting answer. She had been putting him off for fourteen years now. And meanwhile with a lavish hand she distributed Drochety’s belongings.

Martha ought to have been grateful for the scones. Clemmie’s scones were a wonder and a treat. They melted in the mouth. But at sight of them Martha’s flared. anger flared. ‘How dare she pity me?’ she thought; and she pushed the plate savagely away.

She persuaded herself that she did not care. Her mind seemed to have gone dead, as her fingers went on winter mornings. Too tired to cope with her thoughts, she turned away from them and left them in confusion. School took up again. She cycled to the Slack and cycled home, absorbed herself as best she could in the bairns she taught and in Aunt Josephine, and told herself that her emotions were exhausted and nothing would stir them any more.

She had yet to reckon with Roy Rory Foubister.