The worst fright Isa got that night was from the way Guthrie’s words were spoken, for it was right fearsome to think there was something the laird himself was feared of. When she told her tale in Kinkeig there were smart folk said the quean had read her own feelings into Guthrie, and the stationy – him they called the Thoughtful Citizen – said sure it was a case of transferred emotion. But Isa stuck to her story the laird was sore feared of something; and before many weeks passed folk were to say Well, he had good reason and Isa was a gleg quean to have probed to it; the stationy said he had ever thought her a perspicacious young person.
Guthrie had no sooner spoken than he turned about and fell to pacing the gallery, but ever between Isa and the door or thereabout so that she was fast prisoner still. Whiles he went silent and whiles he chanted his verses, verses, Isa said, with a queer run of Scottish names to them and then ever a bit of gibberish – it might be coarse foreign stuff – at the end. Isa made nothing of them, nor ever had of his chanting; fient the loss, she thought, was that. Half it came to her to come out and brave the laird, but she had bided over long watching him at his daftness and he would be fell angry surely, did she discover herself. So she pulled her bed-gown about her – a bit flimsy gee-gaw rubbish, no doubt, and not the good flannel her mother had sent her to the meikle house with – and resigned herself to thole the cold until Guthrie’s going. At least he couldn’t lock her in, the door in smithereens as it was. And soon she was feeling in a queer way that the laird was company, up there in the lonely gallery; she was half sorry when he moved off a bit, hoping though she was that he would turn a corner and give her a free run from the room. Once she gave a bit cry – the second time she had cried out to him – it was when she felt a tug low down on her gown, a great grey rat it was, as bold as brass and with eyes, the fancy took her, grown wicked like the eyes in all the Guthrie faces dim round the gallery. But again the laird heard nothing; he was wrapped strangely in his own inner darkness, ever chanting the same strange run of verses, as intensely as a Catholic creature might go over and over some set of words in a shipwreck. Syne he would stop and gowk fixedly Isa couldn’t make out at what, the candle held head-high and at arm’s length. And once he broke off in his chanting, there was a long silence in which Isa heard the tapping of the ivy out by and the whisper of the night wind in the larches, then he cried out in the Scots he whiles knew fine how to use: ‘What for would it not work, man?’ And then, right awful to hear, he whispered: ‘What for would it not work?’
There was another bit silence. Isa was that strung-up she could feel the moonbeams tickling her back and when Guthrie syne gave a high crackling laugh, the like as if something were breaking in him, she fainted.
7
When Isa came to it was to find Guthrie gone and the rats nibbling her fingers. Right painfully she got to her knees and then to her feet, hardly would the stocky legs of the quean carry her, and groped her way from that awful gallery and to her room. There she wasted no time but cast a splatter of cold water, shivering as she was, over her face, and got from that the strength to pack her box and the clear-headedness to pen a bittock note for Christine. Syne she crept to the kitchen and got herself a piece, fair famished she felt after her vigil, and at keek of dawn was out of the castle, her box on her head like it had been a basket of clouts, and keeping a wary eye for Tammas in his barn. Fell glad she was when she had rounded the loch and the dark larches closed upon the grey house, gruesome it seemed to her now, and she was away and down the tail of Erchany brae and on the long glen road to Kinkeig. At full dawn the snow began to fall and toilsome and bitter though it made the road she was the blither for it; it seemed to cast a white carpet of oblivion between her and the murk of that night.
You may be sure that Isa’s story wasn’t long in getting round Kinkeig – the old wives, as I’ve said, making a great thing of it in that idle winter weather. And like all tales that run round a Scottish village it lost nothing in the telling; it got about that wee Isa had been forced to hide behind the dowps of two great idols and that syne Guthrie had come and prayed before them stark naked – idols he’d dug up from the camps of the coarse Romans, no doubt, and prayers that he’d had of his study of heathen runes. Or if it wasn’t Guthrie was naked it was Tammas – Isa’s story, though unco surely, being not quite scandalous enough to please some. It must be said that Isa herself behaved douce and decent considering the fuss was made over her; she told her tale readily enough, but without, as you might expect, a bit fresh embroidery each time. There were but two additions she made that might have been fact or fancy. She minded, she said, like as if she had heard it in a dream, Guthrie calling out something about America and Newfoundland, and that was mixed in her head with two names: Walter Kennedy and Robert Henderson – fient the idea she had of who they were, nor Kinkeig either except Will Saunders said he minded there had once been a Walter Kennedy, a crofter, away down the loch, but long since departed he was, and like enough to America or Newfoundland. And the other thing she thought she minded in some half-conscious moment after her swoon was Guthrie crouched down over a table and poring over something, book or paper belike, she had no memory of what. That was the sum of Isa’s tale. Kinkeig chewed on it a whole week, and I won’t say I didn’t chew on it myself: it’s a catching thing gossip and little comes in to sutor when there’s snow on the ground.
Isa’s leaving the meikle house was almost the end of news from up the glen. Two–three times in the thaw that followed the first snows the creature Hardcastle came down about his business, and once he went on to the junction and shut himself up in the wee telephone box there. The news of that fair affronted the postmistress, Mistress Johnstone, it was as much as to say anything he put through from her bit office she’d sure go claiking round with, her sworn to secrecy by the king as she was. Right aggravating she felt it, for didn’t folk ever think they had a right to a bit news from the postmistress over their cup tea and blame her unreasonably for an uncompanionable body when there was none to give? Howsoever, Jock Yule the station lad, who had never a thing to do all day but sweep out what he called the waiting-room and whiles help truck a few sheep, got a keek at Hardcastle in the box; he was reading from a pack papers into the mouth of the thing, and that meant, certain, he was sending telegrams direct through the Dunwinnie exchange. The laverocks might be in fear of the skies falling, folk said, if those at the meikle house were taking to spend their silver like that.
The next thing was that when the week’s freight came in Jock found he had half a lorry-load of cases to get up to the castle, hampers and the like from Mackie’s and Gibson’s and two-three other great shops in Edinburgh. It seemed fell clear that Guthrie, who sent down once a year to Kinkeig, folk said, for a pound of tea and a packet of kitchen salt, had taken final leave of his senses at last. Jock himself was that scunnered he wouldn’t have been surprised had the laird tipped him half a crown on delivery and offered him a dram forbye. But all the laird did, after Jock had had an unco time getting his lorry up the glen in the thaw, was himself to check the cases into the house against an invoice and then haggle a bit over the cartage; not so daft, in fact, after all. And Jock said that, unthanked as his task had been, he felt half sorry for the man: sleepless he looked and old – and forbye bewildered, like a man in two minds.
Well, it was as good as a Christmas box to many in Kinkeig to hear that Guthrie was in a right fash; if the laird was fretting folk were real content to hear it, whether they could plumb to the reason of it or no. But plenty tried their hand at an explanation and plenty more at controverting them that did the explaining. The stationy got a good deal of respect by saying he could distinguish alternative hypotheses: it’s wonderful how a couple incomprehensible words will impress folk little acquaint with letters.
One bit speak I can mind at the Arms, if but by the unco happening that put an end to it.
Once in a while, you must know, I take a look over to the private bar – most of the better-thought-of folk of the parish think it a decent enough place for a bit crack of an evening. Will Saunders was there, and Rob Yule, and whiles in came the stationy, still with a hypothesis, so to speak, in each pocket – for it was ever his way to seem holding back a bit inner knowledge: to hear him talk on politics you would think he held in with the editors of the
‘Mistress,’ he said, giving a sad look over at Yule and Saunders and myself, ‘I’m thinking there’s a power of evil idle talk in this parish.’
