by Nan Shepherd
‘I don’t quite follow, Captain Forbes.’
Lindsay was standing watchfully. A great unhappiness surged within her. Misery, she thought, had ended yesterday, when Garry’s letter came at last, when he had said, meet me on the moor. Today had been so perfect that she had thought unhappiness was done with for ever. Why should it begin again? And when Louie’s eyes melted into hers, she could have cried for the strangeness of life, its pain, its mystery. She, who had thrilled to her lover’s denunciation (in the abstract) of injustice and hypocrisy, stood now aghast while he exposed one hypocrite. But Louie was true, that was the trouble. There was some hideous mistake.
‘I don’t quite follow, Captain Forbes.’
And then that Garry should say straight out the hideous thing! Now Louie was weeping, talking swiftly. ‘But why should I say these things to a stranger? Oh, I know you were my dear David’s friend, but some things are too sacred even for a friend’s ear. Too secret. How could you know the secret sacred things I shared with David?’
It wasn’t Garry’s voice she heard. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Morgan, I simply don’t believe the story.’ And Louie still weeping. Garry was going away. What! He could insult a woman like that and then march off and leave her! Louie’s sad eyes were watching her.
‘Men,’ said Louie, ‘never begin to understand what we women have to suffer. The loneliness. The awful emptiness.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Lindsay cried, remembering her own anxiety. Tell me, tell me, Louie. He’s quite wrong, isn’t he? Oh, I don’t know what he means by it. It’s horrible. I’m so sorry, so sorry.’ She began to sob.
Louie put her arms round the child. ‘Ah, we women. We understand one another, don’t we?’ Lindsay let herself be comforted. There was a subtle flattery in Louie’s accepting her as a grown woman, meet for a woman’s suffering. She couldn’t know all this if she hadn’t been through it, thought the girl. Louie was like a priestess divulging mysteries.
‘You were engaged, weren’t you?’ she whispered.
‘I am engaged. As you call it. Betrothed, I prefer to say. My troth plighted unto eternity.’
‘Forgive me for asking. Forgive me for asking.’ In some deep fashion she felt that it was forgiveness for Garry that she requested.
To Garry the problem thus set seemed on the first evening simple, if a trifle disgusting. He had always disliked Louie Morgan. When he had first come to Knapperley, she, doubly entrenched as daughter of the manse and a young lady five or six years older than the boys, had administered reproof to David and Garry for their behaviour on the way to church. To Garry: ‘Even though you do come from a godless house—’ To David: ‘And you should be all the more ashamed, a saintly man for your father.’ The boys lay in wait for my young miss. On the day she wore her first long skirt they walked behind her, whispering and laughing. They sang in chorus, then in antiphon:
O wot ye what our maid Mary’s gotten?
A braw new goon an’ the tail o’t rotten.
O wot ye—O wot ye—A braw new goon—
The tail o’t—the tail o’t rot-ten—
Louie could hardly wait till they desisted before ducking round to see that the tail of her skirt was in its place. A shout of laughter came from the ambushed boys.
Later they bribed a small girl to be their victim. In full view of the minister’s daughter, they pulled her hair and punched her arms. The victim expiated all the sins of her sex in the way she wailed. Miss Louie was scarlet with indignation. She read the boys a homily they would remember. But suddenly all three had joined hands and danced round Her Indignation, whooping. The daughter of the manse spluttered with disgust. Assailing the victim: ‘Are you not ashamed, you who come from a Christian home, to play deceitful tricks with these boys?’ The victim (who was Kate Falconer) being sturdy and stolid, made a face. That night the boys took Kate to the harrying of a bike.
In the years of their apprenticeship the boys ceased to see each other. They served their time in different towns, and holidays were spent in camp. But with their Technical College Course they were again together. In the last of their student years David chanced to remark, ‘Old Morgan’s gone. Decent old soul.’ ‘And what’s come of Miss Hullabaloo?’ ‘Oh, husband-hunting still, I suppose.’ Garry could not remember that they had ever talked of her again.
He was therefore sure that the story, wherever it originated, was false. At first it had seemed a simple matter of gossip. That Louie herself asserted its truth made it hardly less simple, though more unpleasant. The claim was a lie, and must be exposed as such. Here was a small but definite engagement in the war against evil, and Garry’s heart, on the first evening of the engagement, rose pleasurably to the fray. It was not often one could deliver so clear a blow against falsehood.
SIX
Tea at The Weatherhouse
In the course of the following morning Miss Theresa Craigmyle ran out of cornflour. Theresa made no objections to running out of necessaries. It provided an excuse for running out herself. Theresa’s slogan—A ga’in foot’s aye gettin’—embraced more than what she purchased at a roup. She would come home with all the gossip of the neighbourhood.
This morning she brought in the cornflour and said, ‘Mrs Hunter tells me that Bawbie Paterson’s nephew is come. Sick leave, she says. And a terrible sight. Influenza and not got over it. All nonsense too thin. “Bawbie won’t fatten him sore,” I says. “Oh, there’s aye a bite and a sup for him here,” says she. “Mr Garry kens where to come whan he’s teem. He’ll aye get what’s goin’. The tail o’ a fish and the tap o’ an egg, if it’s nae mair.” O aye, he would. He had a crap for a’ corn and a baggie for orrels, yon lad. He could fair go his meat. You would have thought he was yoking a pair of horse.’
‘Well, well,’ said Miss Annie, ‘what would you expect? A great growing loon. He needed his meat.’
Kate, who had come home that day with a week’s leave from hospital, heard and said, ‘Better ask him to tea. Well, why not? You ask all the young men home on leave, don’t you? Even if you do object to his aunt—well, even to himself, then—but I daresay he’s sobered down by now. We haven’t seen him for donkey’s years.’
Miss Theresa conceded the tea. It was one of her ways of helping on the war. For every young man of the district home on leave she baked her famous scones and gingerbread, while Miss Annie and Mrs Falconer asked the same series of questions about the Front.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Kate. ‘Linny and I will walk round by Knapperley. She’s never seen the place.’
‘She’s seen Bawbie. That should be enough. Well, Lindsay, don’t you take her tea if she should offer you any. Spoot-ma-gruel.’
‘He’ll be waiting for me, Katie,’ murmured Lindsay when they were outside.
‘That’s all right. I’ll go away.’
‘You’d better give the invitation— Or— As you please.’
Garry said, ‘You, Kate— Remember the wasp’s bike?’
‘Why, yes, I do. Will you face my aunts tomorrow?’
‘Will you face mine today? Yes, do come, Katie. Linny must see Knapperley. And I want to talk to you. How are we to set to work killing this lie about Davie? That Morgan creature, you know.’
‘Is it a lie?’
‘Oh, Katie,’ cried Lindsay, ‘do help me to convince him. He’s taken such a dreadful idea into his head—that poor Louie has invented the whole story. He’s hurt her so.’
‘That sort doesn’t hurt. Does it, Kate?’
‘Why, yes. Very badly, I should fancy.’
‘What! Hullabaloo? No. You thrust, and she closes up round. Unless she’s changed a lot.’
‘But why a lie?’
‘You think David would have married that?’
‘I don’t know. Why not?’
‘Lord, Kate!’
‘Well, I don’t see what’s preposterous in the idea. She’s a good woman. Feckless, a bit. Rather conceited. I’m not particularly fond of her. But David Grey may have bee
n, for all I know. I presume he was, since he asked her to marry him.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘Didn’t?’
‘Garry, you don’t know,’ cried Lindsay.
‘Look here, Kate, you wouldn’t dishonour David, would you? You wouldn’t think him capable of such meanness?’
‘But why should it be meanness to marry a woman? Most men do.’
‘But that Louie.’
‘Louie’s all right, Garry. I don’t see why you should be so angry. I don’t like her much, as I said, but lots of people do. You haven’t seen her for so long. Of course, she was a bit—you know—self-important. Put on airs. But that sort of thing wears off. Or else one gets accustomed to it. She’d make as good a wife as another. I don’t see why David shouldn’t have chosen her.’
‘David, Kate? As good a wife as another, yes. But for the other man—not for David.’
‘David is merely the other man for me, Garry. Any man. I hadn’t seen him for years. How could I know what he might or might not do? And a lot of men make fools of themselves when they marry, anyhow.’
‘So at least you acknowledge that such a marriage would be folly.’
‘No. I was talking of a general principle.’
‘Katie, can’t you see what is at stake? It’s a lie. A blasted, damnable lie. She’s false as hell. It must be killed. She must be forced to acknowledge there was no engagement.’
‘But what an idea! You propose to put it to her?’
‘Oh, Katie,’ cried Lindsay, ‘he isn’t only proposing. He’s done it.’
‘And she acknowledged it, of course?’
‘No, she denied.’
‘Well, what more do you want? Why do you suppose it’s a lie? I didn’t know there was any doubt over it.’
‘I suppose it’s a lie because it can’t be true.’
Kate stopped in the road and gave him a long, considering look.
‘Because you refuse to believe it’s true, you mean. Do you know? David ever say anything about it to you? You’ve no proof? Look here, Garry, you’d better be sure you’re not doing this because you hate Miss Louie Morgan. You never used to miss a chance, you know, of tormenting her.’
‘Of taking her down a peg, you mean. She needed it.’
‘Yes. But it was good fun, taking her down.’
‘Well … it staled. You never could take her down. Just what I said: you thrust and she closed up round. Oh yes, good fun enough. But you don’t suppose there’s any fun in this business about Grey, do you?’
‘I think you are persuaded by your own dislike.’
‘Katie,’ Lindsay’s clear, sharp voice rang out, ‘you have no right to speak to Garry like that.’
‘You don’t want him to make a fool of himself in the countryside, do you?’
Garry winced.
‘Louie Morgan is too much respected—her father—her mother. People would simply gape. It’s your word against hers, isn’t it? And they’ll all remember the things you used to do to her. Even David Grey thought you went too far. That time you made on to be fighting, and she separated you and you carried her off and shut her in the old Tower.’
‘And forgot to let her out.’
‘A willing forget.’
‘No, I don’t think so. No, I’m sure we were doing something else. Queer how hard it is to remember. We did mean to let her out.’
‘Do tell me,’ said Lindsay.
‘Nothing to tell. Horrid rumpus. Dr Morgan purple in the face. And David’s father— That was something to remember. Davie said it happened only once before. Davie’s father told him off. Six words, no more. No more needed.’
‘No one could understand how you got in.’
‘We pinched the key.’
‘Are you quite sure you are not pinching the key this time? I’ll leave you two,’ Kate finished abruptly.
‘But, Katie—about going home. I came out with you. They’d think it funny.’ Lindsay did not wish the old women to understand Garry’s identity. They would make uncomfortable remarks.
‘Yes,’ agreed Kate, ‘they do chatter. Very well, I’ll wait for you. Behind the spruce trees.’
‘But,’ Lindsay questioned as she watched Kate melt against the moor, ‘need we go to Knapperley?’
Garry had been thinking of Kate: ‘How she has altered! She’s growing like her aunts. What, not go to Knapperley? But you must see my aunt. She is not fearsome,’ he added, smiling.
‘But I fear her.’
‘Why?’ he asked, smiling protectively down upon her.
‘No, it’s not that—I am not a child.’ She could find no way to express her thoughts about Miss Barbara. They were not thoughts—that was it. They were something felt, apprehended in her dumb silent self. The image of Miss Barbara loomed above her, as she had appeared in the winter night, elemental, a mass of the very earth, earthy smelling, with her goat’s beard, her rough hairy tweed like the pelt of an animal. She had thought John Grey too like a portion of earth, as he crawled on all fours weeding; but he embodied the kindly and benignant earth; Miss Barbara its coarser, crueller aspect … Has no mythology deified a bearded woman as its god of earth? Lindsay, unable to find words to explain her terror, which could not be explained by anything as yet within her experience, blurted, ‘It was the lights. They were awful, Garry, truly. Every window blazing, in mid-winter, and it war-time.’
‘What’s this?’ said Garry. ‘Good old Barbara! She would win every war that ever was.’
‘Win it? Keep it from being won. Defying orders.’
‘But that’s just it. The spirit of it. We shan’t have won this war until we’re all defiant. Haven’t you understood that yet? My aunt’s enormously herself. She’ll never alter, except to get more herself. I don’t suppose the lights mattered. The police would have seen to it otherwise.’
‘But they did. She was fined, I think. Warned, at any rate.’
‘Very well. Now come and see her after her warning.’
‘You think I am a child, to be afraid.’
But perhaps she was. The warm glad sun danced over her. The earth shimmered away into idle space. And now she had seen a blue tit.
‘What is he, what is he? I do so want to know his name. Garry, there are herons in the lower wood. I saw one yesterday with Kate. Flying. A great grey heavy one.’
‘They are all like that.’
‘Are they?’
‘Then it had been herons we were hearing yesterday while we were talking.’
‘Yes.’
‘And are you satisfied now that you know?’
‘Oh, to know makes me so happy … You think that strange?’
He took her through the high, bare rooms of Knapperley.
‘But these are dreary rooms.’
‘Not the kitchen. I don’t know where my aunt can be.’
‘No matter. Let’s go out.’
‘I was giving these outer doors and windows a coat of paint. Look how warped they are. The wood’s shrunken. Do you mind if I go on?’
‘How neatly you work, Garry! Do you hear that bird? I must follow.’
He gave himself to the consideration of Kate. She was wrong to be so sure: he was sure, moreover, that she was wrong. And to bring this ignoble motive in to a clean fight against falsehood! It was petty on Kate’s part to suppose that he still harboured these boyish animosities. He fought for greater issues now. And if the victim in each case was the same, was he at fault? It was not as a person that he wanted Louie punished, but as the embodiment of a disgrace. He brought the brush down with neat furious strokes. But Mrs Hunter, when he had called the night before at Craggie, had scorned his suggestion of duplicity in Louie’s tale.
‘She has the ring, Mr Garry—his mother’s ring that she showed me herself, and her dying, and said her laddie’s love should wear. That’s nae ca’ed story, Mr Garry. Louie fairly has the ring.’
‘His mother’s ring,’ muttered Garry.
‘I’m nae saying but it’
s a queer whirliorum, a matter like a marriage to come out in a by-your-leave fashion like that. Miss Craigmyle, now, was of your way of thinking—that she made the story up, But “Na, na,” I said to her, “na, na, she has her credentials.” And her credentials is more than the ring, Mr Garry. There’s the name she has, and her family.’
Miss Theresa Craigmyle? Very well, then, he would go to their tea.
Lindsay came bounding back.
‘Garry, your aunt knows—why didn’t you tell me? Your aunt knows all kinds of things. There’s a heronry in Kingcausie woods, my heron must have come from there. They have to shut the doors and windows at breeding time. Against the clamour. And there are oyster-catchers’ eggs on that bit of shingle. Lying in the stones. You stumble on them. Oh, Garry, I like your paint. You have made a difference.’
‘So you found my aunt.’
‘I was watching a bird. I didn’t know what it was, I am so ignorant. I crept in, under the trees there, following. She found me. I thought it was something wonderful. It was only a chaffinch. But even a chaffinch is very wonderful, if you know just nothing at all, like me.’
‘Wonder what Aunt Barbara thinks of this Louie Morgan affair?’
‘What does it matter, now? It’s ended, isn’t it?’
‘Ended?’
‘Surely Kate convinced you? Do you still think Louie made the story up?’
At the Weatherhouse, after tea that evening, Mrs Falconer followed Kate to the garden. How still the air, how shining pure the sky! Waiting—all waiting for the revelation of spring. But it was so hard to talk confidentially to Kate. Her mother stumbled, came in broken rushes against the girl’s tranquillity.
‘Garry is coming? I thought, I used to imagine—long ago—you were such friendly you two. I wondered sometimes—but then he went away. I used to think you cared.’
Kate knit her brows, considering the implications of her mother’s insight; decided that the secret was not hers to divulge.
‘Why, yes,’ she said, unbending her frown. ‘But there was no need for you to know.’
