by Nan Shepherd
‘I don’t suppose many people would want to do that.’ Strange point of departure for the interview!
‘You never know, Mrs Falconer. Folk’s queer. And Mr Grey, good soul, thinks ill of nobody. There’s nothing in this house under lock and key. Forbye the meat-safe, Mrs Falconer, and for that I wouldna take denial. Since ever my dozen eggs went a-missing, that I found a hennie sitting on in the corner of the wood, and them dead rotten—I put them into the bottom of the safe, till Mr Grey would dig a hole and bury them. And in-by there comes a tinkey. “No,” I says, “my man, I’ve nothing.” But when I went outside, lo and behold, my eggs were gone. He had had a bonny omelette that night. Unless, as I said often to Mr Grey, he sold them for solid siller to some poor woman in the town. Poor soul, she had had a gey begeck. So after that I says, I’ll have a key to my safe. If it’s rotten eggs the day, it may be firm flesh the morn.’
She had led her visitor in, and rambled on, paying little heed to interpolations, which had, in any case, to be shouted at her ear. Mrs Falconer therefore gave up the attempt to talk, and sat listening.
‘And you think nobody would want to help themselves? I’m not so sure, I’m not so sure. I’ll tell you what I found here one day. My fine miss, the old minister’s daughter, Miss Louie Morgan, right inside the parlour, if you please, with the master’s drawer beneath his bookcase standing open and her having a good ransack. A good ransack, Mrs Falconer, minister’s daughter though she be. “The master gave me leave,” she says, “and you didn’t hear me ring, so I just came in.” He gave her leave right enough, I asked him. For the Jumble Sale, she says. “The things are no use to me,” he said, “she is very welcome.” He would give away his head, would the master, you could lift his very siller in front of him and he would be fine pleased, but don’t you touch a flower. Pick a rose or a chrysanthemum and you needna look him in the face again.’
Mrs Falconer’s mouth was parched, her lips were shaking. She had asked nothing, but the answer she desired had fallen directly in her ears. She was sure now that Louie had taken the ring. The Jumble Sale took place three months after the death of David Grey. But perhaps Mr Grey himself had given her the ring, to seal a betrothal left incomplete at the young man’s death? Mrs Falconer put the thought away. No, no. The concealment of the ring, her stealing to the drawer unseen, Garry’s certainty, all convinced her; and she was overwhelmed besides by the thought that she had been led straight that day to the discovery. The sense of urgency that had driven her to Knapperley in the night, and to Francie’s croft in the morning, so that Stella’s remarkable story came to her knowledge, and now the immediate relation by the housekeeper of Louie’s conduct, amazed her like a revelation of supernatural design. ‘I have been led to this,’ she thought.
She rose to go, shouting at the old housekeeper an excuse for her unusual visit.
‘There would be no mistake though you came again, Mrs Falconer.’
‘But what must I do next?’ she pondered as she went away.
Kate, bringing home the messages that same afternoon, overtook Louie Morgan on the road.
‘I’m thinking of applying for a Lonely Soldier,’ said Louie. ‘To write to, you know. Wouldn’t it be splendid?’ And without giving Kate time to reply she hurried on, ‘We must all do something to help the poor men. Or a war-time orphan to bring up. I’ve been thinking of that. Two of them, perhaps. Uplands is so much too large for mother and me—we’d easily have room for two. Isn’t it a splendid idea for people to take these poor orphans and bring them up?’
‘Excellent,’ said capable Kate; but privately she thought, ‘Heaven pity any child that is brought up by you.’
Louie blurted, ‘I suppose you think I am making a fool of myself.’
‘No. Why should I think so?’
Without answering, Louie burst suddenly into a side road and walked away.
She had just come from Knapperley.
Garry had laboured hard all day. Knowing that unless he saw the repairs completed before he left, the house would remain as it was and rot, he set to work at once to clear away the damaged material. Miss Barbara, keen for a space, volunteered her aid. She was strong as a man. Francie too, worked manfully. As the morning wore on people came in twos and threes to look at the scene of the fire. Miss Barbara’s eccentric ways, above all her curious taste for lighted windows, gave rise to many explanations of the outbreak. Nor did the sight that met the eyes of the inquisitive lull the tales; for through the gap in the roof, moving about among the beams and on what was left of the flooring of a low attic, could be seen three figures, the tall lean soldier, the clumsy crofter and the brawny woman, sawing, scraping and hammering to the rhythm of an uproarious song:
I saw an eel chase the Deil
Roun’ about the spinnin’ wheel.
And we’re a blin’ drunk, boozin’ jolly fou, ma jo!
Garry, swinging through the work in his enthusiasm, shouted as lustily as the other two:
I saw a pyet haud the pleuch,
Wha’s fou, wha’s fou?
An’ he whussled weel eneugh,
Wha’s fou noo, ma jo?
He broke off, however, at the sight of Miss Theresa Craigmyle among the spectators below. Theresa had hastened back, to lose nothing of the excitement, and found herself well rewarded.
‘They had had a dram,’ she declared later at the Weatherhouse. ‘Bawling out of them like that.’
‘And what more fitting?’ inquired Lang Leeb from her corner. ‘My tuneless daughters don’t understand that work goes sweetest to a song. Did you never know that they built a pier in the harbour of Aberdeen three hundred years ago to the sound of drum and bagpipes? They don’t work so wisely now. Knapperley roof will be a wonder.’
A wonder it bade fair to be. Miss Barbara tired soon and went to the stable. Francie fetched and carried, but the young gaffer having left him alone for a spell, he began to follow his own devices—which were various. Garry returned from attending to some matter on the ground and saw Francie, without plan or instruction, cut gaily into the new wood that he had brought from the carpenter’s shop. He had hacked and hewed recklessly, but, like his father in the Weatherhouse parlour, though without his father’s justification, was so highly pleased with himself that Garry stood abashed, unwilling to remonstrate. It was part of his creed that a man should take pleasure in the work of his hands, and to quench Francie’s pleasure gave him the same sense of constricting life that he had felt in quenching Miss Barbara’s candles. He set Francie’s haggard boards aside.
He was called to the ground again, and before his return the post came in and he found Lindsay’s letter. The note was curt: ‘Garry, I can’t marry you. I’m sure I’m not the right kind of wife for you. I’m sure I’m not.’ Garry pocketed his scrap of paper and climbed to the attic. Francie had mismanaged his tools again. Garry cursed and set to work himself, hoping to prevent further mischief by adroit advice and order. As he worked, however, his heart grew cold. Lindsay’s note settled hard upon it like a frost. He worked dourly on; but nothing prospered. In his first enthusiasm to restore, he had been sure of what he had to do. Now he found checks and miscalculations. He had to stop and realise that he was uncertain how to proceed.
Just then he saw, foreshortened on the ground below him, the figure of Miss Morgan. She beckoned. He turned his back. But she called, ‘May I not speak to you? Indeed it is urgent.’ He went down.
Miss Theresa Craigmyle came near at the same moment. ‘Can’t you keep away?’ he thought angrily. He knew that her visit was an idle curiosity, and had enough regard for the reputation he wished Miss Morgan to retain to ask Louie to enter the house.
‘I want you to understand,’ Louie began, ‘I’m sure I didn’t make it clear: in allowing my possession of the ring to become a symbol, a kind of rite, you realise that I had passed beyond the material vehicle to the spirit. Can I make you see? The material symbol was of no moment. I mean, it’s some justification for my keepin
g the ring. I simply didn’t see it as a piece of someone else’s property. It was just an agglomeration of matter that symbolised what was unseen. I wonder if you understand?’
‘I understand,’ he said slowly, ‘that you want to talk about yourself. But I am busy.’
‘Yes, I want to talk about myself. I know, I know I do. To you. Not to anyone else. I can have no peace until you understand that I am not a common thief. You are doing yourself an injustice if you think that. You degrade yourself by your misjudgment. I have to make you see. I feel that I am needful to you, to open your eyes to new ways of judgment—’
He turned away. ‘Excuse me, I am very busy.’
‘We are all needful to one another. Even I to you. But you don’t think so.’
‘Excuse me.’ He went away.
Louie went home, and meeting Kate Falconer on the road, proposed to adopt an orphan.
Garry returned grimly to his task. He was inexpressibly weary. The muddled disorder of the garret oppressed him. Mrs Hunter came in her comfortable way and tried to make him eat.
‘You never lippened to yon craitur,’ she said, spying out the disorder of the land. ‘Pay the body and send him hame.’
Later she recounted the affair to her neighbour John Grey.
‘That Francie Ferguson—he wouldna cut butter on a hot stane. What a haggar’ he’s made. You would be doing a good deed, Mr Grey, to give the laddie a hand. He’s dirt dane. I took him a bowlie of broth, but he’s never even lippit it.’
John Grey went round to Knapperley and said to Garry in his quiet, unassertive way, ‘You’d better let me give you a hand there.’ He craned over among the rafters to look at Francie’s mismanagement. ‘Tchu, tchu, tchu,’ he said, and began to work rapidly and surely.
Behind his back Garry paid Francie twice the sum he should have had for the completed work, and dismissed him.
‘Your wood’s unseasoned,’ said Mr Grey. ‘It’s too dark to work tonight. Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll give you a hand in the afternoon.’ He showed the younger man with a quiet tact where he had gone wrong in his work and how to remedy the faults. ‘You haven’t handled wood very much.’ It was impossible to feel resentment. Garry swallowed his pride and set himself to learn.
But when at length he went to bed he was overwhelmed in a sense of failure. He could not mend a roof, nor chose a workman, nor love a woman. He could not now even vindicate his friend. He relit his candle, to read once again Lindsay’s letter, which he knew by heart. All the self-distrust of his nature, inherited from a timid father and the grandmother whose utmost remonstrance was a sigh, had risen in him at the reading of her note. In vain, from boyhood up, he had sheltered under a bravado, a noisy clowning or proud assumption of ability where indeed he felt none; nevertheless at moments, suddenly, this ogre of self-distrust rushed out and bludgeoned him. He had never discovered how much he was indebted to the ogre. His later reputation as a man with surprising stores of curious knowledge had its foundations there. The shame he felt at being found at fault or ignorant sent him furiously to learn, and he never forgot what was bludgeoned in; but his sensitive heart, wroth to show a wound, suffered in the process. So now tonight, when Lindsay had found him at fault, he was overcome with shame.
‘She thinks I’m all wrong about Louie, and I can’t tell her. What a confounded mess everything is in!’ He wished he was back at war. This land he had thought so empty was proving unpleasantly full. Wisely he slept on it and woke refreshed in a windy sunrise to think, ‘I’m blest if I let Lindsay go like that.’ Less than ever in the sanity of morning did he wish to see the mob gaping over Louie’s theft; for all the subtlety of her excuses, theft it was. But Lindsay had to know, and should know, well and soon.
In the same wind of sunrise Mrs Falconer lay, very still beside her sleeping sister, and prayed, as she had prayed at intervals throughout the night:
‘Help me, O God, in all that I may have to do.’
She was sure that she had been divinely led to her strange discovery, and in spite of her shrinking from the public stare, had made the dedication of herself to Garry’s service. Her knowledge must be used to help his cause. She had prayed till she was worn out.
TWELVE
Concert Pitch
Breakfast was just ending when Miss Theresa remarked, ‘And a pretty picture they made, the three of them, bawling out of them on the head of the house. He’s as daft as Bawbie herself. He had a real raised look, they said, at that session meeting. Oh, I forgot, Lindsay, he’s your young man. I haven’t got accustomed to that yet.’
‘Then you may spare yourself the trouble.’ Lindsay’s voice was curt.
‘Eh? Now, Lindsay, you needn’t be so short. You know I always say just what I think. There’s no manner of doubt that the young man is strange. They are all saying it. So it’s just as well to know what you are taking in hand if you’re taking him.’
‘Which I don’t happen to be doing.’
Kate gave the girl a curious look. Lindsay continued, ‘Oh, go ahead, Cousin Tris, tell us all you saw and did. He’s not my young man. Say just what you think.’
‘What I think,’ said Miss Theresa, ‘is that he’s a young man you’d be better without. That Louie Morgan’s setting her cap at him and like to get him, I should say. Not a soul did he pay heed to, and him up there on the roof, but as soon as she came in about, down he comes and goes straight to her. Never even saw that any other body was there. O ay, Louie knows what she’s about, gazing at him with all her eyes. He had her into the house right away, and him so busy with his roof. No saying how long they stayed there.’
‘Brute!’ Lindsay pushed back her chair and walked out.
‘What would you make of that?’ asked Theresa. ‘Is she marrying him, or is she not?’
Kate knit her brows and said nothing.
‘Of course she’s marrying him,’ said Miss Annie. ‘You’ve such an ill will at the boy you can’t see the good in him. You scare the bonny birdie with your clapper of a tongue.’
The bonny birdie could be heard upstairs, banging a drawer shut. Kate followed her.
‘You mustn’t take Aunt Theresa too hard, Linny. It’s just her way. She’s got into a habit of speaking like that.’
‘Damned impudence. And I was a damned ass to tell her what I did.’
‘What language, Lindsay!’
‘I know it’s what language. I’ve been brought up to use tidy language, haven’t I? My mother would be finely shocked if she heard me. But life isn’t tidy, you see, Kate, and that’s what I’m discovering. Louie making up to him indeed.’ She jammed her hat on her head. ‘I’m going to Knapperley.’
‘But Linny, that was only Aunt Theresa’s idea—’
‘Idea or not, it’s abominable. Making eyes at Garry? Someone will pay for this. I could face the devil naked.’
‘My dear, don’t be so upset—’
‘Do you never feel about anything, Kate? You should fall in love. Then you would understand.’
She banged the door, crashed like a cataract down the stair, collided with Paradise, shouted, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ as she ran. The house door slammed.
Kate, left alone in the bedroom, pressed her hands upon her breast. Her lips drew together in a line of pain. But in a moment she relaxed and began carefully to make the beds.
Halfway to Knapperley Lindsay met Garry seeking her with the same fury of decision with which she was seeking him.
Later, as they walked towards Knapperley, a mournful Lindsay said, ‘I can’t believe it yet. She talked so beautifully. Made life seem so strange and big. I can’t explain. It wasn’t like anyone else’s world. But Garry—I like the ordinary world best. Only—listen, that hateful Cousin Tris. Oh, I know I shouldn’t hate her, but she’s always right, always right. And since that grocer let out about the way she sneaks things, she’s been on her high horse—you can’t imagine! She’s just aching for a chance to be splendidly right in front of everyone. And I was ass enough to say I’d
given you up. Idiot! And now she’ll crow and say she always knew it wouldn’t last. Listen, you must take me to that concert tonight, claim me in front of everyone, let her see if all her havering about you is right or wrong. You will come, now, won’t you?’
The afternoon sped by. In aiding John Grey, Garry worked happily and well. At fall of dark, Mr Grey said, ‘That will have to do tonight. I’ve promised to look in at the concert. It’s not much in my line, but the children will be acting. They are expecting me to come.’
Garry called in the approved fashion at the Weatherhouse door to convoy Lindsay to the school.
‘Going off with him, Lindsay,’ said Miss Theresa. ‘I thought you said you had given him up.’
‘Given him up? Who? Garry? But what an idea, Cousin Tris.’
‘What were you saying this morning, then?’
‘Oh, that—really, if you can’t understand a little quiet irony!’ Miss Annie listening remembered the slamming of the doors. ‘I don’t think much of your sense of humour,’ concluded Lindsay gravely, and walked away.
‘People should say what they mean,’ rapped Miss Theresa. ‘I always say what I mean myself.’
She set out for the concert with Mrs Falconer and Kate. Ahead of them on the road skipped Stella Dagmar, accompanied by her mother.
‘She’s fatter than ever,’ commented Theresa.
‘It’s here’s-an-end-and-I’ll-be-round-in-five-minutes if you wanted to measure yon. As I live, she’s wearing a new scarf.’ She whipped round on the road, and saw Francie following with the loonie.
‘So there’s you, Francie. You’ve been giving your wife a present, my man.’
Francie rubbed the side of his nose and sniffed.
‘What other would I do with the siller he gied me?’ he asked apologetically; and added, with a happy sheepish grin, ‘It sets her grand.’
The play went well. Stella flaunted her scarlet kerchief, Miss Morgan ‘managed’ both visibly and audibly, there was ample applause. The children scattered to their parents among the audience, and Louie took a curtain to herself, bowing and posturing. She had a charming mien, and her dress of filmy green set off the soft gold of her hair. As she stood in the packed, hot classroom savouring the clapping and the cheers (‘Oh, we’ll give her a clap, just for fashion’s sake,’ said Miss Theresa), Louie’s spirit floated out into its own paradise. To be admired—she craved it as one of her profoundest needs. She threw back her head and smiled at the noisy crowd. The moment seemed eternal, it was so sweet. Slowly and dreamily she turned away and sat to the piano, striking a chord. Now she would play.
