by Neil M. Gunn
Nearly thirty persons were gathered in Widow Grant’s house. It sometimes astonished Finn that though Widow Grant was very holy, she could yet speak to him in an ordinary voice, and sometimes even smile. She now sat with lowered head staring at the winking peat. All those present were slightly tense or excited, because they wondered how they would come out of the ordeal of “the Questions”. And it was a relief when at last Sandy had cleared the ground for the main engagement and, casting his eyes around, let them rest on Finn, the youngest.
“I wonder,” he said, “if this young man could tell me: WHAT IS THE CHIEF END OF MAN?”
Finn replied: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”
“Very good,” said Mr. Ware, his whiskers breaking against his chest as he nodded. Then he looked thoughtfully at Finn for a moment, for he remembered how as a little boy he himself had repeated for years the two words chief end as one meaningless word. “Now could you tell me the meaning of the words chief end?”
“It means,” said Finn, “the chief thing that man has got to do.”
“A little Daniel!” declared Mr. Ware.
Kirsty raised her chin a couple of inches and her closed lips moved out and in, combatively and with satisfaction.
“WHAT RULE HATH GOD GIVEN TO DIRECT US HOW WE MAY GLORIFY AND ENJOY HIM?” Mr. Ware asked her.
“The word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him,” replied Kirsty, evenly.
“WHAT DO THE SCRIPTURES PRINCIPALLY TEACH?” asked the catechist, going round with the sun.
“The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man,” replied Shiela, Roddie’s sister.
“WHAT IS GOD?”
“God,” answered Roddie, “is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”
Through the number of persons in the Godhead, the decrees of God, his work of creation and his creation of man, his providence, up to sin, its definition, and man’s fall, all was plain sailing. The first stumbling occurred with Robert Duncan, who was thirteen years old and one of a family often. “WHEREIN,” asked Mr. Ware, “CONSISTS THE SINFULNESS OF THAT ESTATE WHEREINTO MAN FELL?”
“All mankind by their fall——”
“No, no,” interrupted Mr. Ware, “that describes the misery of the estate whereinto man fell. First we must have a definition of the sinfulness of the estate itself.
“Oh, yes,” said Robert, so quickly that a faint smile showed here and there. “The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called Original Sin: together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.”
“That’s better,” said Mr. Ware, “but perhaps you will learn to repeat it a little more slowly, so that we may all have time to apprehend the meaning of the words.” He stroked his beard, “Now …”
As he went deeper into the mysteries there were momentary hesitations here and there, but the first real break came with Simple Sanny, who was in his thirties, with a brown hairy face and small acute eyes.
“WHAT IS ADOPTION?” Mr. Ware asked him.
Sanny opened his mouth thoughtfully and scratched his chin. “I know the justification one better,” he said.
“We have just had WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION?” remarked the catechist.
“Oh ay,” said Sanny, “so we had.” His quick eye turned upon a faint noise suspiciously like young laughter at Mr. Ware’s back. Encouraged by this, Sanny said, “I’ll give you the first commandment instead—if that will suit you.”
“We are some way from the commandments yet,” replied the catechist, with some severity, “and we do not bargain in these matters as we do over a stirk at a drunken market. A very drunken market, from what I have heard.”
Sanny glanced up out of the corner of his eye. Was the catechist getting at him? For Sanny’s simplicity and malice were an irresistible attraction to merry-making boys and men; and, in truth, at the fair he had been so well treated that he had slept the night in a ditch near the Market Hill.
“Ay, it was all that, from what I have heard myself,” he now replied with an air of simple and sad innocence.
Some clearing of male throats and a choked nasal sound from a boy did not ease Mr. Ware’s severity. But it encouraged Sanny still more. “Ay,” he said, shaking his head and sucking in his breath, “ay, there was one man there and he told me what adoption was, and it’s his words that will not go out of my head, but I know fine they are not the right words. He could not mislead me there,” said Sanny. “No fear.”
“Silence!” cried Mr. Ware.
“He didn’t use bad words, if that’s what you mean,” muttered Sanny, hurt now. “He only said: ‘Adoption is jail without the option’!”
“Silence, you blasphemer!”
Sanny had gone too far and knew it. Everyone knew it. Mr. Ware’s eyes were sunken a little in his head and they now glowed. He stood like a prophet who might well call down doom upon them, the everlasting wrath. Before his denunciations, Sanny curled in upon himself like a whipped collie. But Mr. Ware could, on a breath, almost find excuse for him, for this poor, witless man who to gratify the hunger of a cunning vanity would try for a blasphemous jest in God’s temple itself, because of the ever-growing carnality and sin of those amongst whom he moved, those who should show him a far other example. The more wrought upon Mr. Ware became the richer and more powerful grew his language, lifting him at last to the cry: “Asses’ heads or doves’ dung was not Israel’s meat when the lepers were sounding the trumpet. Lord, hasten the day of sounding the trumpet with the lepers, of battering Jericho’s towering walls with Joshua’s rams’ horns. When will the worm Jacob thresh the mountains? When will the anointed stripling David come from the wilderness to the slaughter of the Philistine that is Israel’s terrification? When will Moses come down from the Mount and see how our Aarons have made the people naked? Lord, hasten the day when our idolizing mirth will be turned to a repenting grief.”
Little Finn gazed on the figure of Sandy Ware with awe. The uplifted head with the out-thrust beard, the hands raised a little like tentative supplicating wings, the deep, rolling fluency of the voice, the up-curling eddies of blue smoke, the gloom of the rafters, the watching faces, the bowed heads, and passing in the midst the ritual, awful figures of Joshua and Moses and David, with the walls of Jericho tumbling down at the sounding horn on the plains of Israel.
A quietness came on the company and Mr. Ware resumed his catechizing, drawing forth the benefits which in this life do flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification, from belief in Christ and the resurrection, working on through obedience and the moral law to the meaning of the commandments, and so to a recital of the ten commandments themselves, together with amplifying statements of what is required in each and forbidden, so that their meaning be completely apprehended. To Wull fell the answer: The third commandment is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain; and to Catrine: The seventh commandment is, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But it was when the commandments were left behind, onward in that rarer air of repentance unto life and sacrament as an effectual means of salvation, that the young and many of the old stumbled. Even Roddie got lost among the six petitions, for here there was no word in the Question to suggest the beginning of the Answer. Catrine hesitated once, but quickly picked herself up. Kirsty never hesitated. In the same even, indifferent voice, she repeated the conjoint wisdom of the Westminster divines as something she had long been familiar with, and did not require anyone in particular to challenge her on the matter now.
When Mr. Ware had addressed them on the state of their knowledge and had exhorted them to be ever mor
e diligent in cultivating the one and only way of salvation, he got to his knees. They all followed him. Finn got down, too, though his mother paid no attention to him. Mr. Ware prayed in a deepened, humbled voice, with every now and then a husky rising urgency as he wrestled in travail with the Holy Spirit. The fervency of supplication became a rich tapestry of text and biblical figure and Eastern scene, with Christ amid the money-changers in the temple, walking by the golden grain in challenge to the orthodox, lifted on high at Calvary, Christ the Redeemer. “O Lord, lead us not unto temptation but deliver us from evil; take us, we beseech Thee, in Thy gracious hand and lead us by the green pastures and by the quiet waters that flow from Thy holy spirit.”
When they were on their feet, Sandy Ware was quiet and smiling and shook hands with each one. Then the folk scattered to their homes in little groups. Roddie took Finn’s hand as he walked with two men behind Kirsty and Catrine and Shiela. At the door of Kirsty’s house they all paused. Kirsty invited them in, but Roddie’s father, who was a good-living man, said it was time they were home.
“I hope,” remarked Kirsty to Roddie, as they were moving off, “that you feel a better man now?”
“Well, I know it could not have made you better anyway,” replied Roddie.
“Hmff!” snorted Kirsty, giving him a sharp, humoured look.
Roddie laughed, saluted Finn, and said, “Good-bye, Catrine.”
“Good-bye,” said Catrine.
“Hmff!” repeated Kirsty as the three came inside; “Sandy setting up to be a preacher! Him criticizing his betters! Sandy Ware, who learned the A B C in his father’s byre, talking about beavenly wisdom being more than college learning. It would be far better for him if he helped his poor wife and daughter to work their big croft than stravaiging about the country, all dressed up, teaching those, who know better, how to behave themselves.”
Finn gazed at her, his mouth fallen open.
And when Catrine had put him to bed (he went without a murmur) he lay gazing up at the rounded soot-blackened ceiling but pursuing images of his own, wondering what a leper was and what sort of trumpet he had and what the horn looked like that tumbled the walls of Jericho. For Finn knew a little about trumpets, and it was news to him that they could knock down walls. But whenever he wanted to ask his Mama a question, there was Kirsty’s endless voice: “… And that was Donald Sage, the greatest Christian minister and man that ever spoke with college learning from any pulpit. She was a strange woman, his second wife. I was there when he brought her home to the manse at Kildonan. And what a home coming it was! He came himself riding on a grey horse, and she beside him sitting sideways on a garron. Eppy Mackay, the housekeeper, went forward to meet them, bowing at every third step. Oh, Eppy knew her manners! We could do with more of her manners here, and less of this evangelical style, with its plaguing the Lord, who knows too much about us already for our comfort. And there waiting were Mr. Sage’s four children. The two lassies were in tartan gowns, their hair nicely braided on the forehead and smoothed with pomatum. But Eppy had kept her skill for the two boys. With ordinary white flour, she had powdered and combed their heads. There were brogues on their feet and white worsted stockings on their legs, tied below the knee with red garters. The kilt and jacket—it was all the same tartan—were seamed together into the one piece and opened down the front with yellow buttons…. And the dance afterwards when Eppy put the flour on the elder’s bald head …”
Finn fell asleep.
As Catrine sat alone by the fire, in a habit that had grown upon her at this hour, she heard her son dreaming.
She began to dream herself.
Running in and out her mind was a little girl in the strath of Kildonan, all bright and full of life and sometimes of half-dreaming reveries that went along the slow ridges of the hills against the sky. But the mind shut itself in a quick snap against anything so slow that it grew frightening, and the body ran off in a shout, an ecstasy of life, with hardly even a look behind. Tormad in the woods. Tormad—with mind and body thrilled to an unbearable stillness, until she felt she would dissolve, fly into bits, unless … ah, the crush of his arms, crushing all the bits back into shape, and the relief of it, the unutterable, divine relief, and the sudden exquisite lack of care, of caring no more, of letting go…. Tormad—and the red berries…. Blood-red magic.
The letter had been written by a man for Ronnie in the West Indies last year. Ronnie had been ill but was getting better. The letter also said that Ian and Torquil, when last seen, were well. There had been no mention of Tormad. It almost seemed as if a previous letter never received had been written wherein some final word may have been said about Tormad. Either that or Tormad had been separated from them in the beginning…. Tormad, standing before her, in sorrow, as if blaming himself for leaving her … and fading away into the wall….
Little Finn breathed quickly in his dream.
The birth of Finn in the awful quiet of the gloaming, among the straw in the byre. She had gone in to see Kirsty’s father, who was now committed to his bed and who, they both knew, was dying. Perhaps it was because she had known him in this final stage of his life that she had grown to love the old man, he was so gentle, with that strange, far-away look that pulled the strings of the heart. Gaunt his face had grown, too, and his patience was beyond belief, beyond what was natural in human being, and now and then expressed itself in gentleness, in a faint smile of regret at having to trouble anyone. He was like a man out of whom long ago the heart had been taken but who now had received back the essence of the lost heart’s kindness.
“I want to speak to you, Catrine,” he said, and at that, as at an irrevocable summons, her own heart stood still. “Are you happy here?”
“Oh yes,” she answered.
“It may be difficult for you at times.” His voice was weak and he paused, as if unaware of the passage of time. “I have been talking to Kirsty. This will be a home for you as long as you like, and should it so happen in the order of things that Kirsty will be taken before you, and you will still have no home of your own, then it is my wish that you would have this home, for yourself and the child.”
Catrine shut her teeth hard against her uprising emotion. Never had she shown any complaint to this man, never anything but what little brightness was in her.
“My family are gone from me—all except Kirsty, but she has been a good daughter to me and will honour my wish.”
Her head drooped. She could not speak.
“At first I thought that a new young life like yours would have tired me. But you brought lightness with you, and kind, willing hands. You have been a great help to us, and somehow you have brought peace to my last days. I want to thank you, Catrine; for my time has come upon me.”
The tears were now streaming down her face and her body was trembling.
“You have had a hard life for one so young,” said the voice, quiet now as if disembodied. “But His ways are inscrutable. I had hoped to live long enough to see your child born, and so have made it easier for you, but it is not to be.”
Catrine lost control of herself, and fell on her knees by the bedside, and buried her face, crying, “No! No!”
His long, worn hand came gently upon her head. “May God bless you, my child, now and through all your days.”
Her face was such a mess of emotion and blinding tears that she could not look at him, but got up and hurriedly left the room, without thanking him or saying one word.
By the door she brushed past Kirsty, who merely remarked in a matter-of-fact voice, “Have a look at Bel. I hear her mooing.”
Blindly she went into the byre. Bel threw her head round, showing the whites beyond her great liquid eyes. Her calving time was upon her.
Catrine stared at her and Suddenly felt sick. Her knees weakened, sweat broke out ori her brow, and she staggered towards the new straw, got to her knees and rolled over. With the pains came terror, but she bit the scream into her
All the flesh of her body gathered itself
together, terrified but fighting-wild, gathered and strained, blood running from her lip, her hands knotted in the straw.
Outside, Kirsty’s voice called, “Catrine! Catrine!” It was the high death-cry, and in the midst of her own torment, Catrine knew it, and it did not weaken her but on the contrary increased her fighting urgency.
To the byre door came Kirsty, still crying “Catrine!”—and saw Catrine in the straw and little Finn being born.
That matter-of-fact astringency in Kirsty, which she had instinctively turned to from the emotional dissolution of Dale, as a dog will turn in its sickness to green grass, had been all firm hands and confidence, death put aside in the urgent needs of life. “You’re all right, my lassie. Bel herself couldn’t do it better.” And the firm hands worked deftly.
Finn gave a little whimper in his sleep.
Catrine got up and soothed the dream from him, then returned to the fire, and began lifting the peats back and smooring those with red embers in the ash-pit.
What lovely days, too, she had had in her life! How lovely life could be, how bright and beautiful! And, in a way, loveliest of all had been these last few years with Finn.
Down on the braes below the house, with the small birch bushes, the grey boulders with cool ferns in the shadows, primroses and violets, smooth bare-cropped green hillocks, the sunlight on narrow alleyways winding and hidden amid the golden gorse, daisies and buttercups and dandelions, the burn singing its low, unending song from the throats of the little shining pools, and Finn’s restless body and Finn’s voice. The herding days of summer. For beasts could not always be on tether, and whenever possible Catrine had to herd them, so that they could visit all the rich pockets of grass on the steep, broken ground, and yet, in their freedom, not be allowed either to stray from their own ground or on to the cultivated land.
