and the mistress came up. And you suddenly felt a fool altogether, you were weeping and weeping, with her arm about you, safe you felt there and sleepy and tired. She said, It’s all right. Else, sleep, you’ll be fine. You’re tired now you’ve talked so long with your lad.
But you knew from her look she knew more than that, she knew the thing you yourself had thought; and you said to yourself when she left you that night, If I ever hear any speak ill of the Colquohouns, I’ll—I’ll—and afore you’d decided whether you’d blacken their eyes, or their character, or both, you fell fast alseep.
SOMETIMES A BLACK, queer mood came on Robert, he would lock himself up long hours in his room, hate God and Chris and himself and all men, know his Faith a fantastic dream; and see the fleshless grin of the skull and the eyeless sockets at the back of life. He would pass by Chris on the stairs if they met, with remote, cold eyes and a twisted face, or ask in a voice that cut like a knife, Can’t you leave me alone, must you always follow?
The first time it happened her heart had near stopped, she went on with her work in a daze of amaze. But Robert came from his mood and came seeking her, sorry and sad for the queer, black beast that rode his mind in those haunted hours. He said that the thing was a physical remembrance, only that just, and Chris not to worry; and she found out that near the end of the War he’d been gassed by an awful gas that they made, and months had gone by ere he breathed well again, and the fumes of that drifting Fear were gone. And sometimes the shadows of that time came back, though his lungs were well enough now, he was sure, though ’twas in the months of his agony he’d known, conviction, terrible and keen as his pain, that there was a God Who lived and endured, the Tortured God in the soul of men, Who yet might upbuild the City of God through the hearts and hands of men of good faith.
But also Chris found it coming on Robert that here he could never do good or do ill, in a countryside that was dying or dead. One night he looked at Chris and said, Lord! But for you, Christine, I was daft to come here. I’ll try for a kirk in some other place, there’s work enough to be done in the towns. And thought for a while, his fair head in his hands. Would you like a town?
Chris said, Oh, fine, and smiled reassurance, but she bit at her lips and he saw, and he knew. Well, then, not a town. I’ll try to find something betwixt and between.
So he did ere a month was out, news came from Segget its minister was dead, Robert brought the news home: I’m to try for his kirk. And Chris said, Segget? and Robert said Yes, and Chris quoted the bit of poetry there was, somebody they said in Segget had made it:
Oh, Segget it’s a dirty hole,
A kirk without a steeple
A midden-heap at ilka door
And damned uncivil people!
Robert laughed, We’ll make them both civil and clean, Chris said, But you haven’t yet gotten the kirk, and he said Just wait, for I very soon will.
Three Sundays later they set out for Segget, Robert to preach there and Chris to listen, it was April, quiet and brown in the fields, drowsy under a blanket of mist that cleared as the sun rose, leaving the hills corona’ed in feathery wispings of clouds, Chris asked their name, and Robert said, Cirrus. They bring fine weather and they’re standing still. There’s little wind on the heights to-day.
And Chris on her bicycle suddenly felt young, younger far than she’d felt for years, Robert beside her on his awful bike, it made a noise like a threshing machine, collies came barking from this close and that; but Robert ground on and paid them no heed, scowling, deep in his sermon, no doubt. But once he swung round. Am I going too fast? and Chris said, Fast? It’s liker a funeral, and he came from the deeps of his thoughts and laughed, Oh, Chris, never change and grow English-polite! Not even in Segget, when we settle in its Manse!
Syne he said of a sudden, a minute or so later, they were past Mondynes and Segget in sight: Do you mind how Christ was tempted of the devil? And so was I till you spoke just now. I’d made up my mind I’d butter them up, in the sermon I preached—just for the chance of getting out of Kinraddie, settled in Segget, and on with some work. Well, I won’t…. By God, I’ll give them a sermon!
THE OLD MINISTER had died of drink, fair sozzled he was, folk said, at the end; and his last words were, so the story went, And what might the feare’s prices be to-day? No doubt that was just a bit lie that they told, but faith! he’d been greedy enough for his screw, with his long grey face and his bleary eyes and his way that he had of speaking to a man, met out in the street or down by the Arms, as though he were booming from the pulpit itself: Why didn’t I see you in the kirk last Sabbath? And a billy would redden and give a bit laugh, and look this way and that, were he one of New Toun. But more than likely, were he one of the spinners, he’d answer: Maybe because I wasn’t there! in the awful twang that the creatures spoke; and go off and leave old Greig sore vexed, he’d never got over the fact that the spinners cared hardly a hoot for kirk session or kirk.
Ah well, he was a dead and a two-three came to try for his pulpit, more likely his stipend, two old men came, each buttered up Segget, you’d have thought by the way the creatures blethered the Archangel Michael could have come to Segget, and bought a shop, and felt at home as he sat at the back and sanded the sugar. Folk took that stite with a dosing of salts, then the third man came and some stories came with him, ’twas the Reverend Robert Colquohoun of Kinraddie, he’d been down there only a bare two years, and half his congregation had gone, they’d go anywhere but listen to him, he was aye interfering and preaching at folk that had done him no harm, couldn’t he leave them a-be? Forbye that he’d married a quean of the parish, and if there’s a worse thing a minister can do than marry a woman that knows the kirk folk, it’s only to suck sweeties under the pulpit in the time he’s supposed to be in silent prayer.
Well, Mr Colquohoun, he didn’t suck sweets, but he did near everything else, folk said, and most of Segget, though it thronged to hear him, had no notion to vote for the creature at all.
But when he was seen stride up to the pulpit, and he leaned from the pulpit rails and he preached, the elders were first of all ta’en with his way, and the old folk next with the thing that he preached, not the mealy stuff that you’d now hear often, but meaty and strong and preached with some fire—and man! he fairly could tell a bit tale!
For he took his text from a chapter in Judges, his sermon on Gath and the things that that Jew childe Samson did, how at last the giant was bound to a pillar, but he woke from the stupor and looked round about, and cried that the Philistines free him his bonds; and they laughed and they feasted, paying him no heed, sunk in their swine-like glaurs of vice. Their gods were idols of brass and of gold, they lived on the sweat and the blood of men, crying one to the other, Behold, we are great, we endure, and not earth itself is more sure. Pleasure is ours and the taste of lust, wine in our mouths and power in our hands; and the lash was heard on the bowed slave’s back, they had mercy on neither their kith nor their kin. And Samson woke and looked round again, he was shorn of his hair, bound naked there, in the lights of the torches, tormented and chained. And then sudden the Philistines felt the walls rock and they looked them about and saw the flames wave, low and sharp in a little wind; and again about them the great hall groaned, and Samson tore down the pillars of the roof, and the roof fell in and slew him and them…. And Samson was rising again in our sight, threatening destruction unless we should change, and free both him and the prisoners chained in the littered halls of our secret hearts.
And maybe it was because it was Spring, new-come, the sun a long, drowsy blink in the kirk, and folk heard the voice of the Reverend Colquohoun like the wind they’d hear up under the hills, fine and safe as they listened below, and who could he mean by Samson but them, ground down by the rents they’d to pay the Mowats? Maybe it was that and maybe it was because folk aye had prided themselves in Segget in taking no heed of what others said, that they licked up the sermon like calves at a cog; and a fair bit crowd watched