he told her of her mother’s intention.
Martha’s anger blazed. She broke out upon her mother.
‘Where are you getting him?’ she asked, after having intimated her displeasure. Some illegitimate outcast, she supposed.
‘Hingin’ on a nail i’ the moss,’ said Emmeline shortly.
Martha could be conclusive too.
‘Well, mind,’ she said, ‘if you bring that child here and you fall ill again, I won’t look after him. So you can please yourself. I mean it, mind.’
‘Ye’re terrible short i’ the trot the day,’ said Emmeline.
Martha’s anger blazed again.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I want to know what my bed’s doing out in the field.’
‘Oh, is’t oot? That’s Madge, the randy. Fancy nae bringin’ it in a’ day. That’s her sweirness −’
‘Do you mean to tell me that Madge is sleeping in my bed?’
‘Weel, fat’s a’ the temper for? Ye did it yersel! Why sudna she?’
‘It’s my bed,’ cried Martha passionately. ‘She can take her own bed outside.’
‘Yon lumber o’ a thing −’
‘And she’s had my sheets. Hasn’t she? I know she has −’
‘The sheets’ll wash, surely to peace.’
‘I’ll never sleep in them again after her.’
‘Weel, dinna, then. Ye wad think she was a soo.’
‘She’s worse,’ cried Martha in a transport of rage; she had no idea that she hated Madge so much; and the girl herself coming in at the moment, she emptied out the cataracts of her wrath.
Madge gave her a contemptuous stare and began to spread a bit of oatcake with jam. She did not trouble herself to answer back. There was something horrible in her self-possession.
‘Mind you about that infant, mother,’ said Martha, swinging round on Emmeline. ‘I won’t touch it, I won’t look at it. If you’re ill it can starve, for all I care.’ And she made off up the field. A fortnight of her six weeks’ holiday was already gone and there seemed no nearer hope of reaching Liverpool; and she had realized, in a ferocity of anger against herself, that through the whole year that had elapsed since Luke’s departure, she had been living for the moment of reunion. ‘I need him,’ she cried desperately to the night. ‘I must have him. I’m only really alive when I’m with him. If I can’t see him now I’ll die. I’ll never go through another year without him. Without seeing him. Being revitalized by him. It’s by his life I live.’ And in daylight, taking the ashes from the grate, ‘Good God,’ she thought, ‘am I such a slave as that?’ She wanted to kick out at the whole world to prove how free she was.
‘Fatever ails her?’ said Emmeline, as she swung herself away from the family conclave. ‘I hinna seen sic a tantrum sin’ she was a bairn.’
‘She’s richt eneuch aboot the loonie,’ Geordie said. ‘If you werena weel again it wad be a gey trauchle for her.’
‘O weel,’ said Emmeline, ‘I wunna bring him.’
In spite of aching muscles after a long day’s work among the hay, Geordie walked to Crannochie that night to tell his daughter that the child was not to come.
‘O, I’m not caring,’ said Martha peevishly.
What did anything matter if she was not to see Luke?
But the next time she came home Emmeline was seated by the fire with a bundle cradled in her arms.
Martha’s rage had fallen. She was toneless, apathetic. Three weeks of her vacation had gone.
‘So you brought him after all, mother,’ was all she said.
Emmeline had been in secret a little afraid of what Martha might say. She blurted, apologetically,
‘Ye sud ’a’ seen the girl’s face whan I said I cudna tak him, Matty. … Besides, I’m rale fond o’ the craiturs. I’ve been used to them a’ ma days an’ it’s rale lanesome-like wi’ you and Madge an’ yer father awa’ a’ day lang an’ me used to a hooseful. I like a bairn aboot to get the clawin’s o’ the pots.’
Martha said nothing. Encouraged by the silence, Emmeline drew aside the shawl that wrapped the child.
‘Did ye ever see sic an imitation?’ she said, displaying the baby. ‘Ye cud haud him i’ the lee o’ yer hand. But he hadna a chance − the lassie was that sair grippit in.’
Martha glanced incuriously at the child.
‘Sax months an’ mair,’ said Emmeline. ‘An’ ye wadna think he was three.’
Six months and more, Martha was thinking. Six months and more till she would see Luke. Half her holiday was gone. Aunt Jean had visited Aunt Josephine the day before and Martha, desperate, had gulped that she was invited to Liverpool. Aunt Jean had not seemed to realize that Martha could not go to Liverpool unless someone else stayed at Crannochie. She had not made the slightest motion towards help. She had said, ‘Oh. Fa’s there?’ ‘I’ve friends,’ Martha had said. In Aunt Jean’s presence it had seemed an utterly senseless proceeding to have friends of her own outside the family cognisance. But perhaps later Aunt Jean would realize the position, and write.
At the end of another week Aunt Jean had not written. Martha wrote. She wrote to Liverpool and told them that she would never be able now to get away.
Three days later Peter Mennie, calling out cheerfully from the garden so that they might know he was coming, strode into the kitchen and struggled with something in the letter bag.
‘Is’t a parcel?’ asked Miss Josephine, all agog with interest.
‘There ye go!’ he said triumphantly, dragging out from the bag first one and then another huge potato. ‘A makin’ o’ ma new potatoes to you. Arena they thumpers?’ And while Miss Josephine exclaimed upon their beauty, he held a letter out to Martha.
‘O ay, they’re a terrible crop the year,’ he said, striding to the door again; and stepping out cried over his shoulder to Martha:
‘Ye’ll be awa’ to Liverpool ane o’ these days.’
The postmark of her letter was Liverpool: doubtless Peter had taken a shrewd glance at it before he gave it up. Clemmie had trained him well in such habits of observation: especially in regard to the letters that were delivered before he came to Drochety.
Obeying a sudden impulse, Martha blurted out her bitterness of spirit to Peter.
Twenty minutes later Drochety’s Clem burst open the door. ‘Foo’s a’ wi’ ye the day?’ she shouted to Miss Josephine, and, lugging Martha outside the door:
‘Dinna you fret, lassie,’ she said, ‘awa’ wi’ ye an’ hae yer holiday. I’ll come in-by an’ sleep aside Miss Josephine an’ dae her bits o’ things. There’s nae need to hae onybody in.’
Martha looked at her coldly.
She resented Clemmie’s interference in her affairs. She had almost instantly regretted her impulse of confession to Peter and was furious that he had gone straight and told Clem. She might have known! − He told Clem everything. Every day as eleven o’clock approached, she watched for his coming and had his cup of cocoa ready when he arrived; and while he sat in the big armchair in Drochety kitchen and drank it, Clemmie relieved him of the bundle of letters he was holding. … Hence her unique mastery of the affairs of the neighbourhood.
‘But she doesn’t need to know mine,’ thought Martha angrily: and she was short with Clem; refusing her offer in brief