we can look for nocht else.’
The Reverend John nodded gravely.
‘Still Andra: you wouldn’t expect that to be the prime source?’
‘Well, you couldn’t just say no, John.’
‘And they’re all serving lassies: it’s bound to give a parent a sore heart.’
Andrew Ramsay thought of his own daughters. He wondered how long he might be spared such domestic humiliation. Two of them were courting. It would probably be easy enough to get them married. But if not—? He poured himself a large whisky and listened for a moment to the rain drumming on the high vestry window. It was a grand day to be indoors: their thoughts should flow pleasantly.
Though neither of them were of a licentious turn of mind they liked to discuss, in a masculine way, the details of adultery and fornication in the parish.
The Reverend John, though a bachelor, kept a good-looking serving lass. The long winter nights in the manse were dreary enough even with the additional comfort and companionship of a woman. The trouble with the Reverend John was that he did not enjoy the companionship of women. He loved books and drink. He realised that he should never have taken up the ministry for his forthright opinions on certain matters of politics did not ensure his popularity with the influential members of his congregation. He felt himslf held in uncomfortable restraint. Only with his colleagues did he unburden himself.
To-day he was rather testy on the adulterous excesses of his parishioners. He would require to make visits and be stern and full of righteous wrath. And he would much rather be with his Latin poets. Strangely enough he was an excellent Latin scholar. He had just managed to pass at college. It was not till he had settled down in the manse and had decided against marriage that he developed a passion for classical literature. But withal he remained a misfit. He disliked the world into which he had been born. He disliked the Galloway farmers for their greed and their ignorance: he disliked their labourers for their ignorance and wretched poverty. There was nothing he could do in his world but preach and censure. There was little he could praise. Politically he tended towards radicalism. But his radicalism was sterile. He had no faith in the people: he had no faith in the government. But he was always ready in the secrecy of the vestry to champion the cause of any one who was spirited enough to enter the lists against authority.
Samuel MacKitteroch was no great Latinist: nor was he a scholar in any strict sense. He had once been the captain of a trading schooner. But a painful accident in which both his legs had been broken and carelessly set rendered him unfit for sea life. So he had retired to his native villlage and set up as schoolmaster.
The school was held in an old barn of John MacMeechan’s. His fees consisted of a peat which each scholar brought him. The laird and a few of the farmers contributed a small sum of money towards his expenses for he taught the farmers’ sons to read and write and apply the science of numbers to their daily work.
It was Sam MacKitteroch and not John Ross who taught the children the Shorter Catechism and instructed them in the ways of the Lord. But his schoolmastering was a thankless job. Pupils came when they liked and went when they liked: he had no control or authority over them. He realised the farmers needed their labour and that their parents needed the few coppers they earned. Because of this Sam too was embittered and disillusioned. His great fear was war. He preached in season and out of season the inevitability of war. Some day the coloured races would rise up and the white man would be annihilated. His sailing had brought him in contact with the black and yellow races and he had seen how the white man treated them. They were robbed and beaten … but there would be a day of retribution …
Andrew Ramsay was the wisest and sanest man of the three. But he was the least discreet. He could not make his peace with authority whether farmer or laird. He considered he was better than either. But in the end they had broken him as they had broken his father.
His father, David Ramsay, had been a stone-mason of no mean ability: but he had been of a quarrelsome independent disposition. He had quarrelled violently with the laird over the building of a new house and had finally destroyed what he had begun of the house because the laird thought he knew better than the mason as to how the work should proceed. But David Ramsay would not yield and he lost more money than he could afford. He had ended his days as a dry-stone dyker – a trade he had passed on to his son.
The son was as excellent a craftsman as his father but he had also inherited his father’s temperment. He liked, above all, to be his own master: least of all did he like the interference of ignorant and greedy farmers.
An unhappy marriage had not eased his lot and early in life he had come to look upon drink as the only solace in a mean and hard-bitten world. But he was a keen political thinker, much more realist in his thought than either of his companions.
Their common tragedy was drink: it was drink that finally caused them to acquiesce in their lot. It was drink that enabled them to live from one week-end to another.
The parish of Kirkcolm was more advanced than the parishes of Stoneykirk and Kirkmaiden. Kirkcolm was nearer the Port of Stranraer, nearer the comings and goings of the civilised world. Many men went to sea from the district – even if few returned to settle down. But relatively they were isolated and backward. For men of any spirit there was little to lighten the endless round of monotonous days.
And so the curious ceremony in the church vestry had come to be established and accepted.
The routine seldom varied. First they discussed the gossip of the parish and then they proceeded to affairs of state – basing their discussions on the current issue of the North British Daily Mail – a Scottish news-sheet of Radical tendencies.
But however the discussion went, the drink never ceased to go round: so that after an hour’s hard drinking they were more or less bemused. It was at this stage that Andrew Ramsay was liable to become eloquent. At this stage his respect for John Ross’s cloth sunk very low.
The Reverend John became more and more lugubrious as he drank. He found pleasure in his depression. His troubles became less personal: took on a more universal aspect.
As for Sam MacKitteroch, being much the oldest member, he quickly reacted to the potency of the spirit and contented himself with occasional – and sometimes witty – interjections.
As the three of them sat looking into the bright vestry fire the rain drummed and battered on the long narrow window and spattered in the wide chimney; the wind moaned and sighed round the high gables of the small grey stone church and groaned among the grey stones in the surrounding church-yard. The grey daylight was already fading over the rain-sodden land, blending in dismal harmony with the restless grey heaving of the waters of Loch Ryan. Inside the vestry the darkness hung softly in the corners and from the oaken roof tree. The shadows crept ever nearer the fire, whose dancing light, seen across the men’s faces, served to heighten their effect and significance. The face of the minister glowed red and high-lights glistened on his shiny cheeks. Andrew’s face seemed heavy and deeply lined though his greying beard seemed black and lustrous as a youth’s. Old Sam’s face caught in slightly drunken profile seemed suffused with a deep inward saintly spirituality. His face was wrinkled and kindly. His snow-white beard gave him that final touch of other-worldly reverence.
And then the schoolmaster raised his glass of whisky, exposing his yellow stumps of teeth for a moment before draining it off.
‘You don’t think these iron ships are less safe than the wooden ones, Andra?’
Andrew shook his head slowly.
‘No: the steam engined iron ship will drive the wooden barques and schooners off the sea. Don’t you agree, Sam?’
‘The sailing days are far from finished, Andra. But the steam boat’s quicker even if she’s dirtier and more uncomfortable. What does it matter any the ways o’t? The owners’ll send men to sea in anything nowadays providing they’re well covered with insurance. There’s many a ship they send out in the hope she’ll never reach port.’
‘You’ve