up the passage beside her. She almost trembled at the nearness of his presence. For a moment the dominie stood over her. The writing was as wretched as any in the school. And no wonder! How often had he told them how to hold their pens? And yet here was this girl holding her pen as in a death grip, the first joint of her forefinger flexed inwards with the strain.
The grip tightened as he stood over her and the hand began to shake. With a vicious stroke he brought the sharp edge of the ruler down on her hand. The thumb nail was split open down into the root.
Jean started up with a strangled cry but the dominie thrust her back down on the bench.
‘Maybe you’ll learn to hold your pen correctly – how often am I to tell you?’
GALLOWAY GLOAMING
Tom Gibson weeded and hoed in his garden till dusk began to settle on the land. Then he lit his pipe and leaned his arms on the garden wall close to a clump of gooseberry bushes. From the garden wall the land fell away towards the heughs of the coast and towards Craigdaroch Bay. He could smoke in peace for as yet the midges were not out in their plaguing myriads.
Tom Gibson, though he could rarely allow himself moments of inactivity, could, at the end of such a day of fruitful toil, lean on his garden dyke and meditate. His mind was extraordinarily calm. He had never known, and it seemed he would never know, excitement. Excitement was a sign of weakness: of instability. But there was no weakness or instability about him. He was rock-sure of himself: the earth was beneath his feet. He could afford to meditate in his garden – even if it was a kitchen garden. He would have been ill-at-ease in a garden where good soil and good labour was wasted on the cultivation of flowers.
He puffed slowly and deliberately at his pipe and gazed almost dreamingly over the dusk gathering fields towards the sea. He found the world good. But even as he gazed he was thinking how to-morrow he would vist the dominie at Dunmore. The dominie was a runt: a mere invoice of a man. His audacity in inflicting injury on his child was in the nature of an aberration: but an aberration that would not be allowed to go unchecked.
But there was no hatred in Tom Gibson’s heart: no petty desire to revenge himself on the dominie. He would merely teach him a much-needed lesson: administer effective censure. Not to do so would be to fail in his duty.
And yet in his meditation he found pleasure. There was much satisfaction in being strong and resolute and determined. The working of his iron will brought him a sweet feeling of power. Once doubt and indecision entered, this deep and elemental satisfaction fled.
He was in the magnificent prime of his life. He worked on the land as a Beethoven or a Michael Angelo worked at his art. He was a master-labourer, consummate in his skill, indefatigable in his strength. He could not envisage a day when his muscles would wither and his strength decline and the edge of his cunning dull.
The swallows had gone from the sky: a solitary bat squeaked above the steading of Craigdaroch: a large white moth fluttered among the rank grass and weeds close to the dyke-side. The cattle turned their way from the burn and began to work up through the field. In the stillness could be heard their rasping of the dew-wet grass; the restless movement of a sexually stimulated heifer; the heavy anticipatory breathing of the almost satiated bull as he nosed his way with uplifted muzzle through the herd. The bull, like Tom Gibson, was sure and deliberate: overpowering in its masculine domination.
The grieve of Craigdaroch was alive even in his brooding meditation to every subtle harmony of the night. But he had overstayed himself. He withdrew his pipe from his mouth, tapped the ash gently on his palm, and taking a deep breath of the night air (for a sigh would have been foreign to his nature) he moved towards the house that had already merged with the night: gathered in upon itself in sleep.
SPRINGTIME
The winters were hard. There were long periods of frost when the earth was iron-bound; there were snows that covered the hedges and lay in deep drifts in the hollows of the land; snows that covered the land for weeks till the coming of the thaw.
Springtime came, snell and bleak, towards the end of March. Spring came with the peesweeps and the whaups coming back from the shore to the tilled soil and the moorland. Springtime came with the immemorial sowing of seed, with harrowing and rolling, with draining and fencing, with the sough of spring rain always in the wind.
Springtime signified the opening of a new year of increased toil and activity for every one. But above all it meant one thing to the Rhinns of Galloway: springtime meant calving time.
From the beginning of March till the end of April there was hardly a night that the dairyman was not called out of his bed by the lowing of a cow in labour. There were nights when all the sleep he got was a few minutes snatched on a bunch of straw in a vacant stall. In a land where herds averaged one hundred and fifty milk cows, there could be no question of sleep at calving time.
Sometimes the births were easy. Sometimes they called for much obstetric skill and not a little physical strength. Often a heifer would give rise to much trouble and anxiety: sometimes the fear of milk fever caused more sleepless nights than actual time spent out of bed in the byres.
Not only had the byreman to be out of bed: his wife or his daughter had also to accompany him to milk the cow while the dairyman attended to the calf. And for every calf born in the night there was, as the result, an extra cow requiring milking in the morning.
Over all the land the lowing of cows in the pain and agony of labour could be heard. Some might be dropped in the fields by day. But mostly they were trailed from their mother’s womb in the byres: often as not in the early hours of the morning when the light was no more than the pale and inadequate beam thrown by a lantern resting on the byre walk, flickering and waving as the draught caught it from under the byre door.
In springtime the dairy farmer reaped his harvest. The more calves the more milk: the more milk the more cheese: the more cheese the more profit. But the harvest needed its slaves and these were provided by the dairymen. For them there could be no question of rest; no thought of respite. Day and night they were tied to the byre, tied to the cattle beasts – never resting with an easy mind even when the occasion for rest presented itself. And should their wives also be with child, then indeed their cup was full to overflowing.
Not for the dairyman did the lengthening days and the soft winds and the singing of birds arouse feelings of joy and gladness. Nor did the swelling bud on the thorn promise release from the winter’s darg. Deep down perhaps he welcomed the approach of the June days when the cattle could stay out for the night and relieve him of a weary nine months round of mucking and bedding and feeding. But he would need to plumb his very depths indeed to discover such pleasant anticipation. For the overwhelming urgency of calving obliterated any pleasant thought of the morrow and what it might bring forth.
Yet the peesweep tossed and grass put forth its shoots and the spring rains swept over the turning soil: the days lengthened and the sun grew in strength and the mavis, vibrant throated, with a deep age-long sorrow, sang its love song to the morn.
Of what consequence that man, back bent in toil, had no ear for such music? From every thorn bush the song went forth, a pæan of praise, that the earth had been born yet again.
THE BOY DAVID
Sam MacKitteroch was a very different schoolmaster from John Gibb. His school was different. He was entirely dependent on his scholars and charity for his living. Mostly the scholars brought him a peat two or three times a week but sometimes they would bring him an egg or a farrel of scone. Sam got his oatmeal from John MacMeechan of Achgammie. Sam had trained a son, Robert, in the craft of the sailing ship and had coached him with his chief’s and master’s certificate. In gratitude, Robert had left instructions that during his voyages Sam was never to know want. Robert MacMeechan had gone to sea with Richard Ramsay and both owed much to Sam MacKitteroch that they qualified as masters so quickly.
No one could have disliked Sam. He was old and he was gentle in his methods. He would rather impart thoroughly one