two in this case made an eternity.
Mother and daughter fronted each other, antagonistic, weighing the years in a balance, but with what differing weights!
Stoddart Semple grumbled on. ‘She wants to mak hersel oot somebody,’ he said. All the rasping irritation of his own discomfiture was in the sneer.
‘Some folks are grand at that,’ said Emmeline sharply. But he took her up, not heeding the home-thrust.
‘Deed they are. You cud dae fine to be somebody yersel, Mrs. Ironside, an’ Matty’s nae far ahin ye.’
‘She wunna be’t, then,’ said Emmeline with tart decisiveness, furious that Stoddart should read her secret desires. ‘My lassie wunna ging like Maggie Findlater, terrible goodwillie to yer face an’ despisin’ the hale rick-matick o’ her fowk ahin their backs.’
‘Maggie!’ said Stoddart. ‘Maggie’s nae that ill.’
‘A muckle easy-osy lump,’ snorted Mrs. Ironside.
‘If she’d keep her mou’ shut an’ her feet in she’d be a’ richt. She taks a gweed grip o’ the grun’ yet an’ a grand mou’fu’ o’ her words for a’ her finery.’
‘Yon’s a terrible pit-on.’ Mrs. Ironside’s voice expressed the loftiest contempt that a woman who has married ill can possibly bestow on one who has married gorgeously. ‘An’ a’ the men maun be like her man to be men ava’. “Do you play golf, Mr. Ironside?” she says, most gracious-like. Imagine asking Geordie wi’ his sharny sheen if he played golf!’
Geordie came to the suface again. He had been out of depth, uneasy at every quirk in the conversation that his slow mind could not follow.
‘I dinna haud wi’ that cleverness masel,’ he had said.
Nobody was listening to him. He tried in vain himself to listen to his own thoughts pounding within him. They said nothing intelligible. Now at the relief of a tried and accepted joke he let himself go, laughing immoderately. His eye on his miry boots flung sidelong in the corner − to focus the idea − he pictured their befouled and clumsy strength companioning the natty smartness of the golfers.
Sane man, seeing always in relation such things as he did see.
Martha meanwhile burned in an agony of impatience. What did they mean, chattering of these indifferent occasions while she waited for her doom? If they would only let her back to work. … Wasted time! She stood and fretted, not daring to interrupt, able hardly to endure. And why should her father laugh like that and she in mortal stress?
Geordie came out of the absorption of his joke and heard his wife and his neighbour dispose of Martha’s pretensions to a University education. He ruminated soberly. In the cramped kitchen prodigious horizons lengthened out. There were vast unenclosed tracts within him where his thoughts lost themselves and disappeared. He pursued them deep within himself, past his land marks.
The noise of tongues went on.
‘Ye’re gey forcey, though,’ said Geordie.
He said it very loud, with a sharp resonance that startled Emmeline and Stoddart into silence. He jerked forward on his chair, sitting unusually upright, and spoke unusually loud all through his disquisition. The voice of a man who knew the disabilities of Providence − ‘deaf in the ae lug an’ disna hear wi’ the ither.’ … Providence against Emmeline − it needed that.
‘We’ll nae be nane waur aff wi’ Matty at the college than we are e’noo whan she’s at the school, will we?’ He boomed the question at them as though they too were a little deaf.
‘But we’ll be a hantle better off, it’s to be hopit, whan she’s a finished teacher.’
‘Weel, but that’s nae the pint. We are as we are an’ we’re nae that ill − we micht be a hantle waur. But we wunna be a hantle waur wi’ Matty at the college. It wunna mak nae differ.’
Emmeline felt a little giddy. Geordie argumentative! A new departure.
Being set on concealment of the true reason for her obstructionist policy, she could not immediately find another plausible enough to check him with.
‘We’ve gotten a’ we need,’ he was saying. ‘We’ve aye a tattie till wer dinner.’
‘O ay, it’s aye the meat you look till. Ye’re a grand hand at yer meat, I will say that for ye. But there’s mair things nor meat in this world.’
Emmeline laid a violent emphasis upon this, as though she were quite willing for her husband to circumscribe his activities at eating in a world to come.
‘Ye wunna beat a tattie,’ said Geordie, ‘an’ ye wunna ging far wantin’ ane. − Nae in this warld,’ he added, as though he were willing in his turn for his wife in her next existence to be freed from the encumbrance of food.
Martha crushed the ruined sheet of paper suddenly in her fists and began plucking it to pieces with a series of savage staccato rents.
‘Jist you write it ower again, lassie,’ said her father. ‘There’ll aye be a tattie for ye or ye’re dane.’
Emmeline broke into abuse. She was defeated by one of the few loyalties she retained. Queer, she never taunted Geordie with her loss of status, nor deaved him with her dreams of respectability to come. Queerer still, she had no motive but her love for him. Her fury against Stoddart Semple increased. He had her inner argument pat. She tongued him therefore with virulence, cutting across his rumbling sentences.
‘It’s a mou’bag that you wad need. A body canna hear themsel’s speak in their ain hoose.’
At that moment the wind flared in the chimney, driving the smoke down gustily into the room. Emmeline snatched noisily at the interruption.
‘See to yon flan,’ she cried, seizing the poker and beating at the fuel as though she would batter the smoke back up the chimney. ‘We’ll be smokit ooten existence. Haud back yer chairs a bit.’ And she swung the poker with a virago brandish that made both Geordie and Stoddart scrape back their chairs. The feathery ash from the charred wood blew in their faces.
Balked of serenity, Emmeline took refuge in cleanliness. The kitchen was certainly not out of the need of it. Slush and smoke together − smuts and soot and dribbled snow − clods of earth tumbled from drying boots − dubs and dung and crumbs and ink arid dishwater not yet emptied out, tea-leaves swimming in it, and the rind of bacon flung on the hearth and dissolving in greasy dirtiness among the ashes − a very slattern among kitchens. Emmeline flung herself upon the dirt like a tornado.
‘As black’s the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat,’ she grumbled, sousing the floor.
She splashed and soaped and scrubbed. The steam from her soap suds thickened the air. She lunged with her scrubbing-brush towards Geordie’s seat and he moved farther and farther back before the soapy flood; she dived towards Stoddart and he retired with an edgy and raucous creak from the legs of his retreating chair.
By the time the chair was marooned against the wall Stoddart bethought himself and took his leave. Geordie tip-toed across the dripping floor and reached for his boots.
