spree to the pair of them. Then more trampling and scraping came from the door, folk came drifting in two-three at a time, Chris over- busied to notice their faces, but some watched her and gave a bit smile and Cuddiestoun cried to father, Losh, man, she’s fair an expert getting, the daughter. The kitchen’s more her style than the College.
Some folk at the tables laughed out at that, the ill-nature grinned from the faces of them, and suddenly Chris hated the lot, the English Chris came back in her skin a minute, she saw them the yokels and clowns everlasting, dull-brained and crude. Alec Mutch took up the card from Cuddiestoun then and began on education and the speak ran round the tables. Most said it was a coarse thing, learning, just teaching your children a lot of damned nonsense that put them above themselves, they’d turn round and give you their lip as soon as look at you. But Chae was sitting down himself by then and he wouldn’t have that. Damn’t man, you’re clean wrong to think that. Education’s the thing the working man wants to put him up level with the Rich. And Long Rob of the Mill said I’d have thought a bit balance in the bank would do that. But for once he seemed right in agreement with Chae—the more education the more of sense and the less of kirks and ministers. Cuddiestoun and Mutch were fair shocked at that, Cuddiestoun cried out Well, well, we’ll hear nothing coarse of religion, as though he didn’t want to hear anything more about it and was giving out orders. But Long Rob wasn’t a bit took aback, the long rangy childe, he just cocked an eye at Cuddiestoun and cried Well, well, Munro, we’ll turn to the mentally afflicted in general, not just in particular. How’s that foreman of yours getting on, Tony? Is he still keeping up with his shorthand? There was a snicker at that, you may well be sure, and Cuddiestoun closed up quick enough, here and there folk had another bit laugh and said Long Rob was an ill hand to counter. And Chris thought of her clowns and yokels, and was shamed as she thought—Chae and Long Rob they were, the poorest folk in Kinraddie!
At a quarter past six the mill loosed off again from its bumblebee hum, the threshers came trooping down to the tables again. More dumpling there was, cut up for tea, and bread and butter and scones and baps from the grocer, and rhubarb and blackberry jam, and syrup for them that preferred it, some folk liked to live on dirt out of tins. Most of the mill folk sat down in a right fine tune, well they might, and loosed out their waistcoats. Will was near last to come in from the close, a long, dark young childe came in at his heels, Chris hadn’t set eyes on him before, nor he on her by the way he glowered. The two of them stood about, lost-like and gowkèd, looking for seats in the crowded kitchen till Mistress Strachan cried over to Chris Will you lay them places ben in the room?
So she did and took them their supper there, Will looked up and cried Hello, Chris, how have you gotten on? and Chris said Fine, how’ve you? Will laughed Well, God, my back would feel a damned sight easier if I’d spent the day in my bed. Eh, Tavendale? And then he minded his manners. This is Ewan Tavendale from Upprums, Chris.
So that was who; Chris felt queer as he raised his head and held out his hand, and she felt the blood come in her face and saw it come dark in his. He looked over young for the coarse, dour brute folk said he was, like a wild cat, strong and quick, she half-liked his face and half-hated it, it could surely never have been him that did that in the larch wood of Upperhill? But then if you could read every childe’s nature in the way he wiped his nose, said Long Rob of the Mill, it would be a fine and easy world to go through.
So she paid him no more heed and was out of the Knapp a minute later and ran nearly all the way up to Blawearie to see to the milking there. The wind was still up but the frost was crackling below her feet as she ran, the brae rose cold and uncanny with Blawearie’s biggings uncertain shadows high up in the cold mirk there. She felt tingling and blithe from her run, she said to herself if she’d only the time she’d go out every winter night and run up over hills with frost and the night star coming in the sky.
But that night as Blawearie went to its bed Will opened his bedroom door and cried Father! Chris! See that light down there in the Knapp!
CHRIS WAS OVER at her window then in a minute, bare- footed she ran and peered by the shadow of the great beech tree. And there was a light right plain enough, more than a light, a lowe that crackled to yellow and red and rose in the wind that had come with the night. Peesie’s Knapp would be all in a blaze in a minute, Chris knew; and then father came tearing down the stairs, crying to Will to get on his clothes and follow him, Chris was to bide at home, mind that. They heard him open the front door and go out and go running right fleetly down the night of Blawearie hill, Chris cried to Will Wait for me, I’m coming as well, and he cried back All right, but for Christ’s sake hurry!
She couldn’t find her stockings then, she was trembling and daft; and when found they were, her corsets were missing, slipped down the back of the kist they had, Will came knocking at the door Come on!—Light a match and come in, she called and in he came, knotting his muffler, and lighted a match and looked at her in her knickers and vest, reaching out for the new-seen corsets. Leave the damn things where they are, you’re fine, you should never have been born a quean. She was into her skirt by then, and said I wish I hadn’t, and pulled on her boots and half-laced them, and ran down the stairs after Will and put on her coat at the foot. In a minute they were out in the dimness then, under the starlight, it was rimed with frost, and running like mad down to the lowe that now rose like a beacon against the whole of Kinraddie. God, I hope they’ve wakened! Will panted, for every soul knew the Strachans went straight to bed at the chap of eight. Running, they could see by then it was the barn itself that had taken alight, the straw sow seemed burned to a cinder already, and the barn had caught and maybe the house. And all over Kinraddie lights were springing up, as they ran Chris lifted her eyes and saw Cuddiestoun’s blink and shine bright down through the dark.
And faith, quick though they were, it was father that saved Chae Strachan’s folk. He was first down at the blazing Knapp, John Guthrie; and he ran round the biggings and saw the flames lapping and lowing at the kitchen end of the house, not a soul about or trying to stop them though the noise was fair awful, the crackling and burning, and the winter air bright with flying sticks and straw. He banged at the door and cried Damn’t to hell do you want to be roasted? and when he got no answer he smashed in the window, they heard him then and the bairns scraiched, there was never such a lot for sleep, folk said, Chae’d have slept himself out of this world and into hell in his own firewood if John Guthrie hadn’t roused him then. But out he came stumbling at last, he’d only his breeks on; and he took a keek at John Guthrie and another at the fire and cried out Kirsty, we’re all to hell! and off he tore to the byre.
But half-way across the close as he ran the barn swithered and roared and fell, right in front of him, and he’d to run back, there was no way then of getting at the byre. By then Long Rob of the Mill came in about, he’d run over the fields, louping dykes like a hare, and his lungs were panting like bellows, he was clean winded. He it was that helped Mrs Strachan with the bairns and such clothes as they could drag out to the road while Chae and John Guthrie tried to get at the byre from another angle: but that was no good, the place was already roaring alight. For a while there was only the snarling of the fire eating in to the wooden couplings, the rattle of falling slates through the old charred beams, and then, the first sound that Will and Chris heard as they came panting down the road, a scream that was awful, a scream that made them think one of the Strachans was trapped down there. And at that sound Chae covered his ears and cried Oh God, that’s old Clytie, Clytie was his little horse, his sholtie, and she screamed and screamed, terrible and terrible, Chris ran back to the house trying not to hear and to help poor Kirsty Strachan, snivelling and weeping, and the bairns laughing and dancing about as though they were at a picnic, and Long Rob of the Mill smoking his pipe as cool as you please, there was surely enough smell and smoke without that? But pipe and all he dived in and out of the house and saved chairs and dishes and baskets of eggs; and Mistress Strachan cried Oh, my sampler! and in Rob
