came in upon a day in August.
Martha was wandering in the wood.
‘It’s a queer like thing that ye canna bide at hame,’ Emmeline would say querulously, ‘an’ nae a stockin’ fit to ging on to the bairns the morn’s mornin’. Faur hae ye been?’
‘In the wood,’ Martha would answer, with the same miserable sense of disaster wherewith she had confessed to tumbling in the mire on her return from Crannochie.
‘That’s richt, ma dear,’ said Aunt Josephine, if she happened to be by: and her voice had the quiet decisiveness that suggested something absolute and took the wind from the best-sailing of squabbles. ‘They say trees is awfu’ gweed for ye.’
She was wandering then in the firwood on the August afternoon when Dussie reappeared: Dussie come back, true to her old fore-visioning, with fortune at heel! − If this were indeed the guise wherewith she ushered fortune in, lanky and sober-suited, a plain unsmiling youth.
Fortunate, by tale of her own appearance. Dussie had a costly look. A silken shimmer on her gown, like the play of flame when she moved and every detail exquisite, from the burnished mass of her hair to the burnished buckles of her pretty shoes: for Luke Cromar had cobbled shoes and knew a good thing in footwear when he saw it; and liked it too, upon his wife.
For nineteen-year-old Dussie, tiny, radiant, absurdly finished and mature, was a bride of five weeks’ standing. She had run away from the aunts who had taken her, and married Luke.
‘And of course he had no right to marry me,’ she said. ‘Not so soon. He’s only a student − students aren’t supposed to get married. But he’ll be a doctor next year.’
With that Martha looked at the lanky youth. Hitherto she had paid no attention to him. How could she, with Dussie running on like that? But she gave him now her grave consideration, and he returned her a scrutiny as grave.
‘It’s a holy pilgrimage,’ he said. ‘All the haunts of her childhood. A devotee’s processional.’
Was it some sort of joke, Martha pondered, walking by them out of the wood. Dussie certainly had laughed extravagantly, though on her life she could not tell whether Mr. Cromar had meant it for a joke or not; and he was very earnest when he asked if they might see the cottage.
Martha asked them in. Dussie, quick to catch her hesitation, cried ‘No!’ But Luke was quicker and said, ‘Of course we’re coming in.’ So in they came.
Martha’s trepidation had cause. Emmeline was complacent that afternoon and therefore tolerant. The tolerance was manifest. Dirty dishes, a bit of pudding, old cast clouts and old rotten rags, broken bark, twigs and jags of firewood, a sotter . … Emmeline herself had just completed the current instalment of the serial story in the People’s Treasure. An insatiable reader, like her daughter: but seeking apocalypse in fiction, not in fact. Peeragesque, her novels. Or if there were not titles enough (bold, bad and foreign in default of English) to go round, let them at least portray the Fortunate, their reversals be from misery to style: and never, dear fate! depict a ploughman, or a ploughman’s wife and family.
She had just remarked to Madge, ‘I bet you she’ll mairry yon chap an’ come oot a great swell yet,’ when the door opened and the visitors arrived.
Married she was, though not the she of the novelette. Remember her? Well, to be sure! One didn’t keep a black besom under one’s roof three years and forget her in such a suddenty as that. And, looking her up and down,
‘Ye’re nae muckle bookit, onyway,’ she said. Martha was a good four inches taller. A scoring point for Martha, and scoring points had been hard to find: would be hard still, she realized, studying Dussie more closely. Martha, clothe her how you would, would never look like that. Martha’s figure went straight up and down, her blouses were always in bags or escaping at the waist, her skirts drooped, her hair was stribbly and in moments of preoccupation even yet she sucked its ends. Emmeline had a sudden movement of furious hatred against this shapely apparition that rose in her own house to mock her for her daughter’s lack of presence. It was imperative to disparage Dussie for the sake of her own self-respect.
‘A terribie-like chase ye were in to get merriet,’ she said. ‘But you aye did a’thing by stots an’ bangs,’ − and added, her eye on the husband,
‘But what a tang’l! Ye micht a’ chosen ane wi’ mair beef on him fan ye were at it. Like a forty-fittit Janet up on end.’
Dussie’s lip stiffened. Their call was brief.
‘Yes, we must go on, mustn’t we?’ said the bridegroom. ‘There’s that wonderful Aunt Josephine. We have to see her.’
Aunt Josephine! Martha felt relief. Of course, they would go there, all three of them. Aunt Josephine’s hospitality was equal to any strain. Martha had been wretched; the sloven kitchen, her mother’s rudeness, Dussie’s pretty hauteur, sank her in embarrassed shame. The young man’s voice revived her. But there he was taking leave of Emmeline with a grave courtesy that was embarrassing too. Beef or no beef, the forty-fittit Janet up on end had manners. Martha was not accustomed to men who were polite to her mother. She felt incredibly shy.
Not much grave courtesy out of doors, however.
He had Dussie by the hand.
‘Gorgeous heap of stones. Come on!’
‘O Luko!’ she breathed, ecstatic; and away they went, stumbling and shrieking, helter-skelter between the barley and the dyke.
They stood all three on top of the cairn, breathless.
Martha said: ‘It’s very old. It’s supposed to commemorate something.’
Luke said: ‘I like this place. There’s such a lot of sky round about here.’
Dussie said: ‘But aren’t we going to see your father?’
From her point of vantage she swept the surrounding fields. How Geordie had kittled her, let her climb upon him, sheltered her from storm − Emmeline and the elements, both.
Martha was secretly glad that he was out of sight and call. It would have meant a shame the more. Her father, with his great crunkled boots, straws caught between the soles and uppers, sharn in spatters over them, his trousers tied with string, his empty speech, his roaring gales of laughter. …
They set out for Aunt Josephine’s.
Mary Annie was visiting Miss Leggatt.
The years had made little difference to Aunt Josephine. She had no capacity for growing old. Mary Annie, too, was hardly altered: she had grown so old already, so many ages were graven in her anxious face, that nine years or so could only trifle with the indentations that furrowed her.
Apologetic, she tried to creep away.
‘Noo, noo, Mary Annie,’ said Aunt Josephine. ‘Ye were bidden to tea an’ ye’ll bide to tea. We’ll hae wer tea a’ thegither. It’ll be a party, ma dear’ − she enveloped Dussie, excitement and buckles and all, with her slow shining gaze − ‘just a party. Ye canna ging awa’, Mary Annie, an’ Jeannie oot. Ye canna bide yer lane.’
Fetching a
