harder still, crying: ‘Let me in.’ Standing there in the loose soil of the garden bed he felt an infinite pity for both of the sisters and for himself.
Ann suddenly undid the window and thrust out her head.
Although her face was only a few inches from his she screamed at the highest pitch of her voice: ‘Come back the morn, I tell you! I have to keep the hoose lockit – for a purpose. I’m no’ safe from my sister Mary if I open that door.’
Her remarks, like her glances, were fired into the darkness behind him.
William Murray put up a hand and held the window down.
‘Come, come, Miss Ann,’ he said coaxingly, ‘that’s not the kind of woman you really are. I know you better than that.’
Ann seemed not to hear a word. She had no desire to appear a saint, she merely wished to prove her sister a devil; and she suddenly cut clean across the minister’s cajoleries by screaming: ‘I see you! I see you, you jaud! Come oot frae ahint the minister! Ye needna think I dinna see you. I’ll let the whole toon ken hoo you’ve treated me, so that I have to lock myself up in my very hoose to be safe from you!’
‘Nonsense, Miss Ann! No, no – you’ll just injure yourself—’
The minister’s voice was drowned by Mary’s energetic reply:
‘Lock yersel’ in then. Bide there. Not a penny piece will I give you—’
‘I’ll let the whole toon ken it, then. On Monday I’ll awa’ into the poorshoose, and what’ll you have to say to that? Better to live in the poorshoose by myself than to live wi’ you. Mary Watson’s old sister in the poorshoose! They’ll ken you then for what you are, my leddy.’
Mary was tired, disappointed and angry.
‘Ye cunning auld deevil,’ she retorted, ‘I’ll set the police on you, that’s what I’ll do. It’ll be the police office and no’ the poorshoose for you, and that this very night, as sure as my name’s Mary Watson.’
‘This is my hoose. The police canna take a body up for locking her ain hoose door. Na, they canna!’
‘They can take a woman up for keeping what’s no hers. You’ve a’ my gear in there, and my fur coat and my —’
Ann had disappeared with a thin satirical chuckle. Mary darted to the window and began to throw it up.
‘You’re a fushionless fool o’ a creature, are ye no’?’ she said to the minister. ‘Ye might at least help me through the window.’
Before William Murray could move Mary was thrust back by some large soft object which fell on the ground. Rapidly after it came a succession of things, scattering in the darkness.
‘My fur coat, ye deevil!’ he heard Mary cry, half sobbing, and then he saw her clutching Ann by the hair and shaking the older woman to and fro over the window-sill. Ann began to scream. Instead of desisting for fear of scandal Mary tugged the more furiously; she was as if transported out of herself. The minister at first felt almost suffocated at the sight of the two women worrying each other, and then the inert mass in his bosom seemed to burst into flame.
‘You call yourselves Christians,’ he found himself crying, as he held Mary at arm’s-length. ‘I’ll cut you both off from the communion of the Church – both of you, do you hear? I’ll blot your names from the Church books. I’ll expel you publicly from the congregation!’
He almost flung Mary away from the window.
Open that door at once, Ann Watson,’ he continued, ‘or I shall proclaim you from the pulpit to-morrow.’
His own vehemence amazed him, even while he exulted in it. This time his anger gave him no sense of sin: it was like a clean flame burning up dross, and like a devouring flame it swept the two women before it.
Ann groaned as she shuffled to the door, but the key grated in the lock, and the minister stalked in.
‘Let us have a light,’ he said.
Ann’s fingers were shaking, but the minister avoided looking at her.
‘Go and put on a wrap,’ he said, ‘while I bring in your sister.’
Mary was sitting on the ground where he had left her. She was crying. She had not cried since the day of her father’s funeral.
‘Go inside,’ said the minister coldly. ‘I’ll pick up your things.’
He groped in the flower-bed, which was now faintly illuminated by the paraffin lamp in the kitchen. A fur coat, a hat with hard jet ornaments, two black kid gloves, a flannel nightgown and, gleaming in the dark soil, a large gold watch with the glass smashed he collected one by one, shook the damp earth from them and took them into the cottage.
Mary was sitting at the table, her head supported on her hands. She had unpinned her hat. He noted that Ann was in her bedroom and that Mary had stopped crying. For the first time in his life he felt scornful of tears: his old susceptibility was gone. He noted simply that she had at least stopped crying.
‘Get me a Bible,’ he said, in the same cold, authoritative tone, laying his armful on the table.
Mary looked up and saw the watch.
‘It’s broken! Father’s watch, and she’s broken it! Fifteen years I’ve had that watch —’
He silenced her. What were fifteen years compared to eternity?
The minister picked up the watch, and when Ann reluctantly appeared, in an ancient dressing-gown, he made it the text of his sermon.
On earth, he told them, what is broken can be repaired, but although mended it can never be unflawed again. A moment, a second, suffices to smash for ever what has for years been intact. How much more irrevocable is a break in one’s relations with God! What is done can never be undone, never; even repentance cannot undo it…. The least of our actions is of eternal significance….
The more he berated them the more they felt involuntarily drawn together. His insistence that they were both equally wicked exacerbated but united them. It was the threat of expulsion from the Church that had cowed them, and they now submitted to his exhortations from fear rather than from conviction.
Mary was the first to fidget.
‘I have to get back to my shop, Mr Murray.’
‘Your shop! You should be thinking of your immortal soul.’
‘My shop canna wait.’ The ban was lifting from Mary. Her immortal soul could wait till the morn, she was thinking, but Saturday was Saturday and not Sunday.
Ann exchanged a look with her sister, a look which said plainly: Get him out of here.
‘I’ll mak’ you a cup o’ tea before you go to the shop,’ she offered.
‘Aweel,’ said Mary, rising, ‘we’ve had it out, now, and I dinna think we’ll flee at each other again for a while, Mr Murray. If Ann has ony mair o’ her tantrums I’ll let you ken.’
‘Me!
