of movement, for no sooner did he think he was on the way to it than the whole body of dancers was swallowed up in collective loops of motion, and then were spinning anew in couples till the fiddle put them back in their places and the maze of steps began again. The rhythmic stamping went on like the smothered footfall of a gigantic approaching host; not so much a host of humanity as of some elemental force gathering power behind it. It gripped him as he listened and felt the rocking of the wooden floor. His eyes were drawn across the swinging crowd, the confused shadows and the dust of the thickening atmosphere, to what was the live heart of it all.
The largest lantern, high above, hung direct from its rafter over the head of Donald Gow as he sat on his chair with the dark, dim-looking violoncello between his knees. Before him on the broad table stood Neil, the light at his back magnifying his size. His cheek was laid against his violin, his right foot, a little advanced, tapped the solid boards, as, pivoted on his left one, he turned to and fro, swaying now this way, now that, his eye roving over the mass that responded, as though hypnotised, to the spur of his moving bow. It was as if he saw each individual dancer and was playing to him or to her alone; as if his very being was urging each one to answer to his own abounding force and compelling the whole gathering to reflect every impulse of his mind. The stream of the reel poured on, throbbing and racing, leaping above the sonorous undertone of the violoncello, but never, for all the ardent crying of the string, leaving the measured beat of the matchless time. Now and again, at some point of tension, he would throw a short, exultant yell across the barn, and the tumult of ordered movement would quicken to the sharp inspiration of the sound.
The Englishman stood, with beating pulses and every nerve and muscle taut, gazing at Neil. He loved music and had toiled patiently, and with a measure of success, at the violin. He knew enough to recognise his technical skill, yet the pleasure of that recognition, so great even to one with less knowledge than he possessed, was forgotten in the pure rush of feeling, the illumination cast upon his mind by which intangible things became clear. He seemed to understand – perhaps only for a moment – the spirit of the land he was in, and the heart of the kinsman whose track he was trying to follow, whose body lay, perchance, somewhere among those hills he had seen before him guarding the northern horizon, as he neared Dalmain. For a moment he could have envied him his participation in the forlorn cause he had espoused. The love of country, which was a passion in the race around him, which, unexpressed in mere words, poured out of the violin in this master-hand, was revealed to him, though he could only grasp it vicariously. As he stood, thrilled, on the brink of the whirlpool, its outer circles were rising about his feet. The music stopped suddenly and Neil threw down his bow.
The Englishman awoke as from a dream and drew back. One or two people, aware for the first time of a stranger’s presence, looked at him curiously, but most of the dancers were crowding round the table where Neil was now sitting in his brother’s place.
‘Na, na,’ he was saying, ‘a’ll no win doon till a hae a drink. Man Donal’, awa’ wi’ ye an’ get a dram till us baith.’
The Englishman went back to the stackyard; he wished Mr. Laidlaw had not stayed behind, for he did not mean to return to the manse till he had heard Neil play again. He was an intruder, which was a little embarrassing to him, and he felt his position would be bettered if he had someone to speak to. But the scraps of talk he heard did not encourage him to address anyone, because he was not sure of understanding any reply he might get. Soon a small boy came out of the barn and paused in surprise to look at him; he was apparently of an inquisitive turn of mind, for he hung about examining every detail of the stranger’s appearance. He bore the scrutiny for a few minutes.
‘What is your name, my lad?’ he inquired at last, reflecting that it would not matter if he did look like a fool before this child.
The boy made no answer but backed a step, open-mouthed. The question was repeated, and this time produced an effect, for he turned and ran, as though accosted by an ogre.
He did not stop till he was clear of the stackyard, but when he reached the road he stood still. He had been told by his mother to come home before dark, and when he had first caught sight of the Englishman he was debating whether or no he should obey her. He was now put out at finding himself on the way there, and stood undecided, pouting and kicking his heels in the mud. Looking back, he saw a figure moving among the stacks, and the sight decided him. He set off resentfully, cheated into virtue; a situation that was hateful.
He had no mind to hurry. If he was diddled by an unfair chance into respecting his mother’s orders, he was not going to interpret them literally. Everything was close together in the kirkton of Dalmain, and though he was not a dozen yards from the farm-gate he was abreast of the first cottage in the row. The fiddle had begun again and he could hear it very plainly and the shouts and thudding of feet. It was almost as good as being in the barn, if only there was something to look at. He began to amuse himself by building a little promontory out into the burn with the biggest stones he could collect. He had often been forbidden to do this, and he was glad of the opportunity of being even with fate. When he had been at it for some time, and even disobedience began to pall, he noticed that a bar of light was lying on the water, falling on it from the window of a cottage down stream. Bands of shadow were crossing and recrossing this in a strange way, as if some movement were going on behind the window panes. He jumped over the burn, crept along by the harled wall and, crouching by the sill, peered in.
WHEN THE ELDERS had left the Moirs’ house and the beadle had betaken himself to the Knowes’, Phemie sat on by the fire, like some commonplace image of endurance, seemingly stupefied. Another woman might have been aroused by the entrance of neighbours drawn by the news of what had happened and ready to help in those duties necessitated by a death that the poor share so faithfully with one another. But she had no neighbours in the fuller sense of the word, and the few with whom she had even the slightest communication were enjoying themselves not a furlong from her door. Her thoughts had gone back – far back; years and years back – to the turning-point of her obscure life. She saw it dimly, across the everlasting monotony that had closed down on her and hers at that last time upon which she had taken her place among her kind. Secrecy and servitude to the stricken creature who now lay rigid upon the box-bed; these had been her lot. Servitude was over, but her tardy freedom conveyed little to her, and secrecy – long since unnecessary, though she had never grasped the fact that it was so – clung to her as a useless, threadbare garment. Her solitariness would be no greater. The doors of her prison had opened, but she could not go free because of the fetters she wore.
She got up at last and threw some fuel into the grate. The flame rose and she tried to collect herself. There were things she must do. She went to the outhouse that opened from the back of the kitchen and got a bucket to fill at the burn. This she carried out to the water, but as she stooped with it, it dropped from her hands. The sound of leaping, compelling reel-music cut its way from the Knowes’ farm to her ears. A blind fiddler had once said that he could tell the stroke of Neil Gow’s bow among a hundred others, and Phemie Moir knew who was playing. She clasped her hands over her face and fled indoors.
The lethargy that had enveloped her was gone, snatched away as a wayfarer’s cloak is snatched from him by the wind. She began to run to and fro, crying out, now lifting her arms over her head, now thrusting them forward; her sobs filled the kitchen though her eyes were tearless. She had slammed the door behind her that she might not hear the fiddle. Once she paused by it, not daring to open it, but laying her ear to the edge of the jamb, in the hope of finding that it had ceased. It was going on steadily, and she turned the little shawl she wore up over her head and ran back into the outhouse to get farther from the sound. But a broken plank in the thin wooden walls brought it to her afresh, and she rushed back again and sank upon the chair she had left by the hearth.
When she was a little quieter she returned to the door to listen, the tension of fear upon her. It was at this moment that the urchin, creeping along outside, stumbled over the fallen pail. The sudden noise shattered the temporary quiet of her strained nerves and let
