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. Hospitality hardly requires of a man that he conduct his neighbour home (if the neighbour be so ill-advised as to visit him in such conditions) through pitch-black ploughland, an edged south-easter and a barricade of sleet. But Geordie pulled to the outer door with a terrific bang, settling the business of that impudent baggage the wind that threatened to wrench his own door-handle out of his hand with its blufferts, and steered Stoddart across the field by the elbow, roaring at him in gusts between the palavers of the gale.
‘They tell me she’s byordinar clever. … Faith, it beats me a’ thegither fat way a bairn o’ mine can ’a gotten brains. … Man, it’s a sort o’ judgement on a body. There ye ging, a’ yer life long, rale pleased an’ comfortable. Naething to gie ye a shog ooten yer ain road. An’ then yer ain lassie, that’s the fruit o’ yer ain loins. … Man, it beats a’.’
In the kitchen Martha fumed miserably. She was troubled with a raging conscience. She was wrong. Of course she was wrong to burden the family for two extra years. − But might her father’s authority be considered final? Was her fight really won? − She had not fought at all, then! − stood mute and foolish. She underwent a rush of self-contempt. And in spite of conscience and contempt together she was throbbing with exultation. Back to work, quick − master the throb before it mastered her; though how could she work with her mother nyattering like that?
‘That’s jist yer faither a’ ower,’ Emmeline was grumbling. She had already raised Geordie’s aberration into a universal law governing his being. ‘That thrawn there’s nae livin’ wi’ him. Aince he taks a notion intil his heid, naething’ll move him. He wad argy-bargy ye intil the middle o’ next week. Ye micht as weel ging doon on yer knees an’ speak to a mole that was crawlin’ on the grun’. He taks a bit o’ understandin’.’
Martha bent grimly to her Latin. But inspiration had fled. The four shabby sentences declined to be made less than four. The prose was completed, with much searching of the heart and the vocabulary.
Geordie came in again. Wind, water, earth, came with him, spluttered in his tracks. Emmeline dabbed at the filthy runlets − ‘as muckle dirt’s wad fill a kirk. I never saw. …’
The boys were beddit. They slept in the middle place, a sort of box between the rooms. Madge was sent packing. Martha pulled her books together and went too.
Emmeline’s resentments were messy, but brief.
Next day Martha went to town − in a bitter downpour − by train. Her mother gave her the fare without demur: but she missed the early train home and it was already past the family meal-hour when she returned. There was sign of neither family nor meal. Emmeline on her knees, in splendid isolation, scoured the floor as though it had not felt water for a twelvemonth.
‘Where’s father?’
‘Awa’
