deer. Sir Thomas was wearing a very loud-checked knickerbocker suit and a straw hat. By his side was his lady, very slim, her dress, especially her bustle, accentuating the cramped narrowness of her waist: and in her hand she had twirled a bright yellow parasol. Their gait was slow and artificial – a mere purposeless stroll. They passed very close to the gate and though David could not make out what they were saying their accent fell very strange to his ears. Before they actually came abreast of the gate he had fled.
But he felt that, like the fallow deer, Sir Thomas and Lady MacCready were strangers and had no connection with the land he knew and loved. And he felt glad they had an estate in which they could seclude themselves. He experienced no desire to explore behind its walls: it was a reservation for strange animals, strange customs and strange people.
But David’s time for wandering and dreaming was limited. He was sorry when Old Sam closed the school for the summer and he had to go and work on the Achgammie fields for his threepence a day.
There was a shyness and a reserve in him. He did not like the coarse jokes of the men or their coarse swearing; nor did he like the crude humour of his mates on the turnip drills. The boys and girls were quick to sense this tendency of reserve in David Ramsay: they took whatever opportunity they got to tease him. But there was not much opportunity. Always one of the MacMeechan boys worked in the fields with them. Mostly it was James, a thin wiry son of his father: sparing of words, devoid of all humour and much humanity but cunning and greedy and mean.
James MacMeechan did not allow any time for talking. It had always been a puzzle to him what people got to talk about – especially when there was work to be done. For young people to talk was an impertinence – an aping of foolish grown-ups: and this was not to be tolerated.
James MacMeechan worked hard and steadily. When he had occasion to check any one he did so as if checking a dog or a horse – with a curt vicious command. For this reason his father did not like him to work horses. He ruined them, breaking their tempers, making them nervous and almost unfit for any other man to work. But he was excellent for handling the field workers and could work skilfully with a hoe, a heuk or a flail. Moreover, he had a passionless hatred of women: this was also useful. His brother William on the other hand was hot-blooded and lecherous: always looking for an opportunity to satisfy his lust. He had as filthy a tongue as any man in the Rhinns and his swearing was filthiest when there were women and young girls within hearing.
None of the MacMeechans were popular. There was a cruel hard-bitten strain in all of them. There was a meanness and dryness about the father: a frightening lack of humanity that alienated him even from his own family. Many people felt it was a pity for his wife. She had never been known to smile since her marriage. But as no one felt the urge to smile about Achgammie and since she never crossed her husband in the smallest detail her life was, by her own standard, as happy and contented as there was any need for. But she had to work incessantly to prevent herself from brooding too much on her lot.
Throughout the summer David worked in the Achgammie fields. Hay-making succeeded the thinning of turnips – and there was always weeding as a stand-by. Even when he got home, tired though he was, there was always some weeding or other work to be done in the garden.
He resented, even in his early years, when he might not have been expected to know better, the waste of the summer nights. For by the time he was finished in the garden or bringing home water from the well he was too exhausted to do anything else but crawl into bed and sleep.
Sabbath was the day of rest. After church he would escape from the Suie and make for the shore. In his work in the fields he missed the rhythm of the sea: its visible ebb and flow. But his Sabbath visits were different from his week-day ones. The Sabbath was the day of rest and to visit the shore in a care-free mood was in itself sinful. David had listened attentively to Sam MacKitteroch – much more attentively than he had listened to the Reverend John Ross. The minister was remote, austere: he spoke in a harsh voice anent the categorical imperatives of Presbyterianism. But the voice of Sam MacKitteroch was as the voice of Jacob or Abraham: the quiet all-embracing voice of Subjective Spiritual Authority. Sam had spoken of the Lord’s Day in a manner compelling recognition and obedience. David felt that God was resting – looking down on His work and noting carefully every individual action. He did not even allow himself to think as on week-days: his thoughts dwelt on God the Father and all His manifold and wonderful manifestations. It was God who made the sea to recede and return: the sun to rise up and go down: who caused the seed to grow and the rain to fall and the wind to blow … On the Sabbath then, he thought of God who had made everything and who knew and saw everything.
A seriousness, a calm thoughtfulness far beyond his years, settled upon David Ramsay on these Sabbaths. But his faith in God and in man was being built up and had not yet been tested in the fire of experience. His faith was great because it was pure, because it had all the childish purity of immature inexperience. He thought of God, of Isaac, of Abraham and of Joseph, with his coat of many colours, and of David with his harp and his sling; and he thought of his father and Sam MacKitteroch. But he did not think of the MacMeechans of Achgammie, he did not even think of his mother or his brother Peter. And the background to his thoughts was the sea and the quiet mournful land of Galloway that rose and fell and gathered itself peacefully in the hollows.
In the evening he would return home quiet and withdrawn. Before going to bed his father would read a chapter from the Book. But this was never more than an exercise in piety. David sat with his head bent for he disliked his mother’s eyes. Now that he was beginning to see his mother objectively he found he disliked her – that he instinctively shrank from her. There was no kindness in her, no softness, no quality that drew him towards her. He sensed that she was neither robust nor healthy. But her pinched face, cold passionless eyes and white drawn lips were not solely accounted for by ill-health. It was her spirit that was hard and mean and her mind that lacked all humour and imagination.
Even as he sat listening with half an ear to his father’s reading, he knew that there was no love, no bond of affection between his parents. His father never conversed with his mother: they exchanged information. But, for that matter, there was no conversation in the Suie – never anything more vital than an exchange of information. His mother would sit at one side of the fire knitting or darning – but doing this work resentfully, sighing one time and pulling viciously with her needle the next. His father would sit at the other side, elbows on knees, smoking resignedly and occasionally spitting into the fire. But all the time it was obvious to David that his thoughts were not centred on his home or on his family. Sometimes he speculated on the nature of his father’s thoughts …
But there was never long to wonder. The nights were short. Bed time came early in the Suie for the day started with the rising of the sun.
But often enough Andrew Ramsay’s thoughts centred on his home and his family. How often did he wonder about Sarah MacCalman? She had not been his only love – far from it. There had been Jessie MacKnight, Lizzie Kirkton, Meg Dodds … any of them might have made a better wife for they could not have made a worse. All of them had been stout buxom lassies full of life and laughter. And Jessie MacKnight had been comely and high-spirited. But they were all young then and even Sarah MacCalman, in a pale delicate way, had not been unattractive.
Sarah alone had yielded to him. That had been his undoing. He had clipped and cuddled with Jessie and Lizzie and Meg. But only Sarah had yielded – only with Sarah had the ultimate barriers been overcome. He had been young and hot blooded. There had been nights when he had courted Jessie only to leave her in an unbearable tension of physical passion …
How often did he recall that first night when after a precious hour with Jessie he had met Sarah on his homecoming and found that she offered no resistance? And how easy, how fatally simple her first conception had been or appeared to be. Sometimes he wondered … And yet … she had been a virgin …
He
