always felt uneasy with Mrs. Gibson. The woman’s respect for him was formal. He sensed this. She did not respect him: she did not look up to him. It was he who respected her. But his politeness was also formal. He prided himself that he was above the more petty vanities of his fellow-farmers who might have adopted a gruff or even brutal indifference to her. No: Ned MacWhirrie could afford to be polite: he was strong enough, firmly enough entrenched, to be above the petty irrelevance of intercourse.
Or so MacWhirrie thought. But there was a coolly calculated menance behind his manners and methods. He would never check a man for idling. He would give the man a look and pass on as if he did not employ him. And if he caught the same man in a similar offence he would still say nothing but he would mention the fact to his grieve or his dairyman or to his field ganger. But it was seldom he caught a man at the same offence twice in succession. His silence and his cold look was more effective than hectoring abuse would have been. The men would have understood and even appreciated a swearing. But they could not bear the menace of his silence. They were not long in sensing, if they were new to him, that that silence was cold and utterly merciless.
When he heard the sound of a second cart, Craigdaroch strode out of the byre, taking his hands from his pockets in order to button his oilskin. The routine of farming palled on him sometimes. This was the reason for his drinking and his interest in women. This was the reason for his mettlesome mare. And in getting home the lime cargo there was much more than the satisfaction of achieving a plan and the saving of a few pounds. There was adventure in it: there was activity and drama in it: something into which he might throw his restless energy. He had a feeling that the time was ripe for his intervention.
He stepped briskly into the barn where the lime was being unloaded.
‘Well, Johnston?’
‘It’s a sair trachle, Mr. MacWhirrie.’
‘How many tons have you here?’
‘Full fifty.’
‘What?’
‘Aye: it’ll no’ be the nicht she’ll be unloaded, Mr. MacWhirrie. The tide’s coming in fast. An’ there’s hardly light to see what you’re about.’
Craigdaroch said nothing. He looked at the horse in the shafts. A thick steam was rising from it. He looked at Johnston, his second ploughman. Johnston was showing signs of exhaustion. He could easily lose a mare on a job like this and his men wouldn’t be worth much in the morning. He sucked his greying moustache downwards with his lip. Call the job off and let the rest of the cargo go to hell? He wouldn’t be losing much. And his men would say: Aye, Craigdaroch thought he’d got his lime for nothing but the storm was over many for him. Well, he hadn’t seen the storm that was over many for him yet. Things were just ripe for him to take charge of the helm. He would have a word with MacAtear the dairyman and then get down to the shore.
Jean Gibson was the eldest of the family: she was coming five. After her came James and Mary: after them Robert, who was eighteen months old and still in the cradle. He was a heavy child and had not yet begun to walk.
Jean had the duty of watching them when her mother was at the milking. Her main task was to keep the children back from the fire. But the fire was the main attraction for them and Jean had to be constantly on guard. She had to keep rocking the cradle at intervals, Robert being a fretful child who could only be effectively disciplined by his mother. He had the child’s sense to know when that discipline was withdrawn.
Jean was a bonnie child. Her cheeks were round and apple red: her body plump and strong. Her eyes were large and black as sloes and gave to her child’s face a remarkable depth of beauty. And if she had her father’s quickness of temper she had also her mother’s sensitiveness.
Like most of the children of her age, she was experienced beyond what a later generation was to know as normal. She could wash and dress the children: she could wash dishes and set the table – though all the setting it required was harmless enough. And she could scrub potatoes. In the meagre economy that had to be practised, the wastefulness of peeling could not be tolerated.
Her mother, though she did not encourage her in the sin of idleness, did not impose on her innocent years. Most of the tasks she did impose on her were for her good – serving as a training that would stand her in good stead in later years.
Sometimes Agnes Gibson looked on her eldest child with her bright impetuous ways and sighed. She knew that soon enough her body would be racked with the toil of the hard insatiable fields: that the day would come when she would have to surrender her body to the will of a man and the marriage bed: that the day would come when she would have to put on the harness of life from which she would only be released by death.
God had imposed a hard lot upon womankind: a lot which had few recompenses and which they had to suffer in silence. Knowing this, she saved her child unnecessary toil and hardship.
Agnes Gibson had not yet become brutalised by the brutalities of her existence and she was to fight against brutalising tendencies even to her death-bed. And she was a Protestant even as many Roman Catholic mothers were Protestant – in their deepest nature. Her God was to all external purposes the God of Abraham and of Isaac, but in her heart she was a mother and a woman who realised deeply, if not clearly, that the God of her church was a male God and that for guidance in her daily work she had to trust to her own intuition and experience.
But for all this she was in thrall to many of the more dominant ideas and ideals of her day. When she came back from the milking she prepared a flask of gruel, spread an oatcake with butter, and sent Jean off to the shore to give it to her father. He would be wet and the gruel would help to warm him: the oatcake would appease his hunger.
Jean neither whimpered nor asked questions: she was already disciplined enough for that. Nor was the three-quarters of a mile walk to the shore beyond her. She knew the track well and there would be carts coming and going.
Her mother wrapped her up against the storm, buttoning her into a heavy cloth coat she had made down for her. The coat was buttoned over the flask which, in turn, was wrapped in a small woollen shawl that the warmth of the hot gruel might be the longer retained.
She knew it was a mid night into which she was sending the child. But the errand was one of necessity. She opened the door, patted the child gently on the shoulder and bade her hurry back.
Even at the end of her days that were to be long and arduous, Jean remembered that night. Never had a night been so black: never would a night be so black again. The wind was steadily rising to gale force. But for the moment the rain had abated. The wind was in her face and she was bent over on it so that when there came a sudden lull she stumbled forward almost losing her balance. Strangely enough she was not afraid. Fear was to come later in life when her world was to become populated with irrational, if traditional, terrors. There was a cart a short distance ahead and occasionally she would catch a glimpse of the storm lantern swinging in the ploughman’s free hand as he led his horse by the head.
But if she knew no fear; if she knew nothing as yet of witches and warlocks, of ghosts and wraiths; if she knew little of Auld Nick himself; yet the strange cry that was in the heart of the wind’s sough brought a chillness to her blood. No farm lights showed in the darkness. All the farms lay behind her and Craigdaroch farm stretched from Dum-reddan Point to Lagganmore.
There came to her ears a sound that caused her step to falter. It was a low dull sound filled with menace and evil. It came and went for it was the sound of boulders gurgling in the throat of the tide as it cleaved and tore and rasped for a hold on the long boulder-strewn
