Well, it was as good as a Christmas box to many in Kinkeig to hear that Guthrie was in a right fash; if the laird was fretting folk were real content to hear it, whether they could plumb to the reason of it or no. But plenty tried their hand at an explanation and plenty more at controverting them that did the explaining. The stationy got a good deal of respect by saying he could distinguish alternative hypotheses: it’s wonderful how a couple incomprehensible words will impress folk little acquaint with letters.
One bit speak I can mind at the Arms, if but by the unco happening that put an end to it.
Once in a while, you must know, I take a look over to the private bar – most of the better-thought-of folk of the parish think it a decent enough place for a bit crack of an evening. Will Saunders was there, and Rob Yule, and whiles in came the stationy, still with a hypothesis, so to speak, in each pocket – for it was ever his way to seem holding back a bit inner knowledge: to hear him talk on politics you would think he held in with the editors of the Scotsman and The Times themselves. And behind the bar was Mistress Roberts, banging the pots about to show she was real unfriendly to the liquor and had never thought to come to the serving of it; a sore trial she was to Roberts but not undeserved, folk said, for all the time of their courting had she not been slipping him wee tracts about the poisonous action of alcohol on the blood-stream, and might a publican not have taken warning from that? Mistress Roberts said never a word until in came wee Carfrae, the greengrocer. Carfrae never touches, only he comes into the private for a gossip and Mistress Roberts keeps him a special ginger beer; at one time she put a row of the stuff behind the bar with a notice: Sparkling, Refreshing and Non-Injurious, but at that Roberts put his foot down, everything had its place, he said, and the place for a notice like that was in the sweetie-shops. As I say, wee Carfrae came in for this dreich drink of his, and it was him restarted the speak about Guthrie.
‘Mistress,’ he said, giving a sad look over at Yule and Saunders and myself, ‘I’m thinking there’s a power of evil idle talk in this parish.’
‘There is that for certain, Mr Carfrae, and has been ever since the failure of the Local Option.’ And Mistress Roberts made a great rattle with a pile empty bottles of stout.
‘No doubt we’ve some control of our tongues here in the private,’ said Carfrae with another ill look at us in the corner, ‘but out there in the public are two–three ignorant billies claiking away fair scandalous about the laird.’
‘Poor soul!’ cried Mistress Roberts, ‘he has much to thole, I’m sure’ – and she cast her eyes up to heaven like a hen after a bit drink. ‘It’s right disgusting what they find to say about him and that strange quean Christine.’
‘Shameful,’ said Carfrae, licking his lips as if the ginger had been extra tasty; ‘and the more shameful to speak of since it seems like enough to be true. Bred up to it from a wean, poor lass, the same as you might breed up a sow.’
It’s this kind of speak makes me times doubt the blessings of Reformation and agree with those that say the muck-rake came to Scotland along with presbytery. But Dr Jervie – and I think he’s in the right of it – says No, that’s a false thought: it’s the tough land and the short leases, the long-grey lift and the chill raw haar seeping to the heart, that robs us of half our right sensuous life and sends us to warm and stir ourselves before the fires of evil speaking and whispered lust. I’ve learnt long since to hold my whisht when folk unbridle their tongues so, and I held my whisht now. But Rob Yule, for all that his silver has long lain cold in his cellars, has a warm heart and a quick temper, and forbye he had ever liked Christine. So he rose now to the creature Carfrae’s bait. ‘Is the old lie about the quean,’ he said, ‘wearing that thin that there’s a new one needed?’
You must know that Christine was Guthrie’s ward and bore his mother’s name. She had come to the miekle house as an infant – the child, it was explained, of Guthrie’s mother’s brother, who had been killed with his young wife in a right terrible railway accident abroad. I can remember well enough that none doubted the story until just such a white idle winter as this I’m writing of; it was then that the wee speak grew that what had been given out was no true part of Christine Mathers’ story and that Ranald Guthrie was more to her than uncle. But it was only the secretiveness and the ill name of the laird, the few sensible bodies in Kinkeig ever thought, that gave gradual colour to the claiking: when the quean was never sent to school folk said it was because Guthrie was ashamed of his natural daughter. That was what Rob Yule was calling the old lie – and now here was the wee man Carfrae, sure enough, with another. Fine, he said, you could understand Guthrie turning away Neil Lindsay: wasn’t he jealous of his young mistress, the dirty old stock that he was?
The Roberts wife rinsed a glass. ‘You mean she’s not his daughter at all?’
Carfrae hesitated and looked warily over at us. ‘It’s just the talk,’ he said. And then he gave a bit snicker into his Sabbath School cordial.
Mistress Roberts made a shocked-like click with her tongue and poured herself out a cup of tea: she ever has a great teapot at her elbow in the private and anyone comes in she’ll like enough over a cup to, gratis; it makes Roberts fair wild. The Thoughtful Citizen said Faith, these were terrible lax times for sure and it was a real pity they’d stopped the papers publishing the full revelations of the Divorce Courts; there was nothing kept people more moral than reading those awful-like examples of fast life among the English. And as for Guthrie, it was just awful to think he might have brought up the quean not out of duty as his natural daughter but to make a mistress of her.
Carfrae snickered again at this, and hummed and hahed and hinted and at last the stationy saw what he was driving at, and however much he’d read of fast life among the English I think he was decent enough to be honestly shocked. He looked quite stern at Carfrae and ‘Are you suggesting,’ he said, ‘that these are not mutually exclusive propositions?’
I doubt if the wee greengrocer man understood this – but certain he understood Rob Yule. For Rob walked over to him and took the glass of ginger beer from his hand and emptied it, careful-like, in Mistress Roberts’ nearest aspidistra. ‘Carfrae,’ he said, ‘the Non-Injurious is wasted on you, man. It’s over late for such precautions: you’re nought but a poison-pup already.’
It wasn’t what you could call an ugly situation, for the greengrocer was far from the sort would put up a fight against Rob Yule, there was just no dander to rouse in him. But it was fell uncomfortable; Carfrae was looking between yellow and green, like one of his own stale cabbages, the stationy was havering something about its being technically an assault, and Mistress Roberts had taken up her teaspoon and was stirring furious at the teapot – which was what she ever does when sore affronted. And then Will Saunders, who had been holding his whisht the same as myself, thought to cut in with a bit diversion. ‘Faith,’ cried Will, ‘and look at the aspidistra!’
I don’t believe the plant had really suffered any harm from the Non-Injurious, but the way Will spoke and his pointing to the poor unhealthy thing in its pot fair gave the impression it had wilted that moment. I mind I gave a laugh overhearty to be decent maybe in a man of my years and an elder of the kirk forbye. Rob gave a great laugh too and then we saw that this time Mistress Roberts was real black affronted, she rattled her teapot like mad, herself making a noise like a bubbly jock with the gripes. After all, the Non-Injurious was some sort of symbol to the wife of her struggle against Roberts and the massed power of darkness that was the liquor trade she’d married into. And it was to placate and distract the old body, no doubt, that Will thought to cry out: ‘Mistress Roberts, could we have a look at your grand atlas and see Newfoundland?’