that was the end of my talk with Christine that day, for syne she looked at the clock and picked up her bonnet and was away through the snow that briskly that I guessed Neil Lindsay was somewhere at the end of her journey. Rambling and inconclusive the talk had been; I had an uncanny feeling at the last of having been left groping for I didn’t know what in the shadowy rooms and crumbling corridors of Castle Erchany. That evening I sat by my bench long into the gloaming, never thinking to put up the shutters and take a dander to the Arms; the thing was working on me and I wanted solitude.
Strange that young Neil Lindsay, looking to break from the traditions of his folk and make a new life in a new land, should concern himself with the old bitterness of the Lindsays against the Guthries. And stranger that Guthrie, a scholar and once a poet, whose meditations must be of time and change and the nature of things, should have any thought for that past and narrow hate against the Lindsays. For if the latterday Lindsays, common folk and poor, might maybe take Ranald Guthrie as a type of those that have all and in taking more have beggared the simple folk of Scotland, and but add to that real resentment the colour of a long-past history, what was that to Guthrie – a rich man in the security of his possessions, that should never heed or mind the common envy of the poor? Was the laird doing more than treat Neil Lindsay’s suit as any man, proud of his lineage and his lands, would treat the suit of a crofter billy to one that lived as a daughter in his house?
But Christine thought her uncle was mad or maddened; and unco it was I should be right troubled by her thinking what near all Kinkeig had long thought. The thing was that Kinkeig was ever prepared to think and say any stite that had a spice to it, whereas Christine was a level lass and douce, and one that had learnt from Mistress Menzies and Guthrie to use words exactly. She meant what she said of the laird, and that her feeling was something she could scarce give convincing reason for didn’t make it trouble my mind the less.
Sudden it came to me I hadn’t asked her if she knew of any word lately from the American Guthries: might they not be worrying the laird after all – and the cool quean that had come that night to the Arms one of them? For it was clear that if Guthrie’s conduct these past months was to be accounted for there was more required than the matter of Christine and her Neil Lindsay. The parting with the Gamleys, the orders from Edinburgh, all that Isa Murdoch had seen and heard at the opening up of the meikle house and in the gallery: these seemed to be happenings before Guthrie had learnt who it was would be courting Christine, or that any was courting her. And I thought of the medical books the laird was pouring over, and of how he had fallen to beguiling himself with wee puzzles carven out of wood. And I thought of him cleaving his way in a fury into his long-deserted gallery, and of how he had wandered there, and of his standing at Isa’s last keek at him staring out over Loch Cailie. And ever Christine’s voice came back to me, hard as if she were facing deadly danger, saying her uncle was mad. And then, searching for the pattern that must be in all this, I seemed to hear the voice of the laird himself, crying out in the Latin refrain of that old Scottish poet that he was harried by the fear of death – nay, of Death himself.
At that I went ben and found the book and blew the dust from it and turned to the poem.
Lament for the Makaris
Quhen he was seik
I that in heill wes and glaidnes,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infirmitie;
Timor Mortis conturbat me…
And I read through that hundred-line lament for the dead poets of Scotland to the end:
Sen for the deth remeid is non,
Best is that we for deth dispone
Eftir our deth that lif may we;
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
11
It was a hard winter. Looking
Strange that young Neil Lindsay, looking to break from the traditions of his folk and make a new life in a new land, should concern himself with the old bitterness of the Lindsays against the Guthries. And stranger that Guthrie, a scholar and once a poet, whose meditations must be of time and change and the nature of things, should have any thought for that past and narrow hate against the Lindsays. For if the latterday Lindsays, common folk and poor, might maybe take Ranald Guthrie as a type of those that have all and in taking more have beggared the simple folk of Scotland, and but add to that real resentment the colour of a long-past history, what was that to Guthrie – a rich man in the security of his possessions, that should never heed or mind the common envy of the poor? Was the laird doing more than treat Neil Lindsay’s suit as any man, proud of his lineage and his lands, would treat the suit of a crofter billy to one that lived as a daughter in his house?
But Christine thought her uncle was mad or maddened; and unco it was I should be right troubled by her thinking what near all Kinkeig had long thought. The thing was that Kinkeig was ever prepared to think and say any stite that had a spice to it, whereas Christine was a level lass and douce, and one that had learnt from Mistress Menzies and Guthrie to use words exactly. She meant what she said of the laird, and that her feeling was something she could scarce give convincing reason for didn’t make it trouble my mind the less.
Sudden it came to me I hadn’t asked her if she knew of any word lately from the American Guthries: might they not be worrying the laird after all – and the cool quean that had come that night to the Arms one of them? For it was clear that if Guthrie’s conduct these past months was to be accounted for there was more required than the matter of Christine and her Neil Lindsay. The parting with the Gamleys, the orders from Edinburgh, all that Isa Murdoch had seen and heard at the opening up of the meikle house and in the gallery: these seemed to be happenings before Guthrie had learnt who it was would be courting Christine, or that any was courting her. And I thought of the medical books the laird was pouring over, and of how he had fallen to beguiling himself with wee puzzles carven out of wood. And I thought of him cleaving his way in a fury into his long-deserted gallery, and of how he had wandered there, and of his standing at Isa’s last keek at him staring out over Loch Cailie. And ever Christine’s voice came back to me, hard as if she were facing deadly danger, saying her uncle was mad. And then, searching for the pattern that must be in all this, I seemed to hear the voice of the laird himself, crying out in the Latin refrain of that old Scottish poet that he was harried by the fear of death – nay, of Death himself.
At that I went ben and found the book and blew the dust from it and turned to the poem.
Lament for the Makaris
Quhen he was seik
I that in heill wes and glaidnes,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infirmitie;
Timor Mortis conturbat me…
And I read through that hundred-line lament for the dead poets of Scotland to the end:
Sen for the deth remeid is non,
Best is that we for deth dispone
Eftir our deth that lif may we;
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
11
It was a hard winter. Looking
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