There was a pause.
‘You tell me there are still some of the Moir family left in this parish,’ continued the Englishman.
Laidlaw cleared his throat. ‘I doubt you may not find much to help you,’ he said. ‘It is curious that you should choose this time for your search. It is not just a fortunate one; for though, as I have said, I shall be happy to serve your interests, I fear it is little I can do. There are two persons of the name of Moir in the parish, two elderly bodies. One is at this moment dying – indeed she may be dead by now. She has been unconscious these few days, and it is for that reason that I am not beside her; my ministrations are useless.’
‘I see,’ said the Englishman, his face falling; ‘of course I could not trouble her sister in the circumstances.’
‘It is not that, sir, for I should be glad to give you what hospitality I can till she was able to see you; but she is a strange creature – both are strange. The dying one has been slightly deranged in her mind since she was a young lass – for the last twelve-month she has been completely so – and the younger sister, Phemie, is a very extraordinary character. The bairns are feared of her, and some of the more foolish of my congregation take her for a witch, though I tell them such things are just havers. She seems to have no ill-will at anybody.’
‘But what is wrong with her, then?’
‘She will speak to nobody. Months at a time she will keep the house. I have only been a short while in this place, just three years past, and in that time she has been twice at the kirk on the Lord’s Day, no more.’
‘There must be madness in the family, sir, I should think.’
‘I believe not,’ replied the minister. ‘She is thrawn, that’s all – twisted, I suppose you might say in England.’
‘And are there no male relations?’
‘I understand there was an older brother, but he left Dalmain long ago. I have heard no more than that.’
‘If my cousin and the man Moir fled together after the battle of Culloden, the same fate may have overtaken them both. I admit that my chances of discovering the truth are not promising.’
‘That is true enough,’ said Laidlaw, ‘but we should wait awhile before we despair.’
‘But I cannot trespass indefinitely on you, Mr. Laidlaw—’
‘You’ll need to bide a day or two, sir; I shall be happy if you will. I am not much company for you, I know,’ he added diffidently.
‘You are only too kind!’ exclaimed the other. ‘I have heard many a time that Scotland is a hospitable country and now I see it. I am very fortunate to be here with you instead of hunting a dead man by myself.’
Laidlaw coloured a little. He was a shy man and a humble one.
‘And now,’ said his companion, rising, ‘I will not waste your time with my affairs. You are probably busy at this hour. I will go for a stroll and see something of this place before dark sets in.’
He walked to the window, which was open to the still October air.
‘Surely that is someone tuning a violin,’ he said, turning round to the minister. His face was bright. ‘I am something of a musician myself,’ he added.
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Laidlaw, jumping up, ‘I had forgotten! You have come at a good time, sir – the great Neil Gow is here!’
‘And who is he?’
‘Presairv’s!’ cried Laidlaw, growing, as he always did, more Scottish under astonishment, ‘did ye never hear o’ Neil Gow?’
‘I have not had that advantage,’ replied his guest, becoming correspondingly English.
‘He is the greatest fiddler in Scotland!’
‘Indeed.’
The minister was oblivious of any humour but his own. ‘This is a chance an English body might not get in a lifetime! It’s many a long day since he was here. It was the year of Culloden, they tell me, before they had put the plough on thae fields west o’ the kirkton. There was a green yonder, below the braes o’ broom, that was a fine place for dancing. The English soldiers were about these parts then at the foot of the glens, waiting for the poor lads that were seeking their homes after the battle, but they danced for all that. Neil was a young lad himsel’ then. There’s nobody here but the beadle minds of it. But he’ll never forget yon days till they take him to the kirkyard.’
‘Indeed,’ said the Englishman again.
‘Aye, he was lying in his bed in a house that looked on the green with a wound in his leg, though his wife tellt everybody it was typhus, to keep folks from going in. It was June-month, and the broom was out on the brae. They said Neil was daft; the beadle could hear him from where he lay, skirling and laying on the bow. He kept them dancing till it was too late for a man to see the lass he danced with, and Neil’s arm was that stiff he had it tied up next day when he left Dalmain; and a callant had to go with him to carry the fiddle. But time flies, sir. Likely there’ll no be a lad dancing to it the night that ever heard him play before. I am a Dunkeld man mysel’, so I am well acquaint with him. He’s playing at a dance at the Knowes’ farm. Knowes’ wife is a niece o’ Neil’s.’
‘Then you do not disapprove of dancing?’
‘Toots, no! And suppose I did, what would it avail me in Perth or Angus?’
‘Are they great dancers here?’
Laidlaw gave an impatient snort. There seemed to be so many things his travelled-looking guest had not heard of.
‘I will certainly go and hear your fiddler,’ said the Englishman. ‘But sir, you must come with me.’
Laidlaw sighed. His sermon lay heavy on his mind. ‘I must follow you later – but it’s a pity,’ said he.
While this conversation was going on in the manse, a little group was assembled in the kitchen of Phemie Moir’s cottage, where the beadle of Dalmain kirk stood with open psalm-book in the middle of the room. He was a lean, lame old man with aquiline features set in a fringe of white whisker, and he was sending his stentorian voice into the faces of the men before him. The place was full of rough figures, roughly clothed. Two women were in the kitchen, but only one was visible, and she sat by the hearth. The other lay behind the drawn curtain of the box-bed let into the wall; for she was dying, and had nearly got to the end of what was proving to be a very easy business. The elders had gathered together this evening to give point to Margaret Moir’s passage into the next world, and were well embarked on the psalm that was following the prayer they had offered. A shadow of officialdom impelled the singers to hold their books breast-high and to keep their eyes fixed upon the page, though the dimness of the cruisie at the wall turned their action into a pure piece of romance. It was romance and officialdom mixed that made those who had no books look over the shoulders of those who had; for none could see and all had the metrical psalms by heart. They went about their work with a disinterested unanimity that levelled them all into a mere setting for the beadle, Phemie, and the unseen figure behind the curtain.
No stir nor sign came from the drawn hangings of the box-bed, and though the most tremendous event of human life was enacting itself in that hidden space sunk in the wall, the assembly seemed to be entirely concerned with keeping up the gale of psalmody. Even Phemie, who neither sang nor prayed, and to whom the approaching loss must convey some personal significance, remained detached and impassive, with the tortoiseshell cat at her feet. The animal alone appeared to be conscious that anything unusual was going forward, for it sat bolt upright, looking with uneasy, unblinking eyes to the bed.
In the middle of the fourteenth verse, the last but one of the dragging psalm, the cat rose and walked with slow, tentative feet towards the wall. It sprang up on the seat of a chair at the bedside and disappeared behind the short curtain;