AND NEXT IT WAS Will himself that started the claiks of Kinraddie, him and his doings in Drumlithie. But Chris met the story ere it reached Kinraddie, she met it in Drumlithie itself, in the yard of the gardener Galt. The tink had been gone from Blawearie that day she set out with her basket, no sign of the rain showed even then, the heat held still as the white, dull heat from a furnace door. Down in the turnpike the motor-cars went whipping by as she set her feet for Mondynes, there where the battle was fought in the days long syne. Below the bridge went the wash of the burn west to the Bervie Water, bairns cried and splashed in the bridge’s lithe, they went naked there when they dared, she saw them glance white and startled in the shelter of the stones. Soon the heat grew such that she took off her hat and swung that in her hand and so climbed the road, and there to the left rose Drumlithie at last, some called it Skite to torment the folk and they’d get fell angry at that in Skite. No more than a rickle of houses it was, white with sunshine below its steeple that made of Skite the laugh of the Howe, for feint the kirk was near it. Folk said for a joke that every time it came on to rain the Drumlithie folk ran out and took in their steeple, that proud they were of the thing, it came from the weaver days of the village when damn the clock was there in the place and its tolling told the hour.
So that was Skite, it rose out of its dusts and its ancient smells, the berries hung ripe in the yard of the gardener Galt and he looked at Chris in a queer kind of way when he heard her name. Syne he began a sly hinting and joking as he weighed her berries, a great sumph of a man the creature was, fair running with creash in that hot weather, you near melted yourself as you looked at him. And how’s Will? he asked, We haven’t seen much of him here of late—faith, the roses are fair fading from Mollie Douglas’ cheeks. And Chris said Oh? right stiff-like, and then And I’ll have two pounds of your blackberries too. So he packed her that, hinting and gleying like a jokesome fat pig, she could have taken him a clout in the face, but didn’t, it would only stir up more scandal, there seemed enough and to spare of that. Whatever could Will have been doing; and what had he done to his quean that he’d left her?
Right glad she was to be out from the stink of Skite with the road of Mondynes in front of her. Then she heard the bell of a bicycle far down the road behind and drew to one side, but the thing didn’t pass, it slowed down and somebody called out, timid-like, Are you Will Guthrie’s sister? Chris turned and saw her then, knew her at once Will’s quean, young and white-faced and fair, and heard her own voice near troubled as the eyes that looked at her as she answered, Yes; and you’ll be Mollie Douglas?
The face of the girl blushed slow at that, slow and sweet, and she looked away back at the steeple of Skite as though she feared the thing spied on them: and then suddenly, near crying, she was asking Chris to tell Will he must ride over and see her again, come again that night, she couldn’t bear it longer—she didn’t care were she shameless or not, she couldn’t! And then she seemed to read the question in Chris’s eyes, the blood drained off from her face in a minute and then came back, it seemed to Chris she must be blushing all over under her clothes, right down to the soles of her feet as she herself sometimes blushed. But she cried Oh, you think that, like all of them, but it isn’t true! Staring at her surprised and shamed Chris found she just couldn’t speak up and deny that that was indeed what she’d thought, what else was a body to think? Then she found Mollie Douglas’ face bent close to hers, sweet and troubled and shamed as her own. And Mollie tried to look at her and then looked away, blushing as though she’d sink into the ground, such a fool of herself she was making. It’s not that at all, only I love him so sore I can’t live if I don’t see Will!
So there they were in the middle of the road, so shamed to look one at the other they’d nothing to say; and then a gig came spanking along from the station, at sight of it Mollie jumped on her bicycle again, and wheeled it about, and looked over her shoulder with a smile you couldn’t forget, and stammered and cried Ta-ta!
But Chris couldn’t forget that look in her eyes, she went home with that in her mind and at supper that night couldn’t take her own eyes from Will. She saw him then for the first time in years, almost a man, with his fair hair waving across his head and spreading to his cheeks in a rust-red down, like the down on a new-hatched chick; and his eyes blue and dark as a quean’s, and kind when they looked at her, sulky when they turned on father. Not that they turned there often, there was never a word between Will and father unless they were clean compelled to it; like dumb folk working and eating together that needed no speech for hate.
Father ate his supper and climbed down the hill with his gun, Will loitered from door to window, whistling and idle, till he saw right across the Howe, up on Drumtochty hills, something that rose and coiled ash-grey and then darker against the autumn sky, a great shape like a snake there in the quiet of the evening air, with its tail a glimmer that wasn’t the sunset, burning up red in the lithe of the hills. Whin-burning, he called to Chris, they’re burning the whins up Drumtochty way, come on up the moor and have a try at ours. They’re damned sore in the need of it—But I’ve my jelly to make, you gowk!—Oh, to hell with your jelly, well soon be jelly and bones in a grave ourselves, come on!
So she went, they gathered great piles of old papers for twisting in torches, and made up the brae to the moor. They sat down on the grass and breathed a while, Kinraddie below them all cut and close-stooked, waiting the coming of the night, the lowe of the Bervie lights as the glow of another whin-burning there by the sea. There they spread out to left and right below the moor-gate, Chris held to the left and ran through the whins, stopping to kick holes down close to the ground wherever a meikle bush rose up. Then far round the knowe Will cried he was starting, she saw him a long way off with the sky behind him, and called back All right! and knelt by the biggest bush she’d struck; and kindled her torch and set its light to the crackling dryness of the grass.
It whoomed in an instant, the whin, she set her torch into it and ran to the next and fired that: and so in and out, backwards and forwards worked round the brae, you’d to speed quick as your legs could carry you to fire the frontward bushes when those behind raged out with their flames and smoke at your hair. In the dry, quiet evening the fire crackled up and spread and roared through the bushes and caught on the grass and crept and smoked on quick, searching trains to bushes unlit, and fired them, half you thought those questing tongues alive and malignant as they lapped through the grass. By the time Chris met with Will at the moor-gate there spread before them a park like an upland sea on fire, sweeping the hill, now the sun had quite gone and the great red roaring beast of a thing hunted and postured unchallenged, all Kinraddie was lit with its glare.
Will was black as a nigger, his eyebrows scorched, he pulled Chris down to rest on the grass. By God, I hope the fire doesn’t catch on the fence up there, else old Guthrie will be casting me out of Blawearie for bringing his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave!
He said that sneering-like, mocking at father’s Aberdeen- shire voice, and Chris stirred half-angry, and sighed, and then asked What would you do if he did put you out? and Will said Go—Would you get a fee?—Damn the fears of that.
But