sing and scrub the yard for Mary Tate the second lass, and often she
would do the work for both when Mary’s cough confined her to her bed. Nor
did she care about the extra tasks, but rather she welcomed them, knowing
that Sandy loved her all the more that she was strong. And though at
times he looked on Mary with admiring eyes, seeing her hair that lay like
silken wheat against her head, Jean did not care; she knew the kindling
of his heart was but for her, and the strength that lay in her round
arms. And nearing thrashing time he said:
“Come, Martinmas, I’ll go a cotterin’.”
And Jean replied with hurrying heart, tossing her head to give the words
a careless lilt:
“’Deed? An’ wha will cotter wi’ ye?”
“Yersel’, I’m thinkin’,” he made answer. And lingering by the stooked
grain that stood like little tents beneath the moon, he told her of the
fine bay mare he had his mind upon; and of the farm, come time, they’d
rent together; and of the butter she would make for marketing, and of the
long, long hours that they would work, he, with his back that had the
strength of two, and she, with arms that had the strength of any man’s.
And by and by they’d own a farm, and _she_ would go to kirk in taffetas,
and _he_ would wear a tall gray hat on market days.
Down on her knees she fumbled for the bottle, pulling it with avid hand
from its wrapper in the kist. Seizing the cork with yellowed teeth, she
spat it out, and drank, gulping dryly in her haste. She settled back upon
the piled potatoes in the fusty murk, her heavy throat racked with bitter
sobbing. The thrashing machine sounded in her ears again. She stood in
its sucking wind, feeding the yellow sheaves to its hungry mouth. Sandy
swung by calling her above the roar, love glimmering in his face. She
stopped to wave at him—to watch his glinting head go by—the crunching
mouth reached for her fingers—drew them onward with the wheat—seized
them, pulled them in,—the hand, the arm, up, up the arm:—Oh, God, stop
it!—stop—
She jerked from side to side with the pain of sharp remembering, thumping
the potatoes with the splashing bottle. And then she licked the whisky
from her hand, and drank, whimpering as the glow stole round her heart.
Sandy came to the hospital, silent and down-looking, and every time he
came his stay was shorter. The smell of medicine made him fit to spew,
or the second man was away gallivanting with a lass, and he must hurry
back to do his work. And then he got to bringing Mary Tate along, and she
would sit and look at him and giggle when he looked at her as if they had
a joke between the two of them. And Jean could never speak to him alone
or ask a word about the cottering.
Long after thrashing she came back from hospital, and Martinmas was
drawing near. Lads were speaking of feeing time and whether they would
stay, or seek a better place. But Sandy never spoke a word, but had some
business in the byre, or other work to do when she would question him.
And Mary Tate would make his brose with extra butter, and mealy-mouth
about him in the evening, and make as if she knew what she would never
tell. When Jean could bear no more of that she asked:
“Is Sandy biding here or goin’ cotterin’?”
And Mary laughed and said:
“If he’s yer man ye’ve little need to ask.”
And Jean could barely keep from riving her. “What mean ye by that taunt?”
she cried.
But Mary laughed, smirked and simpered while she stepped about as if the
kitchen were a dancing hall, and all the lads had come to look at her.
So she cornered Sandy in the stubble field at loosing-time. He bore the
harness on his arms and round his neck, for he would sooner break his
back than tire a horse for no good end. He saw her, and he tried to pass,
making as if the horses needed him, but Jean put out her hand.
“A word wi’ ye. What’s come o’ a’ yer talk o’ cotterin’?”
“Oh, nathin’,” he replied. And cried: “Whoa, Bess, whoa!” as if the
horses were astray.
“Nathin’?”
“No.” And looked ahead, straining as if to see the horses reach the
watering trough.
“Look at me, Sandy Morrison: Why will ye no’ go cotterin’?” she cried,
shaking his harness-laden arm with her one hand.
“I’ll cotter come time, nae doot,” he said, with more ease in his voice
than in his face.
“Wi’ _me_?” Her voice was shrill and cut him like a lash. The red rose up
his throat. “Wi’ me? Will ye go cotterin’ wi’ me. Answer me _that_, Sandy
Morrison.”
He could not look at her, and tried to turn away.
“Answer me!” She screamed and beat his breast, and as she struck her
dangling stump jerked to the motion of the beating. Sandy’s eyes were on
it.
“I canna, Jean,” he said. “I’ve nae use for a wife wantin’ a hand.”
And so he married Mary Tate and took her cottering, her that could never
wet her feet, her with arms like matches, and legs like clay-pipe stems.
He took her cottering for a year, and then the baby came, and Mary
couldn’t leave her bed for many a month, and when she _did_ they said
she’d creep about more like a ghost than anything that drew the breath of
life.
Sandy left the cottering and hired out again. Soon there was another
wean[10] to feed and tend; and every year or two another wean, another
mouth for Sandy Morrison to feed, and Mary always lying in the bed. And
he that had so proud a head left the farming to do what work he could
about the town by nights, and tend the weans and make their porridge by
day. He that spoke of fine bay mares, and cottering, and rented farms,
and tall gray hats, was doing work that none would do,—emptying garbage
in the night. She lived again that first night of his shame, when he
crept up the lane at dawn, his head hung low, hoping none would see. But
_she_ was there and screamed her scorn, as many a dawn since then she’d
screamed her scorn:
“Nae use for a wife wantin’ a hand, eh? Fine for ye emptying garbage,
fine for ye.” He never looked toward her, crying in the window there, nor
raised his head. And all the years he never looked nor spoke, but moved
about as if her jeering fell on ears that could not hear.
Why did he not cry back at her or lift his head? Oh, to make him give a
sign, to get her hand upon his shrunken flesh and rive it with her nails.
To tear him open that her eyes could see his bleeding. To make him scream
his pain as _she_ must scream—to make him cry her name—to _know_ that
he was suffering. She rocked tortured on the shifting pile of potatoes,
breaking their white sprouts as her hand grabbed anguished for the bottle.
Oh, what was he to her? He was a dour down-looking chiel[11], thin he
was, thin and withered, withered like a turnip at the winter’s end.
And his hair, his bonnie hair that shone like a Michaelmas penny, was
grizzled and sparse and dry like dusty moss. And the shoulders of him
that had filled the door from side to side as he stood watching her at
the milking, were shrunk and bent, and bent and shrunken was his neck
that had been straight and pink and moist with the sweat of the fields.
And the eyes of him were bleared and wavering, and his gait was like a
weary dog’s.
Oh, what cared she? Why wait to shame a bleary dog—a bleary dog—a weary
dog? Why sit and rock, and wait, and cry at dawn? She’d stop her rocking
and her crying. She’d stop her drinking and her wailing. She’d buy a
dolman trimmed with bugle beads and go to kirk on Sunday. She’d cry in by
to her that lay a coughing in the bed, and him that pottered about wiping
noses. She’d stop a while and sweep the floor, and wash the faces of the
glowering weans. And all the time that image in the bed would hate her
for her strength. And Sandy would be shamed and he would see what he had
cast aside. She’d stop and bake and throw her dolman on the chair so that
its beads would shine. She’d feed the weans and tend the image in the
bed, and it would choke with rage and cough, and cough, and cough.
She’d stop her drinking, this would be the last. She’d be looked up to
and respected, she’d go to kirk, she’d make red petticoats for naked
heathens, she’d stop her drinking. The higher she was held the more would
be his shame. She’d stop her drinking, break the bottle—break it on the
wall—but first she’d drink—no use to waste good whisky—this would be the
last—the very last—the last.
She started to sway pendulum-wise, settling deeper in the pile, rolling
her head as if in time to some well-remembered chant. Her vacant eyes
were bleared with tears that fell on this shoulder, and on that, with the
rolling of her head. Her purple lips forming the silent words twisted
in a half-forgotten pain, and then her voice meaningless as a wind in
a hollow place took up the dirge: “Nae use for a wife wantin’ a hand,
wantin’ a hand....”
THE TATTIE-DOOLIE
_THE TATTIE-DOOLIE_[12]
His name was James MacDonald MacGregor, as you could prove by reading the
newly painted sign over his door, which told Drumorty in yellow and black
that he was: “A high-class tailor; pressing and mending also done.” But
Jean MacFarlane had nicknamed him the “Tattie-Doolie” on the very first
Sunday. But this was not until after the service, not until after he had
outsung her, outsung her in time and outsung her in volume. Even in the
final hymn, when she had held the last note until her ears buzzed and her
face was like a harvest moon, _he_ had held it just a second longer.
Jean had always been proud of her breath. It lasted longer than any
breath in the parish of Drumorty. She was proud, too, that no voice in
the parish could be heard above her own. Many had tried it, both man and
woman!
Skilly’s “Gype,”[13] called that because he was daft-like and wore fancy
waistcoats on week-days, had a roaring fine voice; and Mary Macrimmon,
who had a wooden leg, “could make a braw noise when she put her mind to
’t.” But even they had lost heart at last and had left Jean to lead the
singing. The Gype stayed away from the service altogether and spent his
Sunday mornings “sellin’ his soul to the devil on a dambrod.” But Mary
Macrimmon was a God-fearing woman, so she made up for her loss by coming
late every Sunday, and the ring of the brass ferrule on her wooden leg
announced her passage up the flagged aisle to her seat in the front pew.
Each entrance was a dramatic triumph, for she changed the trimming on her
hat every week, so that the congregation “wouldna crane their necks for
naught.” Jean MacFarlane was well content to let her have this triumph:
there _should_ be compensations for a wooden leg.
In four years none had ventured to dispute Jean’s right to sing the last
note of each line as a solo. The members of the congregation accepted it
with the same placidity that they accepted the fact that the varnish had
never really hardened on the pews; and if you sat too long or too solidly
on one place, you left the nap of your suit embedded on the seat.
In time they came to be proud of Jean, and they waited for her to finish
with their mouths agape, as much out of admiration as out of a desire to
be ready to start the next line when her breath finally gave out.
The organist, who was blind, knew better, and longed for the courage
to terminate Jean’s stentorian solos. But she dared not, for the
congregation believed that she couldn’t be so good as an organist that
could see, and this made her timid; so she would humbly hold the last
note until Jean’s final gasp signaled that she could start a new measure.
But in return for this, Jean defended her when some young snip would
suggest that she wasn’t much of an organist. “No,” Jean would admit.
“She’s no’ a great musician, but she’s a gran’ accompanist, an’ that’s
what’s needed in a kirk like ours.”
Until that first Sunday Jean had held no grudge against James MacDonald
MacGregor, although it would have been natural, and even dutiful, for
her to have sniffed a little in affected disdain when she heard his
name mentioned, for his arrival was a source of much distress to her
father, Perney MacFarlane, who had been the only tailor in Drumorty for
twenty-five years, as had been his father before him. Indeed, old Perney
had given Jean the rough side of his tongue for her undaughterly lack of
resentment over the new tailor. But Jean, while realizing that his advent
would end her father’s sartorial monarchy, was none the less conscious of
a pleased flutter when Mistress MacKenty stepped in by to say: “The puir
man’s single dootless, for I hae seen neither hide nor hair o’ a wife,
nor her belongings.”
“That’s a consideration,” Jean had answered; and, giving her father an
accusing look, added: “to them that never sees a man frae one day’s end
to the other.”
Jean was a little irritated with her father on this score, and blamed him
that she hadn’t been married long since. For, although his trade should
have supplied her with more suitors than any other lass in Drumorty, it
was a fact that, while the grocer’s daughter by making smirking pretense
of helping, could meet young men on Saturday evenings in her father’s
shop; and even the druggist’s boarding-school daughter could “happen” to
come in to kiss her father good night when a prosperous young farmer was
in, Jean could never meet a man that way, because Perney insisted that
it wasn’t seemly for a single woman to come in, when a man _might_ be
having his trousers fitted. To Jean’s protest: “Father, ye canna always
be fittin’ the crotch,” he merely answered, “I _might_ be.”
On the way to kirk that first Sunday, Jean was in a twitter. She had even
gone the length of putting Jockey Club on the front of her bodice as well
as on her handkerchief. This made her feel akin to Jezebel, and for a
moment she liked the feeling. She wished that a woman could be “wanton in
her ways” and yet seem respectable. Then, appalled at her own wickedness,
she made a hasty prayer for her soul’s salvation, and decided that scent
was a hand-maiden of the devil and that she would never use it again. But
the next moment she was glad that she _had_ used it, and sorry that she
hadn’t used more, as the new tailor passed her on the road and remarked
to his neighbor something about “a fine smell.”
He was grand beyond Jean’s expectations. He wore a frock coat and a
“tile,”[14] and she gasped in admiration of his “venturesomeness” in
wearing them when there was neither a marriage nor a funeral in the
neighborhood to justify such splendor.
For in Drumorty the laird is the only man entitled by common opinion
to wear such grandeur on ordinary Sundays. Many a tattie-doolie in the
fields around Drumorty flapped in solitary dignity with the scarcely worn
frock coat and “tile” of some deceased farmer, who had been too modest to
wear them.
Jean had even been pleased when he came boldly up to the choir and took a
seat in the front row of the men’s pew directly facing her. It was a bit
forward of him to sit in the choir without a public invitation from the
minister, but Jean thrilled. “It’s all of a piece wi’ his wearin’ a tile,
he’s a man that kens his mind and does it.” She was glad also that he was
where he could see her, and know at once who it was that sang so long and
so loud.
She settled herself in her seat with the dignity that a duck acquires
upon water. Debating the relative effectiveness of a lace handkerchief
emerging from her sleeve or thrust daintily into the front of her bodice,
she decided in favor of the former, because if she wore it on her breast
the book would hide it when she stood up to sing.
Satisfied that she was at her best, she glanced across the aisle. She
was disappointed to find that he was not watching her. He was reading
the hymn numbers on the announcement slate and looking them up in his
hymn-book.
“A singer himsel’, nae doot,” she reflected. “All the better; it takes a
singer t’ appreciate a singer.” She looked him over carefully and decided
that he was “over thin for good looks, and over white in the face. But he
had a grand mustache! A manly-like an’ full-growin’ mustache. A careful
wife that tended him like a chicken on a brod,[15] could make a fine
strappin’ chiel out o’ him.”
A yearning tenderness toward him, the passion of a brood hen, stirred in
her breast. She wanted to envelop him in her care; already he seemed to
belong to her. Feeling the need to emphasize this to herself by speaking
of him, she whispered to Mary Macrimmon:
“What think ye o’ the new tailor?”
When Mary answered: “He’s unco chilpet[16] and hungry-like aboot the
jaw-bones,” she answered tartly:
“He’s no’ hog-fat. For _mysel’_, I like a man on the thin side.”
Indeed, Jean had even found herself thinking with satisfaction of the
twenty-four hand-made and feather-stitched night-gowns that lay at the
bottom of her kist.[17] Not that she was ready to jump down the throat of
the first man that asked her. Indeed not! She wouldn’t fash[18] herself
if she never married! But twenty-four night-gowns made a body feel
prepared for anything.
When the organist began the prelude to the first hymn, Jean took a deep
breath, and set her head like a filly fighting the snaffle.
Now he would see! Now he would take notice! She charged the first note
with a vociferation that made Mary Macrimmon drop her hymn-book. Never
had her voice been so loud. Never had she felt more exultant in its
power. He would be looking at her now! But wait! Wait until the end of
the verse when she could show him the length of her breath. _That_ would
make him take stock and wonder. _That_ was where breath could show to
advantage.
As she reached the last phrase, she filled her lungs. Now he would see.
This would be the best that she had ever done.
Her voice rose powerfully above the others. They were falling away. As
the last note was reached, Jean’s voice took hold of the ragged edges of
sound and knit them up. Soon she would be singing alone.
But what was this? A voice full and strong was keeping pace with her.
_He_ was still singing. Was he trying to compete with her? It couldn’t
be! She glanced across at him, her face red with the strain of holding
the note. Yes! He was wilfully trying to outsing her. In his eyes was the
insolent look of a duelist who is sure of victory. Outraged, Jean lost
her hold upon the note, and James MacDonald MacGregor’s voice boomed out
in triumphant solo for two beats more.
Affronted! Affronted she was and shamed before the whole congregation!
Shamed and affronted in her own kirk. And by _this_; this whippersnapper.
Made mock of and be-meaned by a half-starved bantam-cock, with a tile on
his brainless head.
There was a sputtering and sizzling of suppressed mirth from the body
of the kirk. The new verse started, and staggered along in gusts like
a drunken man. The McKenzie lassie with the fat legs was giggling and
nudging her neighbor. The minister was hiding behind his prayer-book, but
the redness of his ears told that even _he_ was laughing. Mary Macrimmon
was making no pretense of singing but was frankly laughing under cover of
the organ. The new tailor was looking about him, smirkingly appreciative
of his victory, although he did not yet know its magnitude.
Jean’s heart was fit to fly out of its cage, so angry was she. For little
more she would have thrown her hymn-book in his face. He would come here,
would he? Come here and set up opposition to her father. Horning his nose
in on a man that had worked in Drumorty all his life. But that wasn’t
enough. He must dare to outsing _her_, that had led the singing for
years. He must make a byword of _her_ that had defended him against her
own father. Oh, but she was well punished that she hadn’t hated him from
the first, the swaggering dandyprat, the fribble popinjay, all dressed up
like a tattie-doolie! In that moment she hated him as only a heart that
might have loved _can_ hate.
It had been a bitter Sunday morning; and a bitter, bitter walk back
from the kirk with whisperings and laughter all about her, and handkies
held up to hide wide grins of amusement. It had been hard to bear with
Mistress MacKenty when she said with ill-disguised glee: “Weel, weel,
he’s goin’ t’ lead the singin’ as well as the tailorin’.”
But there had been comfort in seeing the pleasure it gave old Perney
to hear her flay the new tailor. So delighted was he with her nickname
for his rival that he pressed her to take the neck of the boiled fowl,
a delicacy which he only relinquished in moments of great emotion. For
Perney was troubled in his heart, deeply troubled and anxious, and he
dare not speak of it. He had a secret which he believed was shared by no
one. It was this. He didn’t know how the collar of a coat should be cut!
For, although he had been fully thirty-five when his father had died and
left him the tailoring business, he had never up to that moment either
cut or fitted a collar. It had been the elder MacFarlane’s belief that
his son was a witless warlock[19] who was by nature bound to ruin any
piece of cloth into which he put a pair of shears.
In time he begrudgingly and with loud-voiced distrust, allowed Perney to
cut and fit trousers, and at a pinch, when his eyes began to trouble him,
he would prayerfully let him work on a portion of a coat. But never to
his last day would he let him touch a collar.
So Perney inherited the business with a perfect knowledge of trousers,
a partial knowledge of waistcoats, and a complete ignorance of collars.
For so jealous was old MacFarlane of this knowledge that he had always
retired behind a screen for the cutting and fitting of this mystic
portion of the garment.
On the first day he was alone, Perney had embarked on a series of
experiments. From then on, every suit he cut was a hazard, an adventure.
This much he suspected about collars. Something had to be cut on the
crosswise, and something had to be stretched. But which had to be
stretched, which had to be cut crosswise, he never was able to find
out. Sometimes he did it one way, and sometimes the other, but little
satisfaction resulted. When, occasionally, the miracle happened, and
he would produce a collar that did neither stick out at the back like
a spout, nor shy away from the neck in a coy semicircle, he had always
forgotten how he had cut that particular collar, and try as he would he
couldn’t duplicate it.
Perney had never told this to a soul, not even his wife; nay, _least_ of
all, his wife. But sometimes he wondered uneasily if she knew. There was
something too impassioned in the way she defended him when a customer
complained that the collar didn’t fit. It looked like something more than
chance that brought her hurrying down the stairs just in the nick of
time, and there was something more than affability in her voice when she
exclaimed to the customer upon her entrance: “My certies, but that jacket
brings out the breadth o’ yer shoulders.” If in the face of her evident
admiration, the customer still murmured that the collar didn’t set to his
neck, her voice became a shade scornful as she replied: “Think ye the
collar’s human? How would _it_ know where yer neck is? Hae patience and
wear it a while, and come time, it will grow to the set o’ yer body.” And
if he still complained, she would deride him playfully, crying: “Certies,
man, expect ye the collar to grip yer neck like yer lass’s arm?” If this
didn’t send him away with his face red and the suit under his arm, she
could go even further.
It was not so easy with the young ones who had been to Aberdeen to take
the agricultural course at the university. _They_ were “very notional,”
and would bring a suit back again and again for alterations. But smart
though they were, they hated to encounter Mistress MacFarlane, and
would peep in at the window first to see that she was out of the way.
But in the end she would always vanquish them. And it is a tribute to
her eloquence that they sometimes came to agree with her that “a collar
couldna be expected to fit, until you had worn it six months.”
In all the twenty-five years, Perney had never had a suit left on his
hands; but he knew well where the credit lay for that.