Lament for a Maker Read Free Page A

folks either crying out or whispering: their valour of the shining kind, their treasons showing lurid in the discovery, their births at a strange term, a rape or a romance keeking out from behind their canny wivings, violence or madness or some unlikely ecstasy casting flare or shadow over their end. Many old families have as much colour to their stories as the Guthries, but few have as much colour that have contrived too to hold what they have through the centuries. The Guthries have been at Erchany since long before the Reformation – and, Reader, I warn you that back beyond the Reformation with them you and I must presently go. But for the moment my best course seems by way of Ranald Guthrie and the bogles. It was with this that the chief gossip of those weeks began.
    Ranald Guthrie was near-going: how near-going few in Kinkeig knew. For though all knew about the bogles – it was the fashion he treated the Gamleys and not the bogle business itself set folk talking – that was far from giving the measure of his meanness. I had long known myself that his meanness was next to madness – ever since the time his American cousins had tried to prove it on him. Since my mind is on it we’ll take that affair first.
    It was a couple of years back that two English creatures, gey shifty-eyed folk under their little bowlers, came speiring round Kinkeig about Guthrie, getting the billies to talk over a dram at the Arms and wheedling the women – who needed little encouragement to haver anyway – by giving pennies to the bairns. And one of them came in on me bold as brass and asked could I remember anything peculiar about any dealings I’d had with Guthrie? and I believe the chiel would have crackled a pound note at me had I not looked at him fell stern. Fine I knew Guthrie to be peculiar: only the week before he’d sent a pair boots to sutor – with the laces all frayed and knotted so that I’d put new laces in and thrust the old inside when the boots went back to him. And the next day down came the daftie Tammas with the old laces in one hand and the silver to pay my bill in the other – less one halfpenny for second-hand laces returned: had I not written Net Cash right large he’d have had discount as well. But knowing Guthrie peculiar was one thing and conspiring with a bit London informer another, and, faith, I sent the creature away with a flea in his lug. But that was not the end of it. For the next week a pack of doctors came.
    That was sensation enough for Kinkeig: a motor full of medicals in black coats and lum hats, as if they were holding themselves ever ready to attend their patients’ funerals; three from Moray Place in Edinburgh and a fourth, a full-fleshed gawpus, from Harley Street in London. They took up Dr Jervie – fell unwilling he was, but his brother was a colleague of one of the Moray Place lot and that gave them a handle – and away they went up the glen to Erchany. What happened there most folk had from Gamley, who happened to have come up for orders from the home farm. The doctors got into the house and bided about half an hour – the time, no doubt, it took Guthrie to discover what they were nosing after. Then there was hell let loose – with Cerberus well to the fore, for this time certain it was the dogs Guthrie unleased. And syne out of the house and across the moat came the medicals, scraiching and roaring, the London one holding himself behind where the fiercest dog – a tink mongrel enough – had taken a great collop out of his dowp. Into the cars they got and were driven to the manse, the fat one greeting as if he were no more than a bairn sore skelped by his nurse. And later in the day – standing by Dr Jervie’s sideboard, poor chiel – he wrote a long report for the American cousins. Ranald Guthrie, he said, had had a warm and affectionate nature fatally warped during the trauma of birth. And it was a great pity he had never been given a bit plasticine – or even a good patch