THE CORP’

[11]

THE CORP’

By shutting the door to within three inches of the jamb, and moving her chair nearer the cat’s hassock by the fire, old Kirsty could see Mistress MacNab’s door and watch the mourners come and go.

She had been sitting there for three days, secretly watching, her dismay growing with every hour as she realized that it was possible that Mistress MacNab could carry her rage about the butter prize to the extent of not bidding her to see the corpse.

When Mistress MacKenty brought the startling news on Sunday evening that “Sandy MacNab had choked on a cold potato and hiccoughed himself to death,” Kirsty had had a momentary qualm of doubt. She wished she hadn’t openly scoffed at Mistress [12]MacNab’s butter and flaunted her own first prize on the way back from the show. It was “an unwise-like thing to do with death so sure and life so uncertain; but who would expect a braw man like Sandy MacNab to choke to death on a potato?”

“And besides,” she reflected, “Mistress MacNab, be she as angry as she may, would never bury Sandy without all the honor that was due him.” And who in all Drumorty would think of being buried without Kirsty Fraser to cry as the lid was screwed down? Had she no’ cried at every funeral for forty-five years? And was it no’ part and parcel of the ceremony for her to have a fit when the body was carried out? And was it no’ true that the laddies of the village hung round the house of sorrow waiting for the chance to run for the doctor to bring her round?

She recalled the first time. What a day that had been! Never would she forget looking into the coffin of Maggie Sclessor and seeing her lying there so satisfied-like with the best-looking mutch⁠[1] in [13]Drumorty on her head. Never would she forget the rage that had filled her at the sight. For who would have expected Maggie Sclessor, poor as she was, to have a hand-made lace mutch laid away to be buried in and never to say a word about it? She had cried with envy, but the neighbors thought it was with grief, and they had turned their attention from Maggie and her braw mutch to Kirsty as her sobs grew louder; and when the doctor averred that Kirsty had been “on the very verge o’ a fit,” they screwed the lid down on Maggie without further to-do.

And as they carried the body out, Kirsty reflected with satisfaction, “Weel, she had a fine mutch, but wha will think o’ that noo?”

And then, with each succeeding funeral, she had added to her laurels; having once tasted the joy of stealing the attention from the corpse, she could not forego the excitement and the commiseration and the secret gratitude of the mourners. Her “fits” grew more and more masterly, until the neighbors argued boastfully:

[14]

“I’m tellin’ ye, when my man died, she had the worst fit she ever had.” And the answer, as positive, would be:

“Mistress MacPherson, hae I no’ got the use o’ my sight, praise be to God? Did I no’ see her eyes roll up to heaven and her legs stiffen when my Jeannie was carried oot?”

Certainly, Mistress MacNab would never think of burying her man without Kirsty’s being there, butter prize or no butter prize. Thus reassured, Kirsty had resolved to outdo all her past efforts at the funeral of Sandy MacNab. Always in the back of her head she had had a notion that by biting the sides of her cheeks till they bled, and frothing the blood upon her lips, she could give a more convincing and gruesome fit than any she had ever given. She had saved this for some great day. And this was the day. The world would see that Kirsty Fraser scorned to bear a grudge in the face of death. She would treat Mistress MacNab better than if she had been a friend.

On Monday morning she felt so kindly toward [15]Mistress MacNab that she was minded to step over and say a word of comfort to her. She even thought of offering to do the “biddin’,” although she knew full that her legs would never stand it.

But Mistress MacKenty came in to say that Maggie Tate was to do the “biddin’,” and that the funeral was on Wednesday, adding meaningly, “But there’s no need to tell ye that; ye’ll be the first to be bidden, nae doot.”

Her tone made Kirsty uneasy.

At sundown, when Tammas, her son, came wearily in, she watched him wash his face in the tin basin, and as he spluttered and blew the water,—he never thought he was clean unless he made a noise about it,—she started to ask if he had heard anything, but stopped, mistrusting her voice. It would no’ do to let Tammas know that she was anxious. And should it be that some were already bidden, Tammas would know that she had been slighted, being left to the last.

On Tuesday the coffin was brought home. Jimmy Tocher tripped on the step as they carried it [16]in, and it banged against the door. Kirsty could hear Mistress MacNab raking them up-hill and down-dale for their fecklessness, and she wanted to join them and see for herself if they had dented the mountings, but she couldn’t make the first advance.

At dusk she saw Maggie Tate on her rounds doing the bidding. She cried in at Jessie MacLean’s and then went on to Mistress MacKenty’s. “She’ll be here inside ten minutes,” Kirsty reflected, and rose to put the kettle on, so that she could make her a cup of tea. “It’s unco thirsty work, biddin’ to funerals.”

It was getting too dark to see. The kettle boiled dry, and she pulled it forward on the crane. “Mistress MacKenty is talking her stone-blind. She’ll never get here to-night,” she decided, but she couldn’t give up watching.

Tammas came home. He had heard something, and was uneasy in his mind. Kirsty could tell, because he was whistling The Lass o’ Ballochmyle between his teeth, which was a sign. And forby [17]that, he said the long grace before supper, and he said it slowly, as she always had begged him to. He was trying to be kind to her; he even blew the smoke from his pipe up the chimney instead of out across the room. It was unnatural-like, and Kirsty knew that his behavior meant that he was sure that she would not be bidden to see the corpse. She resented his giving up hope before she did. He had never valued her fits. On occasions he had even advised her to bide away if funerals made her take on so. He was like his father, that he was. He was reliable-like, but he was dull. All the Frasers were dull. Why could he no’ speak up and say, “Ye’ll no’ be bidden to see the corp’, and I’m glad o’ ’t,” if that was what he was thinking? She’d give him just a minute more; then she’d ask him outright.

“Mither.” She looked at him as he spoke. To avoid her eyes, he bent down, and used the heel of his boot to press the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

“Weel?” she prompted, and there was an edge on her voice.

[18]

“I’m thinkin’ o’ drivin’ up to Skilly’s the morn ti borrow their rake. Would ye like to go wi’ me?”

So he believed she wouldn’t be bidden, and he was trying to save her face. He little knew. He had never set store by her fits, but others had. Mistress MacNab might wait till the last to bid her, as was natural; she’d do the same herself, but bid her she would, as Kirsty knew well. So she answered tartly:

“I’m thinkin’ yer losing the wee bit o’ sense ye were born wi’, Tammas. The morn’s Sandy MacNab’s funeral.”

Tammas reddened guiltily.

“Oh, aye,” he murmured. “I had forgotten, mither.”

And now this was the day of the funeral. Through the small space between the jamb and the door Kirsty could see Mistress MacPherson knocking for admission to the house of sorrow. She had a small parcel in her hand, which she held gingerly upright.

“A jar o’ calf’s-foot jelly, nae doot,” Kirsty informed [19]Tammas as she called his attention to it. “That’s the tenth parcel since ten o’clock. Mistress MacNab will no’ need ti buy a bite o’ food for a fortnight.” She said this exultantly. Funerals were Kirsty’s art, and she liked them to be successful. “Tammas, keep out from between me an’ the door. I can no’ see through ye.”

Tammas had made another attempt to shut the door in a yearning desire to spare her. Manlike, he could not understand why she tortured herself by looking on. He had seen her put on her black mutch in readiness, and his heart was sick for her. He wondered why she could not give up hope. He paced the floor silently, stopping every now and then to do some kindly useless thing; and she, knowing what prompted him, would snap at him furiously.

The minister came. Kirsty sat rigidly forward in her chair as he was admitted and the door closed after him. Tammas stopped pacing. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He tried them in his pockets, and then took them out again, hanging them limply by his sides.

[20]

From over the street came the singing. Kirsty picked nervously at the crochet edging on her knitted wristlets. She half turned to look at Tammas, and her voice quavered:

“They’re no’ to bid me, Tammas.” But as Mistress MacNab’s door opened and Skilly’s lad came running out, Kirsty rose to her feet, eager and joyous. “Aye, they’re sendin’ for me noo.” She started toward the door. But the laddie ran past. Tammas helped her back to her chair. Then, for a Fraser, he rose to great heights.

“I’m sorry for them, mither,” he said. “It will be feckless⁠[2]⁠-like funeral without a fit at it.”

She sat up at the thought, grasping at it eagerly.

“Aye, will it no’, Tammas? Will it no’?” she cried gratefully.

Then, turning it over in her mind, she found it sweet with comfort, and she chuckled while the tears were still wet upon her face.

“They’ll value my fits more than ever noo, Tammas. Puir Sandy MacNab!”

[21]

She nursed the thought joyously. She was sorry that it had happened to Sandy MacNab, for he had been a good man, and deserving of honor; but she was glad that Mistress MacNab must share the humility.

“She’s cuttin’ off her nose ti spite her face, puir body! I could feel it in my heart ti pity her, Tammas.”

Fully recovered in spirit, she got up lightsomely, and began to unfasten the strings of her mutch.

“We’ll shut the door on the rest o’ ’t, Tammas,” she said, and was moving toward it when Mistress MacKenty came breathlessly in. She was burning with news to tell, and greedy to see its effect.

“Mistress MacNab is havin’ a fit, an’ Skilly’s laddie has gone for the doctor,” she cried.

“A fit!” Kirsty screamed the words in a hysteria of unbelief. “What would she be knowing of a fit, she that has never had one?”

Gloating with the joy of telling it, for she had always envied Kirsty her fits, Mistress MacKenty’s voice swelled with gratification as she answered:

[22]

“Such a fit as I have never seen. Her eyes are rollin’ to heaven, and the blood is frothin’ on her lips.”

At that Kirsty’s knees began to tremble beneath her. She put out a wavering hand and gripped Tammas by the sleeve, striving to keep upright and face Mistress MacKenty, who continued maliciously:

“Drumorty will never forget this fit. I’ll mind on ’t mysel’ if I ever hae a corp’.”

And Kirsty Fraser knew that her glory was gone. Another had stolen the chief jewel of her crown. There would be none in all Drumorty who would do her homage again.

But not before Mistress MacKenty would she bow her head. She took her hand from Tammas’ sleeve and stood alone, and nothing in her voice as she spoke told Mistress MacKenty that her pride lay stricken.

“Gie her the ammonia bottle to take over, Tammas. I hae had slight fits mysel’, an’ I ken ammonia’s good.”

And Mistress MacKenty wondered at this heroic [23]thing that made Kirsty Fraser disclaim the glory of her fits and hand her laurels to another. She stood shamed before it, and she hung her head and crept away, unable longer to look Kirsty Fraser in the face.

Kirsty stood till she had gone; then her hand went feeling blindly for her chair. She cupped one hand helplessly in the other as she sat. The string of her black mutch hung down like a weary pendulum that had wagged its hour. As Tammas knelt by her, dumbly anxious to comfort, she whispered:

“Think ye she knows I care, Tammas?”

“Niver, mither. I would no’ have known it mysel’.”

Assured of that, she let the tears steal down her wrinkled cheeks. Her hands trembled together helplessly in her lap. Tammas reached out and held them firmly in his, and they sat there silently together.

Her thoughts went seeking comfort everywhere, but found none. With every funeral her pride would die a little more; with every funeral Mistress [24]MacNab would reap a greater triumph. None would think of Kirsty’s fits except to say how poor they were, and how great were the fits of Mistress MacNab. And so until the end.

“O Tammas,” she cried, “when I am dead and lying helpless, ye’ll no’ let that Mistress MacNab have fits at my funeral! Promise me that, Tammas!”

[25]

SILK BOTH SIDES

[26]

[27]

SILK BOTH SIDES

“—And two and a half yards o’ four inch black satin ribbon.”

Jessie MacLean added this last fatal item with an upward jerk of her head lest Mistress MacKenty, at the other side of the counter, should think she was ashamed of her purchase. But Mistress MacKenty had a nose for news rather than an instinct for tragedy, and by the suppressed eagerness in her voice as she asked, “And ye’ll want it silk on both sides I’ll warrant?” you could see that she was already half-way down the road to the smithy to spread the news that: “Jessie MacLean had lost heart and would be out in a bonnet in the morn, so help her Davey.”

“Aye, silk both sides,” Jessie answered, letting her eyes range the shelves carelessly to prove that there was nothing momentous in her buying bonnet strings.

Silk both sides proved it! A satin-faced ribbon [28]might have many uses, but silk both sides was a bonnet string by all the laws of millinery known to Drumorty.

Telling about it five minutes later, Mistress MacKenty said, “I might hae been wrang when she bought the silk geraniums, and I may hae been over-hasty when she said ‘half a yard o’ black lace’—but silk both sides is as good as swearing it on the Bible.”

In Drumorty, a bonnet with strings tied below the chin means that youth is over. About the time the second baby is born, the good wife abandons her hat—forever—and appears in a bonnet with ties. She may be any age from eighteen to twenty-five; for matrimony, and motherhood, and age, come early in Drumorty. The spinster clings longer to her hat, for while she wears it, any bachelor may take heart and “speer”⁠[3] her; and if she be “keeping company” she may cling to her hat until she be thirty “and a bittock”; but after that—if she would hold the respect of her community, she must [29]cease to “gallivant” about “wi’ a hat” and dress like a decent woman, in a bonnet with ties.

And Jessie MacLean was six and thirty as Baldie Tocher could tell you, for did he no’ have the pleasure of burying the exciseman the very morning that Jessie first saw the light of day, and was it no’ the very next year that Nancy MacFarland’s cow got mired in the moss?

Drumorty had been very lenient with her. Many a good wife thought it was high time that Jessie laid aside her hat, but always she held her peace, remembering her bridal gown and the care with which Jessie had made it, for Jessie was the village seamstress, and it was a secret, whispered, that she charged only half price for making wedding gowns, because she liked to make them so much.

Another reason for their lenience was Jock Sclessor. For fifteen years Jock had “kept company” with her; not one Sunday morning had he missed “crying by” for Jessie to go to morning service. He would come round the bend of the road from Skilly’s farm just as the sexton gave the bell [30]that first introductory ring which meant “bide a wee till I get her goin’ full swing and then bide at hame frae the kirk if ye dare”; and Jessie would come out of her door and mince down the sanded walk between the rows of boxwood to the gate, and affect surprise at seeing Jock just as if she had not been watching for him behind her window curtain this past five minutes.

Jock was the cotter⁠[4] on Skilly’s farm. Every year he intended to “speer” Jessie when thrashing was over. Tammas, his dog, will tell you how many times he had been on the very point of asking her the very next day, but—always the question of adding another room came up and not for the life of him could he decide whether to level the rowan tree and build it on the east—or to move the peats and build it on the west; and by the time he had made up his mind to cart the peats down behind the byre and build it on the west, lambing was round again and he let it go by for another year.

[31]

And every year Jessie was in a flutter as thrashing was nearing the finish. One year she had been so sure that he would “speer” her that she bought a new scraper; for Jock could make your very heart stand still, he was that careless about scraping the mud off his boots. Often when she was alone, she would practise ways of telling Jock that he must clean his boots before he came in: “Good man, hae ye forgotten the scraper?” was abandoned because it wasn’t strictly honest, for Jessie knew full well that he always forgot the scraper. “Gang back and clean your feet,” was set aside also, because it was too commanding and “Dinna forget the scraper” was also discarded because it isn’t good to nag a man before he has set foot in the door. But none of the expressions had been tried out yet—for when Jock dropped in with her, after service, Jessie hurried him by the scraper as if it might shout at him, “She expects you to speer her!” and so put her to shame.

But now thrashing had been over for weeks, and every Sunday since then, she had looked for the [32]white gowan⁠[5] in Jock’s coat, for what swain “worth his ears full of cold water” ever asked the question without that emblem of courage in his buttonhole? It is a signal to the world that he means to propose, that he is going in cold blood to do it—and forever after his good wife can remind him of that, should he suggest that he was inveigled into it by some female wile.

Last Sunday, on their way to church, Jessie cleared her throat nervously and grasped her new testament, bracing herself as she asked in a thin voice that was much too offhand: “Would your peats no’ be better sheltered in the lea o’ the byre?” and Jock replied: “Na, they are better where they are.”

And so a hope, nourished fifteen years, died, and through the service she sat gazing straight ahead, with her eyes wide open, for the wider eyes are open, the more tears they can hold without spilling over. And next Saturday she bought black satin ribbon “silk both sides” and the world, meaning Drumorty, [33]knew that Jessie’s tombstone would not read “Beloved wife of ——”.

In Jessie’s cottage the blinds were drawn on Saturday evening, and you who have suffered will not ask me to pull them aside and show you how a faded spinster looks when she weeps; nor how her fingers tremble when she sews upon bonnet strings; but let me tell you how bravely she stepped out next morning wearing her bonnet, with never a look through the curtain to see if Jock was on his way, nor a glance to see if the neighbors were watching. Her step was just as firm upon the sanded path, and her head just as high; perhaps she grasped her testament more tightly than usual, but what soul on the rack would not do that?