CLOUD HOWE (The Classic of Scottish Literature) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Author:Lewis Grassic Gibbon [Gibbon, Lewis Grassic]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788075834560
Publisher: Musaicum Press
Published: 2017-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

III

STRATUS

Table of Contents

It was funny to think, this forenoon in June, how long it had been since she climbed the Kaimes, here rose the walls, in their mantle of heather, a blackbird was whistling up in the yews, as she turned around slow she saw the light flow up and down the hill as though it were liquid, Segget below lying buried in a sea, as once all the Howe had lain, Ewan said. Still weak, Chris halted and sat on the wall, her hands below her, and looked at Segget; and drew out her hands and looked at those so thin that almost she could see through them, so thin her face when she put up her hand that the cheekbones that once curved smooth under flesh now felt like twin jagged crags of rock--a long time ere she'd look comely again!

She leant her head in her hand a moment and waited for the hill below to cease reeling--maybe she'd come out too early from bed, this walk, Else had said she mustn't go far. But the Kaimes had called her after those weeks of the smell of medicines, close fires, and the pain that ran up and down her and played hide and seek with every sinew and bone that she had. So up she had come, the sun was up here, she was out of it for an hour or so, out of the winking flash of the days, to sit and look from the high places here, as Christ once had done with the devil for guide.

Idly she minded that and smiled--it came of being a minister's wife. What had the devil said to Christ then? Maybe Just rest. Rest and have peace. Don't let them tear you to bits with their hates, their cares and their loves, your angers for them. Leave them and rest!

Yes, He'd said that, there wasn't a doubt, just as He stood by her saying it now, telling her to rest for the first time in years since that night when she last had climbed up the Kaimes, telling her to rest and leave them a-be, her cares for Robert, for that other who came and yet never came--for that third, that stranger whom slow through the years she had grown to half-know as a traveller half-knows the face of another on a lone road at night, in the summer light of a falling star. How Segget would snigger if they heard her say that that stranger desired was her own son Ewan!

Being young Ewan Tavendale wasn't all fun, you'd to get up as early as half-past six in the little room that looked down on Segget. But it was a good room, the best in the Manse, you could look of a night right into the trees when the rooks came nesting, they had a great time, fighting and mating and playing the devil. Once you nearly fell out when two rooks were at it--mating, you'd wanted to know how it was done.

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