Rosabelle shaw, p.14
Rosabelle Shaw, page 14
Having seen Rosabelle off, Alison heaved a sigh and went upstairs to find out how her invalid was getting on. She found Jay lying in bed with his eyes shut, and she went over to the window to draw down the blind.
“Don’t bother, Aunt Alison,” said Jay, in a low suffering voice, “I rather like the light.”
“Is there anything you want?”
“No, thank you.”
Alison left him and went downstairs. She thought: It’s funny how regularly these headaches seem to occur, when was it that he had the last? It was difficult to remember exactly, but by dint of pinning Jay’s headaches on to various days—he had one the day I was to have gone to the Fergusons’, and he had another the day that Polly came to tea to discuss the bazaar—Alison arrived at the conclusion that Jay’s headaches occurred regularly once a fortnight. When this strange fact was established, Alison had food for thought, but it was not until Bill came home that she began to see light.
“Jay missed drill again,” said Bill, as he wriggled into his seat at the tea-table and contemplated the cakes chosen by his sister with goggling eyes.
“How often do you have drill?” inquired his aunt, from behind the tea-cosy.
“Once a fortnight,” Bill replied.
Alison smiled grimly.
The next time that Jay complained of a headache he had a most uncomfortable and boring day. “You have far too many headaches,” Aunt Alison declared, “we really must do something to stop them—something drastic.” She pulled down the blinds and left him in the dark. Jay did not appreciate this at all; he enjoyed lying in bed, reading penny dreadfuls which he hid beneath the bedclothes when he heard his aunt’s step on the stair, but to lie in bed all day in the dark was another matter altogether. He could not risk raising the blinds, for Aunt Alison peeped into his room every now and then “just to see how he was feeling” and he never knew when she would come. All this was extremely annoying, but worse was to follow, for it appeared that Aunt Alison had taken tickets for Peter Pan that evening “as a nice surprise, but of course, you can’t come, Jay—what a pity, isn’t it?”
“My headache is much better,” Jay protested feebly.
“Oh no, we had better not risk it,” said Aunt Alison firmly. “Mother would never forgive me if I did not take good care of you.”
So Jay lay in bed with old Maggie to keep an eye on him, while the others went off to the theatre in high glee; he decided then that perhaps even drill was better than a long day in the dark, and his headaches vanished never to return.
Jay’s first few weeks at school were unhappy, for he was not of a sociable nature. He was an individualist, and he liked to shine. He found himself pitchforked amongst a crowd of boys who treated him—as they treated any new boy—as if he were a speck of dirt on the wall. Jay was no use at games, and, just at first, he found the lessons difficult—the buzz and bustle of the big classrooms were so different from the peace of Mr. Wallace’s study that it was impossible to concentrate, and although he was well grounded by the conscientious minister, his teaching had been on old-fashioned lines. Jay disliked being overlooked, and to be overlooked by a crowd of boys whom he despised was more than he could stand, so he cast about for some method of raising his stock and forcing himself upon their notice. It was just then that he happened upon a book of boys’ adventures which solved his problem in a curious way. He bought the book at a corner shop in Leith Walk where another boy—of very different calibre—had once bought books of stories of the same nature—penny plain and twopence coloured. The scene of the story was laid in Spain, and something in the atmosphere, and in the highly coloured pictures, appealed to Jay’s deepest feelings. He looked in the glass and decided that he was a Spanish hidalgo—he was slim and dark and proud—indeed, the picture of Don Carlos might easily have been his father, so Jay thought. Soon there were rumours flying about the school: “You know that new boy—Jay Shaw? Well, he’s not really Jay Shaw at all. He’s here incognito, or something—he’s a Spanish Count, really—his father has a huge estate in Spain—an estançia they call it, and his father breeds bulls for fighting”—and then would follow an account of the wreck of the Fendris and of the manner in which Jay had been saved. At first this tale was not believed, but there were certain circumstances which seemed to give it credence. Bill was sounded, and confirmed the story of the wreck; as regards the rest of it he admitted that he did not know—Jay might be a Spanish Count, nobody had told Bill. The truth was, Bill was far too busy making friends and learning to play rugger—which he adored—to bother himself about Jay’s vagaries. The story grew and spread, and soon the whole school had accepted it. Some of the boys accepted it with a shrug—what was a Spanish Count to them?—but there were others who decided that Jay was worth cultivating, for every school has its snobs.
The summer holidays arrived, and the three children returned to Shaws. By this time Jay was settling down, and had begun to like school; he was clever, and, when he got used to the new conditions, he found the work easy, and the Spanish Count story had improved his social position, so instead of harrowing Fanny with tales of frightful privation at Heriot Row and brutality at school (which was what he had intended), he declared that he was “getting on all right” and school was “not so bad.” Fanny was glad: she could see for herself that the boy was looking better, and even a little fatter, and she decided that the new conditions were agreeing with Jay.
18
Summer holidays
Rosabelle was very happy to be back at Shaws again; it seemed to her that she had been away for years. She and Bill revisited all their old haunts; they scaled the Spanish Rock, and renewed their acquaintance with Martha and Solomon. Tom Gilmour was still in Canada, but Mamie was at Langside, and she came over to the Shaws nearly every day and joined in their games. There was an old oak tree in the wood just above Shaws House; it was one of those delightful trees that seem to have been especially designed by a beneficent Creator for the delectation of children. Its branches were thick and spreading, so that even the most timid climber was tempted to ascend, and its foliage was of the most luxuriant green, an admirable roof which sheltered its inhabitants from all but drenching rain. The children called this tree the Robber’s Castle, and they spent hours playing in it and around it. With some small planks, begged from the farm carpenter, they made a solid platform, wedging it securely amongst the branches about twelve feet from the ground. Sometimes this platform was a Malay hut, high above the swampy border of an unknown lake, sometimes it was a nest for birds, sometimes a ship—The Golden Hind, sailing with Drake to the Spanish Main. If it was too hot for games like these, Jay would take his fiddle and, sitting cross-legged on the platform, would regale the others with selections from The Mikado (which Rosabelle adored more than anything), or with little haunting tunes of his own composing, or scraps of songs—“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do” or “Farewell, my Bluebell” or “See me dance the Polka” or “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.” These tunes were already hackneyed and démodé, but the children loved them because they knew the words. Jay was always at his best when he was playing his fiddle, he was more human, and less impish, for music seemed to soothe and relieve the queer devil that dwelt within his breast and caused him to be such a thorn in the flesh of his contemporaries. He liked to play for the others, and to hear their childish voices following his lead—it gave him a feeling of power, and power was what he always craved.
Besides being the centre of all their games, and the recognised “den” for hide-and-seek, the old tree was a rendezvous for Mamie. “I’ll be at the Robber’s Castle at ten,” she would say in the evening as she mounted her bicycle and rode away from Shaws, and Rosabelle would find her there in the morning, ready and eager for the day’s play.
The two girls were unlike each other in every way, but this only seemed to strengthen their friendship. Mamie was an affectionate, clinging type of child, a little slow, and somewhat delicate, and Rosabelle was self-reliant, quick as lightning and strongly built. Mamie followed Rosabelle blindly wherever she led—and sometimes she was led astray, for Rosabelle was impulsive, and loved mischief, and rarely counted the cost of her actions or her words.
Sometimes Rosabelle and Bill would ride over to Langside “for a change,” and would forgather with Mamie and the Whites in the orchard, or in the old shabby schoolroom at the top of the house where they could make toffee, or play “messy games” to their hearts’ content. An old box stood in the corner of the schoolroom, and it was always full of apples—the tart, red, juicy apples which grew so prolifically on the Langside trees—and nobody ever went into the room without making a bee-line for the apple-box and choosing an apple to munch during the talk or the play.
Amongst the Shaws cottagers Rosabelle was extremely popular, for she was natural and friendly and full of fun. Old Miss Russell, who lived with her nephew, the head horseman, and came to Shaws House every week to do the washing was one of her special friends. She was a tall bony Scotswoman, with large hands, pink and swollen with washing, and she was of a somewhat ghoulish humour. Rosabelle loved her stories, and would sit on the edge of a wash-tub and watch Miss Russell washing the clothes and listen to her startling reminiscences of births and deaths and divers strange diseases which she had seen and heard of in the course of her life. This woman was a beautiful knitter, and could make the most filmy and fleecy shawls, or babies’ jackets, or golfing stockings with multi-coloured tops, and because of her skill she was known to everybody at Shaws as “Lady Betty,” after the wool she used for her shawls.
“Lady Betty,” Rosabelle would say, swinging her long legs and kicking the wash-tub with her heels, “tell me about when Mrs. Glaister had her seventh.”
“Och, it wis fair awfu’,” Lady Betty would reply, plunging her pink arms into the creamy suds and retrieving one of Fanny’s white petticoats, with scalloped embroidered frills. “See that noo, Rosabelle, it’s yin o’ yer Maw’s marriage petticoats, as guid as the day it was made, an’ she wears it regular too. It’s carefu’ washing dis it—that’s the thing, carefu’ washing. If yon petticoat had gone tae yin o’ thae new-fangled steam-laundries it wud ha’ bin din lang syne.”
Rosabelle nodded. She knew it was no good to interrupt Lady Betty when she had got on to the subject of washing.
“It’s gey pretty, I alwis think,” continued Lady Betty, squeezing out the suds and rubbing the garment lightly between her hands—no washing-boards for her with their corrugated surfaces and rusty nails. “It’s gey pretty. I like yon embroidery better nor lace—though lace is nice tae, ye ken. Ye’ll be havin’ lace petticoats yersel’ when ye get a wee bit aulder.”
Rosabelle supposed she would, but the prospect left her cold.
“And maybe ye can tell me,” Lady Betty went on, “what on airth it is ye’ve got ontae yon bloose—the blue yin wi’ the white strips. I canna get it aff anyways—is it grease o’ some sort?”
“I think it’s oil,” said Rosabelle thoughtfully, “yes, I really think it must be oil, Lady Betty, I cleaned my bike in it.”
“Did ye no’ clean yer bike with it?” inquired Lady Betty with dry sarcasm. “It luiks like that tae me—I may be wrang.”
“What happened when Mrs. Glaister had her sixth?” Rosabelle asked, changing the subject abruptly. “Do tell me, Lady Betty.”
“It wis her seventh,” Lady Betty declared, “her seventh in eight years—the puir critter. I mind it as if it wis yesterday, Bob Glaister came rinning for me at the back o’ three——” She was fairly off now, and the stained blouse was forgotten.
Rosabelle listened enthralled; she was not shocked or frightened by Lady Betty’s stories, for she did not really believe them in her inmost heart. Lady Betty herself was not quite real to Rosabelle, she was like something out of a fairy tale—and nobody is ever shocked or frightened by the horrors of Grimm. The steam from the wash-tubs rose up round Lady Betty and enveloped her like the smoke from a witches’ brew; she scrubbed and rubbed, and wrung and rinsed, and all the time she talked.
“Dang that Jay,” said Lady Betty bitterly. “I’ve all the sheets tae wash again. Did ye ever see the like!”
“What’s he done?” Rosabelle inquired.
“Cut doon the washin’-line,” replied the old woman grimly. “It’s a skelpin’ he needs, and it’s no’ a bit o’ guid speirin’ Mistress Shaw.”
Rosabelle knew this only too well. “He is a nuisance,” she agreed in sympathetic tones.
“He’s a foreign body,” declared Lady Betty with conviction.
Rosabelle pounced on the new phrase like a terrier. “A foreign body, what’s that mean?”
Lady Betty drew a long breath; it was a good story, and she intended to give it full value. “Weel, ye must know,” she began, taking up a pile of linen and plunging it into the tub, “I had a gey sore eye, Rosabelle—it’s mebbe six year syne—I could neether sleep nor rest wi’ the pain o’ it—it was just fair awfu’. So Will ses tae me, ‘Away wi’ ye tae the dawctor, wumman, an’ see what he can dae for ye.’ Weel, I pit on ma hat an’ away I went. ‘My land, yon’s a sore eye!’ says the dawctor. ‘Let’s see what’s wrang,’ he says, an’ he tuik a wee glass thing an’ luikit at ma eye. ‘M’h’m,’ he says. ‘M’h’m, it’s jist as I wuz thinkin’—ye’ve a foreign body in yer eye, Miss Russell,’ he says.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Rosabelle in horrified tones.
“Ay, ye may weel say!” declared Lady Betty, “a foreign body’s a queer-like thing tae be in a pairson’s eye. So I says tae him, ‘Losh me!’ I says, ‘whit’s that, dawctor?’ An’ he laughs an’ says, ‘In this case it’s a wee bit grit.’ An’ then he telt me that a foreign body wus jist a dawctor’s way o’ sayin’ somethin’ that has nae business tae be there. Then he up wi’ a knife, an’, before I kenned what he was ettlin’ tae dae, he startit scrapin’ ma eye—Maircy, the pain o’ it!—‘That’s fine,’ he says—an’ me greetin’ like a wean—‘that’s fine. Away hame wi’ ye, an’ keep yer eye covered for a wee whiley—it’ll be better the morn’s morn’—an’ it wus.”
Rosabelle was suitably impressed by the dreadful tale. “How awful!” she said sympathetically.
“Ay, it was no’ verra nice.”
“But what’s that got to do with Jay?”
“Can ye no’ see that, Rosabelle?” demanded Lady Betty in surprise. “Well, Jay’s a foreign body at Shaws—a wee bit grit that’s got nae business tae be here. Whiles I’m thinkin’ he’s sent,” she added, in a significant tone, “whiles I’m thinkin’ he’s sent jist tae be a kind o’ trouble tae us all, for like enough we’d be ower comfortable wantin’ him.”
Rosabelle saw now. She swung her heels and kicked the tub thoughtfully—so Jay was a foreign body, like a bit of grit in your eye—the simile pleased her.
The summer holidays passed too quickly, and the children returned to Edinburgh to school. Jay was not so unhappy this term, for the Spanish Count story had raised his stock, and he found himself well received amongst a certain set of his contemporaries. The story stuck to Jay all his schooldays; he told it so often that he grew to believe in it—almost—and to imagine himself the heir to a vast estate in the romantic country he had adopted as his own. He read all he could find about Spain, and embroidered his myth with details culled from his reading.
The home life at Heriot Row was quiet and peaceful, for Jay had met his match in Alison, and he was never so foolish as to waste his time and energy in fighting against impossible odds. He capitulated with a good grace and awaited an opportunity. Meantime, he worked away quietly at his lessons and his music, and possessed his strange lonely soul in patience.
Part Three
… Ripening
19
Christmas Eve
It was Christmas-time, and Shaws House was full. Rosabelle was over eighteen now; she had been for a year in Brussels with a Belgian family, studying music and languages, but now she was home for good—a grown-up young lady. Jay was there too, of course, for he had left school in the spring and was helping John with the farm, and the family party was completed by Bill, home from school for the holidays, and little Janet, and Alison, who had been lured from Heriot Row by the prospect of seeing Rosabelle again. Alison adored Rosabelle, and she wanted to make sure that the year in Brussels had not changed her. A year was a long time, and Rosabelle was young and impressionable; how dreadful it would be if Rosabelle had lost her frank impulsive nature, and had become artificial and sophisticated!
It was rather an anxious moment when Alison first saw her darling, standing on the doorstep of Shaws House, for she had said good-bye to a schoolgirl with two long plaits of straw-coloured hair, and a freckled nose, and here was a young woman, tall and slim, with golden curls piled up at the back of her head in the fashion of the day, and a complexion of milk and roses; but the moment that Alison felt the strong young arms round her neck, and the soft lips on her cheek, she knew that all was well—Rosabelle had not changed. It would take more than a year in a foreign land to change the essential nature of Rosabelle Shaw.
The old house was full, and Fanny was very happy to have it so, for she was of a sociable disposition, and the year had seemed long and somewhat lonely. It was delightful to have all the children home again, filling the place with chatter and laughter, and it was no less delightful to have Alison there, for Alison was excellent company and could talk of old times by the hour without growing tired.
