Rosabelle shaw, p.7
Rosabelle Shaw, page 7
9
Fanny walks in the Sun
It was November now, Wild gales blew in upon Shaws from the North Sea and sent the last remaining leaves flying down from the trees. John came in from the fields with his ruddy face ruddier than ever from his battle with the wind. When the wind dropped it rained, and Fanny’s garden grew damp and sodden. The leaves of the Michaelmas-daisies withered to a bright yellow, and the golden-rod turned a feathery brown.
Work in the garden was impossible, so Fanny, tired of being cooped up in the house, put on her mackintosh and walked down to the shore. The waves were rolling in from the North Sea in lines of grey-green water crested with white foam. They broke on the shore with a roar, and sucked at the shingle so that it rattled seawards. A few brave gulls flew past, shrieking. Far away to the right, the waves broke upon the red rocks, sending up fountains of white spray.
Fanny walked along the grass at the shore’s edge. The wildness of the scene excited her and filled her with a strange exultation. It was good to lean against the wind, to feel it pressing against her body like a tangible force. The skirts of her mackintosh flapped against her legs, and her hair, loosened from its coil, blew against her wet cheeks and stuck there. But Fanny did not mind the discomfort of the day, she was too glad to be out again. She struggled on, laughing to herself and glorying in her battle with the elements. It was more sheltered when she reached the promontory, for its bulk broke the wind, and she stood there for a little to recover her breath and to watch the sea.
How wild the waves were, and how incalculable their mood! This one flung itself against the rocks with all its force, and was shot up into the air to fall in showers of spray, white as snow against the leaden greyness of the wintry sky; that one parted in two, and the one half, a solid grey-green glassy wall of water, slid along against the red wall of the cliff with powerful undulating force. It gurgled and sucked at every crevice, welled up between two boulders and poured over them back into the cream-flecked bosom of its parent sea. Another wave struck the cliff squarely, but, instead of breaking, curled backwards and met its follower yards away; whereupon the two waves broke upon each other in a ridge of creamy froth, and subsided slowly into a dark green valley. And yet another wave—the biggest of all—rushed upon the cliff like a beast of prey and enveloped it in a smother of foam.
Fanny watched it, fascinated. Her senses were dulled by the movement of the water and the thunderous noise.
In a little while it began to grow dark; the sun was setting, but all that could be seen of the sunset was a dull orange glow in the western sky.
Fanny awoke to the fact that it was getting late; John would have come in, and would be waiting for his tea. She had been out much longer than she had intended. Her shortest way home was through the tiny village of Shaws, so Fanny took this route. The village was dark and quiet, for the people were having their evening meal and they had shut up their cottages against the storm. Every here and there a chink of light showed through a knot in a shutter, or through the crack of a badly fitting door. Fanny hurried on; she had reached the steading by now and had not much farther to go. The steading was usually deserted at this hour, for the afternoon milking was over, but to-day it was not deserted. A little group of men had congregated in the doorway of the byre, and were having a friendly “crack” before going home to tea. Fanny saw them as she passed, and a tag-end of their talk came to her ears.
The words she heard made no sense to her, but Fanny reflected, as she hurried on, that scraps of conversations overheard in this way rarely make sense. She and Alison used to play a game together—a game which consisted of listening to people’s words as they passed by in the street, and trying to make sense out of them—“And she said to me”—“I wouldn’t have done it for worlds”—“What a price to pay for it”—“And I hadn’t been gone for five”—these were the sort of words one heard. And there was one occasion when Alison had declared upon her word of honour that she had heard a man say—“so I drowned her in the pond.” They had discussed this hilariously for days afterwards, trying to decide whether the victim had been a cat or an imaginary being, or whether—but this was surely unthinkable—Alison had accidentally overheard the callous confession of a murderer. In any case it had been an amusing game when she had played it with Alison—but then Alison had the faculty of making small, everyday things seem amusing and interesting.
John was waiting for his tea. He was prepared to scold Fanny for being out of doors on such a dreadful afternoon, but when he saw her flushed happy face and bright eyes he had not the heart to scold. Fanny ran upstairs to change her wet shoes, and soon she and John and Rosabelle were having their tea together in the cosy dining-room. Rosabelle was in an unusually talkative mood to-day, and she insisted on telling her parents a long story about Topsy. They listened indulgently, and smiled to each other in delight at their daughter’s cleverness. So it was not until Rosabelle was safely tucked up in bed that Fanny’s turn came, and she began to tell John the story of her adventurous afternoon.
The three preceding winters had been strangely calm, with mild west winds, alternating with frosty weather, so Fanny had never seen a really wild sea before. She described the behaviour of the waves with graphic detail, and John listened to her account with interest. He had seen the same thing happen a score of times, but he had never realised the strangeness of it. Why should one wave break and the next fall back defeated? John could not, for the life of him, imagine. He sat, half-dozing, by the comfortable fire, with his slippered feet in the fender, and listened with pleasure to Fanny’s voice—what a pretty voice it was!
“Some of the men were in the byre as I passed on my way home,” Fanny continued. “One of them was O’Malley; Glaister and Lang were there too. I heard them talking as I passed—isn’t it funny how you sometimes catch a few words of conversation and it sounds like nonsense?”
“What did they say?”
“Glaister said, ‘It’s going to be a wild night—it’s beating up for a right good storm,’ and O’Malley said, ‘It’s the sort of night for a lame donkey.’ ”
John was almost asleep now. He had been battered by the wind all day, and the fire was warm. He said drowsily, “You couldn’t have heard right.”
Fanny said nothing. She was sure she had heard those words, and yet it seemed unlikely. It was emphatically not the night for any lame creature to be abroad. The wind had risen since the afternoon—it was coming straight in off the sea, sweeping up the small valley or fold of ground in which the house was built. It was whistling through the trees, and howling in the chimneys. Fanny sighed, and snipped off a piece of wool—she was darning John’s socks, a dull and never-ending job.
“Rosabelle was funny,” said John, rousing himself a little and smiling at his wife.
“Yes,” agreed Fanny. “She’s a monkey. She picks up everything you say, and then, when you’re least expecting it, she comes out with it. I do think she’s clever for two and a half.”
John agreed. He was very fond of his daughter. She was so small and sweet and yet so full of character. Rosabelle was a person, a small but distinct personality. If only she had been a boy, John thought, and fell to wondering when Fanny would think it right to give Rosabelle a brother.
By bedtime the storm had increased in intensity, and Fanny was frightened. She had thought it fun to be out in the wind, and the fury of the waves had exhilarated her, but now it seemed to Fanny that there was a malignancy in the storm. The night was so dark that nothing could be seen, but the noise was terrifying, it was positively devilish. The wind seemed to come in furious gusts; it howled in the chimneys like a soul in agony, it roared round the tower where the stair was built. She heard the crash of breakers on the shore and the creaking and groaning of the trees. Rosabelle was fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth, and this seemed most extraordinary to Fanny—-how could the child sleep through this noise? She got into bed and lay there, trembling with fright and wishing that John would come.
John was in the bathroom, washing his teeth. He heard the storm, but it did not worry him. His stacks were well thatched, and his barns and byres weather-proof—Burnett could be trusted to see to that before the winter set in. John finished his preparations, and went to blow out the oil-lamp which stood on a little shelf beside the mirror; his face stared back at him from the glass, ruddy and flushed with the wind and the hot fire. Suddenly a gust of frightful fury shook the house. “My goodness, it’s a wild night!” said John, and, as he said it, the words that Fanny had overheard came back to his mind—“the sort of night for a lame donkey.”
The sort of night for a lame donkey—what did it mean? It sounded like nonsense, of course, and yet he felt that there was some meaning in the phrase—he had heard the words before—he was sure of it now. Where had he heard the words before? John tried to remember: he delved into the hidden places of his mind, I shall remember in a minute, he thought, gazing unseeingly at his reflection in the glass, I shall remember in a minute—a lame donkey—the phrase sounded harmless enough, but John felt that it was fraught with horror—that it had some dark and dreadful significance—some dark and dreadful association.
At that moment there was a rending, tearing sound, and a terrific crash, Fanny called out to him in terror, “John, oh, John!”
John blew out the lamp and ran into the bedroom. He found Fanny sitting up in bed, staring at him with wide eyes. “Oh, John—what was that?” she cried.
“It’s a tree down,” said John, “one of the beeches, I’m afraid.”
“I’m frightened.”
“It’s all right,” John told her. “There’s nothing to be frightened of. I thought you liked the storm.”
“I oughtn’t to have liked it,” Fanny said. “It’s wicked—just listen to it, it’s wicked——”
“Don’t worry,” said John, smiling at her reassuringly. “The old house has weathered worse storms than this, and weathered them without losing so much as a slate.” He climbed into bed and took the small trembling figure in his arms.
10
The wreck of the Fendris
When John woke it was still dark, and the wind was still howling round the house with devilish force. The old house—built though it was of solid stone—shook to its foundations at every gust. But it was not the wind which had wakened John, it was something else, something within himself which had called him back from the oblivion of sleep. John slid back into consciousness with the memory of a dream clearly in his mind. He had dreamed that he was a small boy again—not very much older than the chubby Rosabelle who was sleeping so peacefully through the storm—he was sitting on a little stool at his grandfather’s feet and listening to the old man’s talk. Old James Shaw spoke in the old Scots tongue which had been the language of the court in days gone by, and what he said was always worth listening to, for he was well read and knowledgeable—a mine of curious information, as Mr. Wallace had said. Small John liked his grandfather’s stories, and would sit and listen to him with eager ears.
The old man had died when John was eight years old, but, for all that, John remembered him clearly, and now, in his dream, he had seen him again, just as he had seen him in life—with his neatly folded cravat and his wrinkled face, and faded eyes, with his bushy eyebrows, and his fringe of whiskers white as driven snow. And John had heard in his dream—as he had heard long ago—old James’s slow, informative words.
“A lame donkey,” old James had said, “is a device used by the poverrty-strricken natives of Norrth Westerrn Ireland to lure unforrtunate vaissels to their destrruction. The method is ingenious and desairrving of a better purpose. Lanthorrns are fixed to the donkeys’ tails, and the beasts are hobbled and drriven slowly up and doon the shore; so that vaissels, labourring in the storrm, are deceived into thinking that the lights are the lights of ships, lying at anchor in a safe haven. It must be underrstood,” old James had continued with his passion for accuracy, “it must be underrstood that the tairm—a lame donkey—is a fashion of speech among wreckers, for, if donkeys be not available, cattle are used with equal success, or the natives themsel’s may simulate the motion o’ the rocking o’ the ships with verra little deeficulty.”
John sat up in bed and stared at the darkness—the dream had been sent to him from Heaven—he had heard a voice from the grave. He did not realise that the dream was the natural result of his going to sleep with the phrase in his mind, and that his subconscious ego, released from the tyranny of his conscious, had supplied him with the information he desired. The discoveries of Freud in the realm of the subconscious had yet to be made, and dreams were still inexplicable mysteries, messages from the Great Unknown.
John had heard a voice from the grave, and its message was clear. He knew now where he had heard the words, and he knew what they meant. Could O’Malley have used the words in earnest, or was he merely entertaining the younger men with tales from his own wild home? Surely it was impossible that he should have used the words in earnest! It was incredible that he should have contemplated such a terrible crime! “Oh, God!” said John, staring into the darkness with unseeing eyes, “Oh, God, don’t let it happen—you couldn’t let anything so dreadful happen here—at Shaws.” There was no answer to his frantic prayer, no answer save the appalling gusts of wind, the creaking and groaning of the tortured trees, and the thunder of the waves upon the shore.
John felt that he could lie in bed no longer: he must be up and doing: he must go down to the sea. It might be too late now—it probably was too late if O’Malley had really intended to use the devilish device. And if he has, thought John, if he has used the lame donkey, then I’m guilty. And if a ship goes ashore on the rocks, then the blood of those innocent men is on my head. Yes, he, John Shaw, was guilty, for he had kept O’Malley at Shaws against Burnett’s advice and against his own better judgment. It seemed to him, now, that he must have been mad to keep O’Malley—some devil of obstinacy had possessed him, and driven him, and clouded his mind.
John crept out of bed and groped his way into his dressing-room. He was guilty also, he thought wretchedly, in that he had not remembered the significance of the words when he had heard them from Fanny’s lips—it would not have been too late then to have circumvented O’Malley’s plans. I might have realised how strange it was, thought John to himself, that those men were still in the byre; that they were lurking there and conspiring together at that hour. Why were they not down at the cottages having their tea? I might have realised how strange that was if I had thought for a moment—if I had considered the thing, instead of turning it off and telling Fanny that she must have been mistaken in what she had heard—and, if I had realised how strange it was, I should have paid more attention to the words, and I might have remembered where, and in what connection, I had heard them before.
John lighted the lamp on the bracket and peered at his reflection in the glass. He remembered how he had peered at it before with the words “a lame donkey” in his mind. He had nearly remembered them—so nearly. He had got the length of thinking that the phrase was fraught with horror, that it possessed a dark and dreadful significance for all its harmless sound, and then Fanny had called, and he had gone to her and comforted away her fears.
He was pulling on his boots when he heard, above the constant roar of the storm, the sound of men’s voices beneath his window, and, immediately afterwards, the rattle of a handful of gravel against the window-panes. John knew what that meant, and his soul was filled with horror. His bones turned to water, and he scarcely had the strength to drag himself to the window and raise the sash. There was a little group of men standing on the sweep of gravel before the house—Burnett with a lanthorn in his hand, and old Will Cowie, and Russell, the head horseman of Shaws Farm.
“Is that you, Maister Shaw?” said Burnett anxiously.
“Yes, Burnett. What is it?”
“There’s a ship driving ontae the rocks. I doubt she’ll no’ weather the pint in the storm. I’m feared she’s doomed.”
Doomed—the heavy word rang in John’s ears like the tolling of a death-bell. He tried to say that he would come, but the words stuck in his parched throat. He shut the window and finished dressing, and slipped quietly downstairs. The men were waiting for him at the front door.
By this time John had found his voice. “Is she in the bay?” he inquired anxiously.
“No, she’s not,” replied Burnett.
“It would be a deal better if she was,” Cowie declared, “for there’d be some chance o’ saving the puir creatures if she went ashore in the bay. I’ve seen a wheen o’ wrecks at Shaws——”
John knew that this was true. He could remember at least a dozen wrecks—sometimes the ship would be driven right into the bay by the force of the wind, and in that case the crew could be rescued by means of a human chain. Men, linked together by a rope and holding each other’s hands, could force their way through the breakers and reach the vessel’s side. Once communication with the shore was established and the rope made fast, the shipwrecked crew could be hauled to safety. John had taken part in such rescues himself, and his father before him; and before them, his grandfather, old James Shaw, of whom almost legendary feats of courage were told. But if the ship failed to clear the Spanish Rock, which rose like a huge wedge at the end of the reef of boulders, there would be little hope for her crew.
“Is she driving on the rocks, then?” John asked.
“She’s driving straight ontae the Spanish Rock,” Cowie replied. “Gin she strikes there we can dae little, for it’s that sharp she’ll split like a hazelnut. I mind when the brig Wayfarer struck in sixty-fower—ye’ll no mind that, Maister Shaw—she was away in a moment, lost wi’ all hands.”
