Rosabelle Shaw, page 27
They followed Reena O’Malley into the byre (for it was too cold to stand about outside), and stood near the door by the big corn-bin. A hurricane lantern was hanging from a beam in the ceiling, shedding a soft yellow glow, and the place was redolent with the homely smell of cows—a warm sweet smell. Rosabelle could see their hind-quarters as she looked down the line; they were moving a little restlessly, for they had been disturbed out of their sleep.
“I won’t keep you a minute,” said Reena again. “It was only this—I wanted to give this to Mistress Gilmour.” She displayed a little packet as she spoke, and slipped it into Rosabelle’s hand.
“But I don’t want it—what is it?” Rosabelle said, looking at it in dismay.
“It belongs to you,” said Reena, and she turned to go.
Tom stepped back into the doorway, and blocked it with his big frame. “This won’t do,” he said firmly. “You must explain what it means, you know. Do you want Mrs. Gilmour to open it, Reena?”
“If she wants to,” said the girl, a trifle pertly.
“Open the packet. Belle,” said Tom.
Rosabelle did not want to open it—she had a feeling that there was something inside it that she did not want to see.
“Take it back,” she said, holding it out in the palm of her hand.
Reena shook her head.
“Open it, Belle,” said Tom again.
There was nothing else to be done, so Rosabelle untied the string and opened out the paper … she found inside the little coral necklace which she had lost the night of the dance. It lay, coiled up in her hand—the little pink necklace which had caused so much trouble and worry. Rosabelle looked at it in amazement.
“It’s yours,” said Reena.
“Yes, where did you find it?”
The girl did not reply. She stood and looked at them, with a somewhat defiant air.
“Is it really your necklace, Belle?” Tom asked.
“Yes, it’s mine.”
“You’re sure of it?”
“Quite sure,” said Rosabelle. “Look, there is the little ‘R’ on the clasp. It’s the necklace that Father gave me—I lost it the night of the dance.”
Tom nodded, he remembered the incident well. “Come now, Reena,” he said, “where did you find it?”
“I didn’t find the necklace. It was given to me.”
“Tell us the truth,” Tom said gravely. “It will be better for yourself—come, Reena, we can’t leave it unexplained.”
Reena’s attitude changed, she was almost weeping now. “I didn’t take it—if that’s what you’re thinking,” she declared. “I wouldn’t do such a thing. It was him—he gave it to me—it was him. He fastened it round my neck with his own hands—how was I to know it belonged to Miss Shaw? There was a little ‘R’ on the clasp and all. I thought he’d bought it for me.”
“Who?” asked Tom, and his voice sounded very stern. “Who gave it to you, Reena?”
Rosabelle did not need to hear the answer. She knew who had given Reena the beads. “But he helped to look for it!” she cried. “I don’t understand—he helped to look for it!”
“I swear it’s the truth,” the girl declared. “I swear it be the Blessed Virgin. He gave it to me the night of the big party at Shaws. ‘This is for you,’ he said, and he showed me the little ‘R’ on the clasp, and I said to him, ‘But me name’s Catherine,’ I said, for I was named for the blessed Saint Catherine of Sienna,” she crossed herself automatically as she spoke, “and he laughed and said ‘Catherine, is it—but you’re Reena to me,’ and then he fastened it on me neck.”
Rosabelle believed every word she said, for there was an unmistakable accent of sincerity in her voice. Jay had given it to the girl. It was incredible—but it was true. Jay had found the necklace—she could not think that he had actually taken it off her neck—and had given it to Reena O’Malley. Suddenly Rosabelle saw Jay stripped of all his glamour, she saw him as a pitiable creature, worthless and wanton, a creature who would stoop to petty theft, a creature who could steal a necklace from one girl to give it to another, and lie, and lie about it, and help to look for it. Oh, it was beyond everything, Rosabelle thought. To other people it might seem very little worse than the other things that he had done, but to her it seemed infinitely worse, for it was a mean crime, mean and petty, cruel and senseless; it was the crime of a devil who gloried in mischief.
“Oh, Tom!” said Rosabelle in a broken voice. “Oh, Tom!”
He put his arm round her shoulders comfortingly.
“Can I go now?” Reena asked.
“Not quite yet,” said Tom. “We want to get the whole thing cleared up—for everybody’s sake. There’s no need to cry, we believe what you say.”
“It’s the truth,” she said, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. “It’s the truth. I never doubted but what he had the right to give me the beads. It wasn’t till yesterday, when we were over at Shaws helping with the leading, that I knew what he’d done. Mary Burnett—she saw me wearing the beads, and she said to me. ‘That necklace is the spit of the one Miss Rosabelle lost on the night of the dance,’ she said, ‘but hers was real coral with a gold clasp. What a hunt we had for it,’ she said, looking at me in a nasty way. There’s folks that think if a girl goes wrong once she’ll stop at nothing, but I’m not a thief, Maister Gilmour, no, I’m not.” She paused a moment, and then went on more quietly: “The queer thing was I knew when she said that—yes, I knew at once what had happened—I knew it like as if somebody had told me—I knew he’d taken the beads and given them to me. It was all of a piece with him—if you know what I’m meaning—it was the sort of thing he liked to do. To set everybody by the ears, hunting for a thing, and have it in his pocket all the time—and him hunting too, and looking worried and vexed——”
“Oh, don’t!” Rosabelle cried. “Oh, stop—I can’t bear it——”
“Well, it’s the truth,” said Reena sullenly. “It’s the truth whether you can bear it or no. I’ve suffered more than you or anybody, but I’m through with him now—yes, I’m through. It’s making a thief of me he was, and I’m no thief, whatever else I may be. Did he think when he gave them to me that folk would say I’d robbed Miss Shaw? Did he think of the trouble he might be putting on me? If that’s love I’m through with it,” said Reena furiously.
Tom and Rosabelle were dumb, they could find nothing to say.
“Ah, now, and don’t I know to me cost what he was like,” she continued, the slight Irish brogue in her voice increasing as she lost control of her words. “Don’t I know it only too well. Sure, there was an enchantment in him that could make you do what he wanted—and you knowing it was wrong.”
She stopped again, and there was a little silence.
“You may keep the necklace,” said Rosabelle at last, and she held out the little packet as she spoke.
Reena O’Malley drew back. “I’m not wanting it now,” she declared, “I’m leaving Langside to-morrow, and I’m leaving all me trouble behind. I’m not wanting anything of his—or yours. It’s a new life I’m starting——”
“But I don’t want it either!” cried Rosabelle in dismay.
“I’ll take it then,” said Tom, and he took the necklace from Rosabelle’s hand and slipped it into his pocket. “There,” he said comfortingly, “that’s settled. Is there anything else you want to know?”
Rosabelle tried to think. There were a lot of things she wanted to know, but it was hard to find words for her questions. “Was it the night of the dance he—gave it to you?” she said at last.
“It was,” replied Reena. She was feeling more at ease now, and seemed glad to get everything off her mind. “He told me to meet him at the Robber’s Castle—it’s an old tree, really, but that’s what he called it. I’d met him there before—often. He was late that time, and I thought—He’s not coming after all. He was like that,” said the girl bitterly. “Yes, that’s what he was like. He’d tell you to meet him, and not come at all—or keep you waiting hours in the cold, and you’d be angry and miserable, and then he would come—and you’d forget to be angry. You couldn’t be angry long whatever he did. I could hear the music that time, and I thought of him dancing with the other girls, and me waiting in the dark—it didn’t seem fair.” She stopped for a moment, remembering her misery. “And then he came.” she said, and sighed to think how her anger had melted away.
“And brought you the necklace,” Tom prompted her.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, but even without that I’d have forgiven him. I know I would, for there was an enchantment in him——”
It was that word which seemed to explain everything—all that she had borne and suffered because of Jay—the enchantment in him. And to Rosabelle also the word seemed the key to his power.
“Well, I can go now, I suppose,” Reena added, with a return to her pert manner.
“You can go now,” agreed Tom.
She slipped past him under his arm, and was gone in a flash.
“Tom!” said Rosabelle. “Oh, Tom, isn’t it dreadful?”
“The girl may have been lying——” he began doubtfully.
“She wasn’t lying,” Rosabelle declared. “It’s true, what she said, every word. It’s the sort of thing he would do—I see that now—a cruel mischievous trick.”
They were silent for a few moments, busy with their thoughts. The cows moved quietly in their stalls, and the rings on their chains rattled gently.
“It’s better,” Rosabelle said at last. “It’s better to know the real truth, and face it. But just at first … it hurts. You mustn’t mind. Tom. I love you now—I do love you——”
“I know that,” he declared. “I understand everything. You’ve been afraid of him really. But I think you’re free now.”
“Free?” she asked.
“Yes, free. Do you remember one day in the orchard—long ago—you and Bill had come over to tea, and the Whites were there? We were playing a game—a silly sort of game it was—somebody asked questions, and the others had to answer.”
Rosabelle tried to remember. The scene was dim to her at first, but it was coming back—the orchard, the hot sun, the little group beneath the apple tree. “Go on,” she said, “I’m remembering now.”
“Jenny asked you if you could love a thief,” said Tom slowly, “and you said you could, but only if he were a thief in a big sort of way. I knew what you meant, Belle.”
“And I said I could never love a mean sneak-thief,” she added. She thought about it for a few minutes, examining her heart. Was she really free now? She had tried so hard to free herself from Jay’s spell—was she free at last? “Perhaps I am … free,” she said slowly.
“Of course you are,” declared Tom.
They put out the light in the byre and walked up to the house arm in arm. Rosabelle’s mind had gone back to that bright summer day in her childhood, and she remembered another queer thing that had happened on the same afternoon.
“Fancy you remembering all this time,” she said. “It seems so long ago, doesn’t it? Jenny asked you who you loved best in all the world, and you wouldn’t answer—do you remember that?”
“I remember,” Tom said, and she could hear him chuckle quietly in the darkness. “I remember very well. It was you I loved best, of course. I couldn’t tell them that—it seemed so soppy—and I wasn’t going to lie about it.”
“Oh, Tom, even then!”
“Even then,” he declared earnestly. “Then, and now, and always.”
“I wish it had been like that with me, it would have saved such a lot of trouble,” said Rosabelle somewhat naïvely.
39
Rosabelle solves a problem
When Tom went away, Rosabelle was very miserable, for she had begun to know his real worth. His mind worked at a slower tempo than hers, but he saw into things more deeply, and for this reason she had found him an interesting companion. She had enjoyed his dry quiet humour, and had begun to lean upon his strength—he was so dependable, and so thoughtful and kind. Perhaps it was his kindness that she missed most of all. She had discovered that he was a little shy with people that he did not know well, and this accounted for his silence in company; when he and Rosabelle were alone together Tom was at his best, and this was as it should be. Rosabelle realised that she was fortunate in her husband; she was not “in love” with him, but she loved him dearly. It was quite a different thing from her feeling for Jay, and it seemed queer that the feeling should have the same name. Her feeling for Jay was a sort of fascination, full of fear and unease, and the struggle of her better self to withstand his charm, whereas her love for Tom was happy and peaceful and full of tenderness.
Tom was sent to a camp on Salisbury Plain to be turned into a soldier, and from there he wrote to Rosabelle nearly every day. Some of his letters were mere scrawls, a few lines written in his tent before he turned in for the night, but others were long and interesting.
“They are having some trouble making me into a soldier,” he wrote, when he had been in training for about a fortnight. “It is all so strange—you can’t imagine how strange it is. I’m not good at drilling, and I’m always getting hauled over the coals. I think too much—you’re not encouraged to think. All you’ve got to do is to do what you’re told—and do it quickly. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? The other fellows are a good lot, and I like them nearly all. There are all sorts—doctors, clerks, butlers, hairdressers, and a host of others—all being made into soldiers as quickly as possible. Everybody has a nickname already, and I’m called Farmer Giles. Sometimes it is just Giles, for short. I’m quite used to it, and answer to it readily.”
Rosabelle devoured his letters with eager interest, and replied at length, telling him all that was happening. She was back at Shaws now, and it seemed to her that the short interlude of her married life was just a dream. Everything was the same as before. Her wedding-dress, hanging in the wardrobe, swathed in a white linen bag, was the only thing to remind her that it had not been a dream. …
Christmas came and went, and one Sunday Mrs. Gilmour and Mamie came over to lunch at Shaws, and afterwards, when the older people were resting and chatting, Rosabelle and Mamie went out and walked on the beach. It was a queer day, misty and grey and silent—the world felt muffled, and the only sound to be heard was the booming of a foghorn in the distance, a strangely sad and ominous sound. They walked along by the edge of the silvery-grey sea, which was as calm as a lake, and seemed to have scarcely enough strength to turn over and ripple on the shore. Only a little bit of the sea was visible and a little bit of the brown hard sands; it was almost as if the two girls were walking in a grey-curtained room which moved along with them as they went.
“There’s only you and I in all the world,” said Rosabelle suddenly, and she thought: How simple life would be if that were really so—just Mamie and I, here, by the sea, and everything else wiped out. She looked at Mamie, and saw her small sweet face, her soft grey eyes, and the beads of moisture hanging on her lashes.
“It’s the sort of day to talk secrets,” Mamie declared.
Rosabelle agreed. They were shut away in the mist; there was nobody to hear or see them; there was nothing living within sight—not even a seagull.
“Let’s play ‘What would you do?’ ” said Mamie suddenly.
It was a childish game, and they had not played it for years, for life was so earnest and so full of troublesome problems that they had had no time for childish things, but they were still quite young in spite of the anxieties and responsibilities they carried, and Rosabelle thought it would be rather fun to play the game again. It was really her game, and her vivid imagination made it interesting. Mamie had tried to play it with other girls, but it had not been the same.
“What would you do?” said Rosabelle in a serious tone. “What would you do if I suddenly went mad and started to strangle you?”
“I’d fight you,” Mamie declared stoutly.
“You wouldn’t have a chance,” Rosabelle told her. “I’m much stronger than you are. I’d strangle you quite easily, and then I’d dig a hole and bury you—nobody would ever find out.”
“Well, I’d just be strangled then, I suppose,” said Mamie with a chuckle. “There isn’t anything I could do, is there? But I’m not frightened really.”
Rosabelle pressed her arm. “It’s funny that you shouldn’t be frightened, isn’t it?” she said thoughtfully, “because, of course, I could do it easily. It’s really your turn now, but I’ve thought of a good one——”
“Go on then, Belle.”
“What would you do if a German soldier with a fixed bayonet suddenly loomed up out of the mist?”
“Oh!” cried Mamie in horror-stricken tones.
“What would you do?” demanded Rosabelle.
“I’d scream and run away.”
“He’d run after you. Besides, of course, you’re surrounded by German soldiers. They’ve landed at Shaws Bay, under cover of the mist, and they’re going to march on Edinburgh.”
“I’d die, I think,” Mamie declared.
“Oh no, you wouldn’t. They’d capture you, and make you show them the way——”
“Oh, Belle, you are awful!” Mamie exclaimed. There were actually cold shivers running up her spine at the thought of it.
Rosabelle laughed with delight. “It was a good one, wasn’t it?” she inquired. “Did it make you feel quite gruey?”
“Quite gruey,” admitted Mamie with a shudder.
They had reached the other end of the bay by now, and the rocks loomed up suddenly before their eyes, dark and dripping with moisture, barring their way. They sat down on a slab of sandstone.
“Belle, I want to talk to you,” said Mamie.
Rosabelle smiled at her. “You are talking to me, aren’t you?”
“Seriously,” Mamie added. “Listen, Belle, perhaps you’ll think I’m a wretch, but I can’t help that. Belle, I must get away from here, I want to do something useful.”
“But, Mamie——”
