Читать книгу Eliza for Common - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 4

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“A lily-bud, a pink, a rose.”—Balisand.

The year had almost passed, and not very much had happened in it.

It was December, and the Laidlaws sat in the dining-room at Blinkbonny. The room was the same more or less—a little shabbier, perhaps, the carpet a little more rubbed, the furniture more marked by kicks from impatient feet. Walter Laidlaw and his wife were the same, except for added lines and wrinkles; Rob and Geordie had grown in stature, though in grace not an inch, but in Eliza the year had wrought a miracle.

The rather heavy girl with the round face had suddenly sprung into a tall, handsome creature. Her face was still round, but now the colouring was clear white and rose, the grey eyes were larger and brighter, and the mouth, which had been thick and rather sullen, seemed now merely generous in its width, and was vividly red over the white teeth. The shining hair was parted in the middle and plaited into a coil over each ear. Her dress was of knitted wool, soft-blue, which brought out blue lights in her eyes and brightened the gold of her hair.

Jim was expected home that evening after his first term at Oxford, and they were discussing possible changes in him.

“If he speaks English,” Geordie warned them, “I’ll laugh—so will Rob.”

“Idiots!” Eliza withered her brothers with a glance, while Mrs. Laidlaw said, “Indeed, it will be a great pity if he hasn’t taken on Oxford,” a remark which made her husband chuckle, and ask:

“Now I wonder what, exactly, you mean by that, my dear?”

“Well, I just mean that I hope he’s getting all the good out of the place—culture, and an accent, and that sort of thing. Anything else would be most disappointing.”

“So it would,” Mr. Laidlaw agreed. “Geordie, your mouth is too full. I think the train comes in about 6.30? I suppose I’d better meet the boy.”

His wife nodded. Walter Laidlaw’s liking for meeting trains was well known, and regarded as an amiable weakness. “He ought to be here by seven o’clock,” she said. “I’m having finnan-haddock and poached eggs for his supper; he always enjoyed that, and I don’t expect he’s been getting it much at Oxford.”

“I wonder,” said Eliza slowly, “I wonder what he will be like.”

“He hasn’t had much time to change,” her father reminded her.

“No, but his letters are quite different in these two months,” Eliza insisted. “At first you could feel how home-sick he was—you know when he said he smelt the tea because it was the only thing that reminded him of home, and talked about the sight of the pollarded trees making him sick, and of how he hated men brought up at English public schools ... and gradually the letters changed, and now you can see that he feels himself quite ‘in’ things.... So, either Jimmie has become more like English people, or....”

“Or they have become more like Jimmie,” Walter Laidlaw finished. “That doesn’t seem very likely, does it?... But I’ve noticed that he seems to have settled down and made a place for himself.” He smiled at his daughter and went on—“You are a wise child, ‘Liza, always were. You used to sit quite silent, a small stolid child, munching bread and butter as if for a wager, while your elder brother chattered, spinning words, and then, quite suddenly, you would come out with a remark that tore his airy fabric to ribbons. Solid, sensible Eliza!”

Eliza looked reproachfully at her father as she drew her slim shoulders very straight. “What a cruel thing to call your only daughter, Daddy! Solid and sensible—straight hair, flat feet, shiny nose!”

“You’re awful proud, Elijah,” Rob said, regarding his sister distastefully.

“Why? Because I clean my nails?”

Rob, after a glance at his own nails, put his hands under the table, while Geordie, with an accusing glance towards Eliza, said, “She reads poetry, Father.”

“There are worse crimes, my son.”

“But, Father, she doesn’t read it for lessons, she likes doing it. Not jolly things either, like Kip, or Newbolt, or ‘Out spake brave Lars Porsena,’ but rubbishy things about—oh, I don’t know what about—love and people dying and that sort of tripe....” Geordie’s voice fell to a shamefaced murmur.

“Rob, don’t make faces at your sister!” Mrs. Laidlaw commanded.

“Elijah’s doing it too,” Rob cried shrilly.

“Am I, Mother?” Eliza turned a calm face for her mother’s inspection.

“She is,” Geordie shouted. “That’s her scornful face. Ya—a—a!”

“You’re irritating your brothers, Eliza; don’t do it,” said Mrs. Laidlaw, knowing from experience that Rob and Geordie were never wholly in the wrong in a quarrel with Eliza.

“Yes, Eliza,” Rob said, waving a superior hand, and smiling his exasperatingly gentle smile, “do remember what a great girl you are,” and before his sister could rise in her wrath and smite, he and Geordie were out of the room and clattering down the kitchen stairs to Mary-from-Skye, who, they knew, would shelter them from all attacks.

Mrs. Laidlaw pulled the table-cloth straight, picked up a chair that had been thrown over in the scrimmage, and shook her head at her daughter.

“I wonder you trouble, Eliza,” she said.

Eliza lifted her pretty eyebrows in half-assumed surprise.

“Oh yes,” her mother nodded at her, “I know well what a maddening expression you can put on—and the boys are wild enough in all conscience without your help. You should try to be a refining influence with your brothers—shouldn’t she, Walter? You could be a great help with their manners if you were always gentle and polite to them—an only girl has such a chance to influence.... People often said I was just a sunbeam in the house.—Now, Eliza, don’t drop your eyes at me. I can’t stand it any more than the boys.... I do wish you’d make your hair fuller in front; it’s perhaps artistic, but to me it gives you an old look.—Yes, Mary, what is it? I’ll come in a second.”

When her mother had bustled out of the room Eliza went to the glass in the sideboard and surveyed her hair, then she turned to her father, who was watching her, saying—“Don’t you like it, Daddy? Is it old?”

Walter Laidlaw looked down at the flushed face upturned to his.

“Old?” he said. “Most wonderfully, pitifully young.... But if your mother thinks your hair would look better—what did she say?—bunched?—why not try it?... Is there anything you ought to be doing now? I’ve got fully an hour before I go to the train, and it’s hardly worth while beginning anything—shall we finish Cleopatra?”

Eliza gave a jump and clasped her father’s arm.

“Oh, let’s—we’ve got all the most glorious bits to read yet.... Daddy, what would people do if there weren’t books to get inside?”

“What indeed!” echoed her father, as, arms linked, they made their way to the study.

Three hours later Jim had settled down in Blinkbonny as if he had never left it.

Like most much-looked-forward-to events, his home-coming had been slightly disappointing.

To his mother the disappointment lay chiefly in the way he had eaten his supper. He had not partaken of the finnan-haddock with the zest she had expected.

“Isn’t it good, Jimmie?” she had asked.

“Very good, Mother,” he had assured her, and casually pushed aside his plate, as if haddock and poached eggs, once a luxury, was now a thing of naught. Mrs. Laidlaw felt that somehow she had been put at a distance from her boy.

Eliza watched her brother, saying nothing. She had adored Jim since she had realised anything, at four, or thereabouts. The world she remembered had been a terrifying place, full of cart-horses that lifted great hairy feet and brought them down with a clamp on the hard ground, and showed enormous teeth, as she passed clinging to her nurse’s hand; and great dogs that ran towards one with bounds; and long passages, and nurseries that were homely and happy in the daylight but became filled with lions and tigers as soon as the light was turned out. And her only protection against all these dangers had been Jimmie. He had taken her hand, this valiant man of seven, and had shielded her from all harm.

As she grew older she had delighted to fetch and carry for him, and he had bestowed on her the honourable title of the Patient Cuddy. She had listened when he talked, gravely absorbing all his plans for the future; she had slavishly followed his taste in books, had saved her pennies to buy him the sort of sweets he liked: to please him had been her one care in life; a word of commendation made her happy for days. To her he had always seemed to dwell on Olympic heights. She had watched him racing through all the first reading-books while she struggled with the alphabet; watched him conquering compound addition while she laboriously added two and two to make four, and later saw mathematics, which was always to remain a mystery to her, yield to him its secrets.

And then he had begun to write. Eliza alone had been permitted to see the first rude beginnings, which were sent hopefully to the most unlikely papers, only to return like homing pigeons. It was Eliza who, on that never-to-be-forgotten day, was waiting to rush to him when he returned from his classes at Glasgow University with the envelope, stamped on the back with the name of a well-known publishing firm, containing a letter from a kindly editor accepting and mildly commending an article. He had been absurdly young to write, and fearing that his youth and inexperience would be only too evident in his writings, he had adopted a cynical elderly style, which was decidedly comic when taken in conjunction with his young and ingenuous countenance.

And now Eliza looked at her brother and decided that he had changed. His clothes were the same, of course—a suit was not got or lightly discarded—but he wore them differently. There was a difference in his collar and tie, his hair, the way he held himself,—a general well-brushedness; before, he had rather delighted in being careless about such things. He had picked up little tricks, too, movements with his hands, ways of standing, all quite unconscious: and his accent——

At the first sentence he spoke on entering Rob and Geordie had hurtled from the room and fallen on each other in the hall in ecstasies of mirth.

Eliza was anxious in case Jimmie would hear the senseless sounds, but she need not have feared, he did not know that his accent had changed, any more than he knew that now he spoke with authority, a returned Ulysses who had seen men and cities.

He stood on the hearth-rug, his mother in one arm-chair with her knitting, Eliza in the other with idle hands; his father sitting sideways on a high chair with his legs crossed; Rob and Geordie on the floor at his feet, ready at a moment’s notice to get under the table if the Oxford accent should prove too much for them.

Jimmie looked round the circle and his eyes remained on his sister’s burnished head.

“Hullo! ‘Liza’s got her hair up! Umm.... Nice.... I rather like those snail-shell things over your ears, ‘Liza, they give you a mediaeval look.... I told you, didn’t I, about the two girls who were staying with the Master? Miss Grahams—their people have a place in Galloway. Scotch as can be and frightfully nice. They were almost more like boys than girls, with little close-cropped black heads, and as slim as—as fishing-rods—Mother, what about ‘Liza bobbing her hair?”

Mrs. Laidlaw clucked her impatience at the suggestion and Eliza’s heart fell. She had looked in her glass and told herself that surely Jimmie must think her improved, might even think her pretty, but a careless sentence was enough to make her entirely lose conceit of herself. “Close-cropped little black heads.”... “Slim as fishing-rods.” That was what Jimmie admired. What, then, was the use of her height, her coils of shining hair, her colouring of clear rose and white? At once she felt herself bulky, high-coloured, commonplace.

She sat silent and downcast, all her happy complacence wiped away, while her mother asked questions about Jimmie’s life in college, about his meals, who made his bed, how often the sheets were changed, and if he had enough towels and table-cloths.

“Your scout comes and asks what you want for breakfast and brings it from the buttery,” Jimmie explained.

“And what d’you have?” Geordie asked, always greatly interested in food.

“Oh, the usual things, bacon and eggs, sausages, fish. There’s a chap in the room beneath me, Beaton’s his name, an awfully good chap but sleepy-headed, and the scout was trying to get out of him what he wanted for breakfast. He said, meaning to be helpful, ‘Mr. Laidlaw’s taken plaice, sir,’ and Beaton, half asleep, thought he meant I’d just come into being, so to speak.... My rooms aren’t up to much, not really much more than attics, right at the top, but they’re all right for the present. I’ve got my eye on jolly good ones, richly furnished, as you might say, genuine antiques, and purple velvet curtains—eh, what?”

“Purple,” whispered Rob, and Geordie snorted.

“And I hope you go regularly to church?” Mrs. Laidlaw said.

“Chapel every morning.”

“Oh that!” Mrs. Laidlaw brushed the Church of England aside with a wave of her knitting-needles, “I mean the Presbyterian Church.”

“Yes, I’m generally there on Sunday morning.... It’s a beastly bore early chapel, but I must say I enjoy Sunday evening service. The music’s good and it’s jolly singing hymns you know in such surroundings. Father, have you heard this yarn? A man tried to get out of early chapel by saying he was a Parsee. The next morning at 3 A.M. his scout called him. ‘Dean’s orders, sir—get up and worship the sun.’—The artful dodger was speedily converted to Christianity.”

Mr. Laidlaw smiled appreciatively, while his two young sons heaved with emotion at his feet. He stooped down and regarded them in a puzzled way.

“What are you doing, boys? You’re like two dogs lying there. Either sit up and behave decently or go to bed. It’s nine o’clock.”

“Nine o’clock!” said their mother. “Be off, boys, at once, and take your bath one at a time. You swamped the bathroom last night.... Come back, Geordie, and walk out of the room on your feet—crawling there like a bear! I wish you were both the length of going to Oxford and learning manners.”

But this was too much for Rob and Geordie. Convulsed with hysterical laughter they rolled out of the room, each beating the other feebly over the head.

Mrs. Laidlaw shook her head as the door closed behind them.

“When are those boys going to learn sense?” she asked.

Her husband laughed. “Let them alone,” he said, “they’re good boys on the whole.”

“Good!” echoed his wife.

“Yes, goodness looks out of Geordie’s ugly face, and Rob never did a mean thing in his stormy life. They’re just like two young bears, tumbling about and fighting, without manners but also without guile. Don’t worry, Ailie.... And how goes the writing, Jimmie?”

“Fairly well, Father.” Jimmie was lighting a cigarette. “I’ve got a good deal of regular work—an article every week in the Statesman, and I find time to write a story now and again, and later on I’m going to try and tackle a play.”

“A play!” ejaculated Mrs. Laidlaw.

Jimmie turned to his mother. “I know you don’t like the sound of it, Mother, but I’ve always been frightfully keen about the drama, though until I went to Oxford I’d hardly been within a theatre, and, funnily enough, I think I’ve got a sort of notion of stage-craft.—But it’s no good talking about it just now. I may be simply no use at it at all, but I’d like to try, for if a play’s a success the author makes pots of money.”

He stopped, but his mother merely shook her head as she knitted, while his father said, “I dare say,” and bent forward to poke the fire. But Eliza’s eyes were like lamps as she said—“Oh, Jimmie!” and he caught her arm, crying, “Come and help me to unpack, ‘Liza. I’ve got lots to show you,” and the couple went, taking the stairs several steps at a time.

It was Jimmie’s old room, sparsely furnished, and full of remains of boyish hobbies. There was the glass-topped “Museum” that a joiner in the church had made for him, containing his collection of birds’ eggs, and various arrow-heads, and coins, laid neatly out on cotton-wool; a ship made and fitted by himself hung over the bed; a home-made book-case held an array of books—boys’ stories and cheap editions of the poets.

Jim was eagerly undoing the straps of a bag. “These are for Christmas,” he said, producing sundry parcels. “Father, Mother and the boys.... I say, d’you think Rob and Geordie’ll slaughter each other altogether with these knives?”

“They’re splendid,” his sister assured him; “just the sort they’ve been longing for.... But you shouldn’t have troubled about presents. D’you find you can manage all right?”

“Oh, absolutely. There are all sorts of ways of saving without seeming mean, and the men I see most of are all quite poor. And I’ve been lucky about placing stories well—an awful pot-boiler bought all the presents! And I’ve got a typewriter which is a great help, and ... what’s that?”

“The boys shouting for you. I expect they want to say good-night.”

“Come on then—Hullo, you two young fellows. What’s the row?”

Rob and Geordie shared a room and a bed, a perfectly good room but a somewhat inferior bed. The mattress was so humpy that the occupants had christened the two chief summits “Ben Rob” and “Ben Geordie,” while the valley between was the “Land of Beulah.”

“Rob’s cheating,” said the voice of Geordie. “He had his bath first and got into the Land of Beulah, and I can’t lie all night on the scrap he’s left me.”

“I had to do it last night,” said the voice of Rob.

“How d’you generally lie?” Jim asked.

“One on Ben Rob and one on Ben Geordie,” said Eliza. “That divides it properly.”

“Get up, both of you,” said the young Solomon. “Light the gas, ‘Liza, and we’ll try to make a level plain.—Now then ...!”

Meantime, in the dining-room, the parents of the children sat looking thoughtfully into the fire.

“Plays!” said Mrs. Laidlaw at last.

Her husband was playing with the tongs, replacing small bits of coal that had fallen from the ribs.

“There’s nothing actually immoral in writing a play. A dramatist,” he reminded her, “may be a very fine man.”

“Oh, I dare say.... Walter, do you remember when he was a little boy how he used to say when anyone asked him what he was going to be—‘A minister and preach the Gospel’?”

“I remember,” said her husband.