Selma at the Abbey

by Elsie J. Oxenham

  “I’d no’ like to do that,” Selma admitted.

  “It would hurt him badly, if you refused to let him help. And it’s for himself as well as for you, for he wants you to be ready for him, when the time comes. You will write and thank him nicely, won’t you?”

  “I will that!” Selma made up her mind. “I’ll go to the school with Jen and I’ll learn all I can. But we’ll no’ waste Angus’s money. We’ll only buy what I need to have.”

  “Oh, surely!” Joan said heartily. “We won’t be extravagant. We’ll tell Angus what we spend and what school is going to cost, and he’ll send a cheque; and then you’ll feel that you don’t owe anything to us but only to Angus, which is right and proper. You won’t mind owing your pretty frocks to him, will you?”

  “No’ if it’s truly right and proper, as you said. But I was no’ sure o’ that,” Selma confessed.

  “I’m certain it’s right. And you must remember what a lot your letters are going to mean to Angus.”

  “I’m no’ very good at letters.”

  “Oh, but you will be! You’ll want to tell him everything. Now go and ask Joy for her guide-book, and read up what you’re going to see in Oxford!”

  CHAPTER 19

  MAPS AND ENGLISH GRAMMAR

  Selma came home from Oxford radiant with joy in the new experience. She had seen a great deal in the time, and she talked more readily than she had done since she came. Jen, at night, listened enthralled and watched her eager, vivid face with delight.

  “She’s prettier than ever when she gets excited,” she murmured to Joan.

  “Oxford has stirred her up thoroughly,” Joan agreed.

  When Jen heard the plans for shopping, she raised a new point. “Well, I say! Don’t get a tunic, till you’re sure she’ll need it. Won’t she be a senior? The Head won’t have seniors in tunics, except for gym and games.”

  “Blouses and a skirt, then. But she’ll need the tunic too.”

  “But will I no’ be with Jen?” Selma asked in dismay. “She’s not a senior, is she?”

  “Rather not!” Jen grinned. “I may have to be next year, but you may as well know the worst, Viking Daughter; I’m not a serious student. I do just enough to keep the mistresses calm and because it bores me to have to stay after school and do returned lessons. But none of it thrills me very much. If you’re any good at all, you’ll be at least one form above me, and perhaps two.”

  Selma looked alarmed. “I thought I’d be with you. I don’t think I want to go.”

  “Oh yes, you do!” Jen said briskly. “You’ll love it, after the first day. And I want you. I’m fed up with going by train. You’ll see plenty of me; don’t worry! I’ll find you nice people to be friends with. There’s Aileen, for one, and as she’s coming to tea with Joy on Saturday, you’ll know her before you go to school.”

  Selma looked disappointed. “Maybe I could be with you at first, till I get used to it.”

  “I’m sure you could. The Head will understand,” Joan reassured her.

  “What are you going to do at home till half-term?” Jen demanded. “Explore the country? Don’t get lost!”

  “I’ll no’ lose myself,” Selma said with dignity.

  “She’s going to write long letters to Angus, and make a Hamlet Club frock, and help me, and go out with Joy,” Joan said.

  She sat on a broad window-seat with a basket of mending next morning, and to her delight Selma came to help at once. “Will I no’ do some? Do you darn for everybody?”

  “Joy’s supposed to do her own, but I help Jen, as she’s busy at school; she really hasn’t much time. And I always do Mother’s darning. Thanks very much! I’ll be glad of help.”

  “I’ll do this pair. Will you tell me something?”

  “As I said before—if I can, of course I will.”

  “Tell me how to speak like you do.”

  Joan laid down her work and gazed at her. “In what way?”

  “I know I don’t speak like you, or like Jen. If I go to the school, those girls will laugh at me.”

  “I don’t think they will. I like the way you speak, and I love the way you trill your r’s. You ought to be a telephone girl! But there are little things I could tell you, if you really want me to do it.”

  “Please!” Selma begged. “I will try to remember.”

  “You say no’ for not. ‘I’ll no’ do that’!”

  “Oh!” Selma cried. “Do I still do it? Angus told me; he said ‘Finish your words.’ Have I been forgetting? I don’t think what I’m saying.”

  “I like it. I don’t want you to change, and I’m most certainly not criticising you. But you asked me, and if you are going to school, it’s only fair to tell you. Say not, when you mean not, Selma.”

  “I will try,” Selma said humbly. “We had to do it at my school, but I’ve been away from school for nearly a year, and—and Mollie and the others——”

  “Weren’t so particular as they were at school.” Joan finished the sentence, as she hesitated. “You’ll soon get into the way of it again. There’s another thing, but I’m not sure that you’ll ever put it right. I’ve heard that Scots always get tied up with their ‘shalls’ and ‘wills.’ You do overwork that poor little word terribly! You say ‘I will’ when you mean ‘I shall.’ ‘Will I do this’? is what you say. You ought to say ‘Shall I do it?’ ”

  Selma looked puzzled. “I didn’t know about that. But how will I know? Do I always say ‘I shall’?”

  “You should say ‘How shall I know’? You only say ‘I will’ when you want to be very emphatic.”

  “Or when you’re getting married.” Joy appeared suddenly outside the window.

  “That is a time for being very emphatic,” Joan retorted.

  “You surely aren’t lecturing the poor kid? Leave her alone. I love the way she says things,” Joy protested.

  “I asked her to tell me,” Selma cried.

  “I like the way she talks too,” Joan said calmly. “But she’s going to school, Joy, and she asked me to help her.”

  “Don’t you do it! We don’t want her any different. As for ‘shall’ and ‘will,’ she’ll never get that right, so you needn’t worry her over it. It’s born in her to say, ‘I will go out on the hills with Joy this afternoon, if she asks me kindly.’ That sounds all right, doesn’t it, Viking Daughter?”

  “It sounds nice.” Selma broke into a laugh. “Do you mean it, or is it a joke?”

  “I want to walk; I feel like it. You’d better come, and we’ll go in a new direction. I’ll show you tiny churches in folds of the hills. Forget all that stuff Joan has been talking! We like you to be a real Scot.”

  “That’s all very well. I like it too,” Joan agreed. “But Selma asked me to tell her.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Selma objected. “When do I say ‘I shall’? And should it be ‘You shall’ too?”

  “No; oh no! ‘I shall’ and ‘you will’,” Joan cried. “But don’t worry about it, Selma. Listen to what we say, on that particular point, and you’ll soon get used to it.”

  “I don’t believe I will—I shall, I mean,” Selma said doubtfully.

  “Correct!” Joy told her. “But I hope you won’t, all the same. I’d rather you sounded homely than correct.”

  After hours on the hills, they pored over maps at night, and Joy explained contour lines and colouring, and showed how they could tell where they had gone up or down, which had been the very steep slope where they had been forced to go sideways, and which were woods and which bare hillsides. To Selma maps had hitherto been those in an atlas, of distant countries, or of towns and rivers, and the big ordnance map fascinated her. She hung over it, asking questions, English grammar forgotten; and Joy delighted in such an apt pupil and told her all she knew.

  “You’ll be the perfect wife for Angus,” she announced.

  Selma turned big startled eyes on her. “Will I? But why?”

  “You’re so keen on seeing new places. He mi
ght marry a girl who wanted only to have a settled home and sit there darning his socks, while he wanted to go all over the world, playing in Paris and Vienna and Rome, and in New York and Australia. How you’ll love going with him and exploring the world!”

  Selma’s eyes grew wider still. “Will I see all those places?”

  “I believe you will, if you marry Angus Reekie.”

  “Almost worth getting married for, isn’t it?” Jen looked up from her essay.

  “No,” Selma said, taking her literally, as she always did. “But it will be lovely to go all over the world. And I can darn his socks just the same,” she added.

  “You’ll need to,” Jen chuckled. “Are you any good at darning? I’m not up to much, I’m afraid.”

  “Selma darns beautifully,” Joan said. “She did your gym stockings this morning.”

  “Angel! Oh, angel! But, I say! I think you ought to make Angus change his name.”

  “Change his name?” Selma stared at her. “But why?”

  “Angus Reekie’s not a bit a good name for concert programmes and posters.”

  “I feel rather the same,” Joy agreed. “But there’s plenty of time for that.”

  “But what would he change his name to?”

  “I’ve no idea. You can think of a name you’d like, and then tell him he’s got to change it,” Jen said.

  Selma made no further comment, but she looked thoughtful for some time.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE JEWELS OF LADY JEHANE

  On Saturday Aileen Carter came to tea, to exchange musical experiences with Joy. Looking very happy to be at the Hall, she went round the Abbey with Joan, followed by Selma, who listened attentively to the stories and descriptions, but shyly did not say much.

  Joy and Aileen played alternately on the beautiful piano, while Joan and Jen and Selma listened with respect and applauded vigorously at the end.

  “It’s been a lovely evening,” Aileen exclaimed, as she said good-night. “Thank you both so awfully much—Joan for the Abbey and Joy for the music. I have enjoyed it!” She turned to Selma. “You’re coming to school in a week or two, Jen says. I hope I’ll see a lot of you. If there’s anything I can do, please come straight to me; I’ll be glad to help.”

  Selma coloured in pleasure. “Thank you. I shall be glad to see you at school.”

  Her eyes met Joan’s, and Joan smiled and nodded.

  “I expect you’ll be in the senior school,” Aileen added. “If Jen Robins wasn’t such a little slacker she’d be moving up soon. But she only cares about dancing and cricket.”

  “Well, I like that!” Jen protested. “I provided a whole item for the summer fête—my children and me! Everybody said it was one of the best turns in the show!”

  “It certainly was,” Aileen agreed, laughing. “But I don’t apologise. You could work much harder in school, as well as training the kids in singing-games.”

  “Can’t do everything,” Jen said haughtily.

  In Selma’s bedroom lay yards of soft yellow material, bought in Wycombe that morning, with advice from Joan and Joy and Jen; and in the following week she worked hard on a dance frock, under Joan’s direction. The dress was simple in design, and she sewed well and enjoyed the task, much intrigued to hear about the Club she was to join and about its dances and its Queens. The big photos of Joy and Joan in their robes and crowns, which hung in the hall, had prepared her for what she would see, if she stayed long enough to be present at a coronation.

  “You look gey bonny,” she said wistfully. “I must see you all dressed up. I’m beginning to feel I will never want to go away.”

  The more serious shopping was postponed till half-term Monday, at Jen’s urgent request. But Joy, insisting that there would be no time for sightseeing when there was so much important business to be done, took Selma to London for a long day and showed her the Tower and St. Paul’s and Westminster, the Thames and its bridges. “You’ll see the West End when we come for shopping,” she said.

  Not all Selma’s days were given to excursions and dressmaking, however. Joan missed her one morning, and after a search found her in the library, a heavy book in her hands, another on her knee, and a worried look on her face.

  “What are you reading? You don’t seem very happy about it,” and Joan came to investigate. “Oh, Selma!” she cried. “Who told you to read that? I’m sure you won’t like it!”

  Selma laid down The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with a sigh. “I do not! I don’t understand it a bit. But is it no’ one of the books everybody ought to have read? You said I was to read books like that.”

  Joan took The Decline and Fall firmly from her and replaced it on the shelf. “What is the other one? The Origin of Species? That’s more modern, anyway. But those aren’t the books I meant. My dear, I haven’t read them myself.”

  Selma’s eyes widened. “Have you no’? But does everybody no’ have to read them?”

  “In theory, perhaps. They’re classics, and people are supposed to read classics. But nobody does. You’d never get through them. Don’t bother with them!”

  “But then, what books did you mean?” Selma heaved a sigh of relief. “I’ll be glad no’ to go on with that one! And I was feart to begin the other.”

  “I should think you were! I meant Dickens and Jane Austen; things like that. Do you know who Emma was? Or what it means if someone talks of ‘waiting for something to turn up’, or says ‘I could never desert Mr. Micawber’?”

  Selma looked at her and laughed. “Are they out of Dickens? I’ve read about Little Nell and the old grandfather and the horrid dwarf.”

  “Mine were out of Copperfield. Emma is from Jane Austen. I’ll lend them to you; and Shakespeare. And I know what would be really useful for you. Read lives of the great composers, the men whose music Angus wants to play. You’ll be fascinated by the story of Mozart. Joy has a very fine book; she’ll lend it to you.”

  “I’ll do more than that,” Joy said, when asked for the book. “I’ll play Mozart to her, when she has read about him, and I’ll tell her what to look out for in his music. Then we’ll do Schubert, and Beethoven; and we’ll put on records of bits of symphonies.”

  “Oh, good! That really will educate her! Angus will be pleased and touched,” Joan exclaimed. “I had to get her away from The Decline and Fall!”

  “Poor kid!” Joy said, laughing.

  “She’s going to love Copperfield and Emma. I’ve supplied her with them, and she’s deep in David and Peggotty already.”

  “Hadn’t she read them?”

  “She hasn’t read very much. She could really do without school, if you are going to educate her musically and I’m giving her English literature.”

  “You can’t give her French, and I certainly can’t,” Joy remarked. “And there’s the Hamlet Club. She’ll like meeting the girls, even if she doesn’t work very hard. She’d better go to school.”

  The shopping day was a riotous occasion and all four girls came home exhausted but triumphant. “Most improper for our schoolgirls,” Joan said. “Jenny-Wren is supposed to be having a half-term rest, but she’s so tired that she can hardly keep her eyes open.”

  Selma, happily conscious of a new dark green coat and hat for the winter, which suited her perfectly, and of a wine-red woollen frock and another of delicate pale green for evening wear, exclaimed, “You’ve all been most awfully kind. I love my new things! I will write to Angus and thank him and tell him all about them. It’s his birthday on St. Andrew’s Day; I’ll write another letter then.”

  “Which is St. Andrew’s Day?” Jen asked.

  “Jenny-Wren! The last day of November.” Joan was looking thoughtful.

  She had a private word with Joy that evening, and then proposed a plan to Selma.

  “Would you like to invite Angus to come here for his birthday week-end? Could he escape from McAlistair for a day or two?”

  Selma turned a radiant face to her. “Would I no’? Would you let him
come? Oh, I would like to see him!”

  “Joy thinks it’s a good plan. You’ll have so much to tell him, by that time. You’ll have been to school, and you’ll have met our Club. There are all your new things to show him, too. I expect he’s missing you a lot.”

  “I miss him,” Selma admitted, a touch of colour in her face.

  “I thought you did. Angus has been very good to you; I’m sure you’d like to see him. Write and ask him, then. Say we’ll be pleased to see him, and if he can come on the Friday before his birthday and stay for a few days, all the better. Can he get some friend to take his place with his evening orchestra?”

  “Oh, aye, he’ll do that! It’s the lessons that matter more than the dance band.”

  “Write soon, then, to give him time to make arrangements. There’s one thing you ought to see before he comes,” and Joan opened the door of the big drawing-room. “As you’ll have noticed, we don’t come in here very often. It’s too huge and too stately! If ever we have receptions or weddings in the house, this room will be useful, but for ordinary life we like the small drawing-room or the library better. Look here, Selma! As these were rather a sore subject we haven’t shown them to you before, and you haven’t asked to see them. But if Angus is coming, you’d better be introduced to the jewels of Lady Jehane. I know Jen has told you the story of Jehane and Ambrose.”

  She unlocked a glass-fronted cabinet in a corner, and Selma gazed at the stones spread on the shelves.

  “Oh, lovely!” she whispered. “Oh, they’re bonny! You can almost understand Rykie and Angus, can’t you?”

  “It wasn’t their beauty that tempted Rykie and Angus. They wanted the stones so that they could sell them,” Joan said bluntly.

  “Aye, it would be that with Rykie. But I’m thinking when Angus lost his senses and was foolish, it was because all the colours and the sparkle went to his head for one moment.”

  “Well, perhaps. You may be right; you know him better than we do. You can understand how we felt when we thought he was going to take them.”