The Jewel Read online

  ‘He came from the north-east to Edinburgh. Looking for his fortune I suppose. Times were hard.’

  ‘Times are always hard.’

  ‘They are so. He worked as a gardener there. Then, he travelled by a roundabout route to Alloway and set up as a nurseryman. He rented land, and even began building a house, but I think he found it desperately hard to make a living, so he took up a position as head gardener at the Doonholm Estate instead.’

  ‘But your mammy’s from Maybole?’

  ‘Aye, she is. Well, there or thereabouts. He met her at the Maybole fair, and she says he proposed to her almost immediately and she accepted him without hesitation. Love at first sight.’ He paused. ‘I think it was the only time in his life he ever did anything on impulse.’

  ‘And then you were born.’

  ‘Aye.’

  She could sense him grinning at her in the dark. She could feel the warmth of him beside her, beneath the plaid. Like a good fire, she thought, vaguely, realising that she would be very happy just to lean against him, close her eyes and sleep. There was something oddly familiar about him. And safe, in spite of his reputation.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, again. ‘Like a true hero, I was born on a wild January night, in a storm so fierce that the chimney blew down. My mammy had to wrap me up and take shelter with the neighbours while my father got help to rebuild the gable end. Maybe he wasnae as good a builder as he was a gardener. Not like your father, eh, Jean?’

  ‘My father always says he builds to last. But then he’s no gardener. So you moved from there to Mount Oliphant?’

  ‘You ken all about me it seems.’

  ‘There’s been a lot of talk. Hard to avoid it in this place.’

  ‘We flitted when I was six. That was the first farm. A bad bargain. And thence to Lochlea near Tarbolton. Which was the least fortunate of all.’

  Jean knew that there had been a long-running legal dispute with the landlord. William had died a year ago, fretting over the fate of his wife and his children, but fretting most – so the gossips said – over his eldest boy, fearing for his future. Rab had been a trouble to him, for sure. It was whispered that William had said as much on his death bed, reducing his son to tears. If James Armour was stern, it seemed Rab’s father had been obdurate, even in the face of death.

  ‘Your poor father,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘He seems to have been a good man, but life didnae treat him well.’

  ‘No. He had nae luck for all that he was a good, God-fearing man. He aye thought I was feckless. I was off to Tarbolton with the lads, or at Masonic meetings. I went to the dancing even back then, but he thought dancing was the devil’s work. I could not agree with him and I could not shut myself away to suit him. I needed my friends about me. I still do.’

  ‘He would have had a lot in common with my father. He thinks the dancing is the devil’s work too.’ She chuckled, suddenly. ‘My mother told me once that father danced Bab at the Bowster when they were courting, but all the kneeling down and kissing that went on mortified him completely. He was blushing and stammering and didn’t know where to put himself and she had to kiss him!’

  She fell silent, wondering if she should have mentioned kissing, but rather to her disappointment, Rab only tucked the plaid a little more tightly round the two of them.

  ‘He thought me idle,’ he said, and there was a sadness in his tone that wrung her tender heart. ‘Well, he couldnae understand why I was always reading and writing. Why my nose was aye in a book.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that about you, Rab. It’s hard not to!’

  Unconsciously, she had slipped into calling him Rab. But you couldn’t sit wrapped up in a plaid with a lad and call him Mr Burns, could you?

  He squeezed her hand. ‘Your wee fingers are cold.’

  ‘I’m fine. Tell me more about your father.’

  ‘He was responsible for our education. He believed education to be a fine thing. I think he believed it till his dying day. But he was torn. He used to say, what good was reading, when there was hard work to be done and stony ground to improve? What good was reading, when there was a family to feed and clothe? How could a body waste money on books when poverty came knocking at the door?’

  ‘Perhaps he just worried about you.’

  ‘Perhaps he did. Me more than any of them. I could settle to no respectable occupation. That was his chief complaint. Maybe it’s still true. My brother is by far the better farmer. He’s cautious and sober in all his dealings. I’ve tried, and I still do try, but it’s never enough. I’ve made too many mistakes. I ought to have settled to something by now.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Ach, Jeany, if I knew that, I might be able to set my mind to doing it. If I could spend my days reading and writing, I would. I was a disappointment to him. Even on his deathbed, I was a sore disappointment to him.’

  She hesitated. But the truth seemed so clear to her that she had to put it into words. ‘Rab, d’you not think…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘D’you not think that one of the reasons he was so hard on you, might have been because he loved you best?’

  He paused, thinking about it.

  She persisted. ‘Sometimes fathers in particular are harder on the weans they love most. I should ken that! He must have worried himself sick about you, but it doesn’t mean he loved you any less. I think it means he loved you more. Maybe he was more like you than you ever kent. He must have been an adventurous lad, once upon a time, to leave his home and head south the way he did.’

  He sighed. ‘You’re a good, kind lass, Jeany Armour. And maybe you’re right. But it still hurts me to think about him.’

  ‘You should come to the singing school,’ she said, in an effort to lighten his mood and her own. The pity she was feeling for him at this moment seemed perilously close to love.

  ‘Ach, it’s no for me. The dancing, aye. Singing? I don’t think so.’

  ‘You never know. You might enjoy it.’

  ‘I’d enjoy the pleasure of your company,’ he said, slyly.

  ‘Well, we sing for pleasure more than ought else. We like to share songs and melodies.’

  ‘I’m no singer, Jeany, though I like the old Scots songs fine, so I do. There’s such a wealth of wisdom at the heart of them. But I like to hear them sung with simplicity. A good pure sound. None of your airs and graces. None of your twiddly bits and singing five notes where one will do.’

  ‘I agree with you there.’

  ‘Which is why I would not gie you and your wood-note wild for a score of my cousin, singing his heart out in there.’

  She was glad of the darkness for she was blushing again.

  ‘Besides, what would your father say, Miss Armour, if he found out you were inviting a rakish rook like Rab Mossgiel to the singing class? Or sittin cooried up in the fause-house in the dark with him for that matter.’

  She knew all too well what her father would say, but she didn’t respond.

  He took her hand again, squeezed it, held onto it. ‘Ach, I ken fine he hates me. If looks could kill, I would already be laid in my coffin in the kirkyard down there.’

  ‘He worries about me. Like your father worried about you.’

  ‘And who can blame him? I don’t suppose the news about Betty Paton pleased him very much either.’

  She had been avoiding the topic, but now he had named the lass himself.

  ‘No. It was one more thing to upset him.’

  ‘I’m very fond of her. And I’ll no abandon the wean. I would never do that. But I’ll not marry the lass either. We would not go a month without hating each other.’

  She thought, but didn’t say, that if he knew as much all along, he should not have made love to Betty, not have got her with child. But then mistakes were all too easy to make in the heat of the moment. She fel
t quite hot right now. Warmer than the night and the fause-house merited, even with the plaid.

  ‘Then maybe you were right not to marry her.’

  ‘They tell me in the toun that your father has got his heart set on a weaver for you, Jeany. Yon Rab Wilson. Off to Paisley to mak his fortune.’

  ‘Is that what they’re saying?’

  ‘Aye, it is.’

  ‘So you’ve been asking have you?’

  ‘I have. And then they say he’s to come back and marry you.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Rab.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She leaned over and planted a daring kiss on his prickly cheek.

  ‘You shouldnae believe all you’re tellt,’ she whispered.

  She slid out from under the plaid, jumped down from the fause-house and wrapped her shawl about her. The back door of the house was open again, light falling on the flagstones with smoke curling through it. He followed her and caught her arm.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. If I come to the Whitefoord Arms before the singing school, will you meet me there? You could bring your friend, Chrissie Morton.’

  ‘Why? D’you fancy Chrissie as well?’

  ‘No. But – for appearance’s sake, just. I’ll walk down with John Blane.’

  ‘He comes to the singing whenever he can.’

  ‘And he does fancy your friend Chrissie, although I suspect she has small interest in him. But then we could all have a wee chat together, before the singing. If you’re agreeable. We could meet up in the snug, downstairs, the four of us. It would be respectable enough.’

  ‘Aye, maybe it would.’

  ‘So, you will?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ She smiled up at him, their two breaths mingling in the frosty air. They went back into the house, taking care, by a sort of mutual but unspoken agreement, not to go in at the same time. Jean went first, sliding into the darkest part of the room so that she could pretend she had been there all along.

  That night, a hard frost fell. The road back to Mauchline was treacherous, with ice filling all the deep winter ruts, so the visiting lassies elected to sleep over at the farm. Rab and Gilbert were sent to join the farm servants in the stable loft while Jean, Christina and the Miller sisters slept in the garret room. Jean lay awake for a long time, listening to the gentle snores of her companions, the sighs and mutterings, the rustle of chaff as they turned. It had occurred to her that she was quite probably lying in Rab’s bed, although he was elsewhere. The thought made her smile, gave her a little thrill of excitement, banished sleep.

  Chapter Five

  Assignations

  There’s not a bonnie flower that springs

  By fountain, shaw, or green,

  There’s not a bonnie bird that sings

  But minds me o’ my Jean.

  The following week, a message came from Ayr to say that the singing teacher was indisposed, having contracted a fever of some kind and lost his voice entirely. Between that, and various more pressing engagements that had to be fulfilled as soon as he was well, it was well into spring before the singing school resumed, before Robert Burns and Jean Armour could do more than pass the time of day with one another.

  Jean would not think of going alone to such an assignation, if assignation it could be called. It was one thing to sit in the dark of the fause-house with Rab Mossgiel where nobody could see them, but this was very public. It was supposed to be an innocent enough gathering, a conversation between friends, but it felt like something more, something illicit, and she had a tremor of excitement at the thought that Rab wanted to see her in particular. But Jean would have thought shame to go alone. There had to be a chaperone. And even then it was daring and somewhat inadvisable. The Miller sisters had given off fancying Rab altogether, the reason being that there was a new baby in the parish. Betty Paton had just given birth to a healthy girl child, Bess. She had named Robert Burns in Mossgiel as the father and Rab had admitted his culpability in the kirk. He had agreed to support mother and child, but he had also written a poem to celebrate the event, calling the infant the sweet fruit o’ mony a merry dint. The kirk elders were outraged.

  The belles had pretended shock and surprise at the bawdry of it, though they had all giggled over the tale when one or two of the lads had repeated the verses in their hearing. There still seemed to be no question of Rab marrying the lass, but he had offered to bring the child to Mossgiel as soon as she was weaned, to be brought up by his mother and his sisters, so that Betty Paton might not be encumbered with an unsought-for daughter and might be able to find a man willing to marry her.

  ‘Aye,’ said Jean’s mother drily, when she heard the news. ‘ And it’ll be the women of the family who’ll have all the work of minding the wean!’

  But at least Rab had not denied his child or his fault, and there was, so Jean thought, something praiseworthy about a man who would admit to his own mistakes so readily. Too many lads were quick to blame the lass for ‘getting herself with child’ and would deny everything, branding the woman a whore and leaving her to suffer the consequences, unless the minister and his elders might be able to prove otherwise. Then the kirk would do everything possible to force a marriage or at least force some acknowledgment of fatherhood and responsibility. One man had staunchly refused to accept any responsibility for a second baby borne by the same woman, loudly proclaiming before the kirk session that he had lain with her more than nine and a half months previously, and that ‘no woman gets more than nine months for the second child.’ There might even have been some truth in it, as Jean’s mother had knowingly observed. But for a lad to claim responsibility as readily as Rab seemed evidence of his good nature, if nothing else.

  The way it went when a lad had his eye on a lass and wanted to know her better, was this: he would choose a public house, although it must be a respectable kind of a place such as the Whitefoord Arms, a place where a young woman might not be ashamed to be seen, and he must arrange a meeting there, just openly enough – perhaps in some quiet but visible snug – so that people could see without really eavesdropping upon the conversation. There was no use going into one of the back rooms, because everyone knew what that meant, and they would gossip endlessly about it, and that would be the girl’s good name gone forever. Mostly a lad would take a crony with him, and the girl would always be accompanied by a close female friend. That way, the lads and the lasses could sit and converse two by two, so that no suspicion of improper behaviour could fall on them, the one pair chaperoning the other. It was a good way to start a respectable courtship. You could fall acquainted, slowly and carefully, and extricate yourself with your reputation still intact if all did not go as well as you hoped.

  Jean sometimes wondered how it must be for the gentry who, in spite of their big houses, had no recourse to such kindly contrivances, but who barely seemed to know each other before embarking on a marriage that all too often was arranged by their parents, with scant regard for the feelings of the young people involved. More often than not it seemed to be a financial arrangement with the tocher – the dowry – of more importance than any mutual affection. But perhaps they found their own ways and means of circumventing supervision. Big houses and big gardens must afford some privacy. And after all, the protection afforded by sedate meetings only lasted for a short time.

  The previous year, gossip had been rife about James Montgomerie of Coilsfield House that lay between the two towns of Mauchline and Tarbolton. He and his brother were close friends of Gavin Hamilton and acquaintances of Robert Burns as well. If folk loved to spread rumours about their neighbours, there was something even more enticing about scandal among the nabbery. James was a soldier, a big, handsome young man of great charm and energy. He was the youngest brother of Hugh Montgomerie of Coilsfield, also a military man – Sojer Hugh they called him. James had been brought up at Coilsfield. The house stood on t
he banks of the River Ayr, and when James was not engaged on his military activities, he would come home to Coilsfield where his sociable elder brother would indulge him and his friends with such balls and parties as he thought fit to host. Perhaps Hugh hoped to find a suitable wife for his young brother. Soon it was whispered, and then not even whispered but openly discussed in the streets and change houses of Mauchline and Tarbolton, that charming James had found himself a lovely young wife.

  Unfortunately, she was the wife of another man.

  Her name was Eleanora Maxwell Campbell of Skerrington House near Cumnock, not far from Mauchline – a pretty name for an accomplished young woman. Some six years previously, Eleanora had married Charles Maxwell, from Dumfries, but the marriage had proved to be unhappy. Jean had seen Eleanora occasionally in the town, visiting the clock-maker or the draper perhaps, or passing through on her way elsewhere, and had envied her fine clothes. But Eleanora seemed doomed to disappointment in life and in love. Her father was something of a spendthrift and so was her brother, who had died while still a young man. Both had been declared insolvent, living on promises and loans. Eleanora, with only a little money of her own from her mother, had inherited the Skerrington estate upon their deaths, but in desperation and in haste, she had then married Charles, believing that his declared income of £500 a year would help her to avoid penury. It was a lie, and she was left to repent her misjudgement at leisure. He had no such sum, but perhaps he had expected a bigger dowry. Perhaps, it was whispered in the town, they had misled each other as to the size of their respective fortunes. However it was, the estate was sequestrated and Charles proceeded to spend whatever small amounts he could get his hands on of what was left of his wife’s inheritance and to treat her with casual disdain, gallivanting here and there while she cared for their two children. She had few protectors in the world other than Gavin Hamilton of Mauchline. He was a good friend to her and acted as factor on the Skerrington estate, attempting to save it from the worst of her husband’s depredations and debts, while mediating as best he could between the perennially warring couple. Perhaps, thought Jean, it was easier to be at war with your spouse in a large house. At least escape would be possible.