Читать книгу The Rutherfurd Saga - Anna Buchan - Страница 25

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“The only difference between the sentimentalist and the realist is that the sentimentalist’s reality is warm and beautiful, while the realist’s is glacial and hideous, and they are neither of them real realities either. . . .”

Reginald Farrer.

They were apt to linger over breakfast at the Harbour House. It was a pleasant time of day in the dining-room with its striped silk curtains and Hepplewhite chairs, more especially when the tide was high and the water lapped against the low wall, but always pleasant with the feeling of morning activity all round, voices from the harbour, children shouting as they went to school, wives having a gossip before they began their daily round.

The postman came, as a rule, when they were at the marmalade stage, and they read bits out of letters to each other. It had been so, too, at Rutherfurd. Something this morning took Barbara’s mind back to the old times when they had all been together in the sunny morning-room that opened on to the lawns and the brawling burn. Nicole had been a schoolgirl, swallowing her breakfast and rushing out with her brothers to get every minute out of the day, while she, in the restraint of new grown-upness, had sat with her elders sipping her second cup of tea and listening to Sir Walter reading out bits of news from the Scotsman.

There never had been, Barbara thought, a more truly good man than her uncle, so gentle and magnanimous, so full of humour, such a sportsman. Often, laughing, they had told him that he was in danger of the Woe promised to those of whom all men speak well. He was always asked to take the chair at political meetings that promised to be rowdy, because he was so courteous, so full of sweet reasonableness that the rudest were disarmed. She remembered how all his life his first thought had been his country. In his youth he had been in the Army, and when his father died he settled down at Rutherfurd, making the ideal landlord. When war broke out he had at once offered for service, and worked patiently through the four years at a dull but necessary job at the War Office, stinting himself of all but the barest necessities when food became scarce.

He was cheerful till Ronnie and Archie died. After that his laugh was seldom heard, though he went about among his friends and neighbours with his old kindly smile, always willing to listen, always ready to help. At home they had seen the change in him. The big man seemed to have shrunk, his clothes hung loose on him. He wandered much alone, and the men about the place shook their heads and told each other, “He’s sair failed, the maister; he’s gettin’ awfu’ wee buik. . . .”

Barbara came back to the present with Christina bringing in the letters. There were a few for Barbara and Nicole, but most of the budget went to Lady Jane.

“Why, Mother,” Nicole said, “I never saw any one get so many letters. You might almost be a Cinema Star.”

“It comes,” said her mother, busily opening envelopes, “of being one of a large and united family. This is from Constance.”

Nicole took up her own letters, looked through them and laid them down again to go and strew the usual meal on the window-sill for the birds. She sat half outside the window for a few minutes breathing in the fresh salt air.

Lady Jane looked up from her letters. “Anything interesting, Nikky?”

“Nothing much. There’s one from Mrs. Jackson asking me to Rutherfurd in the beginning of March. If I can come she means to send out invitations for a dinner on the 10th, and a dance on the 11th. Heard you ever the like?”

“It is very kind of Mrs. Jackson,” Lady Jane said.

“It is—very. She gives me no information about how things are going with her, but in a postscript remarks, ‘We are liking our new home quite well.’ I must say I call that rather cheek! Liking it quite well indeed! I feel inclined to say to her what Thomas Carlyle said to the lady who told him she accepted life. ‘My God, Madam, you had better.’ ”

Lady Jane laughed. “I had forgotten that,” she said; but Barbara glowered and asked, “Will you go? Could you bear to go?”

Nicole looked at her cousin thoughtfully. “It won’t be easy. In fact . . . but, you see, I’m afraid I did promise that I would go and help her if she wanted me. It’s so fatally easy to say something kind when you are saying good-bye to people you don’t expect to come much into contact with; Mrs. Jackson seems to be depending on me. I know, Babs, you think I would consult my own dignity if I refused. What do you say, Mums? Ought I to accept or not?”

Lady Jane gathered up her correspondence. “My dear, you know best yourself. Mrs. Jackson is a nice woman and she was very considerate to us. It won’t be easy, but it might be kind. You’d be a great help to her, and you needn’t stay more than a few days.”

“I might have to stay a week.”

“I daresay you would survive it.”

“And,” said Barbara, “I defy Nicole not to get a great deal of amusement out of the most unpleasant duty. It’s your lucky nature. I don’t think I could go, but I’m not likely to be asked. Naturally they want the more romantic figure, the dispossessed heiress, golden hair and all!”

“What nonsense, Babs!”

“Great nonsense, my dear, but true . . . By the way, I’ve a note here from Marjory Erskine. She wants us to go over this afternoon. Some people have arrived unexpectedly whom they’d like us to meet.”

“But I can’t, Babs, I’m so sorry. I’ve promised to go to tea with Miss Symington—a special invitation in writing. I haven’t seen her for weeks. They’ve had the painters in, and Alastair has said several times that his aunt was from home. It is unfortunate. I’d have loved a run with you this fresh good day. . . . Here comes Alastair with his shining morning face and his bag on his back, the complete scholar! Well, old man, is bat still t a b this morning? . . .”

That afternoon, having half an hour to spare before going to Ravenscraig, Nicole looked in at Knebworth, and found the Heggies, mother and daughter, at home.

“This is nice,” said Mrs. Heggie, rising large and fresh and rosy, in her black dress and white frillings, to greet her visitor. “We do see you seldom! Surely you’ll stay to tea?”

“I’d like to,” Nicole assured her, “but I’m engaged to drink a dish of tea with Miss Symington. Invited by letter. I thought it must be a party, but it can’t be if you’re not going.”

“Oh, it may be, it may be, but we’re not invited. In fact, I haven’t been asked inside the door of Ravenscraig since well before Christmas.”

“Oh well,” Nicole said soothingly, “Miss Symington may perhaps want to talk to me about something. I expect I’m the party! It’s much better fun when there are several.”

“Yes. She hasn’t much conversation and it’s difficult getting into a good comfortable talk with her. You’ve just to ask her how the Girls’ Guild’s getting on, and the Mothers’ Meetings, and talk about the price of food and how cooks waste. She’s not interested in anything you’ve been reading, and she’ll not gossip. I must say I like a more varied ‘crack’!” Mrs. Heggie laughed. . . . “And how’s Lady Jane?”

“Very well. She’s so busy writing letters this afternoon that she wouldn’t stir out to take the air. You see, she has five sisters and three brothers and numerous nieces and cousins, and they all love her dearly and write constantly.”

“Wonderful!” ejaculated Mrs. Heggie. “It’s so unlike all I’ve ever heard of the aristocracy! . . . Joan’s glaring at me, but I’m not saying anything wrong, am I?”

Nicole smiled at Joan, and reassured Mrs. Heggie.

“Of course not. You mean that from novels and the daily papers you would think the ‘aristocracy’ were thoroughly debased, engaged all the time in being divorced, and spending hectic days and nights gambling, drugging, swindling and dancing at night clubs—all that sort of thing! And, I suppose, it’s true in a way of a certain section, a small but very vocal section. But you would be amused if you met the members of my mother’s family and their friends. Some, I admit, are not bright and shining lights, but the majority are quite hopelessly respectable, and full of ‘high ideels,’ working away obscurely and conscientiously to leave the world a little better than they found it: husbands and wives quite loving and loyal; children brought up to respect the eternal decencies; master and servants liking and respecting each other! Even the people labelled ‘smart’ in the picture papers, whose names you see reading from left to right, are often quite dull-ly respectable. I’m afraid it’s disappointing!”

Mrs. Heggie nodded. “But far better,” she said. “Of course I knew Lady Jane was good, you can read it in her face, but I thought mebbe she was an exception, for, I’m sure the stories you hear. . . . And what is Miss Burt doing to-day?”

“Oh, Babs is off in her little car—I tell her she’s like a child with a new toy—to spend the afternoon at Queensbarns.”

“I suppose the Erskines are a very smart sort of people?”

“They certainly dress well,” Nicole said.

“I mean that they keep up a lot of style—a butler and all that, and go to London for the season. They’re not what you’d call provincial.”

“Perhaps not. . . . Anyway, they’re very kind.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Heggie, “they’re kind to you, naturally. But I’m told they’re a bit stand-offish. Mrs. Thomson—you know, Joan?—they simply ignored her.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Joan.

“Oh!” her mother protested. “She’s quite a nice woman and awfully willing to be hospitable.”

“A pusher and a climber,” said Joan.

“Oh well,” said Mrs. Heggie, with her usual large charity, “it’s only natural that she should want to better herself, as the servants say!”

“Miss Joan,” said Nicole, “do tell me, where do you do your writing? In some eyrie?”

Mrs. Heggie replied for her daughter. “Upstairs. Joan, take Miss Rutherfurd up to see.”

Joan looked uncertainly at Nicole, who said eagerly, “Won’t you? I’d love to see your workroom.”

The two girls went upstairs together, and Joan opened a door, remarking, “It’s not as tidy as it might be. I like to keep it myself.”

It was a small room looking to the sea, with the floor stained black and covered with one or two bright-coloured rugs. The cream walls were hung with a medley of prints and photographs. A small figure of the Venus of Milo stood on the mantelshelf. A book-case entirely filled one wall.

Nicole went to it and began conning over the books.

“You’ve got Raleigh’s Shakespeare—one of my first favourites. I think I can almost say it by heart. And what a line of poets—Walter de la Mare, A. E. Housman. . . . Do you sit at this table and write solemnly?”

“No. I generally crouch before the fire with a writing-pad on my knee. But I never write anything worth while, so what’s the good of it?”

“Well, I don’t pretend to be much of a judge, but your mother let me see some verses which seemed to me to have a touch of real magic.”

“Oh yes, I’ve got a certain facility in the writing of verses—but that’s not what I want to do. I want to write a book about life, a strong book, going down to the depths and rising to the heights, a book that talks frankly—not the pretty-pretty sentimental stuff that my mother and so many women love to read. I’ve heard them in book-shops at Christmas time: ‘I want a book, a pleasant book. . . . Are you sure this is pleasant all through?’ ”

Joan sat gloomily in a wicker chair filled with brilliant orange cushions. Her skin looked dingier than ever against the cushions and the many-coloured Fair Isle jumper that she wore, and Nicole wondered why such a wholesome-looking mother should have such an unwashed-looking daughter.

“If you want to write a book like that, why don’t you?” she asked.

“Because I can’t,” said Joan bitterly. “I don’t know whether it’s my upbringing or my subconscious self or what, but no matter how untrammelled my thoughts may be, when I put pen to paper I become so moral as to be absolutely maudlin.”

She hunched up her shoulders and sat forward, staring hopelessly into the fire.

“What a book I might write about Janet Symington, for instance, about all the thwarted forces of her nature going into good works, what a study I could make of her! But I can’t put down what I want to say, my pen seems to boggle at it.”

Nicole giggled, then abjectly apologised. “I’m so terribly sorry, but it is rather funny, you know. . . . And I can’t help being rather glad that you don’t feel equal to writing such a book, it would be neither elevating nor entertaining. The sort of books you talk about don’t shock me at all, I enjoy the cleverness with which they’re written, but I finish them with relief and push them away. Isn’t it better to try to write a book that people will go back to again and again? . . .” She looked at her wrist-watch. “Good gracious! is that the time? . . . Good-bye. Thank you for letting me see your den. Won’t you come and see us soon? Mother would love to talk to you about poetry. . . .”

It had always been dusk when Nicole had gone to tea at Ravenscraig, but now the days were drawing out and the thin bright light of early spring lay over everything as she stopped to look at the clumps of snowdrops in the border, and the grey-green shoots of daffodils, and the first bold yellow crocus.

But what had happened besides the spring? Surely there was a difference! The stiffly starched lace curtains had gone from the windows, gone also the brown Venetian blinds, and in their place were hangings of fine net. The large sheet of stained glass in the inner door had been replaced by small leaded panes, and when the door opened she found that the hall had been changed out of recognition. Instead of the imitation marble there was a soft grey paper; the wood was painted black, and soft powder-blue carpets covered the stairs and lay on the tiled hall. An old oak chest bearing two heavy Chinese lamps had taken the place of the hat-and-umbrella stand.

Nicole glanced round distractedly, feeling as if she had fallen out of a dream, inclined to clutch the solid arm of the servant to prove to herself that she was really awake, but the drawing-room door was being opened, and she stumbled through to greater surprises.

Was this the bleak room with its gaunt bow-window, its dingy walls hung with pale water-colours and enlarged photographs, its carpet a riot of chrysanthemums on a brown ground, its unwelcoming gas fire?

Nicole forgot her manners in her astonishment. She left her hostess standing with outstretched hand, while she stared, and stared again, gasping at last, “But it isn’t the same room; it can’t be.”

To begin with, it seemed twice the size. The walls were a warm apricot, the floor was polished, and bare, except for a fine Persian carpet in the middle, and a much smaller one at the fire-place, round which were grouped some capacious arm-chairs. The window was hung with curtains of blue and green and gold, beautiful glittering stuff that made one think of peacocks strutting in the sunshine. In the middle of the window was a small divan heaped with cushions covered with rich stuffs.

A grand piano stood in one corner, and the wall opposite the fire held a long low table with bowls of spring bulbs, above which hung the only picture the room contained, a glowing Eastern scene of hot sunlight and dark shadows. There was a long, slim gilt mirror over the mantelshelf, on which stood four old crystal candlesticks. In place of the gas fire with its baleful gleam, a fire of coal and logs sent flickering lights over tiles that gleamed like mother-o’-pearl.

Nicole shook hands with the owner of this room and sustained another shock, for Miss Symington was exactly the same. That she, too, should have suffered a change into something rich and rare was, perhaps, too much to expect, but it was, nevertheless, rather disconcerting to find her still in a blue serge skirt and a silk blouse and with an unfashionable head.

She looked rather bashfully at her guest as she said, glancing around the room, “We’ve been having some alterations made here, you will notice.”

Nicole sank into one of the arm-chairs and found it supremely comfortable. “Alterations!” she said. “I should think you have; but, tell me, was it your own idea, this room?”

“No,” said Miss Symington, looking rather affronted. “Could you imagine me thinking of anything like this? . . . I don’t know how it was, your house looked so different, but I had no idea how to set about improving mine, so I went to the best furnishing shop I knew, and they sent a man to see the house and advise me. He was quite young—he looked like an artist—and he told me this was his profession, advising people how to make their houses pretty. Isn’t that a queer profession for a young man?”

“Rather a jolly one, I think. So he thought out this scheme?”

“Yes. He said in this sort of villa there wasn’t much to work on, but he managed to change things a good deal.”

Nicole still gazed round the room. “Your young man seems to me a magician. You like it, don’t you? And is all the house changed?”

“I think I like it,” Janet said, rather doubtfully, “at least, I think the rooms that aren’t changed look odd. The dining-room is just as it was. You see, there are the preachers over the week-ends, and they might not feel at home in this sort of thing!” She waved a hand towards the new splendour of colour. “Only this room, and the lobbies and stairs, and my own room and the best spare-room are changed. You must come up and see them after you’ve had your tea.”

“But—d’you mind me asking?—what made you decide all of a sudden that the house wasn’t just as you liked it?”

Tea had been brought in and Janet was pouring it out in her deliberate way. She passed Nicole a cup, and in her slightly complaining voice said, “It was your crystal bowl that started it all.”

Nicole poured some milk into her tea and waited for enlightenment.

“On Christmas morning,” Janet went on, “I took it up to my room, and it was so useless and so pretty that my room didn’t seem the place for it at all. It made everything else look dull and ugly. I thought it was the wall-paper, and I got that changed; then the chintzes looked dingy and the carpet, and the bed, somehow, was wrong, and the light wood furniture—then I called in an expert.”

She stirred her tea in the genteel way that always amused Nicole, and sat very straight on the edge of a great comfortable chair. All round her was beauty and colour, but she was provokingly drab.

Nicole leaned forward. “There’s one thing still left to do,” she said coaxingly. “You’ve made your house beautiful, now give yourself a chance. Blue serge is very nice, but it’s not the most becoming wear for you. I want to see you in something softer—let me take the place of the furnishing young man and adorn you!”

Janet Symington flushed, pressing her lips firmly together, and Nicole cried, “I know what you’re thinking, but that seems to me such a mistake. Would God have troubled to make this world so beautiful if He had wanted us to go about all sad-hued and dreary? You simply don’t know how much harm is done by good women not knowing how to dress. I remember as a child, when I helped my mother to entertain Mothers’ Unions and Girls’ Friendlies and things like that, wondering why the best people—meaning the most serious, good people—nearly always had badly hung skirts! And to-day, when clothes are so easy and so suitable and so varied, it’s conservatism run mad not to wear what other people are wearing. You would never wear a blouse and skirt again if you knew the comfort of a little frock. You always look nice and tidy, but I could make you look so attractive. . . . Let’s go to Edinburgh and have a buy! It would be such fun. . . .”

* * * * *

About an hour later Nicole burst into the drawing-room at the Harbour House to find her mother listening to Barbara, who had just come in full of her afternoon at the Erskines’.

“I was to tell you, Nik, that they were very sorry you couldn’t come; but they quite understood that Kirkmeikle had great attractions.”

“I should think so indeed!” Nicole said, squatting down on a stool at her mother’s feet. “Kirkmeikle’s the most exciting place I ever struck. What do you think? When I went into Ravenscraig to-day I found the whole place changed as if a magician had waved a wand. Mums, you know what it looked like the first day we went to call? Lace curtains, sprawling flowery carpet, gas fire! Pouf! Gone. Now, lovely exotic colours, space—comfort. Some furnishing firm sent a man to advise, and this is the result. It’s all as modern as can be, of course, you know the sort of villa he had to cope with, but quite beautiful. The staircases are grey and powder-blue, with black-framed etchings on the walls: the best bedroom is striped grey and white with pale-yellow silk curtains: Miss Symington’s own room is prettiest of all. And the dining-room is the same old room—red leather chairs, green table-cover, aspidistra in a pot—because the preachers mightn’t feel at home if it were changed. Isn’t that delicious? Now, Babs,” to that young woman, who was standing with her coat over her arm ready to go upstairs, “tell me if your Erskines ever do delightful exciting things like that? Never!!”