Читать книгу The Proper Place - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 4

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“The last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,

And a new people take the land....”

G. K. Chesterton.

Nicole went out to the hall to see the visitor depart. When she came back to the drawing-room, “Well?” she said.

“Well,” said Barbara, and added, “I must say!”

Her cousin laughed. “Yes, ‘smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau’ or words to that effect. All the same I like Mrs. Jackson, though I admit at first I was appalled. The tight figure, the large red face crowned by the ospreyed hat! I thought ‘That woman at Rutherfurd!’ But in a little I realised that she wasn’t ‘that woman’ at all. She’s a dear, and simple, and above all a comic. I do love a comic.”

Nicole put a log on the fire.

“Wasn’t she funny about Mary Carstairs? ‘A frozen sort of woman’ so exactly describes her when she is standing at bay, so to speak, before the advances of the populace. I think myself that it’s silly of her. Her life would be enormously more interesting if, instead of standing aloof and looking ‘frozen,’ she would try to like and understand these kindly people. After all, it’s a case of Canute and the waves. They’re coming in like a tide, the new people, and the most dignified thing for us is to pretend we like it, and to get out of the way as quickly as possible. Anyway, I’m enormously cheered by Mrs. Jackson. I had a nightmare fear that Rutherfurd would be bought by horrible ‘smart’ people. I don’t grudge it a bit to that comic.”

Lady Jane laid her hand on her daughter’s.

“That’s so like you, Nikky,” she said. “You never expect to receive evil things, but if they come you immediately discover in them some lurking good. That’s why you’re such a comfortable person to live with.”

“I don’t believe,” said Barbara, “that we’ll hear any more of this Mrs. Jackson. It seems most improbable that people like that could even think of buying a place like Rutherfurd.”

Nicole wagged her head wisely. “Mark my words, in a few days Mr. Jackson will arrive. I’m not sure that I shall like him, I distrust his high ideals—wasn’t it pathetic the way his wife said, ‘He has such high ideels, you know what I mean’?—and he evidently has a correct mind and knows what to admire, which is so tiresome. Still, he may be a very nice man, and willing to deal justly and be decent about things. Yes, I feel it in my bones that the Jacksons are to be our successors.”

“It’s a mercy you can take it so light-heartedly,” Barbara observed drily, but Nicole did not reply.

Lady Jane sat looking at the fire, not listening to what the girls were saying. It hurt Barbara to see her.... She looked so wan in her black dress, so desolate. Barbara thought of her as she used to be, looking almost a girl in her pretty clothes, with her husband and Ronnie and Archie always hanging round her. Now she sat there having lost everything, her husband, her boys, her home, her position. And the worst of it was no one could do anything to help her. One could not even think, “Oh, well, in time she will begin to feel quite bright again. In time she will cease to mourn, and will become one of those contented, healthy widows that one meets everywhere.” She was not like that. It sometimes struck Barbara with a sharp pang that her aunt was merely living from habit, that the mainspring of her life was broken. She wondered if the same thing had struck Nicole.

“Mums,” said Nicole, “don’t look at nothing. Turn your head round and try to look interested in my bright conversation.”

Lady Jane smiled up at her daughter’s down-bent face.

“Why, yes, darling. I’m so sorry I was dreaming when pearls were falling from your lips. Will you repeat your valuable remarks?”

Nicole bowed with mock gravity. “My words of wisdom are so numerous that it seems almost a pity to repeat. I was only philosophising.... You may not realise it, you and Barbara, but we are in rather a romantic position. Mr. Chesterton would describe us as ‘the last sad squires riding slowly to the sea.’ Why to the sea, exactly? I don’t know. But, anyway, novels have been written about such as we.”

“Very dull novels they must be,” said Barbara. “I don’t know how you can laugh, Nik. It’s the most tragic thing that ever happened, that the Rutherfurds should have to leave Rutherfurd.”

“Of course it is,” Nicole agreed, “so tragic that the only thing to do is to try and laugh. Mr. Haynes says we can’t afford to live in it, and our lawyer ought to know. It’s the Jacksons’ turn now, and we must go down with the lights up and the flags flying. A Rutherfurd fell at Flodden, and the name has been respected all down the years, and not the least honourable were the three Rutherfurds that we knew best—— We’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Simply, there is no room any more for our sort. We are hustled out. We can’t compete. Rutherfurd must go to the successful man who can cope with life as it is now! We must find some other place to pass our days in. Well, I don’t mind.”

Nicole got up and went to the fire, her head held high, a certain swagger in her walk, such as one sometimes sees in small boys who are shy and homesick and wish to conceal it. Lady Jane was again looking at nothing, and did not notice the piteous touch in her daughter’s attitude, or she would have replied to that and not to the brave words she had uttered.

She said, “Youth, my dear, never minds anything, really. It’s all part of the adventure of life. Youth bounds through changes and troubles like an india-rubber ball, but middle age has ceased to bounce; middle age collapses like a pricked balloon. I’m fifty-five—more than middle-aged, getting old—and I don’t feel that there is any bounce left in me at all.”

“Oh, my poor little mother,” Nicole cried, kneeling beside her to stroke her hands, “quite deflated, are you? And I don’t wonder. Much as Babs and I love Rutherfurd, leaving it can’t be to us what it is to you.”

Lady Jane looked at the two girls in a withdrawn way and said, “I leave everything when I leave Rutherfurd. I don’t want to pity myself, or, as you would say, make a song about it, but Rutherfurd is my life. The house your father brought me to thirty-two years ago! The house in which my children were born—where Ronnie and Archie played.... I was always utterly content in my home, I never wanted to go away. I never felt it dull even in the dead of winter. In fact, I think I loved winter best, because nearly all the neighbours went away to Egypt or the Riviera, and we could draw in together and hug our delicious solitude. We often laughed, your father and I, at our own unsociableness, and then our consciences would prick us and we would invite a lot of people to stay, and ask people to meet them, and work hard to entertain them and enjoy it all quite immensely. But when the last guest departed what thankful sighs we heaved! Once more the place was our own. It wasn’t that we were inhospitable so much as that we were so happy alone we couldn’t bear to spoil it.”

The very thinking of past happiness, the telling of it, had changed Lady Jane. Her blue eyes, that looked as if the colour had been washed out with much weeping, deepened and brightened, a flush that was almost girlish came into her thin cheeks; she smiled tenderly.

“But, Aunt Jane, you did sometimes go away from home,” her niece reminded her. “I can remember you and Uncle Walter setting off, rather like two victims mounting the tumbril, to pay visits. We children were quite pleased to be without you for a little, for we had always a lot of nefarious schemes in our heads that needed your absence for accomplishment, but we soon got tired of it and welcomed you back with joy. Nicole, do you remember when Ronnie locked Johnson into his own pantry and lost the key? And the day when Mrs. Asprey said Archie might have one bun out of the batch she was baking if he would go out of the kitchen, and instead, he took a bite out of each!”

“And the strawberry-wine we made,” said Nicole, “and the feasts. I don’t think they ever told of us when you came home, did they, Mums?—about all our ill-done deeds?”

Lady Jane shook her head. “They wouldn’t have done anything to spoil my home-coming.... When we went away on a visit I always looked up the train we would come home by before we left, and that somehow seemed to make the time shorter, and anchor me to you all. Of course it was quite different when we took you all with us, our glorious holidays in Switzerland ... and when we had the fishing in Norway.... Don’t let me grumble. For more than twenty years my life was altogether lovely. I’ve had far more than most people. Why, I’ve no right to complain though I should never have another happy minute. It’s as you say, Nikky, we must plan what we are to do. The sight of Mrs. Jackson has made me realise things. Do you think, Barbara dear, you could make me understand just where we stand? You have got such a much tidier mind than I have, and I get so confused when Mr. Haynes explains things, though I’m sure the poor man is most lucid.”

Barbara settled herself at her aunt’s feet and tried to make her see the situation so far as the lawyer had made it plain to her, and Lady Jane fixed her eyes on her instructor like a child anxious to please, but when Barbara stopped, she sighed.

“It sounds very complicated,” she said, “though you do explain very nicely, Babs dear. Then, what exactly have we got to live on?”

“That depends,” said Barbara, “on how things go—on Mrs. Jackson, perhaps. But you will have quite a good income, and Nicole, of course, has her own money from Grandfather. What does it bring you in, Nik? about £500 a year? And I have about the same, so we aren’t exactly penniless, dearest.”

“Yes—but—if we have a good income, why need we leave Rutherfurd? If we lived very simply and spent almost nothing....”

Nicole took her mother’s hand and kissed it. “You want both to have your cake and eat it, my dear. Your income will come largely from the sale of it. We can’t run Rutherfurd on a few hundreds a year. Think of servants’ wages alone! No, I’m afraid there is nothing for it but to leave our Eden, and the question is, where are we to go? The whole wide world is before us. What are your ideas on the subject, Babs?”

“I haven’t any. So long as I am with you two I don’t much care where it is. What about a flat in London? ...”

“A flat?” said Nicole. “Somewhere in Kensington, I suppose? I’ve got very little idea of how much money one needs to do things well, but I fear our combined incomes wouldn’t go far in the way of a fashionable flat. Besides—would Mother like being cooped up in town? I doubt it. For myself I couldn’t stand more than a month or two of London at a time, and it’s not a place to be poor in.”

“We might travel for a bit,” Barbara suggested.

“We might!” Nicole agreed. She had perched herself on the arm of her mother’s chair. “What about going round the world? I read in the ‘personal’ column of the Times the other day that a General, a K.C.B., was offering to take a party round the world at £950 a head, or something like that. Can’t you see us staggering about Japan with the K.C.B.!—Babs, Mother smiled. Did you see? Well, you made a very good impression on Mrs. Jackson, anyway, Mums.”

“Nonsense, Nicole.”

“Oh, I assure you, as she left she said to me, ‘It’s been a pleasure to meet you, and I just love your mother.’ After all my unwearied efforts to be nice to her and show her everything, it was galling to see you romp in and win her approval with no trouble at all. Why are mothers always nicer than their daughters? If this deterioration goes on, if every daughter is inferior in every way to her mother, what of the future of the British Race? I confess it weighs on me a good deal. But, seriously, Mums, what would you like to do? Now, don’t say you don’t care, you’re bound to have some preference.”

“I haven’t, my dear, you must believe me when I say it. I shall be happy if you are happy. We must see to it that we go to a place where you and Babs can have a good time. Nancy Gordon—did you read her letter?—suggests that we go to them in Somerset. She says the dower-house is empty, and Tom would gladly let us have it. Nancy lives in a constant whirl of entertaining, so you wouldn’t be dull. Then, Aunt Constance wants us to go to her at once. She says Ormhurst feels so large and empty now, that it would be a real kindness to go and help to fill it. Constance was always my favourite sister.... But, perhaps—d’you think—we’d better have a place of our own?”

“Yes,” said Nicole. “I doubt if it would be wise to plant ourselves on friends or relations, no matter how willing they are. They might easily tire of us or we of them. We must make our own niche. I’ve been thinking”—she looked from her mother to her cousin with a quick laughing glance—“I’ve been thinking that since Mrs. Jackson and her kind are all rising in the world, they must be leaving vacant places. Well, why shouldn’t we, ousted from our own place, take theirs? Why shouldn’t we become dwellers in a suburban villa, and taste the pleasures of suburban society? I think myself it would be highly interesting.”

“Interesting!” Barbara ejaculated, but Nicole hurried on. “I don’t mean, of course, that we should go making a fuss about ourselves. The time for that is past. Pooh-Bah could no longer dance at middle-class parties—for a consideration. There are none so low now as do us reverence! You and I, Mums, would get on all right, but Barbara”—she glanced affectionately at her cousin—“is so hopelessly aristocratic.”

Barbara flushed, for she knew that what her cousin said was true. Social distinctions meant almost nothing to Nicole; to Barbara they stood for much. Nicole never thought of her position; Barbara gloried in belonging to Rutherfurd. When they were all children together they had played with other children about the place. There had been quite a colony of large families belonging to servants on the estate, and they had had splendid games. But Barbara had always been the Little Lady from the Big House, had held herself aloof, allowed no familiarities. Her cousins were different, their whole hearts were in the play, they had no thought of themselves. Barbara often felt that Nicole should have been the Burt, and she the daughter of a hundred earls. To see Nicole playing at “houses” with a shawl wrapped round her supporting a doll, as she saw cottage-women carrying their babies, making believe to stir porridge in a pot while she addressed her playmates in broadest Border Scots! It had been the summit of her ambition to live in a cottage—a but and ben—and carry a real baby in a shawl. She startled her mother one day by handing her a doll and saying, “Hey, wumman, haud ma bairn.” The boys were as bad. Ronnie was found one snowy morning on the roof of the house—he had climbed out of a skylight—putting out crumbs for sea-gulls. When remonstrated with by his governess, he replied, “Wumman, d’ye want them to be fund deid wi’ their nebs in the snaw, seekin’ meat?”

Sir Walter said Border Scots was a fine foundation for Eton, and so it proved. The boys came home from school speaking correct English, but always able, at a moment’s notice, to drop into the speech of their childhood.

“Well,” said Nicole, “what d’you say to my suggestion?” Barbara merely shrugged her shoulders, but Lady Jane was unusually firm.

“Darling, I said I didn’t mind where I went; but I do draw the line here. I’m afraid I can’t fill the vacant place left by Mrs. Jackson. Suburbs are for people who have business in cities: we have none. Why not a small house in, or near, a country town? I think I should like that, only—not too near Rutherfurd, please.”

“That,” said her daughter, “is the correct idea. A country town. A rambling cottage covered with roses. Delightful Cranford-ish neighbours, quiet-eyed spinsters and gallant old men who tell good stories. I see it all.”

Barbara wore a most discouraging expression as she said, “I never saw a cottage that ‘rambled.’ What you will probably find in any country town is a number of new semi-detached villas occupied by retired haberdashers. Cranford doesn’t exist any longer—the housing problem killed it. You’re a most unpractical creature, Nik. You don’t know how horrible such a life as you want to try would be. Imagine living always with people like Mrs. Jackson! Just think how you would miss your friends—Jean Douglas, the Langlands ...”

Nicole shook her head impatiently. “My dear, why will you insist on saying things that jump to the eye? Don’t you suppose I am full of thoughts about having to leave the old friends? I never loved Mistress Jean as I do to-night, and the thought of Kingshouse makes me want to howl like a wolf. The jollities we’ve had there! And Daddy Langlands, and Miss Lockhart, and even Tillie Kilpatrick, though, poor dear, she does paint her face more unconvincingly than any one I ever saw. But Mistress Jean will be the great loss. To know that there is no chance of suddenly hearing Johnson announce ‘Mrs. Douglas,’ and to hear her say ‘Well,’ and then, ‘This is nice,’ as she settled down beside us.”

“Then why not stay where we are known? There are lots of small places that would suit us, and people would be glad to have us stay, and would make things pleasant for us.”

Nicole turned to her mother. “What do you say, Mums?”

“My dears, I don’t think I could remain near Rutherfurd. Let us try Nicole’s plan for a year and see how it works....”

“You mean,” said her daughter, “that we should go to a new place and make a niche for ourselves? Let’s, Barbara. I’m sure there are places without semi-detached villas, where we shall be able to cultivate ‘high ideels’ like Mr. Jackson.... But you must promise to make the best of everything—it would be terribly unsporting of you to grumble.”

“Oh, very well,” said Barbara. “Let’s try it for a year. A lot can happen in twelve months.”