Читать книгу The Proper Place - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 6

Table of Contents

“... In a kingdom by the sea.”

Edgar Allan Poe.

When Mr. Jackson went with his wife to see Rutherfurd the place conquered him. It was not, he complained, the sort of place he wanted at all; it was far too big, too far from Glasgow, too expensive to keep up, in fact, all wrong in every way. Nevertheless he entered into negotiation with the lawyer, and before October was well begun Rutherfurd had passed from the family who had held it through centuries into the hands of the hard-headed little business man from Glasgow.

“Mind you,” Mrs. Jackson said to Lady Jane, “there’s not the slightest hurry about your leaving the house. Though you stay here over Christmas we won’t mind. Indeed, I’d like fine to have another Christmas at Deneholm, and there is so much to arrange before we leave Pollokshields that I don’t believe we’ll flit till spring. It’s a nice heartsome time to flit anyway—so mind you take things easy.”

This was the more unselfish of Mrs. Jackson as she was secretly longing to get the workmen into Rutherfurd to start operations for central heating, and to see the paper-hangers make the bedrooms as she wanted them. But, as she told her husband, she had “both her manners and her mense,” for the Rutherfurds, realising that when a thing has to be done it were better it were done quickly, decided to leave as soon as they could find a roof to cover themselves and their belongings.

What they wanted to find was a smallish house in a pleasant village or country town, which they could furnish with the things they did not wish to part from, and keep as a pied-à-terre. They might decide to travel for a time, or pay visits, but there would always be this place of their own to come back to.

It seemed in the abstract a very simple thing, but when they set out to find the house the difficulties began. To begin with, they wanted to go somewhere quite out of reach of their present home. As Nicole pointed out, “We don’t want to decline into a small house in our own neighbourhood and have all sorts of casual acquaintances feeling that they have to be kind to us. ‘These poor dear Rutherfurds, we must ask them to dinner’—can’t you hear them? Of course, our own friends wouldn’t be like that, but we’d better go where we’ll be on nobody’s conscience.”

But there seemed to be some insuperable objection to every place they tried. If they liked a little town, there was no suitable house; if a suitable house was found, the locality was disappointing, and the house-agents’ advertisements were so misleading. An attractive description of a house—old-fashioned, well-built, with good rooms, and garden—suppressed the fact that a railway line ran not many yards from the drawing-room window, and that a row of jerry-built villas obtruded themselves almost into the rose-garden.

Day after day the two girls came home discouraged from their house-hunting. “If ever,” said Barbara, “I valued Rutherfurd it is now. Let’s give up this quixotic search for a habitable house, store our furniture, and set off on our travels. Thank goodness, there are still hotels!”

They had almost decided to do this when one day by the evening post came a letter from the helpful Mr. Haynes, enclosing a card to see a house which he thought they might consider worth looking at. It was in the town of Kirkmeikle, in Fife, and was called the Harbour House.

“Far enough away, anyway,” was Barbara’s comment.

“Fife,” said Nicole, and, wrinkling her nose, she quoted: “I never lik’it the Kingdom o’ Fife.”

“Still,” Barbara said, “we might go and see the place. What d’you think, Aunt Jane? Have you any objection to Fife?”

Lady Jane looked up from the book of old photographs she was poring over.

“Fife,” she said. “Your uncle and I once paid a very pleasant visit to people who lived, I think, near Falkland.... Oh no, dear, I’ve no objection.... There are no hills to speak of in Fife, and I seem to remember that it smelt rather oddly—linoleum, is it? But otherwise, I’m sure it would be a pleasant place to live.”

“Dear contented one,” said Nicole, “the smell is confined to big towns with factories. Kirkmeikle is a little town in the East Neuk, wherever that may be. I grant the lack of hills, but if we find we can’t live without them I daresay we could always let the house. People love to spend their holidays near golf-links. I must say the name rather appeals to me—the Harbour House.”

Barbara was studying the lawyer’s letter.

“We may have a chance of it,” she said, “for evidently Mr. Haynes thinks it’s a house that will not appeal to every one. It belonged to an old Mrs. Swinton who died in it a few months ago. Swinton’s a good name: probably she was connected with the Berwickshire Swintons.... Well, shall we start off to-morrow morning? It’ll mean leaving by the first train, and we may have to stay the night in Edinburgh.... I’ll see how the trains go from the Waverley——”

It was a bright autumn morning with a touch of frost when Barbara and Nicole crossed the Forth Bridge and looked down at the ships, and saw the sun on the red-tiled houses, the woods, the cleaned harvest-fields, and the long stretch of shining water.

“It’s pretty,” said Barbara, almost grudgingly “Living inland I had forgotten the magic of the sea. There’s such a feeling of space, and a sort of breath-taking freshness!”

“Oh yes,” Nicole agreed, gazing down into the sparkling depths, “the East Coast is fresh and caller, and beautiful in its way. The funny thing is, I never have been fond of the sea, perhaps because I’m such a wretched sailor. But, anyway, I prefer the East Coast sea to the West Highland lochs.” She leaned back in her seat and smiled at her cousin. “Shall I ever forget going out with Morag MacLeod on that awful loch of theirs? The old boatman warned us not to go for the weather was most uncertain, and it’s a dangerous place, full of currents and things, and Morag is one of the most reckless of God’s creatures. I felt perfectly certain I was going to be drowned, and the thought filled me with fury, for I can’t imagine a less desirable death than to go down in a horrible black West Highland loch, with sea-birds calling drearily above one. Morag, I knew, would save herself, and I could see her bearing my death so nobly, quoting a lot of stuff with a sob in it. I almost wept with self-pity as I clutched my coat round me with one hand, and held on with the other to some part of that frail craft. How I sighed for my own solid Border glens with no wretched lochs!”

“What about St. Mary’s? And the Loch o’ the Lowes?”

“Oh, but they’re clear and sunny and comparatively shallow, with no towering black mountains round them.”

“Loch Skene is dark enough.”

“Yes, but small. You wouldn’t think of yachting on it.... I’ve never stayed again with Morag, she’s too comfortless. I like being in the open air as well as any one, and there’s nothing nicer than a whole day tramping or fishing or climbing, but in the house I expect comfort. When I come home I want great fires, and abundance of hot water, and large soft chairs, and the best of food. One day—have I told you this before?—No. Well, one day she made me start off with her at nine in the morning, after a wretched breakfast, half cold, eaten in the summer-house. It was a chilly, misty morning, inclined to rain, and we plunged along through bogs and wet heather until we came to a loch where a keeper was waiting for us with a boat. We fished for hours, then ate some sodden sandwiches, and bits of chocolate. All the time Morag was chanting about the joys of the Open Road till I was sick of her. We didn’t catch any fish either. About four o’clock we started for home, very stiff and wet about the legs, and I thought I could just manage to live till five o’clock, and tea and a fire. A mile from home Morag suddenly had an idea—a thoroughly vicious one, I thought. ‘We’ve got some sandwiches left,’ she said, ‘let’s sit here and eat them. You don’t want to go home and eat hot scones stuffily by a fire, do you?’ Didn’t I? I positively ached to, but I’m such a naturally polite creature that, though I could have felled her where she stood, I only murmured resignation. Happily I was saved by her father. We met him at that moment of crisis, and he laughed to scorn the thought of mouldy sandwiches, and insisted on us going back to tea.”

“I should think so,” said Barbara. “Morag was always a posing donkey, and, I should think, no use as a housekeeper.”

Nicole shook her head. “None in the world. A comfortless mistress makes careless servants, and the fires were always on the point of going out, and the hot water never more than tepid. The only time I was comfortable and warm all that week was when I was in bed hugging a hot-water bottle. I was sorry for Morag’s father. It’s wretched for a man to live in a badly run house.”

She stopped and looked at her cousin. “My word, Babs, you’d be a godsend to any man as a housekeeper.”

“Only as a housekeeper?”

“My dear, no. As everything, companion, friend, counsellor, sweetheart—wife.”

They changed at Thornton, and in due course reached their destination. Kirkmeikle, they found, was a little grey town huddled on green braes, overhanging the harbour. There was one long street with shops, which meandered downhill from the station; some rows of cottages and a few large villas made up the rest of it. The villas were conspicuous and wonderfully ugly, and the two girls looked at them in dismay. Was one of those atrocities the house they had come to look at?

Barbara settled the question by stopping a small boy and demanding to know where the Harbour House was.

“Ye gang doon to the harbour an’ it’s the hoose that’s lookin’ at ye.”

“Quite so,” said Nicole, heaving a sigh of relief, and turning her back with alacrity on the red villas.

Proceeding down the winding street they came at last to the sea-front. A low wall, flat on the top, ran along the side of the road, and beyond that was the sea. At high tide the water came up to the wall, at other times there was a stretch of firm sandy beach.

A tall, white-washed house stood at the end of the street leading down to the sea. The front door was in the street, and to the harbour it presented a long front punctuated with nine small paned windows; the roof was high and pointed, and there were crow-step gables.

“What a wise child that was,” said Nicole. “It is ‘lookin’ at ye’ with nine unblinking eyes.”

“It smells very fishy down here,” was Barbara’s comment.

“Fishy, yes, but salt and clean.... Have you the card?”

The door was opened by a stout, middle-aged woman with a rosy face and a very white apron on which she wiped her fingers before she took the card Barbara held out to her.

“Ay, come in, please, mem. Certainly, ye can see the hoose. I’ll tak’ ye through.... No, it’s no been empty that lang. Ma mistress dee’d last July. There’s been a gey wheen folk lookin’ at it—kinna artist folk the maist o’ them—but I dinna think it’s let yet.”

As she spoke she led them through rather a dark hall and opened a door. “The dining-room,” she said, and stood aside to let them pass.

Nicole at once went to one of the windows to look out, but Barbara studied the room, measuring spaces with her eyes.

“Not a bad room,” she said. “The sideboard along this wall ...”

Nicole turned from the window. “Oh, Babs, do come and look. Isn’t that low wall jolly? Fishermen will sit on it in the evenings, and talk and smoke their pipes. And the harbour! I like to think of ships coming in and unloading and setting off.”

“Yes, yes,” Barbara said absently. “I wonder if that fire-place throws out any heat. I distrust that kind.”

“Let’s see the drawing-room,” said Nicole.

“Upstairs, mem. Mebbe I’d better go first.”

The stair was stone with shallow steps, the bannisters delicate wrought iron with a thin mahogany handrail. The woman with the snowy apron pattered briskly across the landing and threw open a door.

“Ye see,” she said proudly. “It’s bigger than the dinin’-room by a’ the width o’ the lobby. Ay, an’ fower windows nae less.”

“How jolly,” sighed Nicole, “oh, how jolly!”

It was a long room, rather narrow. Each of the four deep windows looked out to the sea, and was fitted with a window seat. The fire-place at the far end of the room had a perfect Adam mantelpiece: the doors were mahogany.

“Curious shape of room,” Barbara said. “I’m not sure that I——”

“Say no more,” interrupted her cousin. “This is where I’m going to live. As soon as I saw it I knew, as you might say, that it was my spiritual home. I’ll sit curled up on one of those window seats every evening and watch the sun set over the sea. What? No, perhaps I’m not looking west, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t carp ... I’m sure mother will love this room. She’ll hang her beloved little portraits in a line above that fire-place; the bureau will stand just here, with the miniatures above it, and her very own arm-chair beside the table.... We’ll be able to make it exactly like home for her.”

“My dear girl, we haven’t got it yet.”

“Sensible always, Babs dear: that’s quite true, we haven’t. But I’m absolutely sure this is to be our home. I knew the house when I saw it. It seemed to give me a nod as I came over the doorstep. There’s no doubt about it we were meant to come here, and that’s why poor Mrs. Jackson was uprooted from Pollokshields. I’m going off now to wire to Mr. Haynes to take it at once. It would be too ghastly if those ‘artist folk’ got before us—come on, Babs.”

“Nonsense,” said Barbara. “Don’t be so childish. We haven’t seen the bedrooms—much the most important part of a house to my mind. And we don’t know if there is a decent kitchen range and a good supply of hot water. It’s so like you, Nicole, to look out of a window and immediately determine to take a house.”

Nicole, instead of looking crushed, smiled into the eyes of the caretaker, who, evidently liking her enthusiasm, came to her help.

“Ay, my auld mistress aye sat in this room and lookit oot on the water. When the tide’s in if ye sit ower here ye canna see onything but water, juist as if ye were on a ship. An’ it’s a warm room; grand thick walls; nane o’ yer new rubbish, wan-brick thick. I’m vex’t that ye’ve no’ seen the room wi’ the furniture in’t. The next o’ kin took it awa’ to Edinboro’ and hed it sell’t. It was auld, ye ken, terrible ancient, and brocht a heap o’ siller.... The bedrooms? Ay, fine rooms. There’s two on this landin’—the mistress’s room an’ the dressin’-room aff, that the ain maid sleepit in.”

They went with her to the room. “Ye see,” she pointed out, “it hesna the sea view, it looks up the brae, but it’s a nice quait room, for the gairden’s round it... An’ there’s a bathroom next the dressin’-room.”

“It’s all in beautiful order,” Barbara said. “The paint and paper seem quite fresh—— What rooms are upstairs?”

“I’ll show ye. There’s fower bedrooms an’ a wee ane made into a bathroom. That was dune no’ mair nor seeven year syne (an’ its never been used, so it’s as guid as new), when the mistress’s grandson, wha should ha’ heired it, was hame frae the War. We wanted to hae things rale nice for him, an’ the mistress was aye readin’ aboot the dirt in the trenches, an’ she was determined that he wud hae a grand bath o’ his ain the wee while he was hame. Ay, but he only got the use o’t the wance. He was awfu’ high aboot it, the laddie, but he never cam’ hame again; an’ the property ga’ed to a far-awa’ freend that the mistress kent naething aboot.” She opened a door.

“This is the new bathroom.”

The two girls looked at the white-tiled walls, the gleaming hot-water rails, the glass shelves, the large luxurious bath, all spotlessly kept, then Nicole turned away with a slight shiver. “Poor little boy who liked his comforts,” she said.... “May we see the bedrooms?”

Two of them looked to the sea, two to the brae: all good rooms.

“Now for the kitchen,” cried Nicole, “and pray heaven that’s as perfect as the rest.” She turned to her friend the caretaker. “You don’t mind, do you? It seems we’ve simply got to see the kitchen and inquire into the hot-water supply.”

“ ’Deed ye can see onything in the hoose. I’m prood o’ ma kitchen. I’ve cooked in’t for near thirty years.”

“Oh!” said Barbara. “So you were Mrs. Swinton’s cook? That explains why everything is so well kept,” and she said it again with more fervour when she saw the kitchen premises. There was little left except necessities, but the tables were scrubbed white, the stone floors in the scullery and laundry sanded in elaborate patterns, everything showing that there was some one in charge who loved to work.

“It’s awfu’ bare: ye should hae seen it wi’ a’ the braw covers and copper pans, but everything’s been sold.” She shook her head sadly. “A body’s little hert to wark—but still ...”

“And when the house is let,” Barbara began, and stopped.

“When the hoose is let, I’ll tak a cook’s place in Edinboro’. Ye get awfu’ big wages noo-a-days, but I dinna ken hoo I’ll like the toon.” She answered Barbara, but she looked at Nicole.

“You’ll hate it,” said that young woman briskly. “Besides, think how lonely this old house would be without you. Thirty years, did you say you’d been here? Why, you must love every stone of it. I don’t believe you could sleep now away from the sound of the sea.... Won’t you stay on and take care of us? I want to hear all about old Mrs. Swinton and the boy who liked his comforts. You see, we’re leaving our home and coming to a new place, and it’ll make all the difference if we feel that it isn’t a stranger in the kitchen, but some one who belongs. By the way, what is your name?”

“Agnes Martin, mem. I’m no married nor naething o’ that kind, but ma mistress aye ca’ed me ‘Mistress Martin’: she said it was better for the young lasses, ye ken.”

Nicole held out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation the old servant took it and shook it awkwardly.

“Then that’s settled, Mrs. Martin. You stay with us in your own old place and I promise you will be happy. There’s only my mother and my cousin and myself. Bar the door, please, to all further seekers; tell them the house is taken. We’re going straight now to the post office to wire to our lawyer.” And seizing the hand of Barbara, who was regarding coldly her precipitate cousin, and smiling at the old servant, who seemed bewildered but rather pleased, Nicole left the Harbour House.

Later in the day, Agnes Martin took off her white apron, wrapped a grey woollen shawl round her shoulders, locked the back door of the Harbour House, and went to visit, as was her custom of an evening, her old friend Mrs. Curle. It was only a little way, a step or two round the corner into the Watery Wynd where stood the outside stair that led to Betsy Curle’s one-roomed house. Agnes Martin turned the handle. “Are ye in?” she asked.

“When am I ever oot?” was the reply from the woman sitting by the fire.

Betsy Curle was not a very old woman, but for years she had been getting gradually crippled with rheumatism, and now could do little more than crawl round her kitchen. Yet everything was spotlessly clean. With her twisted hands she scrubbed and polished, remarking irritably when well-meaning people wondered how it was done, that there was no wonder about it, if a body had the whole day to clean a room it would be a shame to see it dirty.

“It’s you, Agnes,” she said to her visitor. “C’wa in to the fire: it’s surely cauld the nicht?”

“Ay, I wadna wonder to see a guid touch o’ frost. How are ye?”

“Fine.”

It was odd the difference in the speech of the two women. Agnes’s sharp intonation, rising high at the end of each sentence, seemed to have something of the east wind and the sea in it; Betsy’s broad Border tones, slow and grave, made one think of solemn round-backed hills and miles of moorland. Betsy had come to Kirkmeikle as a young wife, but the thirty-five years she had spent there had done nothing to reconcile her to the place. Home to her was still the village by the water of Tweed.

Agnes took out a grey stocking and began to knit while she recounted the small doings of the day, which were eagerly listened to, for Betsy took an almost passionate interest in her neighbours, though she was now, by reason of her infirmities, unable to keep them under personal observation.

When various small bits of gossip had been recorded and savoured with relish, the important news was brought out.

“I’m thinkin’ the Harbour Hoose is let then, Betsy.”

“D’ye tell me that? Whae tae?”

“Weel—the day, juist aboot denner-time, the bell rang, and there was twa young leddies standin’ on the doorstep wi’ a caird to see the hoose. I saw they werena juist daein’t for a ploy like some o’ the folk that comes, they were terrible tae’n up wi’ the hoose, specially the youngest ane. The ither ane was aye for haudin’ her back, but she juist gaed a lauch tae me and never heeded her. A bonnie young thing she was, I fair took a notion o’ her! D’ye ken, she shook haunds wi’ me! Ma auld mistress never did that a’ the years I was wi’ her.”

“Mistress Swinton was a proud body,” said Betsy. “She couldna see that her servants were flesh and blood like hersel’; but she’s dust noo, so we needna remember it against her.”

“She was a just mistress to me, and I’d like fine to stay on in the auld hoose.”

“Will the new folk want a cook?”

“Ay, did I no’ say that? The young leddy askit me to bide. She said it wud mak a’ the difference if I was there. She says, ‘There’s only my mother and my cousin and myself.’ It would suit me fine. I like to serve the gentry, an’ I dinna want to leave Kirkmeikle. If I took a place here wi’ Miss Symington they’d ca’ me a ‘plain cook,’ an’ ye ken fine what that means—juist stewed steak wan day and chops the next—but I could see that thae folk were used wi’ a’thing braw aboot them.”

“But whae were they?” Betsy asked. “Did they no’ tell ye whauraboots they cam’ frae?”

Agnes laid down her stocking and fumbled in her pocket.

“Here, see,” she said, handing her friend an envelope. “They left me that address. Did ye ever hear tell o’ that place?”

Betsy, bending down to the red glow from the ribs, read the words on the envelope, and her poor disabled hands shook.

“Never i’ the warld” ... she muttered, then turning to Agnes, “Rutherfurds!” she cried excitedly. “I’ve kent the Rutherfurds a’ ma days. Rutherfurd wasna faur frae Langhope. It’s a terrible braw place; I used to gang as a bairn to Sabbath-schule trips there, and I mind when Lady Jane Rutherfurd cam’ as a bride.... Ye’re mista’en, Agnes, ma wumman, if ye think the Rutherfurds wud want a hoose in Kirkmeikle.”

Agnes knitted placidly. “I d’na ken. Twa leddies cam’, in deep black they were, an’ that was the name they gae me, and they said they were ga’en straucht to the post office to wire to their lawyer to tak’ the hoose. That’s a’ I ken—mak’ a kirk or a mill oot o’t, Betsy.”

Betsy shook her head. “There maun be something far wrang, but I get nae news frae Langhope noo that I canna hand a pen.... I maun get Tam to write. I’ll no rest till I ken if it’s true. Rutherfurds awa frae Rutherfurd and livin’ cheek by jowl wi’ Betsy Curle! The thing’s no canny.”