Читать книгу The Proper Place - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 7

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“Oh, but her beauty gone, how lonely

Then will seem all reverie,

How black to me.”

Walter de la Mare.

It was late in the evening before Nicole and her cousin reached home after their day in Kirkmeikle.

Mrs. Douglas from Kingshouse had been dining with Lady Jane, and was still there when the girls came in. She was a woman frankly middle-aged, slim, upright, with white hair rolled back in a style of her own from a small, high-coloured face. Her eyes were intensely blue, shrewd, kind eyes, quickly kindled in anger, easily melted to tears. One of the most striking things about Jean Douglas was her instinct for dress. Her clothes were perfect in every detail, and whether she was on the top of a hill with her dogs, or at a Point-to-Point meeting, at a country-house luncheon party (this is a great test), or in a London ballroom, she always looked exactly right.

She kissed the two girls with affection, but her words were severe. “You two stupid creatures, coming home at this time of night! Why didn’t you stay in Edinburgh? I’ve been scolding your mother, Nicole, for not insisting, but well I know you’re the real culprit. Your mother and Barbara are dragged at your chariot wheels.”

Nicole smiled forgivingly at her friend. “Don’t be nasty, Mistress Jean, when Babs and I are perishing with hunger. We had only a snatched cup of tea in Edinburgh, and we kept falling asleep in the train, and got so cold. Johnson,” to that dignitary, who had come into the room, “is our ham-and-egg tea ready? Good. I ordered that as a great treat after our long day. Come with us, my dears, and watch us eat. We’ve got heaps to tell you.”

At first they talked of other things. Nicole wanted to know how her mother had spent the day, asked for all the news from Kingshouse. She seemed completely to have forgotten the weariness of her long day, and ate her meal with relish.

“Babs,” she said, “don’t you think this is the perfectest sort of meal? ... If I had my will I’d always have high tea. We got such a horrid luncheon at Kirkmeikle—very late, when we had ceased to feel hungry. It was in a pot-house of sorts, and we got soup out of a tin (I think), and roast beef that had been hot about an hour before, so couldn’t be described exactly as cold. I felt like St. Paul and the Laodiceans! The room smelt like a channel steamer, and the table-cloth was damp to the touch. Kirkmeikle doesn’t shine in the way of inns; we would need to warn people of that. Which brings us to the point—we hope we’ve got a house there.”

Lady Jane said “Oh!” and gave a faint gasp.

Her daughter caught her hand. “I know. Doesn’t it seem to make things horribly final somehow? I don’t think I really believed we were leaving Rutherfurd until we sent the wire to Mr. Haynes asking him to take the Harbour House if possible.”

“And where is this house?” Mrs. Douglas asked crossly. “I can’t tell you how disgusting I consider your conduct. It’s a poor compliment to your friends that you should want to put the sea—or at least the Firth of Forth—between us, I mean between them and you.”

Nicole spread some jam on a piece of bread and butter.

“Blame me, my dear, me only.”

“It’s you I am blaming. What’s your idea in rushing to Fife?”

“Can’t find a house anywhere nearer.”

“Nonsense.”

“Oh, all right.”

“You know very well,” Mrs. Douglas went on, “that the Langlands are most anxious that you should take the Cottage. You couldn’t find a more charming little place, suitable in every way, and you would have all your friends round you.”

Nicole looked at her friend. “Why, Mistress Jean, I never knew you lacking in imagination before. Can’t you see that it wouldn’t be exactly pleasant for us to stay on here and see strangers in Rutherfurd? We must go to some place where we won’t always be reminded.... The Jacksons——”

“The wretched creatures!” broke in Jean Douglas, so bitterly that the inmates of comfortable Deneholm might well have wilted.... “But I flattered myself that the fact of having all your friends round might weigh against the other. I was mistaken, it seems.”

“Now don’t be sneisty, my dear. You don’t suppose we leave you willingly, do you? ... Babs, we must tell about the house. You begin with the plain facts and I’ll add the embroideries later.”

Barbara poured herself out a cup of tea and declined to do her cousin’s bidding. “Go on yourself,” she said. “When you get too exaggerated I’ll interrupt.”

“Starting from the Waverley,” Nicole began, rather in the style of a guide-book, “it is quite a pretty run—I had forgotten how pretty—and not very long. Kirkmeikle we found to be a funny little steep town of red-tiled houses tumbling down into the Harbour. I won’t disguise from you that there is a row of atrocious new red villas standing in a line above the town, and we quailed when we saw them, fearing that our quest would lead us to them. But no; we were directed down the long winding street, and at the foot we found a tall white-washed house with crow-step gables and a pointed roof, and nine windows looking out to the sea.”

“Surrounded,” broke in Barbara, “with ordinary fishermen’s cottages, and a strong smell of tar and fish, and small dirty children.”

“Why not?” asked Nicole. “I’ve always wanted to rub shoulders more with my fellow-men, and now I’ll get the chance.... And mother won’t mind, will you, Mums? To my mind it’s infinitely preferable to villadom.”

“I think it sounds nice and unusual,” Lady Jane said; “but I hope you asked if the drains were all right.”

“We forgot,” said Nicole, “but I expect they’re all right, for there are two excellent bathrooms fitted up with every sort of contrivance. And Barbara insisted on hearing about the hot-water supply.... Would you rather have a bedroom looking to the sea or up the brae, Mums? The best room, the largest, that is, is on the land side, but we’ll decide that later. The drawing-room is a pet of a room, I know you’ll love it ..., and the furniture from the Corner Room will be exactly right for it.... I planned it all the moment I saw it. The Russian figures will stand on the mantelshelf just as they do here, and your little portraits will hang in a row above them. And the old French clock that plays a tune must be there, and the Ming figures in their own cabinet. They will be quite in keeping with the Harbour House: all seaport towns are full of china brought from far places.... Of course, the dining-room furniture is hopeless, but I was thinking coming out in the train that the things in the Summer Parlour would be perfect in that sea-looking room. The Chippendale sideboard and table and chairs, the striped silk curtains and the Aubusson carpet will make it a thing of beauty.”

Mrs. Douglas turned to Barbara. “Nicole’s as pleased as a child with a doll’s house.”

Barbara shrugged her shoulders. “It is a doll’s house.”

Nicole protested. “It’s so beautifully proportioned that it isn’t a bit cramped. The rooms are all of a decent size, and what can you possibly want more than a room to feed in, a room to talk and read and sew in, a room to sleep in?” She turned to her mother again. “You can’t imagine, Mother, what a homelike little house it is. It must always have been lived in by people with nice thoughts—decent people.... The cook showed us over, the sort of cook that is born, not made—you couldn’t imagine her anything else, with a round rosy face and a large expanse of white apron. Thirty years she had served old Mrs. Swinton in the Harbour House. Of course I told her she must remain with us. Babs thought I was mad, before we had time to ask for references or anything, but her face was her reference. Mrs. Agnes Martin. That is your new cook, Mums.” She turned to Mrs. Douglas. “To find a house and a cook both in one day! That was pretty clever, don’t you think, in these degenerate days?”

“I should like to know more about both before I congratulate you,” her friend said cautiously, as she rose to go. “I ordered the car at 10.30 and it must be long past that. Well—I’m glad you seem satisfied.”

“Satisfied,” said Barbara, with a groan, while Lady Jane sighed.

Mrs. Douglas turned to get her cloak.

“And what,” she asked, “is to happen to all the furniture you can’t get into this new house?”

“Oh,” said Nicole, with an air of great carelessness, “didn’t you know that the Jacksons are taking over the rooms as they stand?”

“What?” She stood staring at Nicole, who held her cloak. “Those heavenly old things! But not the portraits surely? Not your Lovely Lady?” She looked from one to the other of the three women, but no one spoke. “Give me my cloak, Nicole,” and as the girl wrapped her in it she said, with tears standing in her angry blue eyes, “It was bad enough to think of you being away, but I never dreamt of you being separated from your treasures. Nobody knows what Rutherfurd has been to me ... not only because I loved every one of you, but because that room was to me a sort of shrine. You know,” she turned to Nicole, “how the summer sun about six o’clock strikes through the west window and falls on the picture? I used to plan to be there to see it.... And now that fat woman tricked out in silly finery will sit there by the fire, and the shrine is desecrated, things that were lovely all made common and unclean.... Find my handkerchief, can’t you, Nikky? It’s in my bag.... What a fool I am....”

She threw her arms round Lady Jane.

“I’m a Job’s comforter, aren’t I? Bildad the Shuhite should be my name! ... But I promise you Mrs. Jackson won’t enjoy her ill-gotten gains. She will sit in lonely splendour, I’ll see to that.”

“No, no,” Lady Jane protested. “Indeed, Jean, I want you to be kind to her as only you know how to be kind. You are far the human-est person in these parts. Make things easy for her.”

“Not I. Things have been made far too easy for her as it is.”

“But, my dear,” Nicole cried, “if it hadn’t been the Jacksons it would have been some one else—probably very objectionable, pretentious people. In a way the Jacksons are benefactors. They have saved those things for Rutherfurd when they might have had to be all scattered abroad.... Everything in its proper place, Mistress Jean. You remember your Hans Andersen? Out we go, swept by the great broom of Fate. Exit the Rutherfurds. Enter the Jacksons.”

Jean Douglas put both hands over her ears.

“Don’t say it, I hate their very name. And how I shall hate them when I see them in the flesh!”

“No,” said Nicole, “I defy you to hate Mrs. Jackson.”

Late that night, when every one was in bed and the house very still, a light figure slipped downstairs into the dark drawing-room.

Quietly she pulled back the curtains and undid the shutters. Outside a full moon was shedding its ghostly light. How strange and dreamlike it looked, so distinct and yet so unreal—the wild thorns with their bare branches, the glimmer of the burn, the lawns like tapestry. Somewhere up on the Lammerlaw a wild bird cried strangely. Near the house an owl hooted. Nicole drank in the beauty thirstily. It was as if she were fixing it on her mind against a time when she would no longer behold it.

Presently she turned and went over to the fire-place.

In the moonlight the picture gleamed palely. The “Queen of Hearts” looked down on the girl kneeling on the fender-stool. It was nothing to her that the upturned face was very pale, and wet with tears.