The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
visitors were silent, not quite knowing what comment to make, and Mrs. Heggie continued:
“You’ll like the Bucklers. Somebody told me that Mr. Buckler had quite a distinguished career in India, and I must say they are most obliging neighbours. I’m sorry for poor Mrs. Buckler with her servants. Now, you’ll stay and have tea; I’ll ring for it at once so as not to hinder you. It’s early, I know, but you may not be offered it at the Bucklers, for they have a housemaid who objects to giving tea to visitors unless they come at tea-time. No? Oh, don’t rise. You’re not going already? Joan may be in any minute. She’s all I have now. My husband died three years ago, and two boys in the Argentine. Joan is inclined to be literary—— Well, if you must go. . . . When will you come for a meal? Let me see, this is Monday—Would lunch on Wednesday suit you? Friday, then? we must fix a day.”
“If you don’t mind,” Lady Jane said in her gentle way, “we won’t fix anything just now. We are still rather busy settling down and would rather have no engagements yet awhile. Might we, perhaps, propose ourselves for tea one day? That will be delightful, and you must come and see us in our funny little house when you can spare time.”
“I’ll do that,” Mrs. Heggie promised heartily, “and you come here whenever you like. Just run in, you know. I’m always sitting here—except when I’m out somewhere. And when you feel like accepting invitations you’ll come here first, won’t you? I’ll give a dinner for you. . . .”
Half an hour later when Joan came in and asked casually if there had been any visitors, her mother replied with studied carelessness, “Only Lady Jane Rutherfurd and her daughter. They were here quite twenty minutes—the civilest people I ever met. And I didn’t ask one single question, though I’m just dying to know what brought them to Kirkmeikle. They’re charming, perfectly charming.”
Joan sat down heavily in a chair. “For any favour, mother,” she said, “give that worn-out adjective a rest. Whenever you ask what sort of person some one is you’re told—‘Charming,’ and when you meet her she’s nothing of the kind. Charm is not the common thing people make it out to be.”
“Oh well, Joan, I’m not going to quarrel with you about adjectives. You know far more about them than I do, but when you meet the Rutherfurds you’ll be charmed with them, I know that. . . . The daughter looked at your books—what a nice friend she’ll be for you. . . .”
Mr. and Mrs. Buckler received their callers with less excitement than Mrs. Heggie.
Nicole smiled up at Mr. Buckler as he put her into a carved chair with a brilliant embroidered cushion for a seat, saying: “The East in Kirkmeikle! I smelt it as soon as I came into the hall.”
“You recognise it? You know India?”
“Only as a Paget M.P.—I was out for a cold weather when I first grew up, just after the War. I went out to an uncle and aunt who happened to be there. . . . Have you been home long?”
Mr. Buckler, a thin man with tired eyes in a sun-dried face, drew up a chair beside Nicole.
“I retired about five years ago,” he said; “glad enough at the time to get away, but looking back at the life now, it seems the best on earth. Distance lending enchantment! I dare say if I went back I would be disillusioned. It’s not the India I went out to as a boy, and loved. Things, they tell me, are altering daily for the worse—still it’s India. . . .”
While Nicole and her companion recalled people and places Lady Jane listened while Mrs. Buckler told her of the trials of a retired Mem-sahib. She was a pretty, faded woman, with a vivacious manner.
“When I think of my jewel of a Khansamah who made everything go like clockwork and produced anything you wanted at a moment’s notice like a djinn in a fairy tale, I almost weep. Of course, we’re as poor as rats now and we can’t afford really good servants, and I know I ought to be thankful that at least we have honest women in the house, but, oh, Lady Jane, their manners! They never think of saying ‘Mum’ to me, and very seldom ‘Sir’ to Ernest. They seem to think it demeans them, whereas, as I tell them, all servants in good houses say it as a matter of course. They merely prove their own inferiority by not saying it. But how can one teach manners to women who don’t know what manners mean? It was quite funny the other day, though vexing. A friend of ours had motored a long way to see us, and found no one in. Mrs. Heggie—our neighbour next door—came up to the door at the same time and heard the conversation. Our friend has a very forthcoming, sympathetic manner, and she said to Janet, the housemaid, who had opened the door: ‘Now, tell me, how is Mrs. Buckler? Has she quite got over that nasty turn of influenza? Is she out and about again?’ Janet stood quite stolid (so Mrs. Heggie said), then drawled in a bored voice, ‘Och, she’s quite cheery’!”
Lady Jane laughed. “It was rather funny, wasn’t it? and most reassuring, and after all manners aren’t everything: I wouldn’t worry about them if I were you.”
“We tried,” Mrs. Buckler went on, “to be exceedingly polite to each other, Ernest and I, to see if that might have a good effect, but it hadn’t. They merely seemed to think we were feeble-minded. . . . But as you say, we might have worse trials—and Janet isn’t as bad as she was. The last time we had some people to dinner Janet’s way of offering the vegetables was to murmur ‘Whit aboot sprouts?’ . . . But I really don’t mind anything if Ernest and the children are happy.”
“You have children?”
“Two—a boy at Oxford and a girl in Switzerland. That’s why we live here. It is cheap and we can pinch in comfort—a contradiction in terms! . . . Must you go?”
Mr. Buckler walked down to the gate with the visitors, and as they stood talking a tall young man came towards them.
“Ah, Beckett, the very man I wanted to see! I heard this morning from the India Office. . . . By the way, have you met? . . . May I introduce Mr. Beckett? Lady Jane Rutherfurd, Miss Rutherfurd.”
“Mr. Beckett and I have met already,” Nicole said. “I told you, Mother—Alastair’s friend. . . .”
As they walked away Lady Jane asked if they had done enough for one day. “It must be nearly tea-time,” she said.
“Well,” said Nicole, “we haven’t time to attempt the Kilgours, but we pass the Lamberts’ house, it’s just here, this green gate in the wall—we needn’t stay more than a few minutes. Come on, Mums.”
The green door opened into a good-sized garden surrounded by a high brick wall on which fruit trees were trained. There was a lawn, wide borders which still held bravely blooming Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, and plots of rose-trees—evidently a place on which was bestowed both labour and love.
“ ‘A garden enclosed,’ ” said Nicole, as they went up the path to the front door. “And what a pleasant-looking house!”
The manse was a rather long, low house built of grey stone. The front door stood open and children’s voices could be heard. When Nicole rang the bell a very young servant answered it. She was not more than fifteen, but her hair was put tidily up, and she wore a very white cap and apron: her face shone with soap and rubbing.
“No, Mem,” she said shyly. “Mistress Lambert’s oot, but she’ll be in to the tea aboot half five, and it’s that noo. Would ye . . . come in?”
Nicole picked out a card while Lady Jane said:
“No, thank you—we shall hope to see Mrs. Lambert another time. . . . Who is this young person?”
A small fat child had trotted out, and now held the apron of the maid before her as a protection, while she peered at the visitor.
“That’s Bessie. She’s three,” the rosy little maid said proudly, smiling down at her charge.
“I can skip, but Aillie can’t,” the baby informed them, and received the rebuke, “Dinna boast—Aillie canna walk, let alane skip.”
The mother and daughter smiled