The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
comes from Langhope and wants terribly to see you.”
“Yes, but need we go to-day?”
“Well, I’m just afraid she may be looking for us. Besides, it’s so near—the Watery Wynd, the place is called. The first turning. This must be the place. There is the outside stair that I was told to look for. ‘ “On, on,” cried the Duchess.’ Take care, these steps are uneven. . . .”
The short November day was nearly done, and Betsy Curle’s kitchen was dark but for the firelight. She peered through the shadows at her visitors—“An’ whae may ye be?” she asked.
Lady Jane went forward. “I hope you don’t mind us coming,” she said. “Mrs. Martin, our cook at the Harbour House, told us you came from our own part of the world and we wondered if we might come and shake hands with you. We’re still feeling far from home.”
Betsy rose to her feet painfully and tried to drag two chairs to the fire for her visitors.
“Let me,” Nicole said. “You sit down in your own chair and tell us how you have strayed so far from the Borders.”
“Ye may say it! Sit whaur I can see ye. I mind yer faither, an’ yer grandfaither, an’ yer great-grand-faither!”
“Oh!” Nicole leaned forward, her eyes alight with interest. “My great-grandfather! Tell me about him.”
“He was handsome, like a’ the Rutherfurds, and mad! as mad as a yett in a high wind.” She turned to Lady Jane. “I mind fine o’ yer leddy-ship comin’ to Rutherfurd—the bonfires and the flags. That was fower and thirty years syne come Martimas. Ye were but a young lass in a white goon and a hat wi’ feathers, an’ they ga’ed ye a bunch o’ red roses.”
Lady Jane nodded. “I remember both the hat and the roses. . . . Where was your home?”
“D’ye mind the white-washed hoose at the edge o’ the pine wood afore ye come to Langhope? Ay, the keeper’s cottage. I bade there; ma faither was heid keeper at Langlands.”
“And what brought you to Fife?”
“Ye may ask! I mairrit a jiner. If I hed ta’en ma mither’s advice—‘Betsy, lass,’ said she, ‘there’s little sap amang the shavin’s.’ . . . His folk cam’ frae Fife, an’ efter we’d been mairrit a wheen years, he got the offer o’ a job here. I niver likit it—nesty saut cauld hole! No’ like oor ain couthy country-side. I canna thole the sicht o’ the sea, sae jumblin’ an’ weet. What wud I no’ gie for a sicht o’ the Tweed an’ the Lammerlaw! But I’ll never get hame noo, an’ I canna see hoo I can lie quait in that cauld kirkyaird. Of course ma man’s there, but it’s an exposed place.”
“Have you no children?” Lady Jane asked.
“Juist ae son leevin’—an’ he’s mairrit.”
“Oh—but he’s good to you, I hope.”
“As guid as his wife’ll let him be. O, ma guid-dochter’s a grand gear-gatherer. She was a Speedie, and they’re a’ hard. She’s big an’ heavy-fitted like her faither. Handsome some folk ca’ her! Handsome, says I, haud yer tongue! But I’m no’ sayin’ nae ill o’ her, ye ken. She’s welcome to a’ she can get. I never grudged naebody naething their guid wasna’ ma ill.”
“Well,” Lady Jane rose to go, “I hope you’ll let us come again. I want to talk to you about home. . . . Don’t get up. I’m afraid you’ve bad rheumatism?”
“Ay, it cam’ on me aboot five years syne. I was as soople as an eel till then. . . . Hoo’s Agnes Martin pleasin’ ye?”
“Oh, she’s a treasure. And I hope she’s happy with us.”
“Happy eneuch, I daursay. She’s the sense to bow to the bush that gie’s her bield,” and Betsy lowered herself slowly into her chair, while her visitors went down the stairs feeling rather snubbed.
CHAPTER XI
“This for remembrance.”
Hamlet.
Though Barbara had professed herself unable to endure the boredom of calling on her new neighbours, she greeted her aunt and cousin with interest on their return.
“Well,” she said, as she roused the fire to a blaze, and lit the wick under the lamp for the teapot, “how have you fared, intrepid spirits?”
Lady Jane had left her coat in the hall and stood, looking absurdly girlish in her straight black dress, her bright hair escaping from under the close-fitting hat, warming her hands at the fire.
“We’ve done a good afternoon’s work,” she said, smiling at Barbara, “and enjoyed it.”
“You haven’t had tea, I hope? for Mrs. Martin has baked a very special cake—a reward for well-doing, I suppose.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Nicole; “I’m hungry. Mrs. Heggie wanted to give us tea, but Mrs. Buckler didn’t offer because of a disobliging maid. Wasn’t it luck we got three out of the four at home?”
“You call it luck?” Barbara said.
“And,” continued Nicole, “we’ve put our first foot in the morass of invitations you dreaded so. Miss Symington brings her nephew to tea on Wednesday.”
Barbara groaned. “I knew it! The thin end of the wedge. . . . What are they like, Aunt Jane? I want your unbiassed opinion and not a rose-tinted appreciation from Nikky.”
Lady Jane sipped her tea contemplatively for a minute, then said:
“Nice people, I think. We called first at the three large villas. Miss Symington’s is most depressingly bleak and ugly, but Miss Symington herself seems a quiet inoffensive woman. Almost entirely silent, though. Nicole and I had to talk all the time to avoid embarrassing pauses. Some people seem to feel no responsibility about keeping up a conversation. I wonder if it is shyness——”
“Sheer laziness,” said Nicole. “I’m sure I’d much rather be silent; it would be easier than keeping up a bright vivacious flow of talk.”
Her mother laughed sceptically and went on. “Then we went to Knebworth, a type of modern villa that is all right in London suburbs but should never be seen in Scotland. The bleak Ravenscraig goes better with the East wind and the sea birds and the high sharp voices of the people—— But it was comfortable and, in a way, pretty, with its absurd ingleneuks and latticed windows, and Mrs. Heggie herself is a character. She is one of the people who help to make the world go round. She lifts, and doesn’t merely lean. You couldn’t please her better than by using her. But she’s lost in a place like this, her energies need freer scope.”
Nicole nodded. “Not only a good sort, but an amusing good sort. She reminded me a little of Mrs. Jackson. . . . To-day I felt she was constrained, and we were strangers, but I should like to be there when she really lets herself go. . . . I wonder what the daughter is like. I expect the books were hers. Evidently a modern young woman, an admirer of the latest lights. I don’t think, somehow, I’ll ask her to come and read Scott’s Journal with me.”
“The third house,” said Lady Jane, “is called Lucknow, and appropriately enough shelters an Anglo-Indian family. . . .”
“Ah, but, Mother,” Nicole broke in, “don’t lay that to their charge. It was christened before they took it—Mr. Buckler told me.”
“What are the Anglo-Indians like?” Barbara asked.
“Well, there’s always something rather pathetic about retired Anglo-Indians. I know it’s great impertinence to find people pathetic who in no way desire sympathy, but it must be such a