The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
herself in one of the windows. She wore a straight tight black satin dress, with a soft white pleated ruffle starting from the shoulder and continued all down one side. The wicked extravagance of a white ruffle! Why, it wouldn’t go on more than once or twice. . . . And to sit there with the window open and the night air blowing in on her bare neck!
Simon Beckett crossed the room and stood by Nicole, who smiled up at him, inviting him to admire the outlook.
“I sit here always after tea,” she told him, “and look out at the sea and the lights. . . . We do enjoy these quiet evenings. Mother plays Patience or writes letters, Barbara sews, and I watch the lights when I’m not reading.” She twisted the blind-cord and asked, “D’you write in the evenings?”
Simon nodded. “At least I try to, but I get so stuffy and restless that I’m generally glad about nine o’clock to dash out for an hour and tramp about.”
“Is it a novel you’re writing?”
“Oh, Lord, no.” He looked aghast at the idea. “I’m only putting into as decent English as I know how, the record of our expedition in the Himalayas.”
“Yes,” Nicole said, “I thought you must be that Simon Beckett.”
“You see,” Simon said apologetically, “there’s no one else to do it, or you may be sure I wouldn’t have attempted it.”
“It must be fine, though, to have a job like that to do; something you’ve got to begin every morning, something that no one else could do. I envy you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t suppose it matters much to any one, but I’d feel a slacker if I didn’t do it. . . . But the worst of it is I’m no manner of use at writing, I sit for hours over one sentence. I never had much of a head . . .”
He stopped and pulled at his tie, then said bashfully:
“I wonder—would it be an awful bore to you—if any time I’m in a worse hole than usual I came and asked your advice? I’d be awfully obliged if you’d sometimes give me a hand.”
“I’m afraid,” said Nicole, with unusual diffidence, “that I don’t know much about style.”
Simon laughed aloud. “Style! If I can make it sense I shan’t worry about style.”
“In that case we shall feel honoured—I speak for mother, Babs, and myself—if you will come down some night and dine and talk over any difficulty. Mother can spell really wonderfully, and Babs is clever. . . . To write a book must be far worse than attempting a high peak.”
Simon Beckett groaned. “The next time I go out I’ll settle there. Nothing again will ever induce me to attempt to lecture or write on the subject.”
“Oh, you lecture too?”
“I have lectured twice. But never again. It was an awful exhibition . . .”
He turned to Alastair who had come up to him, saying:
“What is it, Bat?”
“Aunt Janet says I’ve got to go home?”
Simon looked at his watch. “By Jove, it’s going on for seven o’clock. Past your bedtime, old man.”
“Why d’you call him ‘Bat’?” Nicole asked.
“Because,” Alastair explained, “my name’s too long and he thinks I’m like a bat. He calls Annie ‘Gentle Annie.’ ”
“Your aunt’s waiting for you,” Simon interrupted. “Yes, I’m coming too.”
Alastair departed reluctantly, comforted, however, by the fact that his pockets were full of nuts and apples; and Nicole had put into his hands a box of chocolates and an electric-torch as parting gifts. “So that you may light them home,” she told him, as he trotted away his hand in Simon’s.
He chattered all the way home to his friend, but Miss Symington walked deep in thought. When she opened her own front door and went into the hall she stared round her as if she were seeing it for the first time. After the Harbour House how bare it looked, how bleak. The unshaded incandescent gas made an ugly light. Before her she saw the hall she had just left, the soft-shaded lamps, the coloured prints on the walls, the polished table reflecting the big bowl of bright berries, the chests with their brass trays and candlesticks and snuffers, the blue and yellow of the old Chinese rugs, the warm pleasant smell of good fires and good cooking and well-kept furniture. She sniffed. Her own house did not smell so pleasantly. There was a mixed odour of hot iron and something burning in the kitchen range, for the cook had an economical but unpleasing habit of putting potato-peelings and such things in the fire.
Miss Symington went into the dining-room. The fire was low, and one gas burned dully. A green chenille cloth covered the table, and there was an arm-chair on either side of the fire, and eight smaller chairs were ranged along the wall under the oil-paintings. Presently a tea-cloth would be laid corner-wise on the green cloth and her supper set. How dull it all seemed! She was not a woman who greatly cared for comfort and good food and pretty things about her, but to-night she felt that something was lacking.
“You’d better go to bed, Alastair,” she said. “Annie will be waiting for you. D’you like Lady Jane and the two young ladies?”
“Yes, they’re kind and pretty and they smell nice!”
Miss Symington was rather scandalised—fancy a child noticing that! but she merely said:
“Run away to bed.”
“Yes.” He was collecting all his treasure to show Annie. “Good night, Aunt Janet.”
But Miss Symington did not reply. She was looking at herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece.
CHAPTER XIII
“This is the flower that smiles on every one.”
Love’s Labour Lost.
A few days later when Nicole was coming home from a tramp over the golf-course, she met Janet Symington at her own gate. They talked for a few minutes, then Janet on a sudden impulse asked Nicole to go in, and she went. Janet took her guest into the dining-room, remarking that she generally sat there.
The daily papers lay on a small table by the fire, along with a Bible and a pile of hymn-books and a work-basket. Janet motioned Nicole to the arm-chair at one side of the fireplace and seated herself in the other. She had wanted to see this girl again, but now that she had got her seated at her own fireside she found nothing to say.
“I suppose,” she began awkwardly, “things will seem strange to you. I mean to say Kirkmeikle. . . .”
“Strange? Well, I’ve never lived in a little town before, and it’s all very new and interesting. We enjoy it—mother, Babs, and I. Perhaps I enjoy it most, for I believe with Mr. Pope that the proper study of mankind is man! Mother and Babs are more—well, withdrawn. I mean to say they would be content to sit up in a tower, hardly troubling to look out of the window, whereas I would want to be down jigging with the crowd in the market-place.”
“Oh!” said Janet. Then, after a pause, “I suppose you will always have lived a very gay life?”
“Oh dear, no! far from it. You see, when I grew up the War was just finishing, and my two brothers had been killed, and my father was beginning to be ill, and there wasn’t much thought of gaiety in any of our heads. Of course, I have had some very good times; my aunts have me in London for months at a time, and I had a cold weather in India; but I’ve lived a great deal quietly at home in the country. . . . When my father died we found we couldn’t keep up our house—Rutherfurd; and we were very lucky to get the place sold almost at once; we heard of the Harbour House, liked it, took it, and here we are! Mine is