The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
and considered her. She was well dressed and had beautiful pearls, but Mrs. Jackson did not care for the arrogant look in her face. This lady, she thought, was probably given to keeping people in their places.
“I was saying, Mrs. Jackson”—her host was addressing her—“that there is a great deal to be said for seeing the winter through in Scotland. Only we who have endured hardships can properly appreciate the first snowdrop, and those who have flown to Egypt or the Riviera haven’t the same right to watch the daffodils. Don’t you agree?”
“Oh yes. Yes, indeed,” she said, rather confusedly, turning from watching Miss Lockhart’s attractive though rather wicked mouth as she talked to Colonel Douglas, to the solemn countenance of her host. “I love the spring days after the dark and cold, and the sight of the crocuses always reminds me that the spring-cleaning’s coming on. I wonder if you’ve noticed an advertisement—it’s awful clever—a picture of a great bunch of delphiniums and a bottle of furniture polish? It fair makes you smell a newly-cleaned room.”
Lord Langlands looked slightly surprised. “Eh—quite so,” he said. “Are you going south after Christmas?”
“Oh, mercy, no. We’re just newly settled into Rutherfurd. Such a flitting as we had! I’m sure we’ll not want to stir a foot from home for ages. I’m not fond of continental travel myself. The language, you know, and the queer food. I’m terrified they give me snails. . . .”
When Mrs. Jackson returned to the drawing-room with the other ladies she glanced surreptitiously round for a clock. Dinner had lasted so long, surely it must be after nine, and the car was ordered for ten o’clock. Only another hour to get through!
“Is that chair comfortable? Do let me give you another cushion,” and Lady Langlands tucked in a cushion behind Mrs. Jackson, while Jean Douglas seated herself in a low chair beside her and began to talk.
“I want to tell you how nice you look. There is nothing so becoming as black velvet and pearls. . . . And how’s Rutherfurd? I had a letter from Nicole the other day; she always asks about you.”
“Yon’s a nice girl,” Mrs. Jackson said earnestly. “I wonder—d’you think it would be all right for me to ask her to visit us some time? I wouldn’t dare ask the cousin, but Miss Nicole was so kind and helpful, she made me realise what it must be like to have a daughter. I’d love to have her if she’d come.”
“Then I’d ask her if I were you.” Jean laughed a little. “As you say, Miss Burt is a different matter—though, remember, there’s a lot of good in Barbara, but she lacks something that Nicole has, that touch that makes the whole world kin. We all liked her, but no one exactly loved her, whereas Nicole has had all her life a surfeit of love—if such a thing is possible. It made it hard for poor Babs.”
“Ucha. Well, I thought we might be giving a dance later, and Miss Nicole said she’d help me any time I needed her. But, of course, it might be trying for her coming back, too.”
“Oh, if she refused you would understand why, but—— What did you say, Tilly? No, this isn’t my month to visit the Nursing Home.”
The talk drifted away from Mrs. Jackson into a maze of Christian names, and events of which she knew nothing. They knew each other so well all these people! She felt a little lonely sitting there, wearing a fixed smile, and listening to Tilly Kilpatrick lisping out gossip about meets and dances, and the whereabouts of this one and that, and her thoughts wandered, and presently she nodded. Lady Langlands’ voice saying her name made her sit very straight, and look incredibly wide awake.
“We are hoping, Mrs. Jackson, that you will take Lady Jane’s place in our Nursing Association. Perhaps you will go with me one day and see over our little hospital? It is part of our War Memorial, and we’re very proud of it.”
Mrs. Jackson nodded amiably. “I’m sure I’ll be very glad. I’ll do anything but speak in public—that I can’t do, but I’ll sit on Committees, and subscribe money and all that sort of thing. . . .”
“That’s the kind of member we want,” said Jean Douglas, while Mrs. Kilpatrick said, “Oh, Jean!” and giggled.
* * * * *
Driving home with her son Mrs. Jackson was a happy woman. The ordeal was over, and a wonderful plan was in her head. Nicole would come to Rutherfurd, Andy would love her at sight. Already she heard the sound of wedding bells. To have a daughter to entertain for her . . . to hear Nicole’s laughter in the house—— A rosy and golden haze seemed the future as she peered into it.
CHAPTER XVI
“Be this, good friends, our carol still—
‘Be peace on earth, be peace on earth
To men of gentle will.’ ”
W. M. Thackeray.
The Rutherfurds had settled down in the Harbour House in a way that surprised themselves. It seemed almost unbelievable that a bare three months ago they had known nothing of Kirkmeikle and its inhabitants and were now absorbed in the little town.
Nicole’s desire to know only Kirkmeikle, and Barbara’s determination to know as little of the town and as much as possible of the county, had resulted in a compromise. People from a distance were welcomed and their visits returned, and Barbara suffered Nicole’s Kirkmeikle friends, if not gladly, at least with civility. The Bucklers she liked, and the Lamberts and Kilgours, but Mrs. Heggie and Miss Symington she could not abide, and marvelled at her cousin’s tolerance for those two ladies.
“The appalling dullness of them, their utterly common outlook on life, their ugly voices and vacant faces, how you can be bothered with them, Nikky, passes me.”
“But it’s the way you look at them,” Nicole protested. “You expect to find commonness, so of course you do. I find nothing but niceness in Mrs. Heggie. Just think what fun she is to feed. I met her the day after we had had her to luncheon and she went over the whole menu with reminiscent smacks. ‘The grape fruit! delicious: and that new way of doing eggs . . . and such tender beef I never tasted . . . and the puddings were a dream. I simply couldn’t resist trying both, though I know it was rather a liberty the first time I had lunched with you, and the whole thing so recherché!’ Isn’t it worth while to have some one like that to a meal? I think it is. As for Joan Heggie, she is rather ugly and awkward, but she can write poetry. . . . Miss Symington interests me.”
“You like them,” said Barbara, “because they make a little worshipping court for you; you shine against their dullness.”
But Nicole only laughed, and called heaven to witness that she had a very rude cousin.
As for Lady Jane she was gently civil to every one who came, but preferred Mrs. Brodie and her noisy brood, and old Betsy with her talk of Tweedside, to any of them.
December is a month that, for most people, “gallops withal,” and it seemed to be Christmas before any one was prepared for it at the Harbour House.
It was the morning of Christmas Eve, and the drawing-room did not present its usual orderly appearance. White paper, gay ribbons, boxes of sweets and candied fruits, and crackers for the out-going parcels lay about on the big sofa, while the long table at the far end of the room was piled with parcels which had arrived by post. Nicole gazed round her ruefully, remarking that everything must be packed before luncheon, whereupon Barbara came briskly to the rescue.
“Say what’s to go into each parcel,” she said, “and I’ll tie them up. These are the local ones, I suppose?”
“Thank goodness, yes. All the others were packed days ago. I wish I hadn’t gone to Edinburgh yesterday and I wouldn’t be in such a state of chaos to-day! Are you sure you can spare the time? . . . Well, first a parcel for Mrs. Brodie from mother; just oddments to make a brightness