The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
said firmly. Then—“What are they?”
“Queen Mary’s house is somewhere here,” Nicole said, as they walked along the old street. “I’ve forgotten my history-books but I remember The Queen’s Quair. It says that in St. Andrews the Queen lodged in a plain house where simplicity was the rule, and that the ladies wore short kirtles, and gossiped with fish-wives on the shore, rode out with hawks over the dunes, and walked the sands of the bay when the tide was down. And Darnley came here, that ‘long lad.’ St. Andrews will always in a way belong to Queen Mary. I wonder if the story will ever lose its magic?”
“Never,” said Simon, “so long as there are men and women to listen.”
Alastair was holding Simon’s hand. “Tell me the story,” he begged.
Simon looked down at the small face. “I’m afraid, my Bat, it wouldn’t interest you. Mary was Queen of Scotland, but she had been brought up in France and had learned to love sunshine, and gaiety, and courtly manners—everything we haven’t much of. Then she came to Scotland and found grey skies, and thought the people rough and unmannerly. And all round her were enemies, and though she had some loyal friends they couldn’t keep her from making nets for her own feet, and the enemies put her in prison and in the end they killed her.”
“What a rotten shame!” said Arthur.
“But why did they kill the Queen if she was good?” Alastair asked. “She was good, wasn’t she?”
“Perhaps not always,” Nicole said, “but she never had a chance.” She turned to Simon. “I’m always being rebuked for my tiresome habit of quoting things so now I hardly dare to, but do you know the lines Marion Angus wrote?” and she repeated—
“Consider the way she had to go,
Think of the hungry snare!
The nets she herself had woven,
Aware or unaware,
Of the dancing feet grown still,
The blinded eyes—
Queens should be cold and wise,
And she loved little things,
Parrots
And red-legged partridges
And the golden fishes of the Duc de Guise
And the pigeon with the blue ruff
She had from Monsieur d’Elbœuf.”
“Poor little soul,” said Simon. “Queens should be cold and wise. Imagine her here in this grey place, surrounded by men who wished her ill, she who loved little things!”
When they reached the ruins of the cathedral, “Who knocked it down?” Alastair asked.
“Perhaps Arthur can tell us,” Nicole suggested, but that worthy shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said, “but anyway it wasn’t me,” a reply which struck Alastair as the height of wit.
“Now, listen,” Nicole said. “John Knox had it destroyed. ‘Pull down the nests,’ he said, ‘and the rooks will fly away.’ ”
“The old blighter,” said Arthur. “What about the poor rooks? They’d have to build other nests.”
“By rooks he meant priests,” Nicole explained, “or anyway, papists. Oh, he was a root-and-branch man this same John Knox. Old Betsy says, ‘Mary was a besom, but auld John Knox was a guid man, and he made a graund job o’ oor Reformation.’ ”
“John Knox is a friend of Aunt Janet’s,” Alastair announced. “We’ve a picture of him in a long white beard. . . . Are these all tombstones, like we have in Kirkmeikle?”
“Yes,” said Nicole, reading one here and there. “I’ve all my countrymen’s passion for a graveyard. I can wander contentedly for hours and read epitaphs. Just look at this one.” She spelt out the name, and made out that the man who lay here had once occupied the Chair of Logic in St. Andrews University. . . . “And his family extends to both sides of the stone. I make fifteen: how many do you make? Ensigns and cornets—most of them seem to have gone to India. Well, I do call that a good day’s work—three wives, fifteen children, and a long useful life teaching logic. . . . And now it’s going to rain so we’d better see the dungeons at once.”
After the dungeons had been gloated over, the rain drove them into a cinema for an hour before tea. It was the first time Alastair had ever been in one, and Arthur instructed him. “They’re not real people, you know, they’re only pictures.”
But even in the cinema Arthur was tried by his friend’s too spontaneous behaviour, for not only did he laugh long and loud at the funny parts, but he insisted on addressing the actors who were “featured” on the screen. “I don’t like the look of you,” he told the villain. Against the driver who did not stop the train as quickly as seemed necessary when the hero and his horse lay helpless on the line his rage knew no bounds. Standing on his feet, with his hands clenched, he muttered against him. Towards the heroine he felt nothing but disgust. When in the “close-up” she was shown with large tears in her eyes, he could hardly bear it, and when the hero clasped her in a close and prolonged embrace, he nudged Arthur crossly to know what they were doing. “Kissing,” hissed Arthur shamefacedly, adding, “The silly asses!”
One wonders what Miss Symington thought of her nephew’s adventures when he related them on his return—a medley of mouth-organs, beer in hotels, bottle-dungeons and John Knox, Queen Mary being killed by wicked people, ladies kissing men, and trains that wouldn’t stop though a poor horse was going to be run over.
Alastair had yet another new experience during these Christmas holidays.
“Nikky,” Arthur said to his cousin one night, “the Sprat’s fearfully keen to go to something called a ‘Swaree.’ He says you get a ‘poke’ and ‘a service of fruit,’ and he wants me to go with him.”
Nicole laughed. “But, Arthur, have you any idea what a church soirée is like? True you get tea and a poke, but after that there are speeches and all sorts of dull things. I know what has fired the Sprat’s imagination—the service of fruit, but I’m afraid he’d find it very disappointing.”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, it’d be fine to come home late. The Sprat’s never been out at night.”
“When is it? To-morrow? Well, I’ll see what Miss Symington says.”
The next morning Nicole went to the Manse to ask for particulars, and found Mrs. Lambert in the study with clean towels over her arm. “I’ve got stuck here,” she explained, “when I should be getting the spare room ready for Mr. Bain of Kirkleven; he’s coming for the Sunday School Social to-night. You see, John has to take the chair, and I’m trying to give him some useful hints.”
“I wish you’d let it alone just now,” said Mr. Lambert. “Dear me, girl, can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Yes, but this is your job just as much as the other—— Please don’t go, Miss Rutherfurd. Take that chair by the fire and help me to convince my husband that a chairman must be both bright and tactful.”
“T-terrible!” said Mr. Lambert.
“Terrible indeed,” agreed Nicole, “but necessary. I’ve taken the chair myself sometimes, and I know how one has to smile and smile and be an idiot——”
“And whatever you do, John,” his wife continued, “be sure and praise Mr. Lawson, or we won’t see the right side of his face for weeks.” She turned to Nicole and explained: “Mr. Lawson is the superintendent of the Sunday School, a decent man, but dreadfully easily slighted. And talk about the teachers, John, and say something encouraging about their work. And when some one is singing, don’t just say coldly, ‘Miss So-and-so will sing,’ as if she had forced her way in; say something about how fortunate we are to have Miss So-and-so with us to-night—you know the sort of thing.”
“Yes,