The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
aye somebody to gie me a cry in an’ tell me what’s gaun on. Ye see, I’m aye here, an’ folk like a listener. . . . Did ye hear that ma son’s been lyin’? Ay, it sterted wi’ influenzy and syne it was pewmony. Ma gude-dochter cam’ to see me the nicht afore last. She’s that ill at Dr. Kilgour, the dowgs wadna lick his bluid efter the names she ca’ed him.”
“Why?” asked Nicole, startled. “What has Dr. Kilgour done?”
“Oh, when he cam’ an’ fand Tam sae faur through he gaed her a ragin’ an’ said he shuld hae been there lang syne. An’ he sterted an’ pu’ed down the winday—she keeps the windays shut for fear o’ dust comin’ in—an’ he was that gurrl aboot it that he broke a cheeny ornament.”
“But your son’s getting better?”
“Oh, ay, he is that. Dr. Kilgour’s a skilly doctor, but he’s offended ma gude-dochter.” Betsy smiled grimly. “An’ he tell’t some o’ the wives aboot here that they hed nae richt to hev bairns at a’, they didna ken hoo tae handle them. That’s true eneuch. I’ve aften said ye wad suppose it was broken bottles they hed in their airms.”
Nicole laughed as she rose to go. “Dr. Kilgour’s not afraid to speak his mind.” She looked out of the little window. “See the sun on the water, Betsy! You’ll admit Kirkmeikle is a nice little town?”
But Betsy shook her head. “I see naething in’t. I never cared for a toon. I aye likit the hill-sides and the sheep. Eh, wasna it bonnie tae see the foals rinnin’ after their mithers, an’ the mears stannin’ still to let them sook?”
“Very bonnie. And now I’m going to put your tea ready for you. Mrs. Martin sent a ginger-bread, and I know you like a bit of country butter and some cream at a time. These are fresh eggs. . . .” Nicole was unpacking the basket as she spoke.
“Weel,” said Betsy, watching her, “what’s guid to gie shouldna be ill tae tak’. It’s sic a thocht to move an’ I’m that blind, that whiles I juist dinna bather aboot ony tea, but a cup’ll be gratefu’ the noo. Thank ye kindly, Miss. . . . Na, na, I manage fine. Agnes Martin comes in every nicht when she gets the dinner cooked, an’ sees me tae ma bed, an’ pits a’thing richt for the mornin’. Ay, I’m weel aff wi’ her. . . .”
When Nicole was going up the brae towards the links she met Janet Symington walking with a man. She immediately found herself wondering who he could be, and smiled to think she was becoming as inquisitive as Betsy herself. Then she remembered that it was Saturday. Of course this was one of the preachers.
He was a tall man with a large soft face, and, evidently, quite a flow of conversation, for Miss Symington was walking with her head bent listening attentively. Looking up she saw Nicole and half stopped. Nicole also hesitated, and presently found herself being introduced to Mr. Samuel Innes. He held out a large soft hand (“He shakes hands as if he had a poached egg in his palm,” thought Nicole), and uttered a few remarks about the weather in the softest voice she had ever heard in a man.
“Mr. Innes is going to speak at the Hall to-morrow night,” Miss Symington said. “It’s always a great treat to have him.”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Innes, while Nicole faltered, “That is very nice. I hope it’ll be a good day.”
“There’s always a good turn-out when it is Mr. Innes,” said Miss Symington, looking up at her companion with what in any one else would have been called a smirk.
Mr. Innes repeated “Not at all,” and Nicole, making hasty adieux, fled.
“Now I wonder,” she said to herself, as she stood a minute looking out to sea, “I wonder if that gentleman means to hang up his hat, to use Mrs. Heggie’s descriptive phrase. . . . Mr. Samuel Innes. What a perfect Samuel he makes——”
CHAPTER XXI
“The only difference between the sentimentalist and the realist is that the sentimentalist’s reality is warm and beautiful, while the realist’s is glacial and hideous, and they are neither of them real realities either. . . .”
Reginald Farrer.
They were apt to linger over breakfast at the Harbour House. It was a pleasant time of day in the dining-room with its striped silk curtains and Hepplewhite chairs, more especially when the tide was high and the water lapped against the low wall, but always pleasant with the feeling of morning activity all round, voices from the harbour, children shouting as they went to school, wives having a gossip before they began their daily round.
The postman came, as a rule, when they were at the marmalade stage, and they read bits out of letters to each other. It had been so, too, at Rutherfurd. Something this morning took Barbara’s mind back to the old times when they had all been together in the sunny morning-room that opened on to the lawns and the brawling burn. Nicole had been a schoolgirl, swallowing her breakfast and rushing out with her brothers to get every minute out of the day, while she, in the restraint of new grown-upness, had sat with her elders sipping her second cup of tea and listening to Sir Walter reading out bits of news from the Scotsman.
There never had been, Barbara thought, a more truly good man than her uncle, so gentle and magnanimous, so full of humour, such a sportsman. Often, laughing, they had told him that he was in danger of the Woe promised to those of whom all men speak well. He was always asked to take the chair at political meetings that promised to be rowdy, because he was so courteous, so full of sweet reasonableness that the rudest were disarmed. She remembered how all his life his first thought had been his country. In his youth he had been in the Army, and when his father died he settled down at Rutherfurd, making the ideal landlord. When war broke out he had at once offered for service, and worked patiently through the four years at a dull but necessary job at the War Office, stinting himself of all but the barest necessities when food became scarce.
He was cheerful till Ronnie and Archie died. After that his laugh was seldom heard, though he went about among his friends and neighbours with his old kindly smile, always willing to listen, always ready to help. At home they had seen the change in him. The big man seemed to have shrunk, his clothes hung loose on him. He wandered much alone, and the men about the place shook their heads and told each other, “He’s sair failed, the maister; he’s gettin’ awfu’ wee buik. . . .”
Barbara came back to the present with Christina bringing in the letters. There were a few for Barbara and Nicole, but most of the budget went to Lady Jane.
“Why, Mother,” Nicole said, “I never saw any one get so many letters. You might almost be a Cinema Star.”
“It comes,” said her mother, busily opening envelopes, “of being one of a large and united family. This is from Constance.”
Nicole took up her own letters, looked through them and laid them down again to go and strew the usual meal on the window-sill for the birds. She sat half outside the window for a few minutes breathing in the fresh salt air.
Lady Jane looked up from her letters. “Anything interesting, Nikky?”
“Nothing much. There’s one from Mrs. Jackson asking me to Rutherfurd in the beginning of March. If I can come she means to send out invitations for a dinner on the 10th, and a dance on the 11th. Heard you ever the like?”
“It is very kind of Mrs. Jackson,” Lady Jane said.
“It is—very. She gives me no information about how things are going with her, but in a postscript remarks, ‘We are liking our new home quite well.’ I must say I call that rather cheek! Liking it quite well indeed! I feel inclined to say to her what Thomas Carlyle said to the lady who told him she accepted life. ‘My God, Madam, you had better.’ ”
Lady Jane laughed. “I had forgotten that,” she said; but Barbara glowered and asked, “Will you go? Could you bear to go?”