The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
on me. I know, Babs, you think I would consult my own dignity if I refused. What do you say, Mums? Ought I to accept or not?”
Lady Jane gathered up her correspondence. “My dear, you know best yourself. Mrs. Jackson is a nice woman and she was very considerate to us. It won’t be easy, but it might be kind. You’d be a great help to her, and you needn’t stay more than a few days.”
“I might have to stay a week.”
“I daresay you would survive it.”
“And,” said Barbara, “I defy Nicole not to get a great deal of amusement out of the most unpleasant duty. It’s your lucky nature. I don’t think I could go, but I’m not likely to be asked. Naturally they want the more romantic figure, the dispossessed heiress, golden hair and all!”
“What nonsense, Babs!”
“Great nonsense, my dear, but true . . . By the way, I’ve a note here from Marjory Erskine. She wants us to go over this afternoon. Some people have arrived unexpectedly whom they’d like us to meet.”
“But I can’t, Babs, I’m so sorry. I’ve promised to go to tea with Miss Symington—a special invitation in writing. I haven’t seen her for weeks. They’ve had the painters in, and Alastair has said several times that his aunt was from home. It is unfortunate. I’d have loved a run with you this fresh good day. . . . Here comes Alastair with his shining morning face and his bag on his back, the complete scholar! Well, old man, is bat still t a b this morning? . . .”
That afternoon, having half an hour to spare before going to Ravenscraig, Nicole looked in at Knebworth, and found the Heggies, mother and daughter, at home.
“This is nice,” said Mrs. Heggie, rising large and fresh and rosy, in her black dress and white frillings, to greet her visitor. “We do see you seldom! Surely you’ll stay to tea?”
“I’d like to,” Nicole assured her, “but I’m engaged to drink a dish of tea with Miss Symington. Invited by letter. I thought it must be a party, but it can’t be if you’re not going.”
“Oh, it may be, it may be, but we’re not invited. In fact, I haven’t been asked inside the door of Ravenscraig since well before Christmas.”
“Oh well,” Nicole said soothingly, “Miss Symington may perhaps want to talk to me about something. I expect I’m the party! It’s much better fun when there are several.”
“Yes. She hasn’t much conversation and it’s difficult getting into a good comfortable talk with her. You’ve just to ask her how the Girls’ Guild’s getting on, and the Mothers’ Meetings, and talk about the price of food and how cooks waste. She’s not interested in anything you’ve been reading, and she’ll not gossip. I must say I like a more varied ‘crack’!” Mrs. Heggie laughed. . . . “And how’s Lady Jane?”
“Very well. She’s so busy writing letters this afternoon that she wouldn’t stir out to take the air. You see, she has five sisters and three brothers and numerous nieces and cousins, and they all love her dearly and write constantly.”
“Wonderful!” ejaculated Mrs. Heggie. “It’s so unlike all I’ve ever heard of the aristocracy! . . . Joan’s glaring at me, but I’m not saying anything wrong, am I?”
Nicole smiled at Joan, and reassured Mrs. Heggie.
“Of course not. You mean that from novels and the daily papers you would think the ‘aristocracy’ were thoroughly debased, engaged all the time in being divorced, and spending hectic days and nights gambling, drugging, swindling and dancing at night clubs—all that sort of thing! And, I suppose, it’s true in a way of a certain section, a small but very vocal section. But you would be amused if you met the members of my mother’s family and their friends. Some, I admit, are not bright and shining lights, but the majority are quite hopelessly respectable, and full of ‘high ideels,’ working away obscurely and conscientiously to leave the world a little better than they found it: husbands and wives quite loving and loyal; children brought up to respect the eternal decencies; master and servants liking and respecting each other! Even the people labelled ‘smart’ in the picture papers, whose names you see reading from left to right, are often quite dull-ly respectable. I’m afraid it’s disappointing!”
Mrs. Heggie nodded. “But far better,” she said. “Of course I knew Lady Jane was good, you can read it in her face, but I thought mebbe she was an exception, for, I’m sure the stories you hear. . . . And what is Miss Burt doing to-day?”
“Oh, Babs is off in her little car—I tell her she’s like a child with a new toy—to spend the afternoon at Queensbarns.”
“I suppose the Erskines are a very smart sort of people?”
“They certainly dress well,” Nicole said.
“I mean that they keep up a lot of style—a butler and all that, and go to London for the season. They’re not what you’d call provincial.”
“Perhaps not. . . . Anyway, they’re very kind.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Heggie, “they’re kind to you, naturally. But I’m told they’re a bit stand-offish. Mrs. Thomson—you know, Joan?—they simply ignored her.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Joan.
“Oh!” her mother protested. “She’s quite a nice woman and awfully willing to be hospitable.”
“A pusher and a climber,” said Joan.
“Oh well,” said Mrs. Heggie, with her usual large charity, “it’s only natural that she should want to better herself, as the servants say!”
“Miss Joan,” said Nicole, “do tell me, where do you do your writing? In some eyrie?”
Mrs. Heggie replied for her daughter. “Upstairs. Joan, take Miss Rutherfurd up to see.”
Joan looked uncertainly at Nicole, who said eagerly, “Won’t you? I’d love to see your workroom.”
The two girls went upstairs together, and Joan opened a door, remarking, “It’s not as tidy as it might be. I like to keep it myself.”
It was a small room looking to the sea, with the floor stained black and covered with one or two bright-coloured rugs. The cream walls were hung with a medley of prints and photographs. A small figure of the Venus of Milo stood on the mantelshelf. A book-case entirely filled one wall.
Nicole went to it and began conning over the books.
“You’ve got Raleigh’s Shakespeare—one of my first favourites. I think I can almost say it by heart. And what a line of poets—Walter de la Mare, A. E. Housman. . . . Do you sit at this table and write solemnly?”
“No. I generally crouch before the fire with a writing-pad on my knee. But I never write anything worth while, so what’s the good of it?”
“Well, I don’t pretend to be much of a judge, but your mother let me see some verses which seemed to me to have a touch of real magic.”
“Oh yes, I’ve got a certain facility in the writing of verses—but that’s not what I want to do. I want to write a book about life, a strong book, going down to the depths and rising to the heights, a book that talks frankly—not the pretty-pretty sentimental stuff that my mother and so many women love to read. I’ve heard them in book-shops at Christmas time: ‘I want a book, a pleasant book. . . . Are you sure this is pleasant all through?’ ”
Joan sat gloomily in a wicker chair filled with brilliant orange cushions. Her skin looked dingier than ever against the cushions and the many-coloured Fair Isle jumper that she wore, and Nicole wondered why such a wholesome-looking mother should have such an unwashed-looking daughter.
“If you want to write a book like that, why don’t you?” she asked.
“Because I can’t,” said Joan bitterly. “I don’t know whether