The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan
She hunched up her shoulders and sat forward, staring hopelessly into the fire.
“What a book I might write about Janet Symington, for instance, about all the thwarted forces of her nature going into good works, what a study I could make of her! But I can’t put down what I want to say, my pen seems to boggle at it.”
Nicole giggled, then abjectly apologised. “I’m so terribly sorry, but it is rather funny, you know. . . . And I can’t help being rather glad that you don’t feel equal to writing such a book, it would be neither elevating nor entertaining. The sort of books you talk about don’t shock me at all, I enjoy the cleverness with which they’re written, but I finish them with relief and push them away. Isn’t it better to try to write a book that people will go back to again and again? . . .” She looked at her wrist-watch. “Good gracious! is that the time? . . . Good-bye. Thank you for letting me see your den. Won’t you come and see us soon? Mother would love to talk to you about poetry. . . .”
It had always been dusk when Nicole had gone to tea at Ravenscraig, but now the days were drawing out and the thin bright light of early spring lay over everything as she stopped to look at the clumps of snowdrops in the border, and the grey-green shoots of daffodils, and the first bold yellow crocus.
But what had happened besides the spring? Surely there was a difference! The stiffly starched lace curtains had gone from the windows, gone also the brown Venetian blinds, and in their place were hangings of fine net. The large sheet of stained glass in the inner door had been replaced by small leaded panes, and when the door opened she found that the hall had been changed out of recognition. Instead of the imitation marble there was a soft grey paper; the wood was painted black, and soft powder-blue carpets covered the stairs and lay on the tiled hall. An old oak chest bearing two heavy Chinese lamps had taken the place of the hat-and-umbrella stand.
Nicole glanced round distractedly, feeling as if she had fallen out of a dream, inclined to clutch the solid arm of the servant to prove to herself that she was really awake, but the drawing-room door was being opened, and she stumbled through to greater surprises.
Was this the bleak room with its gaunt bow-window, its dingy walls hung with pale water-colours and enlarged photographs, its carpet a riot of chrysanthemums on a brown ground, its unwelcoming gas fire?
Nicole forgot her manners in her astonishment. She left her hostess standing with outstretched hand, while she stared, and stared again, gasping at last, “But it isn’t the same room; it can’t be.”
To begin with, it seemed twice the size. The walls were a warm apricot, the floor was polished, and bare, except for a fine Persian carpet in the middle, and a much smaller one at the fire-place, round which were grouped some capacious arm-chairs. The window was hung with curtains of blue and green and gold, beautiful glittering stuff that made one think of peacocks strutting in the sunshine. In the middle of the window was a small divan heaped with cushions covered with rich stuffs.
A grand piano stood in one corner, and the wall opposite the fire held a long low table with bowls of spring bulbs, above which hung the only picture the room contained, a glowing Eastern scene of hot sunlight and dark shadows. There was a long, slim gilt mirror over the mantelshelf, on which stood four old crystal candlesticks. In place of the gas fire with its baleful gleam, a fire of coal and logs sent flickering lights over tiles that gleamed like mother-o’-pearl.
Nicole shook hands with the owner of this room and sustained another shock, for Miss Symington was exactly the same. That she, too, should have suffered a change into something rich and rare was, perhaps, too much to expect, but it was, nevertheless, rather disconcerting to find her still in a blue serge skirt and a silk blouse and with an unfashionable head.
She looked rather bashfully at her guest as she said, glancing around the room, “We’ve been having some alterations made here, you will notice.”
Nicole sank into one of the arm-chairs and found it supremely comfortable. “Alterations!” she said. “I should think you have; but, tell me, was it your own idea, this room?”
“No,” said Miss Symington, looking rather affronted. “Could you imagine me thinking of anything like this? . . . I don’t know how it was, your house looked so different, but I had no idea how to set about improving mine, so I went to the best furnishing shop I knew, and they sent a man to see the house and advise me. He was quite young—he looked like an artist—and he told me this was his profession, advising people how to make their houses pretty. Isn’t that a queer profession for a young man?”
“Rather a jolly one, I think. So he thought out this scheme?”
“Yes. He said in this sort of villa there wasn’t much to work on, but he managed to change things a good deal.”
Nicole still gazed round the room. “Your young man seems to me a magician. You like it, don’t you? And is all the house changed?”
“I think I like it,” Janet said, rather doubtfully, “at least, I think the rooms that aren’t changed look odd. The dining-room is just as it was. You see, there are the preachers over the week-ends, and they might not feel at home in this sort of thing!” She waved a hand towards the new splendour of colour. “Only this room, and the lobbies and stairs, and my own room and the best spare-room are changed. You must come up and see them after you’ve had your tea.”
“But—d’you mind me asking?—what made you decide all of a sudden that the house wasn’t just as you liked it?”
Tea had been brought in and Janet was pouring it out in her deliberate way. She passed Nicole a cup, and in her slightly complaining voice said, “It was your crystal bowl that started it all.”
Nicole poured some milk into her tea and waited for enlightenment.
“On Christmas morning,” Janet went on, “I took it up to my room, and it was so useless and so pretty that my room didn’t seem the place for it at all. It made everything else look dull and ugly. I thought it was the wall-paper, and I got that changed; then the chintzes looked dingy and the carpet, and the bed, somehow, was wrong, and the light wood furniture—then I called in an expert.”
She stirred her tea in the genteel way that always amused Nicole, and sat very straight on the edge of a great comfortable chair. All round her was beauty and colour, but she was provokingly drab.
Nicole leaned forward. “There’s one thing still left to do,” she said coaxingly. “You’ve made your house beautiful, now give yourself a chance. Blue serge is very nice, but it’s not the most becoming wear for you. I want to see you in something softer—let me take the place of the furnishing young man and adorn you!”
Janet Symington flushed, pressing her lips firmly together, and Nicole cried, “I know what you’re thinking, but that seems to me such a mistake. Would God have troubled to make this world so beautiful if He had wanted us to go about all sad-hued and dreary? You simply don’t know how much harm is done by good women not knowing how to dress. I remember as a child, when I helped my mother to entertain Mothers’ Unions and Girls’ Friendlies and things like that, wondering why the best people—meaning the most serious, good people—nearly always had badly hung skirts! And to-day, when clothes are so easy and so suitable and so varied, it’s conservatism run mad not to wear what other people are wearing. You would never wear a blouse and skirt again if you knew the comfort of a little frock. You always look nice and tidy, but I could make you look so attractive. . . . Let’s go to Edinburgh and have a buy! It would be such fun. . . .”
* * * * *
About an hour later Nicole burst into the drawing-room at the Harbour House to find her mother listening to Barbara, who had just come in full of her afternoon at the Erskines’.
“I was to tell you, Nik, that they were very sorry you couldn’t come; but they quite understood that Kirkmeikle had great attractions.”
“I should think so indeed!” Nicole said, squatting down on a stool at her mother’s feet. “Kirkmeikle’s the most exciting place I ever struck. What do you think? When I went into Ravenscraig