The Rutherfurd Saga. Anna Buchan

      CHAPTER XXII

       Table of Contents

      “Why should calamity be full of words?”

       King Richard III.

      In the first week of March Nicole went out one day with Alastair looking for star-fish at low tide, slipped, and fell into a deep pool. Often she had done it before and had never been a penny the worse, and this time she laughed and made her wet shoes “chork” to amuse Alastair, and continued the search. But a wind came out of the east, a nipping and an eager air—and Nicole shivered and went home. The next morning she woke with a sore throat and a cough and a temperature, and it was evident that Rutherfurd would not see her that week. She admitted it herself, sitting up in bed, flushed with fever and distress at her own stupidity.

      “Who would have supposed that I would take cold?” she croaked, “a thing I almost never do. And no one would want me for a visitor, coughing and sneezing and infecting everybody! I must give up the thought of Rutherfurd, and I hate to fail Mrs. Jackson when all her arrangements are made. . . . Babs, won’t you go in my place? You would be twice as useful anyway.”

      “My dear, I couldn’t possibly offer myself.”

      “No, but send a wire now, and if she writes suggesting you . . .”

      “We’ll see,” said Barbara.

      Mrs. Jackson’s letter when it came was a wail of despair. How was she to cope with her festivities with no one to stand by her to counsel and direct? What did Nicole suggest? Would Miss Burt think of coming? And Barbara, after much persuasion, consented to go.

      “I’ll be a sort of death’s head at the feast,” she predicted. “You know I never can be gay to order as Nikky can. And I’ll hate the Jacksons when I see them really installed in our house. I feel already like Banquo’s ghost, or something like that.”

      “You’re not ethereal enough for that,” Nicole reminded her, laughing. “I don’t see you flitting spectral fashion. . . . Oh, don’t make me laugh, for then I cough. You look so nice, my dear. Assure Mrs. Jackson that you aren’t bringing her influenza, that this is only a common chill got through wet feet in an east wind, and I’m really better already. . . . Be sure and tell me what you think of ‘Andy.’ ”

      Barbara departed in the morning, and after luncheon Nicole announced that she couldn’t stay in bed one moment longer.

      “Do let me get up and sit by the drawing-room fire,” she begged her mother. “Bed does me such a lot of harm. It has the same effect on me that having his hair cut had on Samson. And it’s so boring in bed; if I were up I could find a thousand things to do. And you needn’t tell Dr. Kilgour.”

      “But you look so comfortable lying there with your pile of books and these lovely roses—Mr. Beckett must have sent to Edinburgh for them. . . . Have you read all the last batch of books that came from the Times?”

      “Never looked at them,” Nicole said cheerfully. “You don’t want to read new books in bed, they’re too wearing. These are all ‘tried favourites,’ as we say of puddings.”

      Lady Jane bent over to read the titles. “Starvecrow Farm, surely that’s an old book?”

      “Don’t you remember it, Mother? The runaway bride and the splendid old hostess of the inn. I know no book that gives you a more wonderful feeling of atmosphere. You absolutely live in that comfortable inn among the mountains, through these November days, and suffer with the girl and her lover. . . . And The Good Comrade. Why, Mums, you surely haven’t forgotten ‘Johnnie’ and the stove called ‘Bouquet,’ and the Dutch bulb-growers? . . . Apart from the great books, what a lot of jolly good books there are in the world!”

      “Yes,” said her mother, “but to go back to the subject of staying in bed, I’m afraid you’ll feel very wretched up.”

      “Not in the least. I’ve no temperature, and I’m not such an unsightly creature now that the cold has left my head and settled comfortably on my chest.”

      Lady Jane ceased to argue, and Nicole rose and dressed herself, adding as an invalid touch a rose-red satin dressing-gown with slippers to match, and assisted by Harris carrying things, took her way to the drawing-room. It was only five days since she had been in it, but she looked round appreciatively as if she had come back from a long journey, and settled down in one of the large arm-chairs by the fire with a sigh of satisfaction. After bed, she thought, what a joy to sit in a chair. A table drawn up by her side held a flask of eau-de-Cologne, a large bottle of smelling-salts, a tin of home-made toffee, and Simon Beckett’s roses, as well as her letter-case, in case she should think of working off some letters.

      “Now, Mother, you sit opposite with your work. It is so jolly to have you there and not feel that I should be begging you to go downstairs and not bother to sit with me. I do hate being unselfish!”

      Lady Jane picked up her work and smiled at her daughter.

      “It did seem a most unnatural thing to have you in bed. I hardly ever remember you being ill. Barbara was inclined to take bronchitis as a child, but you and the boys were like Shetland ponies. Even when you had measles and other childish ailments you were hardly ill.”

      “No. Measles was a very happy time. I remember hot lemonade as one of the chief joys, and The Just So Stories heard for the first time. I can feel the thrill of ‘the most wise Baviaan,’ and the tone of your voice as you read the delicious snatches of verse:

      . . . comes Taffy dancing through the fern,

       To lead the Surrey spring again. . . .

      How long ago it seems!”

      Nicole turned to tidy a pile of books on a stool, and presently said, “It does seem queer without Barbara. I always miss her so when she goes. Three o’clock. She’ll just be starting from Edinburgh. They’re to meet her at Galashiels. . . . D’you know, Mums, I believe Babs will be glad to be back at Rutherfurd even as things are. She pines for it: it meant such a lot to her. She felt secure there, impregnable. She will never be really happy in Kirkmeikle.”

      Lady Jane put down her work.

      “No,” she said. . . . “I can’t help worrying sometimes about Barbara. You are different. You have the gift of taking things as they come, and finding happiness in little things. I shouldn’t be unhappy about you though you missed what most women crave for most, but Barbara can’t make her own happiness, so to speak, it has to be made for her. It was always so as a child. . . . As you say, she misses Rutherfurd—it gave her a setting.”

      Nicole clasped her hands round her knees. “What a pity there isn’t a male Erskine needing a wife, or would châtelaine be a more imposing word? That would be a setting. . . . I suppose people are like jewels, dull and lustreless when badly set, glowing and sparkling in their proper environment—— Why, the sun has come out, Mums. You must go out and enjoy it. You’ve been terribly stuck in the house these last few days. Walk along to the Red Rocks or look in and see Mrs. Brodie. Have you been to see Betsy lately? She greatly relishes your visits.”

      Lady Jane looked out at the bright afternoon, then uncertainly at