but because that room was to me a sort of shrine. You know,” she turned to Nicole, “how the summer sun about six o’clock strikes through the west window and falls on the picture? I used to plan to be there to see it. . . . And now that fat woman tricked out in silly finery will sit there by the fire, and the shrine is desecrated, things that were lovely all made common and unclean. . . . Find my handkerchief, can’t you, Nikky? It’s in my bag. . . . What a fool I am. . . .”
She threw her arms round Lady Jane.
“I’m a Job’s comforter, aren’t I? Bildad the Shuhite should be my name! . . . But I promise you Mrs. Jackson won’t enjoy her ill-gotten gains. She will sit in lonely splendour, I’ll see to that.”
“No, no,” Lady Jane protested. “Indeed, Jean, I want you to be kind to her as only you know how to be kind. You are far the human-est person in these parts. Make things easy for her.”
“Not I. Things have been made far too easy for her as it is.”
“But, my dear,” Nicole cried, “if it hadn’t been the Jacksons it would have been some one else—probably very objectionable, pretentious people. In a way the Jacksons are benefactors. They have saved those things for Rutherfurd when they might have had to be all scattered abroad. . . . Everything in its proper place, Mistress Jean. You remember your Hans Andersen? Out we go, swept by the great broom of Fate. Exit the Rutherfurds. Enter the Jacksons.”
Jean Douglas put both hands over her ears.
“Don’t say it, I hate their very name. And how I shall hate them when I see them in the flesh!”
“No,” said Nicole, “I defy you to hate Mrs. Jackson.”
* * * * *
Late that night, when every one was in bed and the house very still, a light figure slipped downstairs into the dark drawing-room.
Quietly she pulled back the curtains and undid the shutters. Outside a full moon was shedding its ghostly light. How strange and dreamlike it looked, so distinct and yet so unreal—the wild thorns with their bare branches, the glimmer of the burn, the lawns like tapestry. Somewhere up on the Lammerlaw a wild bird cried strangely. Near the house an owl hooted. Nicole drank in the beauty thirstily. It was as if she were fixing it on her mind against a time when she would no longer behold it.
Presently she turned and went over to the fire-place.
In the moonlight the picture gleamed palely. The “Queen of Hearts” looked down on the girl kneeling on the fender-stool. It was nothing to her that the upturned face was very pale, and wet with tears.
CHAPTER VI
“Of many good I think him best.”
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Mr. Jackson bought Rutherfurd practically as it stood. He grumbled loudly at the sum it cost him, but in his heart he was as well pleased as the buyer in Proverbs: ”It is naught, it is naught,” saith the buyer, but when he goeth away he boasteth.
The house was what he had always vaguely dreamed of, always desired to attain to, for he had a real love and appreciation of beautiful things. He did not try to deceive himself about his own or his wife’s fitness for their position; he knew they might be rather absurd in their new setting; his hopes were built on his son. Andrew, he determined, would play the part of the young laird and play it well. There was no need for him to trouble the Glasgow office much; he must shoot, and fish, and take to all country sports. His father had a picture of him in his mind’s eye, going about in knickerbockers, with dogs, a member of the County Council, on friendly terms with the neighbouring landowners. And of course he would marry, some nice girl of good family, and carry on the name of Jackson. There was nothing to be ashamed of in the name; it stood for straightness and integrity. Jackson of Rutherfurd—it sounded well, he thought.
Mrs. Jackson, though very much excited at the thought of the change, was beset with fears. She called on all her friends and broke to them with a sort of fearful joy the news that the Jacksons were about to become “county.” They were all very nice and sympathetic, except Mrs. McArthur, who was frankly pessimistic and inclined to be rude.
Mrs. Jackson would not have cared so much had it been one of her more recent friends who had taken up this attitude, but she had known Mrs. McArthur all her life and had always admired and respected her greatly.
“You’re leaving Glasgow, I hear,” she said coldly, the first time Mrs. Jackson went to see her after the great step had been taken.
“Have you heard?” that lady asked blankly. “I came to-day to tell you.”
“Bad news travels fast,” said Mrs. McArthur, sitting solidly in a high chair and surveying her friend as if she were seeing her in an entirely new light.
Mrs. McArthur was a powerful-looking woman with a large, white, wrinkled face. She belonged to an old Glasgow family and loved her city with something like passion. Holding fast to the past, she had an immense contempt for modern ways and all innovations.
“Ucha,” Mrs. Jackson began nervously. “Mr. Jackson’s bought a place and we’re leaving Glasgow for good. It’s a wrench to leave a town where you were born and brought up and married and lived near sixty years in—— And I’m fond of Glasgow. It’s a fine hearty place, and I’d like to know where you’d find a prettier, greener suburb than Pollokshields.”
Her hostess said nothing, so she went on talking rapidly. “And the shops and all, and concerts and theatres; we’ll miss a lot, but still—— Rutherfurd’s a fine place and not that awful far away. I really don’t know how I’ll get on at all, entertaining and all that, and a butler, and taking my place as a county lady, but I’ll just have to do my best. If only I’d had a daughter! What a help she’d be now. But it’s no good blaming Providence, and Andy’s a good boy to me.”
She smoothed down her lap and sighed, while Mrs. McArthur gave a sniff and said:
“Well, I think you’re making a mistake. Some people are fitted for a country life and some aren’t. I’d hate it myself. We go to Millport every summer for July and August, and the coast’s bright compared to the country, steamers and what not, but two months is more than enough for me. Indeed, I wouldn’t go away at all, if it weren’t that I value town all the more when I get back.” She watched a maid put a large plump tea-pot on the tray before her and covered it with a tea-cosy embroidered with wild roses, and then continued: “A coast house is bad enough, but how anybody can buy ‘a place’ as they call it, a house away at the end of an avenue, removed from all mankind, dreary beyond words. . . .” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling in mute wonder, while Mrs. Jackson cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“Well, but, Mrs. McArthur,” she began, “some people like the country, you know, and——”
“Some people have queer tastes, Mrs. Jackson. Look at the people that are always going away about the North Pole!”
Mrs. Jackson failed to see the connection, but she murmured, “That’s so,” in a depressed tone; then, more brightly, added: “You couldn’t call Rutherfurd cold. Rather sheltered it is, with flowers blooming away like anything still, and
