But there was no real repentance in her tone.
CHAPTER VIII
“Lady Alice, Lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas.”
William Morris.
Jean Douglas insisted on taking Lady Jane to Kingshouse out of the way of the removal, and Nicole and Barbara, accompanied by two maids from Rutherfurd, an under housemaid, and a girl who had been “learning the table,” set out for Kirkmeikle to make the Harbour House habitable.
It proved a comparatively easy task. Mrs. Agnes Martin had managed to chase out the painters in good time, and had every cupboard and floor scrubbed white when they arrived; the furniture fitted in as if made for the rooms, and very soon the house took on a look of comfort.
Now, after a week, Nicole, all impatience, was planning for her mother’s coming.
“You’ll go to Edinburgh and meet her, won’t you, Babs? and I’ll be standing on the door-step to welcome you both. Let’s stage-manage it properly, for there’s a tremendous lot in one’s first impression of a new place. You’d better lunch in Edinburgh and come by the afternoon train—that’s much the nicest time to arrive, about four-thirty or five o’clock.” Nicole moved restlessly about the room—they were sitting in the drawing-room—altering things here and there, while Barbara sewed placidly.
“We’d better arrange for a car to be waiting at Thornton, don’t you think? The first look of Kirkmeikle from the station is frankly ugly, and to jolt down here in a mouldy cab would be very depressing. If you motor you will come through clean harvest-fields, and beside green links, with glimpses of the sea, and then there would be the Harbour, and the open door, and inside familiar things everywhere for her eyes to rest on. . . . If only it would be the sort of day I want—a touch of frost and the sky sunset-red, the stars beginning to appear, and . . .”
“Don’t expect it,” said Barbara. “Rain and an easterly haar smothering everything—that’s what’s most likely to happen.”
Nicole laughed. “In that case the house will look all the brighter . . . I’m pleased with it, aren’t you? Everything has worked out so amazingly well. Mrs. Martin, for instance. I admit I was rash, but you must own that she looks like being a woman in a thousand, and is certainly a cook in five thousand.”
Barbara shook her head. “You do exaggerate so wildly. But I must say she’s a good cook, and in these days a cook that will do without a kitchen-maid is something to be thankful for. And I think she’ll be good with the other servants; she seems to take an interest in them and tries to make things easy for them.”
“I know. She said to me, ‘Christina’s a rale thorough worker, and Beenie too: they’re baith wise lasses.’ It’s funny, isn’t it, that sharp upward tilt in the Fife tongue after the slow soft Border? We’ll get used to it in time, as well as to other things. The thing that matters is that Mother should feel herself at home.”
Three days later, when the hired car drew up at the door, the scene was almost exactly as Nicole had pictured it. The tide was out, and beyond the low wall a stretch of firm, ribbed sand lay white in the half light; a very new moon hung bashfully in a clear sky; the masts of a sailing-boat stood up black beyond the Harbour; somewhere near a boy was whistling a blythe air. The open door showed a hall glowing with welcome. On a Jacobean chest stood a great bowl of brown chrysanthemums and red berries; sporting prints that had been in the gun-room at Rutherfurd hung on the walls; the clock, the chairs, the half-circular table, the rugs on the floor were all old friends.
When Lady Jane entered the drawing-room she cried out with pleasure.
The curtains had not been drawn, for Nicole liked the contrast between the chill world of sea and gathering dark outside and the comfort within, and from the four long windows in a row could be seen the tide crawling up the sand under the baby moon. Inside a fire of coal and logs blazed, and amber-shaded lights fell on the old comfortable chairs, the cabinet of china, the row of pictured children’s faces over the mantelshelf. The tea-table stood before the sofa, with the familiar green dragon china on the Queen Anne tray; Lady Jane’s own writing-table was placed where the light from the window fell on it, with all her own special treasures—the big leather blotter with her initials in silver which had been the combined gift of her children the last birthday they had all been together, the double frames with Ronnie and Archie, a miniature of Nicole as a fat child of three.
Barbara put an arm round her aunt and led her to her own chair.
“Well now, dear, we’ve got our journeying over in the mean time, and here is Christina with the tea and we want it badly after our exiguous lunch. The Club was so crowded, Nik, and the food so bad: everything finished except stewed steak with macaroni, and tapioca pudding to follow.”
Nicole had been standing by one of the windows watching her mother’s face. Now she came forward to the fire.
“You must have been very late, you foolish creatures. Pour out the tea, Babs, and I’ll hand round the hot scones. See, Mummy, everything baked by Mrs. Martin! Yes, even that frightfully smart-looking iced cake. She’s a treasure, I assure you, procured by me single-handed, because Babs was sceptical and cautious.”
Lady Jane smiled at her daughter and took a bit of scone.
“Darlings,” she said, “what a pretty room! I think our things look nicer than they ever did before. . . . These four windows with the seats looking to the sea—I almost seem to have seen the room before, I feel so at home in it.”
“Then,” said her daughter, “we shan’t need to butter your paws. Isn’t that what you do to make a cat feel at home?”
“Meaning me a cat! Trust Nicole to think of some absurd thing. No, there’s no need for such extreme measures. I am more than happy to have my own dear things about me in this funny little sea-looking house, and my two girls to talk to. . . . I’ve all sorts of messages from every one. Jean’s kindness was endless . . .”
“Tell us,” said Barbara.
After dinner in the eighteenth century dining-room with its striped silk curtains drawn—an excellent dinner, for Mrs. Martin was anxiously determined to justify the faith Nicole had placed in her—they sat round the drawing-room fire. Lady Jane got out a strip of lace that she was making, Barbara knitted a child’s jacket: Nicole sat in a low chair with a book in her lap, a large book with dull brown covers.
Her mother looked curiously at it. “What have you got there, child? It looks ponderous.”
Nicole held it up for her mother’s inspection.
“I found it among Father’s books and it’s going to be a perfect god-send to me. I hear the sound of Tweed while I read. . . . It’s Sir Walter Scott’s Journal. Every night I shall read a bit, it ought to last me quite a while for there are two stout volumes, and afterwards I’m going to read Lockhart’s Life. I’ve got that too, in the closest print I ever saw, one fat calf-bound volume presented to Father as a prize in 1888—nearly forty years ago.”
“But, Nicole,” Barbara began, “you never could read
