many bedrooms does that make?”
Mrs. Jackson asked the question in a somewhat weary tone. Since her husband had decided, two months ago, that what they wanted was a country-house, she had inspected nine, and was frankly sick of her task.
The girl she addressed, Nicole Rutherfurd, was standing looking out of the window. She turned at the question and “I beg your pardon,” she said, “how many bedrooms? There are twelve quite large ones, and eight smaller ones.”
They were standing in one of the bedrooms, and Nicole felt that never had she realised how shabby it was until she saw Mrs. Jackson glance round it. That lady said nothing, but Nicole believed that in her mind’s eye she was seeing it richly furnished in rose-pink. Gone the faded carpet and washed-out chintzes; instead there would be a thick velvet carpet, pink silk curtains, the newest and best of bedroom suites, a rose-pink satin quilt on the bed. In one of Hans Andersen’s tales he tells how, at a dinner-party, one of the guests blew on a flute made from a willow in the ditch, and behold, every one was immediately wafted to his or her proper place. “Everything in its proper place,” sang the flute, and the bumptious host flew into the herdsman’s cottage—you know the story? Nicole thought of it now as she looked at the lady, who might reign in her mother’s stead at Rutherfurd.
She was a stout woman, with a broad kind face under an expensive hat, and she stood solidly beside the old wash-stand and looked consideringly before her.
“We have the twelve rooms where we are,” she told Nicole. “Deneholm’s the name of our house in Pollokshields—but, of course, that’s including maids’ rooms. Four public rooms, a conservatory off the library, and central heating. Oh, Deneholm’s a good house and easy worked for its size: I’ll be sorry to leave it.”
“And must you?” Nicole asked.
Mrs. Jackson laid a fat hand on the towel rail, shaking it slightly, as if to test its soundness, and said:
“Well, you see, it’s Mr. Jackson. He’s making money fast—you know how it is, once you get started, money makes money, you can’t help yourself—and he thinks we’ve been long enough in a villa, he wants a country-house. It’s not me, mind you, I’d rather stay on at Deneholm. . . . D’you know Glasgow at all?”
“Hardly at all,” Nicole said, and added, smiling, “but I’ve often wanted to see more of it.”
Mrs. Jackson beamed at her. “You’d like it. Sauchiehall Street on a spring morning with all the windows full of light pretty things! or Buchanan Street on a winter afternoon before Christmas! I’ve had many a happy hour, I can tell you, going in and out of the shops. It’ll be an awful change for me if Mr. Jackson carries out his plan of living always in the country. Shop windows are what I like, and this”—she waved her hand towards the window with its view of lawn and running water, and golden bracken on the hillside—“this gives me no pleasure to speak of. I haven’t the kind of figure for the country, nor the kind of feet either. Fancy me in a short tweed skirt and those kind of shoes—brogues, d’you call them? A nice fright I’d be. I need dressing.”
She looked complacently down at her tight form in its heavily embroidered coat-frock—her fur coat had been left in the hall—and said solemnly, “What I’d be like if I didn’t corset myself I know not.”
Nicole had a momentary vision of the figure of Mrs. Jackson unfettered, and said hurriedly, “It’s—it’s comfortable to be plump.”
Mrs. Jackson chuckled. “I doubt I’m more than ‘plump’—that’s just your polite way of putting it—but what I say is I repay dressing. I’m not the kind that looks their best in deshabille. See me in the morning with a jumper and a skirt and easy slippers—I’m a fright. But when I get on a dress like this over a good pair of corsets, and a hat with ospreys, and my pearls, I’m not bad, am I?”
Nicole assured her that the result left nothing to be desired, and then, anxious to break away from such a personal subject, she said, “I do hope you will begin to like the country if you have to live in it. I think you’ll find there are points about it.”
Mrs. Jackson moved towards the door shaking her head dubiously.
“Not me. I like to have neighbours and to hear the sound of the electric cars, and the telephone always ringing, and the men folk going out to business and coming back at night with all the news. You need to be born in the country to put up with it. I fair shiver when I think of the dullness. Getting up in the morning and not a sound except, mebbe, hens and cows. One post a day and no evening papers unless you send for them. Nothing to do except to take a walk in the forenoon and go out in the car in the afternoon.”
“There’s always gardening,” Nicole reminded her.
“Not for me,” said Mrs. Jackson firmly. “I like to see a place well kept, but touch it I wouldn’t. For one thing I couldn’t stoop. Now, I suppose you garden by the hour and like it? Ucha? And tramp about the hills and take an interest in all the cottages? Well, as I say, it’s all in the way you’re brought up, but it’s not my idea of pleasure.”
Nicole laughed as they left the room together. She began to feel more kindly towards this talkative and outspoken lady.
“Now I wonder if there is anything more you ought to see. You took the servants’ quarters on trust, you’ve seen all the living-rooms and most of the bedrooms. There is another room, my mother’s own room, which you haven’t seen. Would you care——?”
“Oh, I’ll not bother, thanks, just now. I’ve enough to keep in my head as it is, and the time’s getting on.”
“Tea will be in the drawing-room now,” Nicole told her. “We ordered it early that you might have some before you start on your long drive home.”
“Oh, well—thanks. A cup of tea would be nice. And I’d like to see the drawing-room again to be able to tell Mr. Jackson right about it. I must say I like the hall. It’s mebbe a wee thing dreary with all that dark oak, but there’s something noble-looking about it too. I’ve seen pictures——”
She stopped on the staircase for a minute, studying the hall with her head on one side, then went on. “Of course, if we bought it we would need to have central heating put in at once. Mr. Jackson’s great for all his comforts. I see you’ve got the electric light. Yes—That’s the library to the left, isn’t it? Then the dining-room, and the billiard-room. I’m quite getting the hang of the house now, and I must say I like it. For all it’s so big there’s a feeling of comfort about it—grand but homely, if you know what I mean? . . . Deneholm, now, is comfortable right enough, always a nice smell about it of good cooking, and hot-water pipes, and furniture kept well rubbed with polish, but when all’s said and done it’s only a villa like all the other villas in the road. In our road nobody would ever think to have a stair like this without a carpet. This’ll take some living up to.”
Nicole was standing a few steps lower down, looking back at Mrs. Jackson, and she surprised on the face of that lady an expression half-proud, half-deprecating. Her bearing, too, had subtly altered; her head was held almost arrogantly, it was as if she saw herself cut from her moorings in Pollokshields, sailing as mistress of Rutherfurd in stately fashion over the calm waters of county society.
Opening the door of the drawing-room, Nicole said, “Is tea ready, Mother? Mrs. Jackson, my mother. My cousin, Miss Burt.”
Lady Jane Rutherfurd rose from her chair by the fire and smiled at the newcomer, as she held out her hand in greeting.
Nicole
