That poorly satisfy our eyes,More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies;
What are you when the moon shall rise?”
Mrs. Jackson stared at the girl. The light from the dancing flames caught the ruddy tints in her hair, and her upturned face in the rosy glow was like a flower of fire.
The two cousins, Barbara and Nicole, were like each other, yet oddly unlike. Nicole once said, “Babs is consistently handsome. I’ve only got moments of ‘looks.’ ” Barbara had very good features, but there was something buttoned-up about her face, something prim and cold. Her cousin had no features worth the mentioning, but her eyes laughed and sparkled and darkened with every passing mood, and she would suddenly flush into a loveliness which was far beyond the neat good looks of Barbara.
Barbara was inclined to be heavy, Nicole was light and supple, a “fairy’s child.” Nicole was four-and-twenty, Barbara was four years older. Nicole was all Rutherfurd, Barbara was half a Burt.
If Barbara had knelt on the fender-stool and addressed a picture in verse, she would have looked affected and felt a fool. Nicole made it seem a most natural thing to do.
Mrs. Jackson, as I have said, stared, her cup half-way to her mouth. “Elizabeth of Bohemia,” she murmured. “Wasn’t she assassinated?” The way she said “assassinated,” with a lilt in the middle of the word, was delicious, and Barbara, who saw that Nicole, whose sense of the ridiculous could “afflict her like an illness,” was giving way to laughter, rushed in with:
“That was the Empress of Austria, wasn’t it? An Elizabeth too.”
“Uch, yes, so it was. . . Well, I must say I admire your room. Not that we haven’t old furniture, too, we have; Mr. Jackson’s great on it, but I sometimes think our room’s more like a museum than a room to be comfortable in. For one thing, Father doesn’t like photos in it. I used to try and make it more homely, you know, with a photo here and an ornament there, but he said I spoiled the effect. It’s what the man who arranged it for us called a ‘period’ room, but what period I never can mind. I’m never in it except to see that it’s kept well dusted, and when we have people to dinner. I’ve got a wee room of my own”—she nodded happily to Nicole—“the morning-room it should be called, but I like to call it ‘the parlour.’ ”
“I expect,” said Nicole, “it’s a delightful room. Do have one of these hot scones.”
“Thanks. I don’t know if you’d call it a delightful room, but it seems delightful to me for I’ve all my things round me, my wee ornaments that I buy for souvenirs when I visit new places, and photos of old friends—I’ve got Andy (that’s my boy) at every year of his life—and the plush suite that we began life with in the drawing-room. Andy says I like the room because I can come off my perch in it! In a way he’s right. It’s not natural for me to be stiff and starched in my manner. I like a laugh, and I’m inclined to be jokesome, but, of course, I’ve got to be on my dignity when we’re entertaining people. Such swells as we get sometimes! That’s because Father’s connected with all sorts of public things, and I can tell you I’ve to be careful what I say.”
Mrs. Jackson laughed aloud, and Lady Jane said in her gentle voice:
“You must lead a very interesting life. So varied. I always think Glasgow seems such an alive place. Babs and Nicole and I once helped at a bazaar there and we loved it.” She turned to her niece. “You remember, dear, that big bazaar for a woman’s hospital? Mary Carstairs had a stall.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Jackson, “that bazaar. I was there! I had the Pottery stall—along with others, of course. . . . So you know Lady Carstairs? I’ve met her here and there, of course, but I’m not awfully fond of her. A frozen kind of woman she seemed to me, but I daresay she’s all right when you know her.”
“Oh, she is,” Nicole assured her. “She’s a cousin of ours, so we’ve had opportunities of judging. But I know what you mean about the frozenness. It’s a sort of protective barrier she has raised between herself and the host of casual acquaintances that she is compelled to have. She says they would overrun her otherwise. The wife of a public man—and such a very public man as Ted Carstairs—has a sorry time. You must feel that yourself sometimes.”
Mrs. Jackson gave Nicole an understanding push with her disengaged hand. “Be quiet!” she said feelingly. “Do I not know what it means at big receptions and things to have people come up and say, ‘How d’you do, Mrs. Jackson?’ shaking me by the hand as friendly as you like, and me with no earthly notion who they are. Of course I just smile away and never let on, but, as you say, it’s wearing, and then there’s the pushing kind that you’ve got to keep in their places—uch yes. . . . You’ll not have been troubled much with that sort of thing, Lady Ruth—Lady Jane, I mean.”
That gentle lady shook her head. “Indeed no. I’ve often been so thankful for my quiet life. With my wretched memory for faces I would be worse than useless.”
Mrs. Jackson leant forward and said earnestly, “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You’d be a great success, I’m sure, in any sphere of life.” She paused, and added, “If Mr. Jackson buys this place—of course, I don’t know whether he will or not—but if he does, I’m just wondering how I’m to come after you. It’ll be an awful drop, you know, from Lady Jane Rutherfurd to Mrs. Jackson.”
She laughed happily, evidently in no way depressed at the prospect, while Lady Jane, flushing pink at such unusual frankness, hastily suggested that she might have more tea.
Mrs. Jackson waved away the suggestion, too much interested in what she wanted to say to trouble about tea. Looking confidentially into the face of her hostess, she said, “How many servants d’you run this house with, if it’s a fair question?”
“How many? Let me see. There’s Johnson, the butler, he has always been with us, and . . .” She turned to her niece. “Barbara is our housekeeper. Barbara will tell you.”
“Johnson,” began Barbara, counting on her fingers, “and Alexander, the footman, that’s two. And the cook and kitchen-maid, and an under kitchen-maid, five: three housemaids, eight. Then there’s our maid, Aunt Jane, and Harris. That makes ten in the house, doesn’t it?”
“My!” ejaculated Mrs. Jackson. “Ten’s a lot. At Deneholm we’ve just the three—cook, housemaid, and tablemaid. I don’t know if I could bear to launch out into menservants. For all the time we’ve had a gardener I’ve never so much as given him an order, and I’m not a bit at home with the chauffeur. . . . I must say I liked the look of the butler when he let me in—a fatherly sort of man he looked. D’you think he would stay on with us and keep us right—you know what I mean?—and the footman, too, of course.”
She looked at Barbara, who said, “Well—I hardly know. As my aunt says, he has been at Rutherfurd a long time and he may feel himself too old to begin with new people. Alexander might——”
“Alexander,” said Nicole, “is like his namesake, ‘hopelessly volatile.’ ”
“I see,” Mrs. Jackson murmured, looking puzzled. “Have you a large family, Lady Jane?”
Before her mother could reply Nicole broke in, “There are only we three now.”
“Is that so? Well, well. I’ve only the one son, Andy. . . . I can’t tell you what I came
