a wireless set to the laborious penning of a blotted epistle (he was no scholar) to his fever-stricken brother and sister.
“Yes,” Lady Jane agreed, “it was wonderfully nice having a boy in the house—the sound of his heavy boots on the stairs, the way he had of knocking up against things, the way he whistled and sang refreshed one, somehow. There is something stagnant about the air of a house that contains only women.”
Nicole laughed. “My dear, you make the most remarkable statements in that gentle voice of yours. How angry some women would be to hear you! I know what you mean, and in a way I agree. No matter how well women get on together, how much at one they are, there’s a lack of vibration, so to speak. We are too neat, too tidy, too regular in our ways. A man is like a strong wind blowing through the house; his boots are muddy, and he smells of fresh air, and pipes, and peat-smoked tweeds. And his views on life are different, and his voice—— One gets tired of women’s voices, they’re so peepy.”
Just then, Christina’s voice in the dusk announced, “Mr. Beckett.”
“How odd,” said Nicole, as the visitor found his way cautiously to the fireside.
“What is?”
“That you should come in at this moment . . . We were talking, Mums and I, about men, and agreeing that life is a little stagnant without them—almost too peaceful. We’re missing Arthur, you see—— We’ll not have the lights yet, Christina.”
“I’m missing Arthur too,” Simon confessed, as he settled himself into a chair. “He’s a fine little chap. He ought to do well at Eton—he has such a tremendous respect for tradition.”
“He has indeed,” Nicole laughed. “Can you imagine two boys more utterly different than Arthur and Alastair? Arthur rather arrogant and intolerant, as self-conscious as he can be, and with it all a very decent chap, and Alastair, the friendliest little mortal on earth, not caring what any one thinks but quite set on his own odd opinions! And they were such good friends. Arthur adored the Sprat. I don’t wonder. There is something about that fantastic little face and the too-large overcoat that makes my heart turn to water in the most ridiculous way. . . . By the way, we didn’t ask have you had tea?”
“Yes, thanks. I’m just back from a long tramp.”
Nicole laid cigarettes and matches on the table beside him, while her mother said:
“Nikky, you’ve always been a slave to little boys. Providence must have intended you to be matron in a preparatory school. You would so utterly have enjoyed comforting them when they arrived homesick, and giving them a good time when they had measles and mumps.”
“Yes, I only wish I had been Alastair’s aunt instead of Miss Symington. Not that she isn’t good to him, and she’s certainly a far better instructor for youth than I am, but—a child cannot live by bread alone.”
Simon reached for an ash-tray. “The great lack about Miss Symington,” he said, “is that she can put no glamour into things. Life to her is just so many days to be devoted to work, meals, and—in strict moderation—play. Everything is what it seems, and she is merely grieved when the Bat tries to liven up things by telling her he has found an elephant’s nest in the garden. Whereas, some people can make even a dull job like supping rice-pudding into a thing of delight to a child. . . . I remember my mother used to make a quarry in the middle and fill it up with milk, and tell us a story about it, until it all went down. I can’t imagine Miss Symington telling a story, I can’t imagine her ‘making believe.’ I daresay all that sort of thing can be carried too far, but when it’s never there at all the child misses a lot.”
Lady Jane took up her embroidery frame. “I shouldn’t think,” she said, as she chose her various silks, “that your childhood was wanting in glamour.”
Simon turned to her with a smile.
“No,” he said. “. . . There were three boys of us with no sister, but my mother was so young and jolly we never missed one. She loved to bird-nest with us, and didn’t mind a bit lying for hours in swampy places, and she rode with us, and played cricket and tennis. . . . My mother used to say that she had to be extra kind to me because I was the middle one. Ralph was important being the eldest, and Harry, as the youngest, had been petted, but I had to fight for my own hand. The three of us were pretty near an age, and tremendous friends. . . . I can remember getting home for holidays in winter, when mother made toffee and roasted chestnuts in the school-room, and we tried who could tell the weirdest ghost story; and spring mornings when we got up at six and went away through the meadows; and long summer nights in the Highlands where my father rented a stretch of river. . . . My mother died in 1916, when we were all away from her. Ralph was with his ship, I was in the trenches—Harry had been shot down while flying. She worked too hard and got pneumonia, but it was really Harry’s going, and the anxiety about Ralph and me that killed her. Father said so.”
There was silence for a minute, then Simon said:
“Ralph died at Zeebrugge. . . . My father was a good deal older than my mother and after she went he seemed suddenly to become an old man—not keen and interested any more—just as if he had come to an end of hope. When the news came that Ralph had gone he just seemed to give it up, and only lived a month after him—so I’m alone you see, and . . .”
His voice trailed into silence.
Nicole knelt down to stir the fire. In a little, “We must have light,” she said. “Can you find the switch, Mr. Beckett? . . . Dear me, how we blink! Like owls in the sunlight. . . .”
She got up to pull the curtains, standing for a few minutes to look out. When she went back to the fireside her mother and Simon were deep in talk. Simon was speaking:
“I was always very keen on climbing and had done a good deal, and it was a tremendous chance to be allowed to join the Everest Expedition. And then, you see, I had nobody to be anxious about me. I suppose I was lucky not having to feel selfish about leaving people—but that cuts both ways, for I admit it was pretty beastly to come home and have no one to tell. . . .”
“And the book?” said Lady Jane. “I’m afraid you must have got very little done lately, you gave so much of your time to Arthur.”
“Oh, you’d wonder! I’ve begun to rewrite and polish. At present there’s hardly a decently put sentence in it, so I’ve my work cut out for me.”
“Don’t they say, ‘hard writing makes easy reading?’ Probably what you write will be much pleasanter to read than the outpourings of a facile pen. I should think that must be the undoing of many writers—the knack of writing blithely on and on?”
“Perhaps,” Simon said; “anyway, it’s beyond me. I sit in awe of the people who can write page after page about nothing. Bare facts baldly narrated—that’s my style!”
He laughed and took a cigarette.
“And when you finish it,” said Lady Jane, “will you leave Kirkmeikle? For in that case . . .”
“Finished or not, I must leave in March. The preparations for the next Expedition are being made, and I’m going out before the others. There’s a tremendous lot to do—you’d wonder—both here and out there.”
Lady Jane was threading her needle with a strand of bright silk. She stuck it into the embroidery and leant forward to the young man.
“But—you don’t
