what is Miss Burt doing to-day?”
“Oh, Babs is off in her little car—I tell her she’s like a child with a new toy—to spend the afternoon at Queensbarns.”
“I suppose the Erskines are a very smart sort of people?”
“They certainly dress well,” Nicole said.
“I mean that they keep up a lot of style—a butler and all that, and go to London for the season. They’re not what you’d call provincial.”
“Perhaps not. . . . Anyway, they’re very kind.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Heggie, “they’re kind to you, naturally. But I’m told they’re a bit stand-offish. Mrs. Thomson—you know, Joan?—they simply ignored her.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Joan.
“Oh!” her mother protested. “She’s quite a nice woman and awfully willing to be hospitable.”
“A pusher and a climber,” said Joan.
“Oh well,” said Mrs. Heggie, with her usual large charity, “it’s only natural that she should want to better herself, as the servants say!”
“Miss Joan,” said Nicole, “do tell me, where do you do your writing? In some eyrie?”
Mrs. Heggie replied for her daughter. “Upstairs. Joan, take Miss Rutherfurd up to see.”
Joan looked uncertainly at Nicole, who said eagerly, “Won’t you? I’d love to see your workroom.”
The two girls went upstairs together, and Joan opened a door, remarking, “It’s not as tidy as it might be. I like to keep it myself.”
It was a small room looking to the sea, with the floor stained black and covered with one or two bright-coloured rugs. The cream walls were hung with a medley of prints and photographs. A small figure of the Venus of Milo stood on the mantelshelf. A book-case entirely filled one wall.
Nicole went to it and began conning over the books.
“You’ve got Raleigh’s Shakespeare—one of my first favourites. I think I can almost say it by heart. And what a line of poets—Walter de la Mare, A. E. Housman. . . . Do you sit at this table and write solemnly?”
“No. I generally crouch before the fire with a writing-pad on my knee. But I never write anything worth while, so what’s the good of it?”
“Well, I don’t pretend to be much of a judge, but your mother let me see some verses which seemed to me to have a touch of real magic.”
“Oh yes, I’ve got a certain facility in the writing of verses—but that’s not what I want to do. I want to write a book about life, a strong book, going down to the depths and rising to the heights, a book that talks frankly—not the pretty-pretty sentimental stuff that my mother and so many women love to read. I’ve heard them in book-shops at Christmas time: ‘I want a book, a pleasant book. . . . Are you sure this is pleasant all through?’ ”
Joan sat gloomily in a wicker chair filled with brilliant orange cushions. Her skin looked dingier than ever against the cushions and the many-coloured Fair Isle jumper that she wore, and Nicole wondered why such a wholesome-looking mother should have such an unwashed-looking daughter.
“If you want to write a book like that, why don’t you?” she asked.
“Because I can’t,” said Joan bitterly. “I don’t know whether it’s my upbringing or my subconscious self or what, but no matter how untrammelled my thoughts may be, when I put pen to paper I become so moral as to be absolutely maudlin.”
She hunched up her shoulders and sat forward, staring hopelessly into the fire.
“What a book I might write about Janet Symington, for instance, about all the thwarted forces of her nature going into good works, what a study I could make of her! But I can’t put down what I want to say, my pen seems to boggle at it.”
Nicole giggled, then abjectly apologised. “I’m so terribly sorry, but it is rather funny, you know. . . . And I can’t help being rather glad that you don’t feel equal to writing such a book, it would be neither elevating nor entertaining. The sort of books you talk about don’t shock me at all, I enjoy the cleverness with which they’re written, but I finish them with relief and push them away. Isn’t it better to try to write a book that people will go back to again and again? . . .” She looked at her wrist-watch. “Good gracious! is that the time? . . . Good-bye. Thank you for letting me see your den. Won’t you come and see us soon? Mother would love to talk to you about poetry. . . .”
It had always been dusk when Nicole had gone to tea at Ravenscraig, but now the days were drawing out and the thin bright light of early spring lay over everything as she stopped to look at the clumps of snowdrops in the border, and the grey-green shoots of daffodils, and the first bold yellow crocus.
But what had happened besides the spring? Surely there was a difference! The stiffly starched lace curtains had gone from the windows, gone also the brown Venetian blinds, and in their place were hangings of fine net. The large sheet of stained glass in the inner door had been replaced by small leaded panes, and when the door opened she found that the hall had been changed out of recognition. Instead of the imitation marble there was a soft grey paper; the wood was painted black, and soft powder-blue carpets covered the stairs and lay on the tiled hall. An old oak chest bearing two heavy Chinese lamps had taken the place of the hat-and-umbrella stand.
Nicole glanced round distractedly, feeling as if she had fallen out of a dream, inclined to clutch the solid arm of the servant to prove to herself that she was really awake, but the drawing-room door was being opened, and she stumbled through to greater surprises.
Was this the bleak room with its gaunt bow-window, its dingy walls hung with pale water-colours and enlarged photographs, its carpet a riot of chrysanthemums on a brown ground, its unwelcoming gas fire?
Nicole forgot her manners in her astonishment. She left her hostess standing with outstretched hand, while she stared, and stared again, gasping at last, “But it isn’t the same room; it can’t be.”
To begin with, it seemed twice the size. The walls were a warm apricot, the floor was polished, and bare, except for a fine Persian carpet in the middle, and a much smaller one at the fire-place, round which were grouped some capacious arm-chairs. The window was hung with curtains of blue and green and gold, beautiful glittering stuff that made one think of peacocks strutting in the sunshine. In the middle of the window was a small divan heaped with cushions covered with rich stuffs.
A grand piano stood in one corner, and the wall opposite the fire held a long low table with bowls of spring bulbs, above which hung the only picture the room contained, a glowing Eastern scene of hot sunlight and dark shadows. There was a long, slim gilt mirror over the mantelshelf, on which stood four old crystal candlesticks. In place of the gas fire with its baleful gleam, a fire of coal and logs sent flickering lights over tiles that gleamed like mother-o’-pearl.
Nicole shook hands with the owner of this room and sustained another shock, for Miss Symington was exactly the same. That she, too, should have suffered a change into something rich and rare was, perhaps, too much to expect, but it was, nevertheless, rather disconcerting to find her still in a blue serge skirt and a silk blouse and with an unfashionable head.
She
