Andy, I don’t think you’d call it splendid; because everything in it seemed to be about as old as the Flood, but it was beautiful in a queer way. I think you’d like it awfully. And it was all panelled in squares, and above the fire-place there was a picture let in, a picture of—well, I declare if I haven’t forgotten who it was, Somebody of Somewhere. . . . Are you better pleased with these potatoes, Father? I tried another shop. Not any mutton for me, please, I’ll just take some vegetables. They’re quite your way of thinking about furnishing a room, Father, not a photo anywhere, and I don’t think I saw a single ornament. . . . Well, I stepped very gingerly over the polished floor till I found a good high chair, and presently the door opened and in came a girl. A young thing she looked, not more than two-and-twenty, with reddy-brown hair. I couldn’t tell you whether she was pretty or not, for her eyes fair beguiled me. She stood for a second and looked at me and an expression passed over her face that made me feel I had no business to be sitting there. But it was gone in a flash, and she came up and took my hand so kind like, and said, ‘Mrs. Jackson?’ Like that. D’you know, I never knew Jackson was a bonnie name until she said it. My! I’d give a lot to speak like yon. . . . Then she said, ‘You’ve come to see the house, haven’t you? Will you let me show you over?’ and off we went together. She took me everywhere and talked away as if she’d known me all her life. Sensible talk, too, considering who she is, for those kind of people are always queer. Just once, when we were looking at a long row of portraits, I asked who the handsome man was, and she said, ‘That’s my great-grandfather. He was mad.’ ”
Andrew Jackson laughed suddenly, and asked, “What did you say, Mother?”
“What could I say? I just said, ‘Fancy!’ Like that, ‘Fancy!’ But imagine anybody saying a thing like that about a relation.”
“Probably she only meant that he was known to be eccentric, a character.”
Mrs. Jackson nodded, willing to think the best of her new friend. “Mebbe that was it, Andy. . . . There are twelve large bedrooms and eight smaller ones—all very shabby; I don’t think they can have had anything papered and painted for ages. I got my tea, too. When we’d seen pretty well everything, this girl—I didn’t know who she was till later—took me back to the drawing-room. Tea was all ready, as cosy as you like before a fine fire, and two ladies sitting. One was Lady Jane Rutherfurd, the mother of the girl—my girl; and the other girl was a niece—Miss Burt.”
“And what,” asked her son, “was the name of ‘your’ girl?”
“Well, Andy, I can’t tell you, but it sounded to me like Nee-coal, and that’s a daft-like name. The other was plain Barbara. I didn’t like her much. I knew fine what she was thinking of me. Common. She handed me my tea as if I was a school treat. . . . But Lady Jane’s a fair delight. I saw in a minute where the daughter got her pretty ways. But, oh, poor soul, she did look sad! Of course, I made no remark, but I saw by the deep mourning that they had had a loss, and I talked away to make it easier for them. My girl’s awful cheery. It would take a lot to daunton her, but she’s young, of course; it’s hard for older folk. . . . I asked them if they’d be taking away all the furniture, but they didn’t say. It would be nice if we could keep it just as they have it, then we’d be sure it was right. . . . And, Father, I’d like if you could arrange to keep on the butler, he gives such a tone to the house. Some butlers are just like U.F. elders, but he’s more like an Episcopal clergyman, tall and clean-shaved and dignified. There’s a footman, too.”
Mr. Jackson stared at his wife.
“Good gracious, woman, what are you talking about? You’d think the whole thing was settled. D’you suppose I’d have any use for a place like that? A barracks of a place evidently, unsuitable in every way, far too far from Glasgow. . . .”
“Well,” said his wife, calmly stirring the sugar in her coffee, “you’re determined to buy a place in the country and there’s no good in swallowing the cow and choking on the rump. If we’re to have a place it may as well be a place we can be proud of, and we must keep it up in proper style, butlers and all. Rutherfurd’s the sort of place you’d like, Father, I know that. You might try and arrange to go with me mebbe the day after to-morrow. I didn’t commit myself in any way, I said you’d have to see it first. . . . Will we say Thursday?”
Mr. Jackson grunted, and, rising from the table, went off without a word to his study.
Andrew followed his mother out of the room, but instead of crossing the hall to the parlour, which was her favourite sitting-room, she began to mount the stairs.
“Why, Mother, is it not to be the parlour to-night?”
Mrs. Jackson gave a sigh. “No, Andy, I told them to light the fire in the drawing-room and we’ll sit there. If I’m to take up my position at Rutherfurd, the sooner I begin to practise the better.”
CHAPTER IV
“. . . In a kingdom by the sea.”
Edgar Allan Poe.
When Mr. Jackson went with his wife to see Rutherfurd the place conquered him. It was not, he complained, the sort of place he wanted at all; it was far too big, too far from Glasgow, too expensive to keep up, in fact, all wrong in every way. Nevertheless he entered into negotiation with the lawyer, and before October was well begun Rutherfurd had passed from the family who had held it through centuries into the hands of the hard-headed little business man from Glasgow.
“Mind you,” Mrs. Jackson said to Lady Jane, “there’s not the slightest hurry about your leaving the house. Though you stay here over Christmas we won’t mind. Indeed, I’d like fine to have another Christmas at Deneholm, and there is so much to arrange before we leave Pollokshields that I don’t believe we’ll flit till spring. It’s a nice heartsome time to flit anyway—so mind you take things easy.”
This was the more unselfish of Mrs. Jackson as she was secretly longing to get the workmen into Rutherfurd to start operations for central heating, and to see the paper-hangers make the bedrooms as she wanted them. But, as she told her husband, she had “both her manners and her mense,” for the Rutherfurds, realising that when a thing has to be done it were better it were done quickly, decided to leave as soon as they could find a roof to cover themselves and their belongings.
What they wanted to find was a smallish house in a pleasant village or country town, which they could furnish with the things they did not wish to part from, and keep as a pied-à-terre. They might decide to travel for a time, or pay visits, but there would always be this place of their own to come back to.
It seemed in the abstract a very simple thing, but when they set out to find the house the difficulties began. To begin with, they wanted to go somewhere quite out of reach of their present home. As Nicole pointed out, “We don’t want to decline into a small house in our own neighbourhood and have all sorts of casual acquaintances feeling that they have to be kind to us. ‘These poor dear Rutherfurds, we must ask them to dinner’—can’t you hear them? Of course, our own friends wouldn’t be like that, but we’d better go where we’ll be on nobody’s conscience.”
But there seemed to be some insuperable objection to every place they tried. If they liked a little town, there was no suitable house; if a suitable house was found, the locality was disappointing, and the house-agents’ advertisements were so misleading. An attractive description of a house—old-fashioned, well-built, with good rooms, and garden—suppressed the fact that
