“Auntie Fiddlesticks!” said Rowan, and suddenly yawned. “I’m sleepy. I must go to bed or I’ll never be able to cope with my brats in the morning. Good night, Murray. Thank you for listening to my tale of woe.”
“I hope you are going to take my advice,” he said, quite seriously. “The fellow needs a lesson, you know, Rowan. It would do him a power of good.”
“I’ll consider it,” said Rowan, and blew him a kiss from the door.
“Queer,” thought Murray, flinging himself into a chair which groaned protestingly at this brutal treatment. “Queer how girls spend all their time bothering about men! I’m blowed if I’d like it.”
“Stony-hearted,” Rowan had called him in fun, earlier this evening. But he didn’t think he was. It was just that he had so many other things to occupy his mind, and girls were only one among the rest. He did think about Susan Rattray, and sometimes he wondered if she thought about him. If she was like other girls, then she did.
Of course, Susan and he were just friends. They had talked it all out as they trailed round the golf course pretending to play, but more often than not walking slowly on with their clubs slung on their backs, to the scorn and disgust of those devotees of the Royal Game who happened to be following them, and who wondered audibly why people came on to the course at St. Andrews if they did not mean to play golf.
“We are far too young to get married, or even to be engaged,” Murray had said. “I’m only twenty-two and a half, and you’re just nineteen; we both ought to have a good look round first before we think of settling down.”
“People our age do get married, Murray,” Susan had pointed out.
“More fools they!”
“I’d like it,” Susan had said, dreamily. “A dear little house, and a baby, or two babies—”
“Yes, yowling all night, and strings of nappies airing in front of the fire all day. No, thanks. I’m not ready for that yet.”
Then it had struck Murray that perhaps he was being selfish, and not seeing her point of view.
“Look here, Susan,” he had said, dropping the bag of clubs and taking her hands in his—they had reached a deserted hollow—“if you don’t want to wait, go ahead. Only it will have to be someone else, not me. I know I don’t want to marry and settle down for a bit.”
“I—I thought you were fond of me!” Susan had looked like the hurt child she was.
“I am. Very fond. I don’t expect to meet anyone I’m fonder of than you. But don’t you see we ought to give ourselves the chance?”
He had talked her into unwilling agreement in the end, just as an infuriated cry of “Fore!” made them snatch up the clubs and hurry on.
He had felt rather a brute, but certain that he was right.
He still felt a brute, and he was still quite certain he was right, but he had not taken into account this feminine absorbedness in men and their own hearts. Rowan’s hint that Hazel was unhappy, her own worry over the ridiculous Angus, her rueful accusation: “It’s your sex that causes most of our troubles,” had disturbed him.
“Murray! I thought you had gone to bed,” said Mrs. Lenox, coming into the quiet drawing-room, all shadows except for the little pool of light cast by the lamp on the table beside him.
“I’m just going,” Murray said. “Why are you still up?”
“I’m never very early, as you know. I do hope,” said Mrs. Lenox, twitching a chair-cover straight, “I do hope this affair, Holly going out to lunch with Mr. Milner, will be all right. And I really must get the summer covers off these chairs and have them laundered and put away.”
Murray, accustomed to his mother’s habit of making two totally irrelevant remarks in the same breath, ignored the chair-covers, and replied: “Why shouldn’t it be all right? Do you suspect old Milner of lecherous designs on Holly?”
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Lenox, with great dignity. “There are times, Murray, when I think you really have a very nasty mind.”
“Oh, I don’t expect it’s a patch on yours, darling,” Murray assured her cheerfully. “I just say things, but you think them.”
“I don’t do anything of the kind.”
“Then why are you agitating about Holly and Papa Milner?”
“Only because I’m afraid that Holly may giggle dreadfully or knock things over,” said his mother. “You know how clumsy she can be when she’s excited or nervous.”
“She’ll be all right,” Murray said. “Without your eagle eye on her she won’t be nervous, and if she does spill anything, you won’t be there to see. Don’t worry, Mummy, your duckling has tuned into a very creditable cygnet. Let her try her nice new wings.”
CHAPTER 16
Mrs. Ferrier was putting on her hat in a pleasurable flutter. Charles did not take her out very often (though more frequently than Adam did), and she liked to look her best for him.
To-day she was meeting him for lunch at L’Apéritif. It was a fine autumn morning, one of those days when Edinburgh is especially beautiful, and she thought she would start early and walk quietly eastwards along George Street.
Mrs. Ferrier had been no more than ordinarily good-looking as a young woman, tall and with rather a high colour. Now, the fine modelling of her bones could be seen, her colour had gone, and her slim height gave her an air of great distinction. As she walked along in her quiet well-cut coat and skirt, using a long-handled umbrella as a cane, not because she required support but because she considered, quite rightly, that it suited her to do so, she matched the wide street in elegance.
“Mr. Milner,” said Holly, who had been placed by her host in the seat which commanded the whole room, while he had his back to it, “I know it isn’t polite to make remarks about people, but a lady has just come in who looks like what I think a duchess ought to.”
“Then she is almost certainly not a duchess,” replied Mr. Milner. “I’m sorry I can’t see her, but if I turn round it really would not be very polite.”
“She’s coming past our table,” hissed Holly.
Even his short acquaintance with the youngest Miss Lenox had taught Montagu that he had better look at once, in case she made her interest too marked. So he glanced quickly up at the tall woman who was being led past by the head waiter, inwardly commending Holly’s taste, and in the same instant a young man following in the wake of the “duchess” caught his eye.
“Good morning, Ferrier,” said Mr. Milner, with a smile.
Charles Ferrier halted, wondering who the schoolgirl could be that the old rip had got hold of.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, politely.
“Allow me to introduce you. Holly, this is Mr. Ferrier. Miss Holly Lenox, Ferrier. I think you know her elder sisters and her brother.”
“I’m afraid I must join my aunt. She’s having lunch with me,” Charles said, but he lingered.
“Perhaps you would both care to have coffee and a liqueur with us?” suggested Mr. Milner.
“If my aunt says yes, we’d like it very much, sir,” said Charles, and made his way towards his own table, where Mrs. Ferrier was already sitting.
“Tell me who you were talking to, Charles,” she said, with lively interest, almost before he had sat down. “I’ve ordered sole for myself, by the way.”
“Good, if that’s what you want. Fillet steak for me—sauté potatoes, and lots of ’em,” said Charles to the waiter. “And spinach or something green. And a carafe of vin rosé.”
“Now tell me. Who are they?” demanded Mrs. Ferrier. Charles began to laugh. “It’s old Milner. Miss Balfour’s mysterious brother-in-law, the chap who turned up about six weeks after his wife died in the summer. I’d never heard of his existence before—thought he’d died years ago. And the girl is the youngest Lenox daughter. Holly, her name is.”
“Dear me, how interesting. And Mrs. Lenox and Miss Balfour are having lunch here, too, on their own. I wonder if either party knows that the other is here,” said Mrs. Ferrier.
“Don’t suppose so,” said Charl
es. “By the way, would you like to drink your coffee with old Montagu Milner and his protégée? He’s asked us to.”
“Oh, yes, do let us. I love meeting people, and I’d like to see something of your Miss Balfour now that the grim sister isn’t there any longer, poor soul,” said his aunt.
“Mrs. Milner was calculated to freeze anyone’s blood who dared to call on her, but Miss Balfour will like to see you,” Charles said.
“I liked Mrs. Lenox,” murmured his aunt. “I wonder if we could ask her and some of her family to the flat one evening?”
To her surprise, Charles seemed a little dubious about this. “I don’t know,” he said, hesitatingly. “Adam’s so dashed unsociable, Aunt Maud.”
“Well, we could have them on an evening when he’s working late at the Hospital, though I think it’s ridiculous for him to live like a hermit. He ought to meet people—young people—”
“Meaning girls?” enquired Charles.
“Why not?” said Mrs. Ferrier.
“Oh, well, Adam’s a bit of a misogynist these days.”
“Then he must stop being one,” said his aunt with determination. “Oh! Here comes our food. How good it looks and smells! It’s heaven to eat a meal without having to deal with its ingredients in the raw first.”
“You must come out to lunch again with me soon,” said Charles.
“Well, Charles, you know I come every time you ask me,” said Mrs. Ferrier. “Yes, all the sauce, please,” she added, to the waiter, who was helping her to sole.
When he had served Charles and was gone, Mrs. Ferrier looked at her well-filled plate with a sigh of satisfaction.
“I think one of the greatest advantages of having reached my age is that one does not mind being greedy,” she observed.
“I should never have called you greedy,” Charles said. “You enjoy your food, which is so much nicer for the person you are lunching with.”
Lunch proceeded very pleasantly, and Charles, who found his aunt in this mood particularly good company, was not over-anxious to join Montagu Milner and his fledgeling Lenox for coffee.
His Aunt Maud, however, seemed to think she would like it, so Charles, after going across to tell Montagu, came back and escorted Mrs. Ferrier to Mr. Milner’s table.
Once he had made the necessary introductions Charles relapsed into amiable silence. There was no need for him to talk, and not much chance either, he thought, with Aunt Maud and old Monty chattering nineteen to the dozen, and the child Holly joining in as well.
He was immensely amused by Holly’s open disappointment when she heard that her mother and Miss Balfour had also been lunching at L’Apéritif. Aunt Maud, bless her, was soothing the child by saying negligently that two women lunching together was not at all the same as being given lunch by a man.
“I suppose you have involved yourself in all sorts of social activities with the Kirkaldy Crescent households, Aunt Maud?” he said, as they walked westwards again, he to go back to his office, Mrs. Ferrier to drop in at her bridge club for a quiet rubber before tea.
“If by that you mean have I said that I should like to call on Miss Balfour and Mrs. Lenox, Charles, you are right,” answered his aunt serenely. “I can’t say that it seems exactly a whirl to me.”
“It’s the thin end of the wedge.”
“You know perfectly well that whoever I ask to the flat it doesn’t interfere with you and Adam in the least. If you want to meet them, you can. If not, you don’t need to,” replied Mrs. Ferrier.
“Rather different when they happen to be my clients, Aunt Maud!”
“Well, it will do you no harm to see more people, dear. Yes, I know you are going to say you see more than enough in your office, but you ought to have some social life as well.”
Charles laughed. “In fact you are engineering all this to give Adam and me a social life, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Partly,” his aunt admitted. “And partly because I like Miss Balfour and I think I should like to know the Lenoxes.”
They had reached the corner where their ways diverged, and they stopped for a moment while Charles thanked his aunt for lunching with him, and Mrs. Ferrier thanked him for having asked her.
Then they separated, Mrs. Ferrier pleased with her plan for introducing some young life into the quiet flat in Lyon Place. Charles wondering how Adam would feel when he found that he had to meet the Lenox girls again in his own home.
* * *
Mrs. Ferrier did not believe in letting the grass grow under her feet, but she happened to be rather more occupied than usual with committee meetings, and it was almost a fortnight later when she went to call on Miss Balfour in Kirkaldy Crescent.
Edna, answering the door with a pleasant assurance which had grown on her under Miss Balfour’s gentle rule, said that she was very sorry, but her mistress was out. “She’s gone to tea at Number Six’m,” she added.
“Oh, well, I was going to call on Mrs. Lenox in any case, so I shall find her there.” said Mrs. Ferrier.
She rang the bell of the house next door, and this time it was not a maid in cap and apron who opened to her, but a girl dressed in a red jersey and dark green skirt, a slim young creature as vivid as her clothes.
“You must be one of Mrs. Lenox’s daughters, I think,” said Mrs. Ferrier, smiling at her. “I am Mrs. Ferrier. I have come to call on your mother, and I hear that Miss Balfour is with her.”
“Do come in,” said the girl, hospitably, and holding the door wide open. “I’m Rowan. Mother will be so pleased to see you, and Miss Dorothea, too.”
Mrs. Ferrier was accustomed to feeling at ease no matter where she found herself, but she could not remember ever being so instantly at home anywhere except in her own house as she was in Mrs. Lenox’s drawing-room.
Rowan and Holly went away at once, one to make fresh tea, the other to fetch an extra cup and saucer. To Mrs. Ferrier’s protest that she was being a bother Mrs. Lenox merely replied that, of course, she must have tea.
“How can we enjoy our own last cups if you haven’t had any?” she asked. “And a fresh pot will be an excuse for Miss Dorothea and me to have a last last cup. We are both what Mrs. Baird, my daily, describes as ‘Tea-Jennies’.”
Mrs. Ferrier wanted to hear about Murray and the girls, and their mother was quite happy to talk about her family, which she did in her usual impersonal manner, except in Murray’s case. She could not help the warmer note in her voice when she mentioned him, Mrs. Ferrier noticed, and wondered if she herself sounded like that when Adam was the subject of conversation. She fancied not; she thought that she probably spoke of Charles and Adam in exactly the same tone.
What a busy, happy family they seemed, Mrs. Ferrier thought, and as she said so, wondered inwardly if they ever quarrelled.
As if in answer to this Mrs. Lenox said: “Oh, yes, we are happy. Of course, there is a good deal of wrangling at times. I suppose it can’t he avoided when there are four girls in the house. But it is usually just a flare-up and then it is over until next time. And Murray has a sharp tongue, like his father, which sometimes makes for trouble.” But she sounded rather proud of this than otherwise.
Mrs. Ferrier, herself the mother of one son and almost the mother of her nephew, was more interested in the girls than in Murray. If she had had a daughter it would probably have been the other way about, she supposed.
In the kitchen Holly hung about while Rowan waited for the kettle to boil, refusing to face the drawing-room alone, but very willing to babble about Mrs. Ferrier.
“Don’t you think she’s just like a duchess, Rowan?” she asked for the fifth time, leaning against the kitchen table so heavily that even that massive piece of furniture moved a trifle. “Don’t you?”
“I’ve hardly ever seen any duchesses, except the royal ones, and Mrs. Ferrier isn’t a bit like them,” answered Rowan, adding obligingly: “But I know what you mean, and she is very good-looking and elegant.”
“Elegant!” breathed Holly. “Yes, sh
e is. She’s elegant. And Mr. Ferrier, her nephew, you know the one, he’s Miss Dorothea’s and Mr. Milner’s lawyer—”
Rowan was pouring boiling water into the tea-pot with care. “Yes, I know him, at least, he came to a party we had while you were at Kersland.”
“Pigs to have it when I wasn’t here,” said Holly dispassionately, and returned at once to her original topic. “I think Mr. Ferrier is like Rudolf Rassendyll,” she announced.
“Red hair and a beard?” murmured Rowan. “I must say I hadn’t noticed—”
“Now you’re just trying to be clever and awfully grown-up. I didn’t mean red hair, of course,” cried Holly.
“All right, all right. You meant that if Charles Ferrier had red hair, etc., he would be like Rudolf Rassendyll, or if Rudolf had not had red hair he’d be like Charles Ferrier.”
“Do you call him Charles?” asked Holly.
“I don’t call him anything,” Rowan said. “Come on, for goodness sake and don’t forget the cup for your duchess! I’ve only met the man once, but as he has a cousin called Adam Ferrier I—well, I said Charles to—what does it matter, anyhow?” she ended, wondering why she had entered on this lengthy explanation to her young sister.
Galloping upstairs in Rowan’s swift wake, the cup and saucer rattling ominously in her hand, Holly gasped: “What’s the Adam one like?”
Rowan slowed her pace a little. “Better-looking than Charles Ferrier,” she answered fairly. “But I don’t think he’s so nice.”
“I don’t believe he could be,” said Holly, fervently.
“He’s your duchess’s son, remember,” said Rowan, but as she opened the drawing-room door while speaking, Holly had no chance to reply.
They found the three ladies so engrossed in discussion that they had not noticed how long the tea had been in making its appearance.
Rowan and Holly exchanged eloquent glances, and sat down quietly, a little in the background, to listen.
“Of course, they are very comfortable and most beautifully looked after,” Mrs. Ferrier was saying. “But they do miss a little life, poor old dears. That is why the Committee asked me if I could get up an entertainment for their amusement, something of their very own. I thought an all-Scottish programme would please them best, and I have got two good singers and a violinist, but I would like something rather less static as well. A dance or two would be good.”
Near Neighbours Page 16
