"Were you by any chance coming in?" she asked.
"Yes," said Mr. Reid; "I was going to ask if I might see over the house."
"Surely," said Jean. "But--you"re not going to buy it, are you?"
The face she turned to him was pink and distressed.
"Did you think of buying it yourself?" Peter Reid asked.
"_Me_? You wouldn"t ask that if you knew how little money I have. But come in. I shall try to think of all its faults to tell you--but in my eyes it hasn"t got any."
They went slowly up the flagged path and into the square, low-roofed hall. This was not as his mother had it. Then the floor had been covered with linoleum on which had stood two hard chairs and an umbrella-stand.
Now there was an oak chest and a gate-table, old bra.s.s very well rubbed up, a grandfather clock with a "clear" face, and a polished floor with a Chinese rug on it.
"It is rather dark," said Jean, "but I like it dark. Coming in on a hot summer day it is almost like a pool; it is so cool and dark and polished." Mr. Reid said nothing, and Jean was torn between a desire to have her home appreciated and a desire to have this stranger take an instant dislike to it, and to leave it speedily and for ever.
"You see," she pointed out, "the little staircase is rather steep and winding, but it is short; and the bedrooms are charming--not very big, but so prettily shaped and with lovely views." Then she remembered that she should miscall rather than praise, and added, "Of course, they have all got queer ceilings; you couldn"t expect anything else in a cottage.
Will you go upstairs?"
Mr. Reid thought not, and asked if he might see the sitting-rooms.
"This," said Jean, opening a door, "is the dining-room."
It was the room his mother had always sat in, where the horsehair arm-chair had had its home, but it, too, had suffered a change. Gone was the arm-chair, gone the round table with the crimson cover. This room had an austerity unknown in the room he remembered. It was small, and every inch of s.p.a.ce was made the most of. An old Dutch dresser held china and acted as a sideboard; a bare oak table, having in its centre a large blue bowl filled with berries and red leaves, stood in the middle of the room; eight chairs completed the furniture.
"This is the least nice room in the house," Jean told him, "but we are never in it except to eat. It looks out on the road."
"Yes," said Peter Reid, remembering that that was why his mother had liked it. She could sit with her knitting and watch the pa.s.sers-by. She had always "infused" the tea when she heard the click of the gate as he came home from school.
"You will like to see the living-room," said Jean, shivering for the effect its charm might have on a potential purchaser. She led him in, hoping that it might be looking its worst, but, as if in sheer contrariness, the fire was burning brightly, a shaft of sunlight lay across a rug, making the colours glow like jewels, and the whole room seemed to hold out welcoming hands. It was satisfactory (though somewhat provoking) that the stranger seemed quite unimpressed.
"You have some good furniture," he said.
"Yes," Jean agreed eagerly. "It suits the room and makes it beautiful.
Can you imagine it furnished with a "suite" and ordinary pictures, and draped curtains at the windows and silver photograph frames and a grand piano? It would simply be no sort of room at all. All its individuality would be gone. But won"t you sit down and rest? That hill up from the town is steep."
Peter Reid sank thankfully into a corner of the sofa, while Jean busied herself at the writing-table so that this visitor, who looked so tired, need not feel that he should offer conversation.
Presently he said, "You are very fond of The Rigs?"
Jean came and sat down beside him.
"It"s the only home we have ever known," she said. "We came here from India to live with our great-aunt--first me alone, and then David and Jock. And Father and Mother were with us when Father had leave. I have hardly ever been away from The Rigs. It"s such a very _affectionate_ sort of house--perhaps that is rather an absurd thing to say, but you do get so fond of it. But if I take you in to see Mrs. M"Cosh in the kitchen she will tell you plenty of faults. The water doesn"t heat well, for one thing, and the range simply eats up coal, and there is no proper pantry. Your wife would want to know about these things."
"Haven"t got a wife," said Peter Reid gruffly.
"No? Well, your housekeeper, then. You couldn"t buy a house without getting to know all about the hot water and pantries."
"There is no question of my buying it."
"Oh, isn"t there?" cried Jean joyfully. "What a relief! All the time I"ve been showing you the house I"ve been picturing us removing sadly to a villa in the Langhope Road. They are quite nice villas as villas go, but they have only tiny strips of gardens, and stairs that come to meet you as you go in at the front door, and anyway no house could ever be home to us after The Rigs--not though it had hot and cold water in every room and a pantry on every floor."
"Dear me," said Peter Reid.
He felt perplexed, and annoyed with himself for being perplexed. All he had to do was to tell this girl with the frank eyes that The Rigs was his, that he wanted to live in it himself, that if they would turn out at once he would make it worth their while. Quite simple--They were nice people evidently, and would make no fuss. He would say it now--but Jean was speaking.
"I think I know why you wanted to see through this house," she was saying. "I think you must have known it long ago when you were a boy.
Perhaps you loved it too--and had to leave it."
"I went to London when I was eighteen to make my fortune."
"Oh," said Jean, and into that "Oh" she put all manner of things she could not say. She had been observing her visitor, and she was sure that this shabby little man (Peter Reid cared not at all for appearances and never bought a new suit of clothes unless compelled) had returned no Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Probably he was one of the "faithful failures" of the world, one who had tried and missed, and had come back, old and tired and shabby, to see his boyhood"s home. The tenderest corner of Jean"s tender heart was given to shabby people, and she longed to try to comfort and console, but dared not in case of appearing impertinent. She reflected dismally that he had not even a wife to be nice to him, and he was far too old to have a mother.
"Are you staying in Priorsford?" she asked gently.
"I"m at the Temperance Hotel for a few days. I--the fact is, I haven"t been well. I had to take a rest, so I came back here--after thirty years."
"Have you really been away for thirty years? Great-aunt Alison came to The Rigs first about thirty years ago. Do you, by any chance, know our landlord in London? Mr. Peter Reid is his name."
"I know him."
"He"s frightfully rich, they say. I don"t suppose you know him well enough to ask him not to sell The Rigs? It can"t make much difference to him, though it means so much to us. Is he old, our landlord?"
"A man in his prime," said Peter Reid.
"That"s pretty old, isn"t it?" said Jean--"about sixty, I think. Of course," hastily, "sixty isn"t really old. When I"m sixty--if I"m spared--I expect I shall feel myself good for another twenty years."
"I thought I was," said Peter Reid, "until I broke down."
"Oh, but a rest at Priorsford will put you all right."
Could he afford a holiday? she wondered. Even temperance hotels were rather expensive when you hadn"t much money. Would it be very rash and impulsive to ask him to stay at The Rigs?
"Are you comfortable at the Temperance?" she asked. "Because if you don"t much care for hotels we would love to put you up here. Mhor is apt to be noisy, but I"m sure he would try to be quiet when he knew that you needed a rest."
"My dear young lady," gasped Peter Reid. "I"m afraid you are rash. You know nothing of me. I might be an impostor, a burglar--"
Jean threw back her head and laughed. "Do forgive me, but the thought of you with a jemmy and a dark lantern is so funny."
"You don"t even know my name."
"I don"t," said Jean, "but does that matter? You will tell it me when you want to."
"My name is Reid, the same as your landlord."
"Then," said Jean, "are you a relative of his?"
"A connection." It was not what he meant to say, but he said it.