by Guy McCrone
III
Her talk with Robin had left Lucy restless. And now, the night being fine, she had put on her furs, looped up her long dress, come out of doors and was walking on the promenade by Garavan Bay.
It was a night of strong moonshine. Out there she could see every elegant curve of a great white yacht as it lay in the trembling black and silver of the harbour. The light blinked steadily at the end of the breakwater, and she could now see townspeople moving here and there along it, dark shapes, darkly discernible against the deep, luminous blue of the sky. At times, when there was quiet for a moment, a girl’s laughter crossed the water to her.
Lucy folded her arms beneath the furs that wrapped her, and strolled along thinking. What was Robin Hayburn to herself, or she to Robin? And yet he filled her mind tonight. Denise St. Roch had, she could see, captivated the young man. Whether by intent or not, Lucy did not know. Standing still for a moment, she bent over the railings of the promenade, looked at the dark water running in and out among the stones down there beneath her, and fell to considering this. But wasn’t that just what she had wanted? Hadn’t she caused these two to meet? And hadn’t she done so in the best of good faith, because she had thought Denise would amuse him, and give his exile some interest? What was wrong with that? And further, hadn’t she suggested to the American that Robin Hayburn might need some educating, some shaking out of the Moorhouse pattern?
Lucy turned from the railing and continued to walk along slowly. One or two people passed her. A squat, middle-aged French couple. A young fisherman and his girl. Two Englishmen in evening clothes, elderly and fat, discussing the London Stock Market under a Mediterranean moon and leaving behind them the scent of fine cigars. Lights streamed from long windows, outlining stucco balustrades crowned with pots of aloes and cactus.
But now it looked as though something had happened to Robin. Lucy understood very well all young enthusiasm’s new-discovered passion for an art. She had once felt all this herself. But with Robin there were other considerations. Was it driving him into a condition of over-sensibility? Driving him to a frenzy of effort to please his charming teacher? An effort that might defeat the purpose of his stay down here in the south? What if the boy were really falling in love with this not inexperienced woman? Moving towards an affair with her?
But why should she, Lucy Hamont, trouble about Robin Hayburn? Once again Lucy asked herself this question. She supposed she had come to like him. She understood his background, as he himself had said just now, and this, perhaps, made her feel protective towards him. But protective from what?
Somewhere far away a dog was barking. From a little wine-shop just beyond her, near where the road branches upwards from the Hanbury fountain towards the Italian frontier post, she could hear the notes of a melodeon and the voices of young men singing. Lucy stood still to listen, to let her thoughts run free for a moment, then she went slowly on.
Protect him? Why indeed should she bother? Had she not broken away from the old conventions herself? Taken her existence into her own hands and come through, on the whole, not badly? Was she jealous of Denise? Yet how could she be? She, Lucy, was a middle-aged woman more than twice Robin’s age. Or was an instinctive loyalty rearing its head? A loyalty to the people they had—or so Lucy imagined—both of them sprung from? To old ties? The old stricter ways?
She reached the fountain, decided this was far enough, and turned back. Now the ancient town was in front of her. The huddled buildings rising up on their hill and making squares, oblongs and angles of black shadow in the white moonshine, were pierced here and there by lighted windows. On the quay beneath them a chestnut-seller’s brazier was burning.
She had met Denise in Paris, accepted her for what she was, and liked her very well. Denise was a free woman. Gallant in her way. Seeking support from no one, and in no need of it. Taking life as she found it; bestowing her affections as it pleased her. A hard-working craftswoman, but, it was said, no great artist. Yet she mixed freely with the species, was popular, and talked their jargon.
Was Robin worth more than that? Was there, beneath his callowness, some real spark of talent? And had he mistaken Denise’s easy, sophisticated friendship for something better?
Walking faster now, Lucy Hamont told herself not to be a fool. What if he had? And really, if Denise St. Roch had decided to seduce him, what could she do about it? He was a young man, and why should a young man run away from experience? Still—
In her hotel garden she stood for a moment looking up at Robin’s balcony. The glass doors were shut and the net hangings were drawn across, but a desk lamp was lit, and she could just discern a young man’s head as it bent over a work-table. As she came into lunch next day, she found he was not in his usual place. He was sitting with two others. When he saw her, Robin stood up.
“Mrs. Hamont, you must remember my uncles David Moorhouse and Stephen Hayburn.”
The men got to their feet.
Lucy felt her cheek flush a little as she held out her hand. “Of course I remember your Uncle David! I ought to! We were at school together. And I think perhaps I have met Mr. Hayburn.” She saw that David’s colour had risen too. “But I didn’t know you were coming,” she exclaimed. “Robin didn’t tell me.”
“They came down on a night train,” he explained. “They wanted to surprise me.”
His uncles smiled rather foolishly.
“But I’m keeping you from lunch,” she said. “We’ll see each other afterwards.” She left them and crossed to her own place.
So that was David Moorhouse! After more than twenty years! She sat crumbling her bread and watching him. He was half turned away from her, thus making it possible for her to examine him.
The David Moorhouse who had, just before his marriage to Grace Dermott, told her he loved her. But David had, in the end, married Grace and the solid prosperity she brought with her. Who was she, Lucy Hamont, to say that David had been wrong—or even dishonourable? Dishonourable to herself, perhaps. Though in her own world Lucy had seen worse. Yet he had hurt her. He had touched her affections as no one else ever had. After the David incident she had become more detached, more for herself, less easily stirred.
Well, there he was, sitting across the room from her, with his years of prosperous marriage written all over him. The chestnut hair that she remembered had turned sandy, and there was a thinness on the top. The old good looks were there, but he had grown thick and important.
This meeting had fussed her. But now that she was given time to look at him, Lucy was pleased to find that the sight of the middle-aged David Moorhouse left her unmoved. It would be amusing to talk to an old friend. That would be all.
He found her in the garden after lunch.
She looked up at him smiling. “Well, David? How many years is it?” She saw that he, on his side, was still somewhat embarrassed.
“Years since what?” he asked, a little foolishly.
“Since we last saw each other, of course,” she said gaily.
“It must be—let me see—I have a son of nearly twenty-one. It must be over twenty-two years. A long time, Lucy.”
“Is your son like you?”
“No. He’s like Grace—like his mother.”
“How is your wife? I saw her once. A sweet expression, I remember. Why didn’t you bring her with you?”
“She couldn’t get away. Busy with the family.”
“What a pity!”
“She sent me off with Stephen because I had been run down.”
“How unselfish of her!”
“Oh, she doesn’t care much about travelling.”
They had wandered down to the front and were watching the movement in the harbour.
“You don’t look different, Lucy,” David said, seeking, it would seem, to lift the conversation to a more personal level.
Lucy laughed. “Nonsense, David! I am an old widow woman. An old Riviera hack. Of course I look quite different!”
“You don’t look different to m
e.”
Lucy lost patience a little. “Well, you look different to me, you know. You look—what shall I say—more prosperous.”
“Please! Not just that!”
She resented his foolish earnestness. “You must forgive me, David,” she said, “but for a long time now I’ve found the greatest difficulty in feeling sentimental about anyone. Even old friends.”
He turned from her for a moment. His eyes followed the movement of a little sailing boat. “I was unfair to you once, Lucy,” he said at last.
“Were you, David? When? I had quite forgotten.”
She would have excused herself and left him; for now she was angry with this foolish emotion-mongering. But as, by chance, she looked towards the old town, she saw Robin hurrying towards it, looking very much as though he were trying to escape notice. So he was going to Denise this afternoon, too?
Now, in the face of this sticky, middle-aged sentimentality, Lucy suffered a revulsion from her feelings of last night. Let the boy go and burn himself up if he must! Anything rather than this unmanly fingering of the fringes. She turned to Robin’s uncle. “But I’m delighted to see an old friend, you know, David. Shall we walk up the front for ten minutes? I don’t think the sun is too hot. Look. I’ll put up my parasol.”
And thus they went, turning their backs on Robin, as Lucy had intended.
V
“So you know Robin?” David said as they walked together.
“Oh yes. He’s an old friend of mine now.”
“His lungs are threatened.”
“Yes. I guessed that, David. How do you think he’s looking?”
“I don’t know, Lucy. Sunburnt, of course. But he looks thinner to me. Resting in his room this afternoon, he told me.”
Lucy did not reply to this. She was not sure if she liked it. She wished Robin had not lied quite so flatly to his uncles and gone to Denise as to a secret assignation.
They walked along beneath the parasol, silent. Now, perversely, her feeling of a moment ago swung in the opposite direction. She had deliberately invited David to walk this way that Robin might escape him, and now she found herself regretting it. She almost wished his uncle had seen him.
“He’s learning French, he tells me,” David was saying.
“French? Oh yes. I hear he is.”
“It will give him something to do.”
“Yes.” Then, after a moment, Lucy’s change of mood prompted her to say: “He’s been doing some writing, too, you know.”
“Writing?”
“Yes. Short stories.”
“He didn’t say anything to us about that.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t, David. He’s been working quite hard.”
“Well, I suppose if it keeps him interested—He’ll have better things to do when he gets home.”
The artist in Lucy rose against this. “A friend of mine who is helping him tells me his work is quite good. Shall we go back? It’s getting hot.”
David, as he turned, wondered for a moment at the abruptness of her tone. But he continued: “Robin won’t get much sympathy from Henry Hayburn about scribbling, Lucy, I do assure you.”
Lucy was glad to leave him and go upstairs. Her mind was in a state of sharp irritation and confusion. She could not fix her judgments between Denise St. Roch and Robin’s smug, Moorhouse uncle.
In her own room, cool behind its slatted shutters, she flung herself down on her long chair, stared at the ceiling, and called herself a vacillating fool. She wished she had never bothered to be kind to Robin Hayburn, never got to know him.
Chapter Eleven
PHœBE folded Stephen’s letter, laid it down on the lunch table, and poured herself more coffee. Having done so, she sat with the cup in both hands, elbows on the table, staring out of her dining-room window.
This year the Scottish March was mild. The buds on the trees outside were already swelling. A bush of forsythia in full bloom made a glory of yellow. Birds were noisy.
But Phœbe did not notice. Her mind was on the letter. Before he had left for Mentone, she had made Stephen promise to write of Robin’s condition at once on his arrival. Now he had done so. The news of Robin was not bad. He seemed bright and in high spirits, but he looked, Stephen wrote, thinner and a little keyed-up. Two ladies, as Robin himself had probably told her, had been very kind to him, taking an interest in him and befriending him. And one of them, an American and a writer of some sort whom Stephen had not yet met, was amusing Robin by encouraging him to write. But Stephen was going to lecture him about going slow.
Stephen closed his letter with exclamations at the beauty of the French Riviera, the flowers, and the sunshine; wrote that David was much improved already, and that as for Robin, Phœbe had no reason to worry. Which, of course, caused Phœbe to worry very much.
She wished now that she need not show this letter to Robin’s father. And, indeed, had she been another kind of woman, she might have burnt it, and pretended it had never come. Robin’s dabbling in poetry, or whatever it was, would be a red rag to Henry. But tactful deceit was not in Phœbe’s make-up. It did not for a moment occur to her that Henry need not see what his brother had written.
And yet she wished he need not. For Henry was in a remote, rather angry mood these days. Phœbe knew these moods. Of late, when her husband had something he was determined to do, he had developed a way of saying nothing whatever about it until he could announce the accomplished fact. Now she knew from his defensive silences that something was afoot. Henry had acted furtively over accepting his knighthood. She suspected he was now doing the same over the buying of a house.
She was sitting pondering the letter, drinking her coffee, and wishing that their lives might go back a year or two—that Robin was still a schoolboy, well and happy, and that Henry was merely a busy engineer—when presently she heard the sound of a motor-car coming to a standstill at the gate. A moment later her husband passed the window. It was very unusual for him to appear at this time on a weekday. She jumped to her feet and ran to meet him.
“Henry, is anything wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, then, what are you doing here?”
“Get your things on, Phœbe, and come with me to look at a house.”
“House? What kind of house? Don’t tell me you’ve bought a house, Henry, without asking me!”
“Very nearly, anyway. You’d better come and see it.”
“Have you bought it?”
“Come and see.”
“Seeing it won’t tell me if you’ve bought it! Where is it?”
He told her it was in the Buchanan country, some miles from Loch Lomond.
Phœbe turned from her husband and walked back into her dining-room. Worry over Robin had set her temper on edge. This high-handedness had roused within her a quick fury. Now, standing in the window, she turned to face him, her colour high, her strange eyes blazing.
Henry followed her. She had given in so easily over the knighthood, that he had not expected this.
“Sometimes I think I’ve married a madman!”
“What’s wrong, Phœbe?” As he watched her, his face took on a look of—what was it? Pleasure? Interest?
Whatever it was it fanned her annoyance. For she was quite unaware that standing thus with her eyes alight and her skin glowing, she had turned herself back into the beautiful, desirable young woman that Henry had married, the young woman who, all too often now, was hidden behind a mask of everyday living.
She took up his word. “Wrong? Am I never to be consulted about anything now? Moved about like a bit of furniture?”
He actually smiled.
Goaded, she thrust Stephen’s letter at him. “You should be thinking about your son’s health! Not about your own ridiculous ambitions!”
“I’m ambitious for him as well as for ourselves. And surely Robin is going to be all right? He won’t be in France for ever, Phœbe.”
She watched the cloud of doubt pass across her husband’s fac
e. Was Henry pleading with her? Now his eyes were on the words of Stephen’s letter, but she saw they did not take them in. Now, looking up again, they held the old hurt look she knew so well. And now suddenly, his trouble kindled her senses, even as her anger kindled his.
Here before her was the man she would never be able to withstand, and Phœbe knew it.
“Oh, Henry!” She threw herself at him. There was so much she wanted to say; to protect him from himself; to teach him not to be so sure about this boy who meant so much to him; to show him, however dimly, that he, Robin’s father, might one day have to be strong. Or had Henry already become fearful? And was he arguing with his fears? Passionately, Phœbe blamed herself for being tongue-tied. Now she could seek only to show him by the fierceness of her hold how close she felt to both of them—how much they mattered to her.
He kissed her and put her slowly from him. Stephen’s letter had fallen down unheeded.
“Are you coming with me, then?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll come.”
II
And then, in just such time as it took for a lady to get herself into a leather dust-coat, a leather hat, and a veil; such time as it took for a man to turn the starting-handle of a motor-car, assure himself that the engine was running, jump up and take the steering-bar, Sir Henry and Lady Hayburn were off.
Quickly they made their way out of Partickhill, along Hyndland Drive, and thus into the farther, rural part of Great Western Road, passing Balgray Farm and the boating pond, and heading for Anniesland, where the long, straight road then terminated, splitting up into country lanes. They followed the narrow road to the humpbacked Canal Bridge at Temple, made for the toll-house of Canniesburn, ran through Bearsden, and were out into the glory of open country that lies to the west of Glasgow.
It was a sunlit day, of white, piled-up clouds floating high in a sky of clear blue: clouds that cast patches of shadow on rolling upland fields, pasture or purple-brown where they had been fresh-turned by the plough. To the left against the sun, the dark slopes of the Kilpatrick Hills. To the right, open country and woodlands, and beyond these, and mottled by the clouds, the long line of Campsie Fells, the first of the northern ranges, covered by the rough grass that makes them look, on such a laughing day of the early year, as though their flanks were clothed in rich green velvet.