by Guy McCrone
It was settled very quickly. Almost that afternoon. For Bel knew that when Arthur had set his heart on something he would not halt until he had got it. And if he wanted this dignified terrace house with the For Sale board, he would do everything, that prudence allowed him, to obtain it.
She was so sure, indeed, that as their tramcar crossed over Kelvin Bridge on its way back to the City, and she looked at the house her sister-in-law would occupy, she felt she could afford to say to Arthur that that was where poor Sophia was going to be, that it was a pity they hadn’t found somewhere nicer, for, after all, it was the wrong side of the bridge. But that, at any rate, it was nice to think that the families would go on being near each other.
Arthur, well pleased with himself and his wife, merely contented himself by smiling a vague smile of approval. And when he felt the pressure of Bel’s hand, as he sat ruminating behind the trotting horses, he thought of his morning encounter at the Club, and decided it would be better, on the whole, not to mention even such august and flattering advice as Sir William’s, but to let her think that the decisions of the day had had their source only in his deep affection for herself.
Chapter Fourteen
ALTHOUGH the house in Grosvenor Terrace came to be theirs in February, it was May before Bel and her family moved into it. For anyone so house-proud as Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse a shorter time than this would have been utterly impossible. The house had been bought from wealthy owners, and was in excellent condition. Most of the paint, even, was fresh. But all its four floors had to be painted anew, from the children’s flat beneath the slates to the maids’ basement bedrooms. As Bel said, “We can’t have the name of going into a house that isn’t perfectly fresh, can we?” And then there were endless discussions over furniture. They couldn’t have furniture that would make a fool of them. Everything must have the label solid or good. The word beautiful was not often uttered.
Arthur and Bel were at one in this. Their house must be a complete expression of their stability of outlook and circumstance. A house in the West End of Glasgow of that time need not be lightsome or gay, but it must be substantial. Or what would all the other people think? All the other people who were sitting round conventionally in similar houses, wondering, in turn, what people thought of them. All of them equally determined not to be thought arty or trashy.
Bel toiled ceaselessly. It was not all pleasure, by any means. She was haunted by the fear that what she bought or what she had decided to take with her from Ure Place might be considered vulgar. And the Arthur Moorhouses mustn’t have the name of being vulgar. She spent a night entirely sleepless over a walnut china cabinet that had cost much, and that Arthur had decided was a very handsome piece and would just make their drawingroom. She had not been too sure of it at the time, and now that it stood in its place she had just discovered a thin line of gilded metal inlay. Was that bad taste? What would people say?
Phœbe noticed that Bel was worried. At breakfast she asked the reason.
“It’s about that drawing-room cabinet, Phœbe, I’m not sure if I like it. And it’s about the most expensive thing we’ve bought.”
“I think it’s beautiful,” Phœbe said, more to reassure her than because she had bothered to think about it.
Bel did not say any more. Phœbe’s opinion was of no value, she considered.
Phœbe, really, was perfectly aware of this. But as her sister-in-law went on looking worried to death, she decided to drop down to the warehouse to see David.
David was a creature of great distinction now. Even in an old office jacket he had the art of looking quite special. Sometimes Arthur felt proud of David’s appearance, at other times his younger brother’s cool svelteness maddened him. But, on the whole, David had now shaken into a niche in Arthur Moorhouse and Company, and was quite a good businessman. He had stood so long in awe of Arthur and been so much forced into regular habits and methodical ways, that his own rather weak character had settled into quite a creditable groove. In other words, Arthur the downright had been the making of this aristocatic young man.
David looked at Phœbe. He hadn’t seen her for some time. As a connoisseur he was delighted to note how slender and elegant his eighteen-year-old sister had become.
“Hello, Phœbe, how are you? What have you come down about?”
“David, I want you to help me with Bel.”
“Why? Is she ill?”
“No, but she will be if you don’t do something. Could you possibly drop in to Grosvenor Terrace and have a look at the china cupboard in the drawing-room? Tell her how beautiful you think it is. That you admire her taste. And that your friend Mrs. Hayburn has got one exactly like it.”
“But that’s probably not true.”
“Never mind. If you don’t do what I tell you, Bel won’t be fit to live with. Remember you’re the swell of the family. She thinks you know all about these things.”
David accepted this statement without remonstrance. In the main he agreed with it, though he felt Phœbe was perhaps getting blunt a bit as she grew up. However, he did as she asked him. He met Bel in the new house as though by chance, raised the cabinet extravagantly, and told her that his friend Stephen Hayburn’s mother had one very like it. Thus Bel was successfully guided past yet another crisis.
David was not particularly enthusiastic about his family’s coming out West. For some years now he had himself been in rooms near the University, where he conducted his discreet and highly selective bachelor existence. Indeed David was now one of the most respectable of young men. His early visits to musichalls and free-and-easies had merely been to him a reaching away from the humdrum. Grandeur was now his one hobby. No. He felt that his comings and goings might be watched over by the family rather more than he cared about. Not that he had anything to hide except, perhaps, a few conceits of dress—a few little affectations of manner, which he had the sense to shed each morning on his way to the Candleriggs. Still, he would be only one of the Moorhouses shortly, not the unique and special Mr. David Moorhouse. For he had, by this time, quite lived down cheese. The portrait he had constructed of himself might suffer a little alteration here and there from having the others about. But he was, of course, too honestly fond of them to be anything more than a little apprehensive. Even a snob has his moments, when it is pleasant to sit with his mental waistcoat unbuttoned in the warm company of relatives who love him, even though these may be quite indifferent to the altitudes to which he has soared.
II
Phœbe’s attitude to the removal annoyed Bel a little. She kept on being so remote about it. It was not that she was unhelpful—far from it. She was forever in and out of shops. Running errands. Matching hangings with carpets, chair stuffs with hangings—this with that. But through it all her aloofness persisted. What was the girl thinking? Was she laughing a little? When Bel said how nice it was going to be for them all, Phœbe would smile and agree how good it would be for the children to be near the country. The word “nice” was never off Bel’s tongue these days, she simply couldn’t get rid of it. And yet when she used it in Phœbe’s presence she always felt self-conscious. Couldn’t the child see that she was taking a step up socially, just at the time in her life when such a thing was most important to her?
Yet another annoying thing. She seemed just as interested in Sophia Butter’s removal as in the change of her own home. She spent whole days, when Bel did not need her, sewing and making for Sophia. Sophia’s plans, like all the rest of her, were in a perpetual muddle. And muddles—especially other people’s—can be cheerful things. People who are in a state of confusion usually allow their helpers to do what they like. And Phœbe being strong-minded and clear-headed did exactly what she liked. While the most august of painters’ men were applying the very best of paint from garret to basement of the house in Grosvenor Terrace, Phœbe spent several blissful days with paint all over her hair, applying it at random to rooms that didn’t matter—such as the maid’s room and the children’s bedrooms at Sophia’s
. She did not show much skill, perhaps, but the work was done amid peals of laughter.
But on most counts Sophia’s removal at the same time as her own was a blessing to Bel. For one thing it was the lever that had, at last, dislodged Arthur from Ure Place or so Bel believed. For another, now that things were in train, it gave her a continual sense of her own superiority in matters of taste and generalship. And for yet another, although she would not admit it even to herself, Bel was a little timid of her new surroundings, and it gave her a feeling of support that her silly, warm-hearted sister-in-law was to be near at hand.
At this time scarcely anybody remembered the existence of the McNairns. Mary’s attitude to these upheavals was, throughout, one of indifference. She had no wish, she confided to her husband, to live further West than Charing Cross. It was essential, she said, for children to spend all their growing-up days in one house. It stamped them with the right feeling of permanency. George McNairn agreed—not having bothered much to understand what she meant. But the word “permanency” was very much in the air and greatly approved of in these days, so George felt that, without unduly agitating his fast-congealing brain, he could agree with his wife wholeheartedly.
George and Mary McNairn had put on weight in the last year or two. George, a fully-fledged baillie now, pursued his platitudinous way greatly respected. Respect, indeed, kept accruing to his character in much the same ratio as fat kept accruing to his waistline. Nor was his wife a skeleton. Her hands were as white, her face was as smooth, her features as good as ever. But none of these could any longer escape the charge of being chubby. Mary kept a good table—and that not merely as a demonstration to the world of her prosperity. The McNairns all liked their victuals. There were twin four-year-old girls now, in addition to Georgie and Jackie, and these likewise, especially the babies, were more than comfortably padded.
George and Mary were on excellent terms with everybody. They were too complacent to quarrel. And they did not see much of their relatives now. The house in Albany Place was pleasant enough if you were really hungry and wanted a square meal well cooked. But if you were in search of spirited talk, then it was a place rather to be avoided. Shafts of wit seemed to bounce on impervious cushions of platitude and to return to you like boomerangs bearing the label “silly”. The McNairns indeed were kindly enough. But they did not make you feel a success. There was, too, an atmosphere of don’t-tell-about-yourself-listen-about-me, which, to say the least, was defeating. In other words, they were just dull.
On the first Friday of May, Sophia moved out. Wil and Margy were given a holiday from school to help, and it was a day of blissful picnicking amid incredible confusion. A meal eaten on Oberon’s bank of wild thyme would have given them nothing like the rapture they got from sitting with Phœbe, dangling their legs from a newly-arrived kitchen table, surrounded by straw, packing-sheets, old newspapers and the remains of Phœbe’s paint pots, eating sandwiches. The rush of talk that came from the lips of their over-excited mother was no less constant than the rush of the waters of the River Kelvin as it fled through the bridge that spanned the gap that lay before their front door. It was, indeed, a great affliction to get themselves tolerably clean and go down in the evening to Albany Place to their Aunt Mary who had risen to the occasion and had invited everyone, no matter in what condition, to come and have a good filling meal. Later on David looked elegantly in and asked if he could be of use, but he looked so frail and impeccable that Phœbe told him no, and sent him away again—much to his relief; though he felt a little worried in case the young woman before him with a black smudge on her face should be growing up too unconventionally. For she would, sooner or later now, have to be presented to his friends.
III
But he need not have worried. The next time he saw her she was cool, immaculate and lovelier than ever he had seen her before.
It was on a perfect Sunday afternoon in the latter half of May. He had eaten his midday meal with the Hayburns. It was warm for the time of the year in Scotland, and on Stephen’s proposal, he and the two brothers dragged wicker chairs out into the garden. All three young men spent the early part of the afternoon drowsing. At last Henry stirred his loose-boned frame—grown bigger and more mature, but much as it was four years back when David had first known him—and proposed that they should go and have a look at the great hot-houses in the Botanic Gardens which were then being reconstructed. Stephen was still too sleepy, but David, always polite, agreed to go.
The Botanic Gardens of Glasgow were then owned by a private company of select gentlemen. On Sundays only these shareholders and their friends had the right of a key to their paradise of privilege. And thus on this balmy, indolent afternoon David and Henry found themselves strolling around beds of late spring flowers, among bursting pale green leaves, past rare trees covered with blossom. Clumps of common lilac hung heavy with perfume. It was pleasant to raise a beige top-hat to girls you knew, as they went by wearing spring dresses frothing with frills that had, perhaps, been taken from their boxes for the first time this very day.
As usual Henry was talking about himself—his plans for Hayburn and Company—his work. His pug face was all animation. David knew him well now, and he realised that a mere show of interest was all that was necessary. You need not worry unduly about Henry. He was a bit of a genius—and geniuses, it seemed, were intense people who talked overmuch about themselves and their interests. On an afternoon like this you could dream along casually, feeling pleased with yourself—the flowers and the sunshine, the spring, and your own elegance. Henry’s talk did not do much more to David than the buzzing of the one or two early bumble-bees.
But suddenly Henry received a resounding clap on the shoulder. Both young men spun round. It was Sir William, Arthur’s friend of the Traders’ Club, and with him, much to David’s surprise, were Arthur and Phœbe. He knew they had just moved in, but had seen nothing of them. He had not expected they would be out and about yet awhile. He ought to have known that Bel, when she did come to move, would advance in perfect order—that the thing would be done with the minimum of fuss or inconvenience to her household. And so, on this their very first Sunday, they were in the Gardens, sunning themselves under the tutelage of Sir William, who had met them by chance at the gates.
David was delighted with the encounter. He knew Sir William by sight, of course, and it was most gratifying to be able to exhibit his sister and brother under such august wings. And there was no denying that they did him credit. Today, feeling the weight of his new possessions, perhaps, Arthur presented an appearance that was gaunt, distinguished, and very unvulgar. And as for Phœbe, he had never seen her like this before. Her dress of fine grey stuff lay with extreme elegance to a figure that spoke at once of girlishness and maturity. Her close-drawn waist was small and flexible, and its grace was accentuated by the suggestion of a bustle. A fashionably small hat was set on her small graceful head. Eyes, strangely set and devastating, looked out on the beauty of the spring from under a straight-cut fringe.
“So this is a Moorhouse, too,” Sir William was asking. “You talk to the young lady, Henry, and I’ll see what this young man’s got in him.”
So David had to submit to a genial examination, and Phœbe was left to Henry Hayburn.
Queer excitable young man this friend of David’s, Phœbe thought, as she sauntered along, beneath her parasol, at Henry’s side. There was an attraction about his odd face with its young black beard. She noted, too, his gesticulating engineer’s hands. She guessed his age to be about twenty-three or twenty-four. But, good gracious, couldn’t the creature stop talking? He was telling her all about himself at an incredible rate. He didn’t make you feel of much importance. She tried to stop him once or twice—to draw his attention to some of the beauty about him—but he gave her only the attention of an instant, then off he went again. What he said was not stupid, she had no doubt, but there was so much of it! She had heard that one of the Hayburns was very clever, and she began to wonder if
this were he. She came to the conclusion that it must be; he was so peculiar.
At last there was a shout from behind from Sir William. She held out her hand. “Goodbye, Mr. Hayburn!”
Strange creature. His face fell as though he were a puppy that had been whipped.
“Oh, goodbye, Miss Moorhouse. I’ve enjoyed our talk tremendously.” Then, perhaps because he saw a flicker in Phœbe’s eyes, “Look here, I’ve been doing all the talking.”
He looked so ridiculously like a little boy that had been scolded that Phœbe found herself feeling sorry for him. “Not at all, Mr. Hayburn, I put a word in here and there, you know.”
“Now you’re laughing at me.”
“Nonsense.”
“Shall I see you again sometime?”
“I suppose so. We’ve just come to Grosvenor Terrace, you know.”
All Henry said to this was “Goodbye”, then he turned and trotted off after David as though David were his nursemaid.
Chapter Fifteen
MRS. ARTHUR MOORHOUSE was vastly proud of her new house. It was a source of endless delight to “have things just so”, as she expressed it. When Mary and Sophia called during the first days to ask how things were going and to offer help, she was careful that they should not see too much, for she was determined to have a house-warming and to let the full and finished effect burst upon them. She mentioned her plan to Sophia, who was delighted.
“What a good idea, Bel! You see, your house is so much bigger and grander than mine, that a house-warming out here will do beautifully for both of us. But, of course, you must let William and me help with the expense.”