by Guy McCrone
There was, perhaps, a trace of coldness in Bel’s voice as she thanked Sophia for her offer. Arthur, she said, would no doubt want to provide all the entertainment himself.
Sophia as only too prompt in replying genially that—oh, well, she dared say he would. That the notion had just then come into her head—she hadn’t really thought it out. But anyway a house-warming at Grosvenor Terrace would be lovely for everybody.
There was no further talk of entertainment on her own part, either jointly or independently.
But Bel’s entertainment was not to happen for a week or two. By then she would have time to draw her breath, everything would have found its place, and the last french polisher would have given the last inch of mahogany its final rub. She hoped to invite everybody—even the enigmatic and seldom-to-be-met-with Mungo.
For in the last years Mungo had certainly become both of these things. Bel couldn’t make him out. He was turning into a different kind of person. It was only at New Year time that Mungo could be counted upon to make his appearance. And last New Year she had noticed a very marked change in him. To the rest of the family he was the same old Mungo, with his sturdy farmer’s ways—and his slow Ayrshire voice. And he still seemed not to know, quite, how to behave towards herself and his own sisters. But there were several odd things about him. You would have thought that a bachelor living by himself with no one to tend him would have become more careless in his ways, to show more of the recluse in his manner. But the exact reverse had happened. He seemed to have gained a quiet authority. He still wore the rough clothes of a farmer, but they were well made and unslovenly. His linen, now, was always spotless and of a finer quality than before. And—a detail that she noticed specially—his flat farmer’s hands were always clean, and though he still kept his nails cropped, they were neither broken nor in mourning. And yet you couldn’t quite put your finger on the real difference. Perhaps it was that Mungo was behaving much more as though he were a person of some consequence in his own circle. But what kind of consequence? What more was Mungo now than he ever was? A bachelor farmer who was prospering. Phœbe, who went most often to the Laigh Farm, reported that things were much as usual. But Phœbe was the worst gossip in the world. She seemed to notice nothing. Perhaps Mungo went about a bit more, that was all. He had taken to breeding a pony or two. The common interest of pony breeding took him, it seemed, to the stables of Duntrafford, and even, sometimes, she had heard, to meals in Duntrafford House. But surely, Bel pondered, there could be no equal friendship between the laird and his tenant. And the shy Mungo was the last person in the world to try to force himself into a friendship above his station. No. Her own husband and David might, in their way, be ascending the social ladder, but when all was said, and whatever change was taking place in Mungo, he would always remain just a plain Ayrshire farmer, without frills.
And frills were the things that counted with Bel. Frills. Any amount of them. A grand house expensively, solidly furnished. A financially solid husband, who went to a financially solid business—it was more genteel not to specify what kind of business—every morning in order to provide more frills. Clothes made by the best dressmaker. Well-fed children at the best local school taking all the extras, getting all the frills. Good, solid accounts in equally solid banks. Accounts that were never, never drawn to their limit. Seats in a well-built Victorian-Gothic church, where the minister delivered splendid sermons that told you where the unfortunates went who weren’t as honest and solid as yourself.
One regret she had, and that was that her mother, Mrs. Barrowfield, was left by herself in Monteith Row in the middle of the city. She was as snug and comfortable and—but for occasional attacks of rheumatism—as hearty as ever; but it was bleak for her, Bel felt, to have her only daughter the better part of an hour away from her instead of ten minutes. She never said so, and she was vastly proud of her daughter’s fine house, and additional consequence—but she was now a lonely old woman. Bel knew it, and forced herself to make many a trip into town when she would gladly have rested.
As time went on she was to have great reason to be grateful to Phœbe, who, strangely, had always been a favourite with the old lady. There was a downrightness about both of them that seemed to find an echo each in the other. Mrs. Barrowfield’s pre-Victorian outlook pleased the young girl. Phœbe found she could talk to Bel’s mother with less reserve than she must use with Bel. The old late-Georgian seemed to meet her on a commoner ground. At the time, too, Mrs. Barrowfield had been greatly stirred by the Hughie’s Yeard incident. Had her eldest grandson been any child she would still have applauded Phœbe’s smeddom, as she called it, for she accounted courage the first virtue. But that the girl should have rescued her own eldest and quite special grandson was enough to place her on a pedestal for ever. And so it came about that Phœbe paid many visits to Monteith Row in Bel’s place, and always found a warm welcome.
II
On the Friday evening following his chance meeting with Phœbe in the Botanic Gardens, David came to call at Grosvenor Terrace. Phœbe ran down into a nearly completed drawing-room, smelling of furniture polish, to find him with Bel in conversation which, however, stopped when she came in. For a moment, as she greeted her brother, she thought she detected a glint of intrigue in Bel’s eye, a glint she was well used to, for Bel was by nature an intriguer.
“Hello, Phœbe,” David said, looking approvingly at his—there was only one word for it now—lovely young sister. He bent down and kissed her solemnly.
“Peculiar young man you had with you on Sunday,” Phœbe said.
“Henry Hayburn? Why peculiar?”
“He seemed very excited.”
“Perhaps he was,” David said, then he seemed to think better of this and added, “No, I don’t suppose he was any more than usual. He’s a great talker, Henry. What did he talk about?”
“Himself.”
David laughed. “He’s not really conceited,” he said.
“I didn’t think he was.”
“David says the Hayburns are very rich,” Bel said. She was sewing rings on a curtain.
“Then he ought to buy himself a suit of clothes that fits him.”
“Didn’t you like the young man, Phœbe?” Bel’s head was bent. She was stitching diligently.
“Yes. Quite. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You seemed—well—David says he’s brilliant.”
“Yes, I’ve heard all that,” Phœbe stood up again, and, crossing to the window, looked out. The new green leaves of the trees on either side of the Great Western Road looked so virgin, so tender that, for a moment, they laid the restlessness of the spring upon her. The street lamps were already lit, although it was not yet dark. Two hansoms, one following the other, raced past towards the City. A young workman and his girl went by laughing. She watched them until they were gone. People were out and about—doing things. She sighed and came back to Bel and David. “What a beautiful night it is! It makes me homesick for the Laigh Farm. I would like to go for a walk in the country.”
“It’s just what I’ve come to ask you to do,” David said. “But not tonight. Tomorrow afternoon.”
“I can’t go tomorrow afternoon. I’m taking little Arthur to see the animals at Balgray Farm. I’ve promised.”
“The children are going to their Granny tomorrow,” Bel said firmly. “They haven’t been to see her since we flitted.”
This was the first Phœbe had heard of the arrangement, which, she thought, was strange. And it was new for David to be troubling about her. Still, perhaps, it was natural. “All right,” she said, “I’ll come.”
And so it came about that she found herself setting out on the following afternoon.
III
They took the right-of-way known as the “Khyber Pass” that skirted the west side of the Botanic Gardens and served as a short cut from the Great Western Road through to the Three-Tree Well and the wooded banks of the River Kelvin. There were mills here and there at the water’s edge, but
the gorge of the Kelvin was still beautiful in parts, though building to the north was in progress. The little industrial village of Maryhill had not yet crept down to the edge of the wooded gulf.
David proposed that they should follow round until they came to the high aqueduct which carries the waters of the Forth and Clyde Canal across the valley of the Kelvin. The great water-bridge and the chain of locks were, he said, things to be seen. Phœbe was very willing to follow.
It was a surprise to her, however, to find Henry Hayburn and a young man, whom she took to be his brother, hanging over the parapet of the Canal Bridge idly looking about them. For a moment she wondered if David had arranged a meeting with these two young men—then she dismissed the idea. Why should he?
“Hello, fellows,” he was saying, now that they were within earshot. “Out enjoying yourselves? Phœbe, this is Stephen Hayburn.”
Stephen Hayburn was as carefully dressed as his brother Henry was the reverse. He wore fashionable English flannels and a straw boater. In his sporting tie was fixed a gold horseshoe, and he had an eyeglass. Henry gave the impression of being dressed in any old thing.
He flushed as he greeted Phœbe, hat in hand. Stephen’s manner was controlled and elegant. He adjusted his eyeglass and tugged at his drooping fair moustache as he greeted her amiably, and said suitable things about his delight at getting to know David’s sister. But his eye kept running over Phœbe appraisingly as he talked. She decided that she liked Henry better, stuttering and boyish though he might be.
Which way were they going? David asked.
They had planned to have look at the locks, then return across the aqueduct upon which they now stood, follow the tow-path for a bit, turn up over the hill and eventually come to the Great Western Road again at North Balgray Farm. They would be pleased if Miss Moorhouse and David would walk with them, if it were not too far.
Phœbe assured them that she was well used to long walks in Ayrshire, and so they moved up towards the locks. Stephen and David went in front, while Henry followed with Phœbe.
Phœbe, in so far as she must choose one or other of the Hayburns, was best pleased with this arrangement. She would have been glad merely to continue her walk with David and let the brothers take their separate way. But all three men seemed determined that they should return home together.
If Henry had spoken overmuch at their first meeting, now he did the reverse. It was left to herself to make desultory conversation as they went along. Now and then she exclaimed at the canal—what a labour it must have been to cut it right across Scotland—building waterways across deep gulleys such as the one they had just crossed. She exclaimed at passing ships. Barges carrying coal or wood to the City woodyards, towed by little smoky tugs. At the Maryhill locks they stayed behind to see a boat go up through, for Phœbe had never seen such as this happen before.
And during all these happenings Henry continued to say little. Now and then he would explain a point to her—usually in highly technical language—as one engineer to another, using terms that Phœbe couldn’t possibly know. The working of a tug’s steam-engine. The principle of the rise and fall of water in a canal lock. How the level of the canal was maintained. And yet it all seemed as though he were holding himself in. As though he were a little boy who had too much to say, and had been told to remember to let others talk. To every word of her own he gave intense, blushing attention. But there was no ease about him. Only in the shortest possible words did he reply to her questions.
A queer person. She couldn’t make him out. Other men she had met talked when they wanted to, and held their tongues when they didn’t. And after the torrent of speech on Sunday in the Botanic Gardens! Yet, on the whole, she rather liked him. He seemed such a simple creature.
At last they had regained the Great Western Road, and were coming to the parting of their ways. Again Henry put the question he had put at their first meeting. Would they see each other soon again?
She smiled. “Well, we’re very near you now, you know.” He blushed again and relaxed a little.
“I didn’t talk too much this time, did I?”
“I never thought. No, I don’t think you did. Why?”
“Because I talked far too much the first time I saw you—”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I fairly chattered my head off.”
This was really absurd. He couldn’t really be grown up. “I didn’t notice. I talk just as much as I feel inclined to. Don’t you?”
“Yes, usually. But I can be terribly tedious. You see, I get so interested that I forget people are not so interested as I am.”
She gave him her hand. “Well, the next time we meet just talk as much as you want to, Mr. Hayburn. Say whatever you like. I like people to be themselves.”
“Do you really mean that?” Why did his eyes shine so boyishly? “Yes. Of course. Goodbye.”
And when Phœbe and David had turned and gone away, leaving him to his brother, Henry could hear nothing but her parting words ringing in his ears. And into these words he read all kinds of meanings that Phœbe had in no way intended.
Chapter Sixteen
STEPHEN HAYBURN dropped in upon his mother in her little sitting-room as she sat drinking tea and reading Good Words, her practice on Sunday night when she was alone after dinner. She was pleased to see him.
“Will you take a cup of tea, Stephen?”
“Thanks, Mother. If you’ll allow me to smoke.”
She smiled. “I don’t mind fresh smoke. But I hate the smell of stale tobacco hanging about in a room afterwards. Still, for once. I’ll ring for a cup.” She pulled the china bell-knob.
Stephen returned from his smoking-room with his cigar and a box of vesuvians. He was also wearing a tasselled smoking-cap embroidered in gold and a dark red smoking-jacket. He took his teacup from his mother’s hand, thanked her and set it on a little brass Indian table beside his armchair.
“Where’s Henry?” Mrs. Hayburn asked, looking up at her elegant son.
“Upstairs working, I expect. Or thinking about Miss Moorhouse.”
“Miss Moorhouse?”
“Yes.” Stephen stood watching his vesuvian fizzling, then he lit his cigar with it, settled himself luxuriously opposite to his mother, crossed his feet, which were encased in embroidered house-slippers, on a hassock in front of him, and continued: “Henry has asked me to talk to you.”
She sat forward. “About what, Stephen?”
“About Miss Moorhouse.”
“Is this girl the sister of David Moorhouse?”
“Half-sister, I believe.”
“Well. And what about her?”
“Henry has fallen in love with her. Very badly, I should say.”
Mrs. Hayburn said nothing. She sat looking into the fire (for like most Scots she insisted upon a fire even on warm spring evenings). She had always told herself that when Henry fell in love he would fall heavily. Everything he did, he did with intensity. So far as she knew he had had none of the tentative, lesser affairs of most young men. Affairs that served perhaps to give them some sense of proportion. With her younger son it would be head over heels or nothing. Now it had come. And not very conveniently.
“Where has Henry seen her?” she asked presently.
“He met her last Sunday in the Botanic Gardens, while he was walking with David. She was with her other brother, the one who is David’s partner, and Sir William.”
“Sir William? They know him?”
“Yes.”
That helped a little. Still—the sister of cheese merchants. David was socially established now. Cheese or no cheese. He was an old friend—and quite unstamped by his occupation. Besides, for some reason he had got himself accepted everywhere. And with him the question of marriage didn’t enter, nor up till now had he obtruded his relatives. But now this half-sister—?
“Have you seen her, Stephen?”
“Yes. We arranged with David to meet them yesterday.”
“Arranged? Did this g
irl know it was arranged?”
“No. We made it look like an accidental meeting.”
“Why hasn’t Henry talked to me himself? Why does he ask you to tell me this?”
“He thinks I can persuade you better than he can.”
“Persuade me? Persuade me to what, Stephen?”
“He wants you to invite her here.”
“How can I?”
“She lives with the Arthur Moorhouses. The brother’s family who have just come to Grosvenor Terrace. He wants you to leave cards on Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse.”
“I don’t know that I want to.” Leave cards on a provision merchant’s wife? Her own grandfather had been a crofter in Argyle, but that was two generations back, and merely made her the more jealous for her position now. “What have you said to David Moorhouse about this?”
“Very little. I don’t suppose his family would object if anything came of it.”
“No. I don’t suppose they would.” Object to marrying her son? The son of a family that was established, of excellent standing and rich? Stephen and Henry could look to drawing a handsome income from Hayburn and Company all their days. If Henry insisted upon working for his living that was his affair. He didn’t need to. (She had already offered to settle him in a country estate. His queer ways would look better in the country, she had thought.) Object? Not very likely. But she was aiming higher than Phœbe Moorhouse for her sons.
“I don’t want Henry to marry this Miss Moorhouse,” she said presently. “I know David’s a friend of yours; and I’ve never discouraged him coming here. I knew you liked him, and I thought he was quite a good friend for you. Even when I discovered what his business was, I didn’t let that make any difference. Still, you must see, Stephen, that it’s another thing when there’s a question of marriage.”
Stephen sucked his cigar and nodded. It made no difference to him what happened. He had merely given way to Henry’s importunings in speaking to his mother.