by Guy McCrone
For the last years Arthur had insisted upon their going to Glen Rosa in Arran. It was a beautiful place, of course, but there had been times when Bel had thought that it would be nice to have a smart house at Cove, and, as she put it, “meet people”. But this year the idea of Brodick and their house in Glen Rosa which, like most Arran houses, was simple to the point of crudeness, filled her harassed soul with balm. Grosvenor Terrace was very well and she was delighted at last to find herself established there. But now, for a blessed two months, she could do and look precisely as she liked. Her time would be pleasantly taken up, running to the beach with the children. Pulling off and on shoes and stockings, drying little brown bodies and unpacking chittering bites. And in Glen Rosa there would be the smell of bracken and bog myrtle, of burning peat, the sound of running water; and of a morning, as she lay in bed, the cackle of cocks and hens. And sometimes, in the evening, she would see the Duke’s deer moving on the shoulder of the mountain, frescoed against the sky.
No. A visit to Duntrafford would be too much for her at present, so she thanked Margaret and regretted that she must wait to know her parents until later.
But Phœbe was to be at the Laigh Farm for the summer. Now that she was grown up she must take her share of family responsibilities. On every count it was right that she should be there. She was the only woman of the family who was free to go, and the only one to whom the farm was now familiar. Even in the country she managed to conduct her own very personal existence and live within herself, bothering no one—very much indeed as her own parents had done before her. The farm-hands liked her; she did not interfere. Mungo too was pleased, for Phœbe’s independence kept her from being in the way. Indeed, her presence was of great use, for she made it possible for Margaret to come and go without seeming bold.
Chapter Twenty
PHŒBE arrived at the Laigh Farm this summer with great plans for improving her mind. She had been reading in a ladies’ magazine—a truly genteel periodical, with no sympathy for that abhorred creature The New Woman—just how important it was for the refined lady to be well read. There was no reason, it said why, for instance, a woman of average good intelligence should not grasp the works of Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Carlyle. A little determination was all that was necessary. Mr. Dickens was, of course, a great author, but he was a little helter-skelter if it came to the question of forming style in addition to being well read. Besides, there were moments when he could scarcely be freed from the charge of vulgarity.
Perhaps it was better to leave Mr. Dickens to the gentlemen. And talking of style, Miss Austen’s books were, as everybody knew, excellent, but on other counts they were a little tame and old-fashioned, perhaps, and lacking in romance. Still, they were the works of a gentlewoman and could safely be recommended. Books like Jane Eyre the contributor could not recommend. If a young lady must be romantic, there was always Sir Walter.
Again, before leaving her music-master for the summer, Phœbe had suggested to him he might set her some holiday work. He had perhaps noticed that her practising had not been so regular of recent months, but she had been tremendously busy helping her sister-in-law. Now, however, she was going to bury herself in the country for the whole of the summer, and had every intention of more than making up for lost time. The piano at her brother’s farm was an old one, having been bought for her sisters years ago, and perhaps, now, its tone was rather tinny, but she would write to her brother to have it put in order by a travelling tuner. At this point she had looked at her music-master. Would an indifferent piano, did he think, spoil her touch? Knowing her, or rather her youth, better than she knew it herself, he assured her that he thought it would not.
So down into Ayrshire Phœbe came, arrived with many improving books, a fat bundle of pieces and exercises, and a fair amount of fancy sewing, with which she intended to decorate her own bedroom in Grosvenor Terrace.
All of which she at once forgot in the superb July weather. Besides—she lamented later to David who had the temerity to tease her about it—there was so much she found she simply had to do when she got there.
Margaret was always wanting her over to Duntrafford to do this and that. They were forever in the Dower House watching and instructing joiners, plasterers, paperhangers and painters. There was no end to it. And though Margaret had a sewing-woman, of course, there were always little odds and ends that she, Phœbe, found herself promising to do. Then there were all Mungo’s clothes to be gone through. She really couldn’t let him be married without seeing that he had everything necessary. She had never realised, she said importantly, just how negligent men could be. So David needn’t sneer.
Indeed, she built up a very effective picture of herself slaving her way unselfishly through these summer months for her brother and his wife-to-be; the very personification of thoughtful sisterliness, when she had much rather, of course, been sitting in seclusion improving her mind and her fingers.
But she did not tell him of a litter of collie puppies, shocking wasters of time. Nor of the long, solitary walks that took her over field and moor, or across the green holmes and by the wooded banks of the River Ayr—expeditions that she came to make daily.
Almost every evening, too, when Phœbe and Mungo did not dine at Duntrafford, Margaret came across to look at her pony. They were walking the injured leg daily now, very carefully. An ailing animal was a lame duck to Phœbe, and she had become as interested as the others. Would the beautiful little creature yet fulfil its first promise? A pony by the same stallion had gone to America, sold, it was said, for a thousand guineas, to pull the governess-cart of a Vanderbilt. Mungo, who had seen this animal, declared its proportions were not so fine as those of the Duntrafford filly. Would she too come, after all, to be of great value?
Or was she to be nothing now but a brood mare? When Phœbe saw her first the filly was still hobbling, hardly putting her hoof to the ground. But by dint of much tending and rubbing the limp began to go. At first she would allow only Mungo’s and Margaret’s hands upon her. But later Phœbe, having made herself familiar, was allowed to tend her too. Steadily the limp diminished. At last, one afternoon towards the end of August, a farm-boy was given the halter rope and told to trot her. The lad called encouragement and began to run. Margaret, Mungo and Phœbe stood watching. The pony was petted. At first she would only walk, dragging back on the rein. At last, finding this uncomfortable, she hurried her pace and in a moment more her enraptured audience saw her set her elegant neck and begin to trot “high and disposèdly” round the yard, like the aristocrat she had first shown promise of becoming.
Mungo turned to the women. “She’s all right,” was all he said. Which, to anyone but a Lowland Scot, may seem inadequate for more than four months of constant anxiety and labour.
II
A pleasant summer for Phœbe, most of it, and if she didn’t carry out the scheme of education she had planned for herself, she received, perhaps, some education of another sort. For her constant association with Margaret Ruanthorpe and her parents gave her a glimpse of a different world, a different point of view from the climbing provincialism of Bel’s house in Kelvinside. As ways of living, there was not much to choose between them. Sir Charles and Lady Ruanthorpe held to their view of life just as complacently as the Glasgow Moorhouses held to theirs. But their code of life followed a wider tradition, the code of Victorian Britain’s lesser gentry; whereas Phœbe’s own family, only just emerging—by their own honest effort—from the peasantry, had their outlook sharply limited by that all-absorbing occupation known as “getting on”. At all events, the world of Duntrafford was something new for Phœbe, and helped her, perhaps, towards finding her own perspective.
The wedding, Margaret had decided, was to be at the end of the first week in September. The holiday-makers would be home again by then. The bridal pair wanted as little ceremony as possible, a fact which suited Phœbe admirably, for thus, until the last moment, she was left free to go her own ways. Late August was lush and beautiful, and h
er long rambles in the wilds had become more of a rapture than ever.
But her last days were destined to be disturbed. She had called a dog and was setting out one afternoon when, suddenly, as she opened the front door of the farmhouse—a door which had to be unlocked, for it was little used—she was confronted with Henry Hayburn. She drew back surprised.
“Mr. Hayburn!” She held out her hand. She was confused, and she knew her face showed it.
He looked hot and tired. He must have walked the three miles from the railway station. He was wearing the same black clothes. The same loose tie. He took her hand.
“I hope I haven’t surprised you too much. David told me you were down here.”
So he had come to see her. “Come in and have a rest,” was all she could think to say.
He shook his head. “You were just going out. Don’t let me stop you. Perhaps I could walk part of your way with you.”
He looked so tired and apologetic now that Phœbe laughed, and laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous. I was only going for a walk by myself. You must come in and sit down. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“Really—I don’t want—”
“If you’ve come from Glasgow you must be hungry. Come in.” She led him into the cool kitchen.
“You mustn’t give yourself any trouble,” he said lamely.
“I won’t.” She fetched some bread, new-baked scones and cheese from the dresser, brought a jug of milk and a pat of fresh butter from the cold milk-house, put them on the scrubbed table, and set a chair. “There,” she said, “that wasn’t much trouble, was it?”
She sat watching him while he ate and drank, running her hand over the muzzle of the collie who sat waiting beside her, and playing with its ears.
Strange, gawky young man this, with his hair all about as usual, and his black beard making his cheeks look absurdly young and boyish. There was something appealing about him today, something that pulled at her heart-strings. She felt, somehow, as though she had taken in a beggar man and was giving him food. What else could she do for him to send him happily on his way? That depended on what he had come to beg for. She felt it better not to ask.
She saw that he ate little, but he drank most of the milk she had given him, for he was hot and thirsty. And while he was eating and drinking he said almost nothing. Answering her merely that, yes, he had seen David lately, and that he looked well. And again, yes, his mother and Stephen were in the house at Kilcreggan. Stephen had been yachting. No, he hadn’t been there much himself. He had been too busy at Hayburn and Company, working on a new idea.
“You look as if you needed a holiday, Mr. Hayburn,” she said.
He did not reply directly to this. He rose, struck the flour of the scones from his hands, and asked her if he might come with her on the walk she had intended to take.
III
She was uncertain what to do with him. She did not want to ask him, right out, why he had come. And yet it seemed odd, to say the least, that he should want to make a train journey, then walk for miles through the dust, just to go for yet another walk when he had arrived. She was not really afraid of what he might say to her, but it was a peaceful, sunny afternoon, and she had no wish to be emotional, if emotional he intended to be. Besides, what she had to say to him, if he opened up the topic of their last meeting, would only hurt him. For her mind was not changed.
“Well, shall we go?” he was saying.
“If you want to.” What else was there to do? How else deal with him?
She led him by fieldside paths that skirted hawthorn hedges, untrimmed and high, and with scarlet autumn berries already formed in clusters against the dark green leaves. By Mungo’s fields of corn, ripening fast, as it stood up motionless in the still afternoon sunshine. Then further up to the moorland, across a rough stone wall or two, through beds of rustling brown bracken and seeding dry grasses. Here and there a sheep, with her half-grown lamb, started up, taken unawares.
Phœbe was becoming conscious now of a growing exasperation. She realised that she was hurrying on ahead of Henry out of sheer annoyance with him. And all he did was to tag bleakly after her in his untidy town clothes. What right had he to intrude like this? These Hayburn boys were rich and spoilt. Because they had money and an indulgent mother they thought they were the lords of creation.
Presently she halted and turned round to look at her companion. No. She had to admit it. At the moment the last thing he looked like was a lord of creation. He looked more tired and hot than ever. His hair was over his eyes, and sweat was glistening on his face.
She laughed, and her own laugh, for some reason, sounded to her a little hard.
“I’m sorry to race you along like this, Mr. Hayburn. You look desperately hot. But you wanted to come, you know.”
He looked at her—irritatingly, feckless, she thought—and said, “Yes, Miss Moorhouse, I did.”
“Look. Here’s a burn. Lie down and have a drink of water. That’ll cool you.” She stood over him contemplating his back, his thick black hair and his long legs, spread apart as he lay flat on the turf by the burnside, putting his lips to the clear surface. She noticed that the seat of his trousers was shining, and felt sure that his mother would disapprove of this careless shabbiness.
Suddenly Phœbe’s irritation evaporated. He was such a child. Like a good little boy, he had dropped down on his knees the moment she had suggested it. He seemed prepared to do everything she told him. She knelt down beside him and, cupping her hands, dipped them into the stream, and drank too. Then she shook the water from them and turned, smiling, to look at him.
He turned too, still prostrate over the little pool, and looked up. His face was red with stooping. Water dropped from his beard and from the point of his nose. A slow smile dawned, in response to her own. He crawled back into a kneeling position, and thus they remained for a moment, both of them, kneeling by the stream, as though they were performing some obeisance.
“Feel better?” she asked presently.
He seized her hand and bean speaking rapidly.
“Miss Moorhouse—Phœbe, I still want you to marry me.”
She started, angry, and tried to drag her hand away, but he would not let it go. “I’ve been miserable ever since I spoke to you in the springtime. I can’t work. I can’t do anything.”
She wrenched her hand away and sat back looking at him. “I told you I didn’t want to marry anybody.”
“I thought perhaps you had changed your mind. I spoke to David about you and he said you were down here.”
“Did David send you?”
Henry said “No,” but Phœbe suspected a hesitation. David would hear about this the next time she met him. What did he know about it? A cool, genteel bachelor who cared for nothing but his clothes and his dinner-parties. He was pushing Henry at her, because he considered him a good match. He had no right to encourage this poor boy to come to her once more, merely to be made miserable. Her rage had turned on David. She was sorry for Henry now.
“No, Henry. It’s no use. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t go on.”
“Of course you can. I’m no great prize, I assure you.”
“I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world.”
She laughed. “Thank you, Henry,” she said.
“You won’t take me seriously.” He complained lamely. “You don’t seem to care if … if you break my heart.” His voice broke.
She looked at him quickly and saw that his eyes held tears. Suddenly her sympathy was touched. She was moved to an extent that frightened her.
“Oh, Henry! Please!”
“Phœbe!” He held out his hand to her.
“No.” She stood up, came to him and drew her handkerchief from her belt. “Look, your face is all wet still, you silly boy. I’ll dry it for you.”
He was still kneeling. She bent over him, purposefully polished his face, and put back his hair, as though he were her nephew Arthur.
“
Now, promise you won’t go on making yourself miserable. It’s ridiculous nonsense, you know.” She stuffed her handkerchief back into its place and shook the grass from her skirt. “Now get up and behave yourself.”
He got up and stood looking down on her. His eyes were burning. Again she was moved strangely. For the first time she became aware that she was standing beside a man. “When am I going to see you again?” he asked.
She was surprised at her own lack of coolness. “I don’t know. I’ve no idea.”
“When are you coming back to town?”
“In a week or two, after my brother’s wedding.”
“Will you allow me to see you?”
“You’re a friend of David’s, aren’t you?” Then, fearing her tone had been tart, she turned to him. “Henry, I’m not refusing to see you. I want to be friends. But anything more is hopeless. Please. That’s my last word. If you keep bothering me, we’ll only be miserable—both of us.”
“Then I suppose I’ll see you when you come back?” He was calm now, and somehow, perversely, his returning poise, if anyone so callow as Henry could be said to have poise, irritated her.
“Yes, I suppose so. I think we should go back. The farm folks have their tea at four, before the milking. You’ll meet my brother Mungo.” She turned to lead the way home. Henry turned and followed her.
IV
Yet to Phœbe that was not the end of it. After Henry had asked her to marry him in early June, she had not bothered about it further. She thought of it merely when something brought it to her mind.