by Guy McCrone
“Miss Moorhouse!”
Phœbe guessed that both the brothers were very excited. She did not know what to say. She weakly said: “Good morning.” Then, feeling she must explain herself, she added, “I’m just in town shopping. I came up the street to see what all this was about.”
Henry was looking at her dazedly, as though he were trying to remind himself of something. “We’re all here,” he said hoarsely. “Mother too. She’s in the carriage. She insisted on us all coming to see if we’ve been turned into beggars or not.”
Phœbe noticed the toneless ring of his voice. “I hope it’s not as bad as that,” she said lightly.
“It’s just as bad as it can be, Miss Moorhouse,” Stephen said, adjusting his eyeglass with a very good show of calmness.
Phœbe admired him. She had never liked Stephen Hayburn much, but now, in this moment of stress, he was doing well.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to get any news this morning,” she said, preparing to move. “The policemen were telling people not to wait.”
“We had better go up, just to please Mother. It was she who made us come here.” Stephen pulled Henry’s arm, and they raised their hats and went off.
Having no other choice now but to pass Mrs. Hayburn’s carriage, Phœbe began to wonder what she could possibly find to say to the stiff old lady in her distress. As she passed, however, Mrs. Hayburn took no notice of her. She was sitting forward in the carriage, staring before her, in a terrible trance of suspense. Could worldly possessions really matter so much to anyone? Phœbe wondered, as she gazed at the wide-open, unseeing eyes and the set face suddenly turned frail and marbled with unnaturally blue veins. She wondered if she ought to make herself known and offer to stay until the sons came back, but at once she decided against this. She felt that she would receive no thanks for breaking in. If Mrs. Hayburn fainted—as judging by her appearance she might very well do—her coachman could look after her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IN Phœbe’s mind the City Bank collapse was inextricably tangled up with the Hayburns. When people talked of it—and for the next month not only Glasgow but the whole of Britain talked of little else; even Punch had a cartoon of an erring bank manager awaiting judgment with other common thieves—Phœbe could think only of the two anxious brothers and the terrible white face of their mother as she sat there alone in her carriage. For many days, however, she heard nothing more of them. She knew, of course, that Hayburn and Company had crashed, “succumbed” (as the papers put it) “to pressure of money matters.” And this made her wonder. But David, who could, at most times, have told her, had not seen them either and had not liked to obtrude.
Meanwhile the disaster kept piling up. On the first day the depositors had been kept calm by the action of the other banks in accepting City Bank notes and by the exhortations of the newspapers. On the second day the books went into the hands of the auditors. And from then onward the news became more and more sensational. The further the examination went the more shameful was the tale of swindle and deceit. Mouths were full of expressions of contempt. “Banking run mad”, “Utterly rotten”, “Reckless plungers”, “Cooked accounts”. One newspaper reported that you could hardly go a dozen yards without meeting a friend who had lost everything. Shareholders had not only to pay up in full to the extent of what they held but had to do this six times over. The burden, in most cases, was unbearable. Charity lists were opened for the unfortunate. People like Arthur Moorhouse gave lavishly. In less than three weeks the directors were arrested.
On the day following the arrests, Arthur, scanning his morning paper, read out the announcement of the death of Mrs. Robert Hayburn. Phœbe’s comment, at the time, was merely that she was not surprised. But as the days went by, this news haunted her. She found herself taken by a strong desire to see Henry and know how he was getting on. She felt he would be defenceless before the blows that had fallen. She did not know whether he had loved his unamiable mother or not. But she rightly guessed that he was one of those who do not bother much about the routine in which they find themselves, so long as it does not interfere with their own intense interests, but who are utterly at a loss if that routine is broken.
At last on the evening of the funeral day, Phœbe, certain that David would have been among the mourners, felt herself impelled to call upon him to hear news of Henry.
II
She found Henry alone by the fire in David’s sitting-room. She had expected David and Stephen too, for the landlady had said they were all there. He was sitting forward, his feet on the black, iron fender. His head in his hands.
He looked up casually, for he was expecting the other two. His eyes looked haunted in his white face.
He sprang to his feet. “Miss Moorhouse!”
Phœbe drew back. She felt she was intruding. “I’m sorry, Henry,” she said, using without noticing his Christian name, “I thought David was here. I’ve disturbed you.”
“No, no. You’re not disturbing me. Come in. David and Stephen went out for a walk. They’ll be here any time.”
Phœbe came into the room and gave him her hand. She was distressed to see how crushed and ill he looked. Whether she would or not he had been so much in her thoughts during these last days.
But in her mind she had not seen him so red-eyed, so weary as this. If ever there was a lame duck, it was Henry Hayburn now.
He shook hands formally and they sat down.
“Henry,” Phœbe began. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m all right.” He smiled wearily.
“I was going to write to you,” she said gently, “but—well, you see, it was perhaps a little more difficult for me than for—most people.”
He nodded.
Phœbe went on. “Still that wouldn’t have kept me. I would certainly have written if I hadn’t met you here.” She waited for a moment, then continued, “I was really shocked to hear about your mother’s death. In a way I wasn’t surprised. I had seen her, not so many days ago. You remember? She looked ill.”
“Yes. The morning we all drove down to Virginia Street to make sure that we were ruined.”
“It was a shock to me to hear about Hayburn and Company too.”
He appeared to wince at this, but he did not reply directly. He merely asked, “What were you doing there?”
“I had gone up the street to see what the crowd meant.”
“Your folks had no money in the City Bank?”
“No, Henry. We were lucky.”
“So you had just gone up to see what ruined people looked like? Just as a matter of interest?”
She was not angry with him. She had after all told him she was that kind of person. He was stating now what had been perfectly true. She did not reply, and he went on:
“I suppose you’re doing the same now?”
She got up and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“I’m going to speak the truth to you, Henry. You’ve never been out of my mind since that morning. You may think this queer of me, but I’ve been really pleased that I could feel so badly upset—over a friend. You see it’s not nice to keep on feeling a—a kind of fish with no feelings.” She turned away and leant against David’s betasselled mantelshelf, with its black marble clock, its pipe-cleaners, its photographs and the gilt mirror stuck at the edge, with half a dozen cards of invitation, requesting the pleasure of the company of that eligible bachelor Mr. David Moorhouse at this ball and that conversazione. Looking down on Henry Hayburn’s black mop, she was struck, for the first time, with the eternal see-saw. Henry had been up. Now he was down. It was her brother David’s turn.
“You’re a queer girl, Phœbe,” Henry was saying.
“I’ve never hidden from you that I was. Have I?”
“No.” Then after a pause, and with a voice that tried to be hard, but only succeeded in being heartbreaking, “You needn’t bother defending yourself against me now. Beggars don’t ask young ladies to marry them.”
Phœbe
laid her hand on the mantelpiece. Something told her she was at the parting of the ways. She must get out of here at once if she did not want to be caught—trapped for ever by her own unaccountable self. She saw this so clearly that she felt a little giddy. She had only to turn his last thrust aside, tell him again how sorry she was about everything and go. But after a moment, a moment that seemed to her to stop and hang motionless in eternity, she found herself still here in David’s room, looking down into Henry Hayburn’s eyes.
But even yet she did not give up the struggle. “What will happen to Hayburn and Company, Henry?” she said, as though she was attempting to ignore his last words.
She looked down at his engineer’s hands. He was wringing the fingers through each other, nervously. When he spoke he seemed to her to be speaking to himself.
“Hayburn and Company was the whole of my life. My father, Robert Hayburn, made it, built it out of nothing. He was an inventor. Other people had to look after the money for him—and you know now what that has led to—but he was the brain, the heart of it all. Stephen and Mother didn’t understand about Father’s work. What it had meant to him. They weren’t touched with the—fire.” And after a long pause, “If they had given me time I would have taken up his work where he had laid it down.” He turned aside as though to hide his face from her. Again he had tried to harden his voice, and again its tone came near to breaking her heart.
III
She stood looking down upon him fascinated. It gave her a strange, passionate pleasure to hear him say that “Hayburn and Company was the whole of his life.” Who was she, Phœbe Moorhouse? A strange, not too sensitive young woman who lived without purpose in and for herself. And here was a young man whose mind might be warped and broken by what life was now forcing upon him. She had courage and strength if she had nothing else. At least she could bring him these. It was in her power to save him, to help him to pick himself up and go on. She saw it now indeed as a sacred duty, the reason why she had been sent into the world. She felt now as she did when, a child of fourteen, she had been impelled to go down into the desolation of the slums and rescue her nephew. She had just the right toughness, the requisite lack of feeling, to stand between life and this brilliant, sensitive creature. She alone could let him go on with his life’s work.
She was terribly shaken by the decision she had made. Her tears were falling as she bent forward and turned his face up to look at her. She put her arms about his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. He sprang to his feet.
“You are going to take up your father’s work where he left it off, Henry. I’m going to be with you and see that you do. We’ll build up another Hayburn and Company.”
He stood, stupid and speechless, holding her two hands. When he spoke it was to say: “But don’t you see, Phœbe, I’m a beggar!”
“So am I. But we’re both strong. Your father started from nothing, didn’t he?”
“I can’t allow you—”
“Of course, if you don’t want me.”
“Oh, my dear!”
He took her into his arms. The faces that came together were both wet. She could feel his beard on her face, smell tobacco, the faint smell of the macassar on his hair, of his linen, of himself. And still, far away, the silent, waiting Phœbe, the Phœbe Moorhouse who had nothing to do with this excited overwrought girl, sat waiting and wondering.
They came apart. His eyes were shining, and his cheekbones were red. She had made him happy. She had given her life a meaning. She would be happy too.
“Henry,” she said, at length, “I want to ask something of you.”
“What is it, darling?”
“Let me go home now. You can come and see me tomorrow.”
He kissed her again. Then she turned and hurried away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
BEL came back to consciousness with an odd feeling that someone somewhere in the house was not resting. For a moment she wondered what time it was, and then, as though in answer, the clock on her bedroom mantelpiece struck one. She lay listening. Beside her, Arthur lay peaceful, breathing steadily. A faint autumn night wind caused the lace curtains by the open window to stir now and then. The pale light from a lamp outside made reflections on the ceiling. The clock ticked hurriedly, quietly persistent. She too began to feel restless—on edge. What had happened to wake her up?
She had gone to bed wondering about Phœbe. The girl had come in from David’s rooms. She had asked her how David was and if he had had any news of the Hayburn boys. She said she had not seen her brother, but that Henry Hayburn had been there. Bel had ventured to ask how he was and what his plans were, and Phœbe had answered her casually that Henry didn’t look up to much and that she didn’t know what his plans were. The girl was in one of her remote, moody fits, so Bel had let her be. She had drunk her evening cup of tea in silence, wandered about the drawing-room aimlessly, played a bar or two standing in front of the piano, then said goodnight and gone off early to bed.
Bel lay wondering now, as she had wondered then, if something had happened.
Above her a board creaked. That must be in Phœbe’s room, for it was directly overhead on the top floor. Had she got up for something? Wasn’t she well? She would wait a little to see if it went on. Was that another creak? Or was she imagining? Was that the handle of a door turning quietly? It was difficult to tell in this solidly built house even in the dead of night. Was there movement now on the upstairs landing? Or were these simply imaginings, born of this unpleasant midnight alertness?
Bel tried to persuade herself that it was nothing. That she had better get off to sleep again. For a long time she lay, trying to make her mind a blank. But it was no use. When the bedroom clock struck two she had to admit that she was wider awake than ever. Should she get up and satisfy herself that all was well upstairs? If it had not been for Arthur she would have done so now, at once. But it seemed unfair to risk wakening a tired, busy man just for a mere whim. In a little time, surely, she would begin to feel sleepy again.
What was that? No. She must go upstairs and see that all was well. Perhaps one of the children—? But if it were one of the two smaller ones, Tom or Isabel, their nurse was with them in the nursery. And if anything was unsettling little Arthur, who was now promoted to a bedroom of his own, he had a way of coming straight downstairs to her or going across the landing to Phœbe.
She slid to the edge of the bed with great caution, listening at every move that her husband’s breathing kept steady, and finally found herself standing on the floor beside her bed. Noiselessly she stretched out her hand for her dressing-gown and felt with her bare feet for her slippers. The handle of the bedroom door turned without noise. Like a ghost she slid through.
As she came up the stairs to the top landing she bent close to the bottom of Phœbe’s door to see if a light was burning. She could find no sign of one. Over on the opposite side, Arthur’s door stood open, and his gas was burning at a peep, for he was a nervous child, and did not like to feel he was shut away in the darkness by himself.
She crept forward and looked in.
II
There in the semi-darkness, in nothing but her white night-dress, Phœbe was sitting by the sleeping boy’s bed, silent and motionless, holding his hand.
Bel drew back, alarmed for a moment, as though, almost, she had seen an apparition. The girl had looked so pale and still, with her long, black plaits of hair falling down in front over her shoulders. What did this mean? Had she come there to comfort Arthur, or in search of comfort for herself?
But Bel’s practical mind came to the rescue. It was nonsense whatever it was. The girl would catch her death of cold. She looked into the room again, and said quietly:
“Phœbe dear, what are you doing?”
Phœbe started.
“Come back to your room. You’ll catch cold.”
Phœbe disengaged her hand gently and came out of the room after her sister-in-law.
Bel lit Phœbe’s gas, turned back the b
ed, and made her get into it before she said:
“Is Arthur all right, Phœbe? Did he want you?”
Phœbe merely shook her head and said, “No.”
“What were you doing there, dear?”
“I don’t know. I just went.”
Bel stood looking at her, puzzled. It had been a rule with her never to break into Phœbe’s confidence. She had always let her tell her what she would. Never forced her. But now it was clear that something was troubling the child. If only she would talk. She looked at her to see if she had been crying. But the eyes that looked out of her lovely pale face shone hot, and strangely clear, like the eyes of a trapped animal.
Bel sat on the edge of the bed beside her and did something that she had never dared do since Phœbe had grown up—she put her arms about her and kissed her.
“Phœbe, my dear, I would like you to tell me what’s wrong. You know I don’t bother you often, but I would like to know now.”
Phœbe still said nothing. And Bel, holding her, wondered for a time if the girl in her arms resented this show of affection. Presently, however, she felt Phœbe’s hand over her own. And thus they remained for some minutes. But things couldn’t stay like this.
“I think considering all I’ve done for you, Phœbe, you might tell me. I don’t know whether you’re fond of me or not, you’ve never shown it very much”—Phœbe was amazed at this, though she said nothing—“but I’m very fond of you. It makes me miserable to see you like this. Did something happen in David’s rooms tonight?”
Again Phœbe did not speak. But Bel saw that she was going to now, and waited.
“Yes,” Phœbe said at length, speaking with strange evenness. “I promised to marry Henry Hayburn.”