by Guy McCrone
Bel withdrew her arms and sat up looking straight at her. All kinds of thoughts crowded in. Henry Hayburn? She would have thought differently of this before the Hayburns had been ruined. But Bel’s snobbery was skin deep; like the snobbery of most women when it is set against the happiness of those they love. She dismissed Henry’s fall from prosperity. After all, he was young and clever. But why wasn’t the child happy? She herself, at the same stage, had been upset, and wept and laughed and been so unreasonable that her mother had been driven to lecture her roundly. But at least she had made some show of emotion, of happiness. She had not gone into this still, dry-eyed trance.
“Phœbe dear, do you want to marry Henry Hayburn?” she asked at last.
“I suppose so.” The girl was incomprehensible.
“But Henry Hayburn’s a very nice young man. Aren’t you happy?”
“I think so. At any rate, I’m going to marry him.”
It was useless. She bent forward and kissed her again. There was nothing else to do.
And now it was Bel who found herself crying. And through the tears she saw the fourteen-year-old Phœbe, ragged and bleeding, carried senseless into the house in Ure Place in her brother David’s arms. No. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to make up to her for that night. But it was so difficult, so baffling.
Now the girl was speaking. “Bel, will you do something for me?”
“My dearest, anything.”
“Will you stay with me for the rest of the night?”
Phœbe had no idea of the happiness this gave Bel.
“Of course. If it will help you.”
A minute later they were together in the darkness. She was allowing Bel to hold her hand as they lay.
“Phœbe,” Bel said presently, “I want you to make me a promise.”
“I’ll try.”
“If ever you’re very unhappy—any kind of unhappiness—it doesn’t matter what or where, will you come, as quickly as you can, back home here to me?”
“Why do you say that, Bel?”
“I don’t know, dear. But tonight, somehow I feel I must. Will you promise?”
“Yes. Of course I promise.”
“I’m glad, Phœbe. Now try to sleep.”
Neither of them said any more. But, after a time, Bel was pleased to hear Phœbe’s breathing come quietly, rhythmically. She did not withdraw her hand. She was afraid to wake her.
THE PHILISTINES
Chapter One
FOR a few moments David Moorhouse did not realise that the play was over. The tension still held him. It was only when the curtain had swept down into its place, its golden fringe bouncing a little in the glow of the footlights, that he began once more to be conscious of his surroundings. Suddenly the storm of applause broke. Men and women were standing up in their places clapping their hands. There were whistles and shouts from the pit and the gallery. For a time the roar continued. At last the curtain trembled. The storm changed to a tempest.
Irving, lean and exhausted, was standing before them, modestly bowing his thanks.
David had never seen him before. A classical actor in a classical play wasn’t much in his line, really. But he had been told that, to be in the swim, he must see Irving’s Hamlet. It would be a solemn, stately affair, he had expected. He would buy a ticket for himself and go to have a look at it. After that he would be able to tell his friends he had been, and duly and suitably agree how wonderful Mr. Irving was. And now he was standing up in his seat like the others, clapping his hands off in thanks to the strange, pale creature down there in front of the footlit curtain. His equipment for judging Irving’s art were his own placid emotions, a certain natural refinement, and a shallow, provincial sophistication. But that had been enough for Irving to work on.
David had gone to take part in a social ritual. Instead, he had been forced to share, and share acutely, the feelings of another young man, troubled and wearied, groping his way through indecision and corruption to a merciful death. It had all been intensely human—the last thing that he had expected. He had heard that Mr. Irving could be terrifying; that he could freeze a theatre with horror; that he could be cold, aloof and regal. But this heart-breaking, noble intimacy, this pitiless exposure of the raw places of a wounded mind, was something beyond David’s experience.
As he stood in the hot theatre looking down, he found himself wondering what possible kind of person this Mr. Irving could be. What were actors like? How did they live? He had never had the slenderest contact with the world Irving belonged to. Actors and artists were strange, erratic people. That was a commonplace. And, in Glasgow at least, solid, well-doing people didn’t want to know them. But now in his enthusiasm David could not help asking himself what Mr. Irving had done to prepare himself for this performance. Had he learnt the words and trusted to his exceptional emotions? Or did he discipline himself in some way?
Irving was standing now hand in hand with his Ophelia, Miss Brennon, acknowledging the endless applause. What kind of life did that girl lead? She looked frail and gentle and not any older than David’s own sister Phœbe. He had been solemnly told that actresses were exposed to all sorts of moral dangers. He could well believe it of the girls who sang in the Scotia or at Brown’s. Nobody expected a girl in a free-and-easy to be a paragon. But this girl who had so well set forth for him the anguish and gentle madness of Ophelia?
David Moorhouse was hopelessly Philistine, but he belonged to a tribe whose emotions were by no means overworked and blunt. He had been much moved by a great actor in a great play, but it would have been quite beyond his powers to tell why.
II
It was late when he found himself standing at last outside the new Theatre Royal in Hope Street. There had been flurries of snow during the day. But now, though it was cold, it was dry. A long chain of cabs waited to take the wealthier of the audience home. One by one, as the doorman called out their numbers, the muffled cabmen pulled the rugs from the backs of their horses and moved to the brightly lit entrance.
Under the blazing gaselier, David had recognised more than one friend who might have offered him a lift. But he had avoided everybody. The play had thrown him into a strange, unaccountable excitement. He wanted to be left alone. For a moment he looked about him, wondering if he should go down into Sauchiehall Street and pick up a cab for himself. But almost at once he decided to walk. The theatre had been hot. The fresh air would do him good. He wanted to think. He turned into Cowcaddens and made his way towards New City Road.
He was now passing through one of the slums of the city. It was only Tuesday night, and he would have only himself to look to. Towards the end of the week, when wages came in, drinking and riot made this district impossible at so late an hour. Even tonight, as he hurried along, he passed one or two wretches staggering and roaring. Many dirty, barefoot children were still about. There was filth and squalor everywhere; and not a little misery. For in November of 1878 Glasgow was deep in trade depression. In this she was like the rest of the Kingdom. Businesses were failing everywhere. Banks were collapsing. The City Bank of Glasgow had been the first and greatest British Bank to go. Its shareholders and depositors had been the victims of fraud as well as bad times. Unemployment was mounting. There were rumours of war. Depression bred depression. And meanwhile the people suffered; just such hungry, haggard people as David was passing now.
But as he hurried along, his hands deep in his pockets and his coat-collar upturned, his thoughts were far from the people around him. One became used to the sights of everyday. The play had set his brain racing, sharpening consciousness, stimulating thought. As he paced along, he found himself living again the hours he had passed in the theatre. The wonderful traffic of the stage, with that extraordinary man at its centre. The packed auditorium; a great tribute to Mr. Irving in these bad times. The people sitting near him—well-dressed, comfortable people, taking life easily. And then, inevitably, life in general, and his own in particular. What did it all come to?
Whe
re did he, David Moorhouse, stand? Where was he getting to?
He was pounding along New City Road now. For a long distance in front of him, beyond St. George’s Cross, he could see the chain of street lamps stretching, as it seemed, to infinity. A sharp wind was blowing in his face. He bent his weight against it and pushed on.
He was thirty-one, unmarried, prosperous. Indeed, the whole Moorhouse clan was prosperous. The family business in the Candleriggs might be slow this autumn, but it was steady. These farmer’s sons, Arthur and David Moorhouse, dealt in the produce of the farmlands; and people must eat, even in bad times. It was possible to wait for better times before commissioning a house or an Atlantic liner, but it was less easy to wait for a pound of cheese.
The foundations of his life, then, were sound, thanks to an older brother who had built the business and taken him into it. Time was when he had resented Arthur’s guiding hand, but for years now he had been quite settled and able to spread his wings. The family in its increasing prosperity, had moved out West. The Moorhouses were beginning to have standing. And his, David’s, social success had been greatest of all. He was reasonably handsome. He was young and he was eligible. People invited him.
He stopped for a moment at St. George’s Cross, to allow traffic coming up from St. George’s Road to pass him. The breath of the horses showed as puffs of white vapour in the cold air.
Yet what did it all amount to? He was just an ordinary, well-disposed young man with a facile, pleasant way with him. Nobody at all, really. But why should that matter?
David stared, taking stock. Tonight he had looked into the face of great achievement, and although it was of a kind for which he held no yardstick, it had left him dissatisfied and self-critical.
The theatre. Irving. The applause. His tangled train of thought brought him to the love of Hamlet for Ophelia, and from there it went to the question of love as it affected himself. Was love the solution of his problem; the answer to his restlessness? Would it close this void, this emptiness? Many women had asked him why he didn’t marry. He had told them quite truthfully that he didn’t know.
Marriage presented itself to him as a house in a terrace, a starched parlourmaid, calling-cards and a carriage. But the strange being who would have to share the carriage with him? What about her? On this strange night of quickened sensibility, David looked into himself sharply, and had to admit that he did not want to share a house, or a carriage—or a bed, for that matter—with anyone. At any rate, not permanently. And, now that he came to think of it, he never had done.
This last aspect of it troubled him. He had never been in love. No nineteen-year-old passion, even, had crushed his hopes of happiness forever. Was he abnormal? He had reason to know that he was not. Abnormal emotionally, perhaps? Too self-analytical, too apt to stand aside and note his own feelings?
III
He was coming to Kelvinbridge now. On his right hand was Rosebery Terrace, where his sister Sophia Butter and her family lived. There was still a light in a downstairs window. Should he go in and say “Hello”, just before he went back to his own bachelor quarters? Sophia at least was the family. One of his own. But he decided against it and pushed on. Sophia was a good-hearted chatterbox. But she was the last sort of person to soothe him in the mood in which he found himself tonight.
On the bridge he could hear the waters of the Kelvin rushing over the weir in the darkness below him. On the other side a third horse was being joined to a late tramcar to help to pull it up into Hillhead. In five minutes David would be home.
Did it come to this, then, that he had better get himself married, whether he was in love or not? Would it turn him into someone? Develop him? In a year or to he would be one of the old young-men-about-town. Not a fraternity he wanted to belong to. If only he could fall in love, everything would be easy. Or so the more sentimental of his married friends told him. He had never quite trusted the people who had hastened to offer him this information. People who could talk about these things tended to be shallow. Still—perhaps.
Near the top of the hill he took a street on the left, and in a few minutes more he had reached his lodgings. He let himself in with his key and turned up the gas. There was still a glow among the ashes of his fireplace. He bent down, raked the bits together and coaxed a flame from them. As he straightened himself and took off his overcoat, he examined his reflection in the great gilt mirror that filled the wall above his draped and tasselled mantelpiece. His face had more colour than usual. Wind and exercise had put it there. He pushed back his thick, chestnut hair and stroked his discreet, boyish whiskers. It was not the first time David had looked into a glass, and it was not the first time he had been pleased with the reflection. But now, tonight, it was the first time that he had caught himself wondering what kind of effect that reflection might have on the young woman, whose face as yet he could not see.
Suddenly his lips broke into a smile and he turned away. No, he didn’t look so bad. Men with worse faces than that had got themselves married. So far as faces went, his chances were quite good.
But now a thought had struck him. He would go and ask Bel Moorhouse about all this. Bel would help him. Bel was pleasantly, comfortably worldly, and quite prepared for any amount of pros and cons. He would look in at Grosvenor Terrace, sometime during the coming weekend.
David pulled off his boots and thrust his feet into his embroidered slippers. Getting up, he went to his sideboard, poured himself out a tumbler of whisky and water, and settled himself by the fire. Yes, Bel was the one to discuss this. If he could make her realise that he was in earnest, perhaps she could help him.
Chapter Two
THIS Saturday evening Bel Moorhouse was enjoying the luxury of absenting herself from where she had decided it was proper for her to be. She had taken tickets for Herr Julius Tausch’s orchestral concert in the New Public Halls in Berkeley Street. The Arthur Moorhouses were not very musical. But it was time, Bel felt, that, living as they now did in one of the smartest terraces in the West End of Glasgow, they should be seen among people of consequence and taste.
But she had been busy. Already this week they had been to see Mr. Irving in “Louis XI”, to a church social, and to spend a dull and dutiful evening with Mary McNairn. This afternoon, as she stood at one of the long windows of her pleasant first-floor drawing-room, looking out across the Botanic Gardens, cheerless and dank, she decided that home was the only place this evening. Her spirit for once had failed her. No. Her mending-basket and a seat by the fire.
She turned to find her sister-in-law standing beside her. “Hullo, Phœbe dear.”
The sight of the young girl gave Bel pleasure, as she stood there, glowing in brown velvet and fur.
“Where have you been?”
“In Hillhead, shopping.”
A beautiful creature really, this slender child, with her slanting Highland eyes and her jet-black hair. And she had promised to marry a strange young man who had lost all his money. Pity, in a way, although Bel liked Henry Hayburn well enough.
Bel became all friendliness and briskness. “Phœbe dear, I feel that you and Henry ought to go to the concert tonight.”
“We’re too hard up.”
“But I was going to offer you our tickets. There’s a new singer tonight.”
“Who?”
“An Italian name. I don’t remember.” Bel looked at the window as a blast of sleet struck the glass. “Anyway, it’s bound to be very interesting,” she added.
“I would quite like to go. At least it’s something to do.”
“Very well, that’s settled. You and Henry are just at a time in your lives when you should be enjoying everything you can. Arthur and I have had our fling.”
Phœbe had thanked Bel, wondering what kind of fling her hard-working brother had ever had. And so, having duly fed and packed Phœbe and her affianced husband off to the New Public Halls, Bel settled down by the fire with her sewing. There was only one thing lacking for her immediate contentment, and t
hat was the presence of her husband. Arthur, an elder of the Ramshorn Church, was downstairs in the parlour (which Bel was trying to induce the younger members of the family to call the library) having an interminable interview with a dissatisfied church member.
It was right, of course, that anyone so upright and dependable as Arthur should be a church elder. But really, there were limits. Arthur was forever receiving calls from stuffy church people in whom she couldn’t possibly be interested. And it was wonderful what they could go on being dissatisfied about. If only Arthur would stop being so conscientious. Bel rooted crossly in the mending-basket. She had arranged a quiet Saturday evening for him. Now it was being spoilt by dissatisfaction.
The solution was, of course, for Arthur and his family to leave the Ramshorn and join a church in this new and fashionable suburb of Kelvinside. It was tiresome to make the long journey into the City every Sunday. Especially when you might be going to a smart church not ten minutes away; a church with a bright, modern minister, who would keep your ideas abreast of the times, and bright, modern members who bought their wives entertaining hats, and had other, more up-to-date hobbies than dissatisfaction.
There was the sound of someone moving in the hall downstairs. It must be Arthur’s visitor going. That was better.
She did not even turn her head as the drawing-room door opened, but merely said: “Dear me, what was the trouble this time, Arthur?”
“It’s not Arthur, it’s David.”
II
Bel turned round in surprise. She regretted the darning-basket a little. David and darning, she felt, didn’t quite go together. But it was too late to put it away and take up her embroidery.
“Oh, David, come in! I’m glad to see you. Arthur’s downstairs in the library having his evening ruined with some church squabble.”