by Guy McCrone
“He’s too conscientious.”
“That’s what I say.”
David settled himself on the chair Bel had hoped to see her husband occupy. She was genuinely pleased to see him, though she wondered that he should come thus unannounced on a Saturday evening. For David’s bachelor existence was full. But something was worrying him. She knew the signs.
“Well, David?”
David looked about him. The pleasant, richly furnished drawing-room. The stacked-up, flaming fire. The handsome, fair-haired woman opposite him, who was giving the whole a core of agreeable femininity. Here was the sympathy for which he had come.
“I thought I would look in to see you,” was all he found himself saying. “I hadn’t seen you for a day or two.”
Bel looked up from her work and smiled. “You can smoke one pipeful here if you like.”
“No, thanks. I wouldn’t dare to contaminate this room.”
Bel smiled again. David was sensitive and considerate.
“Phœbe and Henry have gone to the concert,” she said conversationally.
“How are they getting on?”
Bel looked at David. Here, perhaps, was her clue. “What do you mean? As separate people, or as an engaged couple?”
“I suppose I mean as an engaged couple.”
Funny question for a man to ask. Any woman might ask it, of course. “Quite well, I suppose. Have we ever known what Phœbe was thinking?”
David got up, put his hands in his pockets and took a pace or two in the room. “But do you think she’s happy?”
“I don’t see much difference in her.” Bel wondered at this. What had prompted it? She put out another feeler. “But I’m certain it’s made all the difference to Henry, after what has happened to him this autumn.”
David thought of his friends Stephen and Henry Hayburn. The loss of their fortune in the City Bank crash, and the death of their mother.
“Yes, I dare say it’s a good thing for him.” And then, after another silence: “Do you think Phœbe is in love with him?”
“My dear David, I don’t know.” Did all this somehow apply to David himself? What was his problem? He was striding up and down in a way quite unlike him, trying to ask her something.
Suddenly he stopped. “Tell me this, Bel,” he said. “Do you think it’s better for a man to be married?”
“Of course.”
“But he’s got to fall in love with somebody first?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say it was a lonely business later on, not being married?”
“Certainly.”
“The trouble with me is, I can’t fall in love.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s true.”
Bel put down her work and sat, gazing away from him into the fire. She genuinely wanted to help him. Something had stirred him and made him very much in earnest about this. He was not just a boy. The great loneliness of the unmated had overwhelmed him, and he didn’t know what to do about it. It was so difficult to help a man, to know a man’s feelings.
David was attractive and lovable, but she could well believe he had never been in love. He was agile-minded, quick to discover his own reactions, and not, she guessed, more than normally sexed. He would laugh at his own little susceptibilities too quickly, refuse to take his feelings seriously. And he had far too many pleasant friendships with women; understood them too well, to be easily borne off his feet.
Still looking into the fire, she spoke. “Are you anxious to be married, David?”
“I don’t want life to slip past me.”
“You can afford to wait. Arthur was your age when he married me.”
“Yes; but he knew he wanted to marry you for years before that. That makes all the difference.”
“Yes. I see what you mean.” Bel let him pace about for some moments more, then she asked: “Do you know of anybody that you think is interested in you?”
“Interested?”
“Well, in love with you, then?”
“What a queer question to ask a man! Women don’t show their feelings.”
“If a woman was in love with you, you would know. You’re that kind of man. She would be clever if she hid it from you.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment.”
“I’m not trying to pay you compliments, David; I’m trying to help you.”
“There have been two or three.”
“I thought so. Is there anybody now?”
“Yes.”
“And what kind of feeling have you about her?”
“I like her. But since I’ve seen she was—well, like that, I’ve been keeping away.”
“Go back and have another look at her.” Bel took up her mending again. “You know, David,” she said, “there are some people who fall in love only after they’re settled down and married.”
“Do you mean I’m one of them?”
“Maybe.”
“But it’s very important for me to know.”
Bel did not reply at once. This was the strangest conversation she had had for a long time. She was very fond of David. He had been a very young man when she had married his brother. And of all the family, perhaps, she had stood nearest to him; nearer than his own sisters. There was a fastidiousness about him, a niceness, that had always appealed to her.
“I don’t really know how you feel about this, David,” she said at length. “How can I? Many women marry without love, and it turns out all right. They say it doesn’t happen so often with men.”
“Would you risk it, if you were me?”
To give definite judgment was too much responsibility. Bel hedged. “Go back and see your girl, anyway, David. Give your feelings a chance.”
Arthur Moorhouse’s appearance brought this talk to an end, the church member having taken himself off. It was just as well, Bel felt. Confidences such as these tended to become dangerous. Arthur’s wiry, vigorous presence brought things back to normal. He stood on the rug, his back to the blazing fire, warming himself.
“I want a cup of tea, Bel,” he said testily. “I’m sick of folks and their blethers.”
III
Phœbe, followed by Henry Hayburn, jumped from the cab that had brought them to the New Public Halls in Berkeley Street. Inside, the auditorium was quickly filling with people. Bel had obtained the seats intended for herself and Arthur in the front of the gallery, half-way down the long hall. They ascended the main staircase, found their block in the steeply graded rows, and climbed down into their places. Sitting now, beside the eager, boyish young man who had but lately engaged himself to become her husband, Phœbe looked about her. Glasgow’s large new concert hall was still a novelty to her. She looked with interest at the sea of seats in the area beneath her; the people finding their places over there in the gallery opposite; at those—scarcely to be distinguished, so great was the distance—who were filing up into the high gallery at the back.
Phœbe and Henry had no intense interest in music. But young people, so alive, could not fail to feel the latent excitement in the waiting audience. They consulted their programmes. They hung over the gallery, picking out acquaintances. They twisted themselves about to see who was near them.
Now the orchestra was coming in. The platform was becoming busy. The harpist was plucking odd strings. One player nodded greeting to another. Musicians were placing their chairs to a nicety. The right positions for music-stands were being found. There was a constant tuning of the fiddles and their like. Wood and wind instruments emitted fragments of scales. Up at the back, the drummer was adjusting the tension of his drums. The air was filled with the sounds of preparation. Phœbe and Henry were enjoying themselves.
Sitting on Phœbe’s other side, a young woman was making much fuss with herself. She was telling friends how she had studied recently with this very Julius Tausch who was to conduct his first popular Saturday concert in Scotland tonight. To enhance her own importance, she was doing her best to impress upon them wh
at a singular man Herr Tausch was. He was a pupil of Mendelssohn, she said, and had succeeded Schumann to a musical post in Dusseldorf. Phœbe, avid of life herself, listened with interest, and envied the young woman her education abroad.
The noise of tuning stopped, as the first violin came in to take his seat. A hush of interest swept the halls. Late-comers tiptoed hurriedly to their seats. Now the side-curtains were held aside by an unseen hand and the new conductor, a heavily-bearded, shaggy-haired, energetic German, hurried in to take his place before the orchestra. For a moment he stood, acknowledging the welcoming applause; then he turned, tapped his desk with Teutonic vigour, and the concert had begun.
It was a Saturday concert, and the music was not, in everything, strictly classical. A popular overture. Next, an arrangement of tunes borrowed from many sources, entitled “Melodious Congress”, in which the leading instruments of the orchestra had solos to perform as an exhibition of their skill. To Phœbe it was entertaining enough. But, even so, she was not sorry to note that when the “Melodious Congress” had been given, a certain Signora Lucia Reni would delight them with her singing. At least one could look at the singer’s dress, wonder how young she really was, and if her hair was all her own.
Now the second piece was ended. Herr Tausch had laid down his baton, and gone beyond the curtain to return at once gallantly leading the Signora, who came, smiling and bowing with professional coquetry. As she took up her place at the front of the platform, Phœbe scrutinised her with interest. The singer looked thirty or thereabout. Her aspect was Parisian rather than Italian. Her skin was fair and Gallic, though her abundant hair was black. The white satin dress sat severely plain on the plump bust, the hour-glass waist and the carefully corseted hips; it was only when it had come below the knee that, after the fashion of the day, it broke into lavish loops and frills. Her long kid-gloves added to the effect of whiteness. The only colour the Signora permitted herself was a red rose admirably set in her hair, killing any austerity in her dress, and somehow adding sparkle and gaiety to her features. A splendid concert appearance, Phœbe decided. But that was not all. Why was her face familiar?
Now Signora Reni was standing, charmingly serious, listening to the orchestra as it played the introduction to her aria. Now she was singing with a clear, trained, concert soprano’s voice; filling the great space with a practised ease. No. Phœbe had seen this woman somewhere before, though she had never heard her perform. A long time ago, perhaps. This imperfect remembrance baffled and maddened her. Now the singer was bowing and smiling acknowledgment at the end of the song. Now she was going off. Still Phœbe could not place her in her mind.
She turned to her companion. “Henry, have you ever seen that woman before?”
“No, never.”
“Doesn’t she remind you of anybody?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
The orchestra was playing again. Henry was no help, then. She couldn’t have known her when she was a little girl in the country, could she? She had never known any Italians. Yet, she had heard that public singers often gave themselves Italian names. She turned to the programme once more. Lucia Reni. About a mile from the Laigh farm there was a farm called Greenhead. Its farmer was called Rennie. One of his daughters was called Lucy. Lucy Rennie. Lucia Reni. Now she was getting somewhere. The light was breaking. Yes, she had seen Lucy Rennie once or twice, when she was a little girl at the Laigh. Lucy Rennie had been, if she remembered aright, about the same age as her brother David. They had been schoolmates together. And she had seen the other Rennie sister and her father quite recently. She must, in part, be recognising a family likeness. She would have another look at her when she came back to sing again.
Phœbe gave her future husband a joyful dig. Henry, whose attention had been caught by the music, turned reluctantly to see her smiling in triumph.
“Henry! I’ve guessed who she is! She’s no more Italian than I am!”
Henry responded to her joy with impatience. “All right. You can tell me later,” he said, turning indignantly again to the music.
IV
David was still at Grosvenor Terrace when Phœbe and Henry Hayburn came back. In the light of his conversation with Bel and his own preoccupations, he found himself watching the young people closely. Henry, coltish and uncouth, was quite obviously very much in love with Phœbe. There was something still schoolboyish in his attitude towards her; although he was twenty-three and Phœbe eighteen, he seemed very much the younger of the two. Towards Henry, Phœbe, as usual, betrayed nothing. She was cool and friendly. Nothing more. Perhaps Moorhouses were not like other people, David pondered.
“Well, children,” Bel was saying, “did you enjoy yourselves? What about the singer?”
Phœbe turned to Arthur and David. “Do you know who the grand new singer was?”
Arthur looked at his youngest sister with fatherly benevolence.
“Don’t ask me, my dear. I don’t know about these kind of people.”
“Does the name Lucia Reni sound like anybody you know?”
“It sounds to me kind o’ Italian or something.”
Phœbe’s eyes shone with triumph. “It was Lucy Rennie of Greenhead!”
“Do you mean to tell me that? Old Tom Rennie’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
All this was Greek to Bel. Who was Lucy Rennie? Where or what was Greenhead? Why the surprise? She asked questions.
Greenhead, it was explained to Bel, was a neighbouring farm to the Laigh. This prima donna with an Italian name was none other than the neighbouring farmer’s daughter. The Moorhouse boys and Phœbe had known her family all their lives.
“I knew one of the Greenhead lassies had gone to London. She would have been better to stay at home,” Arthur said presently. The Moorhouse roots went deep into the Lowland peasantry. And, like most peasants, they were suspicious of artists and their like—seers of visions and dreamers of dreams. If you had made your fortune, walking all the while in due fear of the Lord, then perhaps you might spend some of it in buying their books or their pictures, or even in watching their performances on stages or platforms. But there contact must end.
Phœbe and David took Arthur’s meaning perfectly. They were of his blood. But Bel was anxious to hear more of this woman.
What did she sing?
Phœbe had brought home a programme. It all looked very professional and high falutin.
Had she sung well?
Phœbe and Henry thought so. She had made a success and been recalled several times.
What did she look like?
She was elegantly dressed in white, and seemed pretty in the distance.
“She’ll be thirty if she’s a day,” was Arthur’s comment.
Bel sensed the hostility in his voice and was at a loss to account for it. Arthur was usually so fair-minded. She could not understand that, in addition to his inborn dislike of artists, he had struck upon an old family rivalry. There had been courtesy and even help between the farms, as is necessary among those who must close the ranks every now and then in their battle with Nature. But the Rennies of Greenhead had always been sharp and opportunist; while the Moorhouses of the Laigh Farm had been plodding and industrious. Now a Rennie, true to her type, had appeared and scored a point in a most unexpected and, to Arthur’s thinking, none too admirable a way. And, little as it concerned him, Arthur didn’t like it.
Chapter Three
IF there had been a woman in the office of Arthur Moorhouse and Company, she would have noticed the difference in David’s appearance at once. But these were not yet the days when women clerks were to be found everywhere. Arthur would strongly have disapproved of the idea. He had said often enough that the Candleriggs was no place for a woman. By which he meant that it was no place for a woman who was unused to the coarse oaths and obscene badinage of the carters and warehousemen as they loaded and unloaded their heavy goods, or roughly elbowed their way in this narrow, straw-and-paper-littered street where the distributio
n of Glasgow’s food-stuffs took place.
But as it was, all the hands being male, none of them noticed that Mr. David was more meticulously dressed than usual. His old office coat was put on, of course, when he came in of a morning, but the one he hung up on the peg behind the counting-house door was new, and before he put it on again to go out it was brushed with the office clothes-brush. His waistcoat, his linen and his trousers, always careful, were even more careful these days.
In other words, David had made up his mind, and—never at any time averse to a little forethought—was laying his plans. Bel had told him to have a look at this girl again, and he had made up his mind to do so. But, careful and practised bachelor as he was, he was quite determined that this meeting should not seem deliberate. It must look casual, at all hazards. There was nothing for it, then, but to wait for an encounter. David knew the movements of his world. The chance would not long be delayed, if he put himself in the way.
It was a late November morning, bright and sparkling, with the first touches of frost. The sun, striking for a time down the narrow canyon of the Candleriggs, lent even this humdrum street a passing glory. A morning for everybody to be out. David turned back into the darkness of the warehouse. He had tried Buchanan Street several times. He would try it again, making some excuse for half an hour of escape.
He guessed, as he turned into it, that it would be full of carriages. Women of consequence would have come into town to shop. He was right. There were equipages from the West End and the country. Most of them were halted by the kerb on either side of the broad, handsome street. Cockaded flunkeys stood by impatient, high-bred horses, holding their heads or adjusting their rugs, while their stylish mistresses made their purchases, gazed at their leisure at the windows, or merely walked and talked with each other, enjoying the sunshine.
David was preparing, not for the first time, to make a detailed examination of the carriages and their occupants, when his arm was caught and firmly held by an elderly man.
“Hullo, Moorhouse. Are ye looking for somebody? Ye haven’t seen my wife and girl, have ye?”