by Guy McCrone
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Dermott.”
Old Robert Dermott wondered why David changed colour. “They should be here, somewhere. They were coming in, if it was a fine morning.” It would have surprised him to know that the young man he was good-naturedly holding was there to look for them, too. They stood looking about them for some moments.
David Moorhouse, the farmer’s son from Ayrshire, was not sorry to be seen thus affectionately held by one of the princes of Glasgow’s shipping world—a prince who, like so many of his kind, had begun life with nothing. Nearly fifty years before, the young highland giant, who was Robert Dermott, had come to a rapidly expanding Glasgow. Now he owned a fleet of merchantmen and a house in the country overlooking a deepened Clyde. From his windows he could watch his great steamers, as they moved carefully in the narrow waterway; arriving from, or setting out for, the other side of the world.
David looked up at the grand old man beside him. As he stood there, he seemed to dominate his surroundings. There was something patriarchal about his flowing beard and his bushy eyebrows. The eyes beneath them were arrestingly gentle in all this ruggedness, as they ranged the street looking for their own.
“By the way,” he said conversationally, “I’ve taken somebody you know into Dermott Ships Limited. Young Stephen Hayburn. I don’t know what he has got in him, but I am doing it for his father’s sake. His father was a friend of mine. We learnt our ABC from the same dominie at Ardfinnan.”
David found himself saying that it was kind of Mr. Dermott.
“Kind? It’s not kind if the boy has got anything in him. I hear the young one is to marry yer sister.”
“Yes, they—”
But Mr. Dermott’s thoughts, still running in their own groove, went on aloud, “Terrible smash that City Bank business. Ye know, Moorhouse, the amount of poverty and destitution up and down the country, and in this City of Glasgow this winter—”
But the amount of poverty and destitution did not at this moment prevent a particularly handsome carriage and pair making its way round from Argyle Street into Buchanan Street, the stepping horses shining with moisture after their long run into town from the country. The carriage was dark green, as was the livery of the men up in front. There were discreet monograms “R.D.” in yellow on the doors.
Robert Dermott opened his giant’s throat and bellowed: “Here, MacDonald, stop!” People turned round to look. The nearest horses waiting by the kerb threw up excited heads and had to be controlled. But those in the carriage in mid-stream, for whom it had been intended, had heard, too. The footman turned to tell the coachman. Two ladies were seen to lean forward and look about them. The pace slackened, and in a few moments more the horses were standing, steaming in the crisp, frosty air.
Robert Dermott, still holding David’s arm, marched him forward. “Here’s the wife and Grace,” he said, beaming with pleasure. “Come and say hullo.”
No, David pondered, as he moved forward, the thing could not have been more suitably accomplished, nor with a more casual seeming.
II
The footman was handing the ladies from the carriage. Grace Dermott sprang out first. She was a slim, fair young woman of nearer thirty than twenty. Her mother was large and commanding like her father, and some ten years younger than he. She greeted David warmly in a loud, West of Scotland voice. People turned in the street and said “Oh, there was Mrs. Robert Dermott.” Her daughter, too, gave David her hand.
“Well, Mr. Moorhouse, we haven’t seen you for a long time. Where have you been?”
David told Mrs. Dermott he had been busy. As he stood talking he found himself watching Grace. She was pleased to see him, but, quick to go on the defensive, he wondered now if there was more than that. He thought so. Indeed, it was to see these signs that he had put himself in her way.
In the sunshine, they walked up the street together. The horses, over-warm, had been driven on, for they must not stand in the cold. David, although he had been the guest of the Dermotts a number of times, looked at them anew this morning.
He liked them. They were effusive and kind, with that easy, enveloping kindness of simple people who had become very rich. The world had treated them well. Robert Dermott’s days of striving were so far behind him that, although he talked much of his boyhood and his struggles in a bragging, old man’s way, prosperity and ease had long since wiped out their bitter reality from his mind.
David’s friend Stephen Hayburn had first taken him to visit them. They had accepted him at once as Stephen’s friend.
He was walking between the two women. They talked of Stephen.
“Mr. Dermott has just told me that he has taken him into Dermott Ships Limited,” David said.
“Yes, Robert felt he ought to, Mr. Moorhouse. His father was an old friend. We felt it was the least we could do,” Mrs. Dermott said. She spoke as though nobody had any reason to be uncomfortable; but if there was any difficulty, they, the powerful and benevolent Dermotts, would see to it.
“I hear that Henry Hayburn is to marry your sister, Mr. Moorhouse,” Grace said.
“Yes.”
“Is she like you to look at?”
“Not in the least.”
Mrs. Dermott laughed. “I nearly said what a pity.”
David acknowledged the compliment and held out his hand. “Look here, it’s time I was getting back to work. I’m not as idle as I look, you know.” This last was aimed at Robert Dermott. Shipping princes did not approve of young men who appeared to have nothing to do.
“Can’t we arrange for you to come and see us soon, Mr. Moorhouse?” Mrs. Dermott said. “What about Saturday. There are trains at all kinds of times. Or perhaps it’s asking too much?”
No, it was not asking too much of Mr. Moohouse. He was merely, indeed, receiving what he had come for. “Go back and have another look at her.” Bel’s words came into his mind as he turned across Exchange Square making for Arthur Moorhouse and Company. Grace Dermott was a handsome girl, and everything that was good. He would go and have a look at her as he had been told to.
He liked her. Without knowing it, David slackened his brisk townsman’s pace, and sauntered slowly along the pavement thinking. Obviously Mrs. Dermott wanted him to come. What did Grace feel about him? Was he perhaps, after all, imagining that she loved him? But then, Bel had said he was the kind of man who would know. David thought he knew.
III
When they had finished their business, Grace Dermott and her mother ate their roast beef before the fire, in the comfortable, well-padded dining-room of one of the many hotels in George’s Square. Her father, having gone back to his office for an hour, had joined them. Although they had seen each other at breakfast and were to meet again in the evening, this affectionate trio were pleased to eat their midday meal together. None of them spoke much. Robert Dermott sat enjoying vast quantities of beef, potatoes and cabbage, his glass of claret, the prosperous looks of his wife and daughter, and the blazing fire. These immediate things occupied his mind. His thoughts, for the moment, dwelt neither upon the state of British shipping, nor upon the young man they had chanced to meet this morning.
Mrs. Dermott, having attended a committee formed to relieve the present distress in the city, sat nursing her annoyance over a decision that had been taken against her wishes.
Grace alone thought of their meeting with David.
Early in the afternoon the carriage came to fetch them home. It would take them over an hour to get there. In the yellow November sunshine they took their way along the road that follows the Clyde to Dumbarton. It was getting colder. Already a thin fog was rising from the river, rising to meet the sun hanging low and wintry in the sky, turning it to a luminous disc of pale gold. The misty smoke and the tenements of Glasgow, caught in the light, made a magic of their own.
Snug among their wrappings, the Dermotts discussed their day. The provoking Distress Committee. Grace’s visit to a dressmaker. The fine gold watch that had been dropped so unaccountably,
that the man had said would be so difficult to mend. A new design for embroidery. The talk of those whose business it is to spend, to be pleased and receive respect wherever they may go. But presently, lulled by the beauty of the evening, the steady trot of the horses, and springing rhythm of the carriage, they sat back saying nothing more.
They were passing Kelvingrove, with the new, ornate University towering high on the hill above it. The green slopes of the park and the clumps of bare trees were lit by the dying sunshine. From the River Kelvin, too, a white mist was rising.
So her mother had asked him to pay them another visit. Grace was glad. She would see him again. At the same time she was afraid. Would the visit merely bore him? Caught up suddenly in the upsurge of her feelings she found herself twisting her gloved fingers together under the great fur rug. She knew quite well why her mother had invited David. No confidences about him had ever passed between them. But there are a great many things that women do not need to tell each other. They were passing through the village of Partick—now a busy, industrial suburb. Here and there they caught glimpses of the Clyde’s busy waterway; of fussy river steamers belching smoke and churning the water with their paddles; of the many high masts of the clippers. Across the water a great iron hull stood uncompleted in the stacks, black against the sun.
If he had wanted her he would have come on his own account. He wouldn’t have waited to be asked. Men were like that.
They didn’t need encouragement. There would be someone else. Why had her mother bothered him? They would lose dignity over this. She would tell her she did not want to see him. No. That would be absurd.
Now they were driving between farmlands. Fields of green pasturage and yellow stubble spreading over the flanks of rolling hills or stretching flatly towards the river.
But Grace, as she sat forward clasping her fingers, did not see what was around her. She saw the face of David Moorhouse, handsome, serious and, somehow, remote. And again she saw it as it was when, some weeks ago, he had bent down to pick up some trifle she had dropped on the harness-room floor, flushed and laughing, with a thick strand of chestnut hair over his brow. A woman never should give her heart until she was asked for it. She could not help herself. It had happened like that, and there was nothing to be done.
A sudden glimpse revealed the widening river in the sunset, a sheet of angry copper. Presently they had turned from the main road, passed a gatehouse and were between the trees of their own drive.
Mrs. Dermott looked at her daughter. She saw that her eyes were full of tears.
Chapter Four
LITTLE Arthur Moorhouse had had his hair cut. And by way of recompense for stern self-control during the cutting, he had received his reward. The barber had given him a balloon. Now the seven-year-old stalwart, one hand in his mother’s, the other grasping the string of his prize, was being towed about Hillhead, while Bel did her weekend shopping. Progress was not easy; for everybody else was out, on this, the last Saturday morning of November; and, as Arthur refused to look in front of him, but kept his head turned round watching the large, sea-green sphere that floated behind him, he was continually colliding with other little boys or their mothers; much to the annoyance of his own.
“Come on, dear; you can play as much as you like with your balloon when you get home.”
“Mother, would it be very unselfish of me if I gave this balloon to Tom when I get home?”
“Very.”
“Too unselfish?” Should one ever do so much for a brother? Bel looked at her son’s troubled face and laughed. “Tom’s very wee, he’s only three. Perhaps he would just burst it.”
“Yes; I think perhaps it would be wiser not to give it to him.”
Arthur now looked pleased and comfortable.
For a moment Bel was stricken. Was she teaching her elder son to be selfish? But really, with her mind so full of tomorrow’s roast beef, and fish for tonight, and the baker and the florist, child psychology (although it was not yet known to her by that name) was too much for her this morning.
“I’ve not spent my Saturday penny yet,” Arthur said, suddenly stopping dead and refusing to move.
“Well, come on, dear; you’ll have time to do that if we hurry. Don’t dawdle.”
Arthur trotted along, meditating deeply. Now here prestige was involved. If he had only his own tastes to consider, he would buy Slim-Jim, or broken chocolates—you got a lot of that. But, on the other hand, as a man of the world and a Kelvinside Academy scholar of some three-months’ standing, perhaps he owed it to himself to buy liquorice straps. The boy who arrived on Monday morning with straps of liquorice was popular and important. You flogged all the dirty, perspiring paws of your friends with the liquorice, then gave them torn-off pieces of it to eat in return for having unflinchingly allowed this sadism. No. On the whole, liquorice straps would be best. He would give them to his Aunt Phœbe to keep until Monday morning. Otherwise infirmity of purpose might overcome him, and he would eat them before they could be used to increase his glory.
So in the sweetie-shop Arthur bought his liquorice. And, as she happened to be on the spot, his mother bought materials to keep him—and herself—contented in church on the morrow. As they left, tragedy occurred. Bel, quick and over-purposeful, shut the shop door behind her too soon. There was a loud report. She had crushed Arthur’s balloon. On the pavement outside there was threatened lamentation.
“Now, remember, you’re a big boy, Arthur. You know your mother didn’t mean it.” Arthur was uncertain of his emotions, and had to be further reminded that the boys at school would think him a great baby if he cried about a silly thing like a burst balloon.
Using a child’s very effective blackmail on his harassed but tender-hearted mother, he thought he might feel better if he were allowed to go down to Kelvinbridge and look down at the water rushing over the weir. Bel was not strong enough to refuse him.
II
Arthur cheered up as his mother held him to look over the parapet at the rushing Kelvin beneath him. There were great moving islands of foam and autumn leaves. He even recovered enough to spit several times and watch the result descending.
“Come along, Arthur; we really must go.” She had him on the pavement again, and was striking the dust of the parapet from him, when she came face to face with Sophia Butter, accompanied by a young woman.
“Bel, dear! And Arthur!” Sophia always made a great deal of noise about nothing. “And look who I’ve got with me! Of course, you don’t know her, because, of course, you haven’t met. This is Lucy Rennie! This is Arthur’s wife Bel!”
Bel turned to the young woman with interest. Fashionable herself, she took in her appearance at a glance. So this was the singer they had been discussing the other evening!
Miss Rennie was small, dark, rather plump and very well dressed. There was a quickness and sparkle about her manner that might have belonged to a Frenchwoman.
“I used to know your husband, Mrs. Moorhouse, although I knew David better.” She was a little affected; but that too, Bel thought, was charming. Her speech held no trace of Scotch.
Bel couldn’t help being interested. The very fact that Arthur disapproved of her gave her a tang. She seemed a harmless enough sort of young woman.
Sophia had never stopped chattering. “It’s too silly! I met Lucy wandering about in Hillhead. And I knew her at once after all these years! Not a bit different! Terribly smart, of course. And very grand! That’s what comes of being so much in London. I am taking her in to have a cup of tea and tell me all about herself. Come along too, Bel. And Arthur will see the children—at least, if they’re there. They’re so awful, I never know where they are.”
It was not often that Bel went to Sophia’s house. First, because she was seldom invited; and second, because its untidiness embarrassed her. Like many very orderly people, the untidiness of others made her ill at ease. But now, busy though she was, she could not refuse.
They crossed to the east side of the bridge. A few
steps more took them to Rosebery Terrace. Sophia’s house smelt of cooking. The little maid, who let them in, glided off in carpet slippers to get them tea. Seated in the back parlour, Bel could hear cups being indignantly banged on a tray. There was a quarrel going on between the son and daughter of the house somewhere upstairs.
Sophia poked up the fire. “I think I hear the children,” she said. “Come with me, Arthur, and we’ll go and look for them. I won’t be a minute. But they must be told Arthur’s here. I would never hear the end of it if they didn’t see him.” And Sophia went out of the room, leaving Bel and Miss Rennie altogether.
“Oh, I know Sophia of old!” Lucy Rennie said. “She was always terribly kind.” She laughed. Gaily and intimately. As one woman of fashion to another. She gave Bel the impression that she had stopped herself just in time. That the adverb “terribly” had been intended to qualify some adjective quite other than “kind”. “Funny” perhaps, or “idiotic”.
Bel was delighted with her. Everything about Miss Rennie appealed to her. Her alertness. Her knowledge of the world. Her “English” accent. Her poise.
“I can’t believe you came from the farm next to my father-in-law’s.”
“Why?”
“You don’t strike me at all as being a farmer’s daughter.”
Lucy smiled. “I dare say. I have been in London for the last eight or nine years. It’s a long story, but a simple one, really. Someone heard me singing when I was twenty, and offered to give me a year’s training. I accepted. Soon I did some teaching, myself, to keep me going, then I began to get engagements as well as teaching. And here I am.”
“Wasn’t it very hard?” Bel asked innocently.
“Abominably.”
“Weren’t you very lonely?”
“Very—at first. Later I made friends, of course.” Miss Rennie allowed her eyes to twinkle. “I’m a self-made woman, I’m afraid, Mrs. Moorhouse.”