by Guy McCrone
The man was a raw Highland crofter, who, like so many of his kind, had been driven to the City to make a living. A startled dray-horse had suddenly backed, and a wheel had passed over his foot. Arthur had seen the man and his foot before they had been able to have him taken to hospital. It had been a sickening and pitiful sight. As he sat waiting, numb and patient, afraid to stir lest he increase his pain, the Highlander had reminded Arthur of a wild thing in a trap.
“Have ye a wife, McCrimmon?”
“Aye.”
“And weans?”
“Aye.”
“I’ll go and see yer wife and take yer wages to her.”
Tears rolled down the man’s cheeks. That had been thanks enough for Arthur. After his meal he took himself up the hill to the Royal Infirmary, and was told that the foot had been amputated. Sorrowful, he turned from the door, and made his way down towards the Cross to break the news to the man’s wife and give her a week’s wages.
Arthur had arranged with his foreman to meet him; for this part of the city, small in area, yet with more than one-quarter of its inhabitants thrust together into its stews and slums, was a labyrinth to anyone who did not know it. The High Street was waking up to its usual Saturday orgy. Hungry, barefoot children, drink-sodden men and women, tired and struggling humanity. The dark side of this great, successful city. Arthur was well used to the look of these people. As a rule he accepted them, telling himself, as all his like did, that do what one would, poverty and squalor would always be. But today the sights about him weighed upon him more heavily. There were plans, he knew—plans and passionate appeals on behalf of the victims of this slumdom. But even if they bore fruit this afternoon, they would be too late to save that consumptive drab, that little group of undernourished children. He hurried on, comforting his conscience with a promise to give as much as he could to charity.
His foreman was waiting for him. Together they set off down one of the nearby wynds. He was glad to have protection. For, as the man knew this region of “ticketed houses”, and had, indeed, been to the injured man’s quarters, he was able to show the way. No easy matter. For in this part of the town a policeman, tracking a criminal, would receive such an address as: “Crawford’s Wynd, No. 21, Back Land, stair second on left, three up, left lobby facing the door.” Such directions were keys of labyrinths—labyrinths of crime and disease, indecency and death. Arthur followed through a filthy entrance, across another narrow wynd, up stairs rank with humanity, and along a passage where they had to strike matches to see their way. Everywhere they were followed by eyes—dull eyes, over-bright eyes, pitiful eyes, bewildered, childish eyes; the eyes of those to whom the great revolution of the nineteenth century, the triumph of iron ships, the expansion of industry, had been cruel.
Their luck was in. They found McCrimmon’s wife at home. That is, if a part of a room partitioned off by thin wood can be called home. A low fire was burning, and by its light and such as came through the small window, Arthur saw a young woman and two little children. From what he had seen of the denizens of this place on his way up, he was surprised that the woman was normally tall. Though she was pale, she was neither ailing nor wasted. There were two chairs, a table and even a bed. An attempt was made at cleanliness—a difficult feat this, where water had to be fetched up several flights of stairs.
The sight of the black-coated gentleman threw the woman into a dumb agitation. It could forebode nothing but trouble. She stood in the middle of the room, her children clutching her dress, waiting for Arthur to speak.
“Are you Mrs. McCrimmon?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Mrs. McCrimmon. Hamish McCrimmon’s wife. Are you being Mr. Moorhouse?”
“Yes.”
“I was after seeing you before once in the distance, sir.” She twisted her rough apron in her hands. Her voice had the soft beauty of the north. She spoke carefully, this English language that she had learnt. Arthur was moved by her dignity—a peasant dignity, that any Moorhouse could well understand.
“I brought yer man’s wages, Mrs. McCrimmon,” he said.
“Oh, thank you, sir.” She took the envelope, and looked about her, as though she were looking for the answer to some question in the dark corners of the room.
“Yer man’s had an accident, Mrs. McCrimmon.” Arthur had to force the words out of himself.
“An accident?”
“Sit down at the table and I’ll tell ye.”
The woman went rigid. A more imaginative visitor than Arthur Moorhouse might have guessed that she was drawing on the immense reserve of pride that was her birthright. “I’ll be standing where I am, Mr. Moorhouse, please.”
“A wheel went over his foot. They had to take it off at the Royal Infirmary this afternoon.”
She stood, still saying nothing. The fingers of each hand kept moving in the hair of the two infants that clung to her. That was all.
Arthur did not fully comprehend that the dry eyes were staring straight into the face of starvation, but his robust companion knew.
There was nothing to be done but go on stammering out details: what they had said at the hospital; when she might see him if she went. The woman stood saying nothing.
If she had lost control and screamed, as indeed they could even now hear a drunken woman screaming in another room, it would have been pitiable. But somehow it was more than that. This woman was on a level with himself. She and these children had no right in this place. He must get her out of it to a place where there was air and light and decency. How had she and her husband come to occupy this room? How had they come to set upon themselves Glasgow’s special stigma, as inhabitants of “ticketed houses”?
But she was not to be talked to. He held out his hand. She did not seem to notice it. “You know where my office is, Mrs. McCrimmon. If you come next Saturday morning at twelve o’clock I’ll give you yer man’s wages again.”
A strain seemed to go out of her face. She managed to look at him. “If you pay me money, I’ll be working for it, Mr. Moorhouse.”
Arthur foresaw a battle with her pride. He became brusque.
“Well, anyway, I’ve got to go now. Goodbye. And come and see me if you’re in any trouble, Mrs. McCrimmon.” His sharp, purposeful tone was too much for her.
“Yes, sir. God bless you, Mr. Moorhouse.”
Arthur turned and left her, followed by his man. He was shaken by this meeting. In a voice that was still abrupt he bade him good-day, thanked him shortly for troubling to come with him, and walked off in the direction of the Kelvinside tram. His stocky foreman stood watching the lean, striding figure until it was lost in the Saturday rabble.
II
Bel wondered, as she sat at her midday meal with little Arthur and Phœbe, if it would be worthwhile to talk to her sister-in-law about the charity concert. Her enthusiasm decided her.
“I met Lucy Rennie this morning at Sophia’s,” she began.
“Did you?” Phœbe went on with her soup.
For the last eight years she had had the upbringing of Phœbe, and, with very good reason, she loved her husband’s youngest sister. But every now and then in these eight years Bel had been overcome with a strong impulse to smack her. Why couldn’t she settle down to a good gossip once in a while? Why couldn’t she ask what Miss Rennie looked like at close quarters? If she was pleasant to speak to? What kind of clothes she wore? Why she was at Sophia’s? How long she was to be in Glasgow? In fact, all the pleasant trivialities of normal feminine intercourse.
Bel should have known better. At more serious moments than this, Phœbe had, maddeningly, held her tongue.
“Do you remember her when you were a little girl at the Laigh Farm?” Bel persisted.
“I saw her once or twice in church.”
“Did she sing in those days?”
“I don’t remember. Yes. I think she was in the choir.”
“Did she never come to the Laigh Farm?”
“I don’t remember.”
No. It was too hard go
ing with Phœbe. And yet the girl had bounced in from a concert two weeks ago to tell David and Arthur that this young lady with the Italian-sounding name of Lucia Reni was none other than Lucy Rennie of Greenhead. Yes. Phœbe was quite unaccountable.
Bel gave it up. She had been seeking some clue to the Moorhouse dislike of the Rennie’s—a clue that might help her to overcome Arthur’s expected resistance. But it was no use. She would have to plan the campaign by herself.
Arthur was brusque and businesslike, but beneath, as his wife very well knew, there was a sympathy that could be quickly touched. Before she had told him anything of Lucy Rennie and the concert, she would tell him about the ragged children. And from there she would lead through easy stages to the meeting with Miss Rennie at Sophia’s, and how they had planned a drawing-room concert to help the suffering in the city. To this, Bel hoped, Arthur could not but respond.
But as she sat, later that afternoon, giving a cold and dejected husband tea, Bel wondered. Arthur had not yet told her what had kept him in the City. His mood was dark. It would be folly to trouble him now. She must have patience.
There was a real understanding between these two. In the nine years of their marriage each had learnt of the other where it was possible to lean, where to go lightly. Goodwill, intelligence and a fundamental respect, each for the other, had brought together a man and a woman who were widely dissimilar. Bel saw that Arthur was preoccupied and weary. She knew that he would snap her head off if she mentioned the concert. But likewise did she know that this would pass; that this thing, whatever it was, pent up inside him, would have to be told, and told to herself as Arthur’s inevitable confidante.
Arthur was therefore allowed to drink his tea in peace, and when it was done to sit on the other side of the fire from a comfortable and untroublesome wife, who seemed wholly intent upon her embroidery.
III
“Well, dear, were you busy this afternoon?” she ventured presently.
“One of the men in the warehouse got his foot smashed.”
“Our warehouse, Arthur?” Bel put her sewing in her lap.
“Aye. They took his foot off.”
“Oh! Poor thing! Do I know him?”
“No. I don’t think so. His name’s Hamish McCrimmon. He’s from the Islands. He’s just been in Glasgow a week or two.”
“Has he got a wife?”
“A wife and two weans. I had to go and tell her, poor body.”
Bel took up her work again. Here was her husband at his best. Taking responsibility upon himself. Shelving nothing that was disagreeable, merely because he didn’t like it. “Poor Arthur!” she said. “What a thing to have to do!”
Arthur gave a grunt of self-depreciation.
“Is she Highland, too?”
“Aye.”
Nothing more was said for some moments. Suddenly Arthur sprang to his feet as though he had been stung. He stood on the rug in front of the fire looking down at her. “She was in one of those terrible rooms off the Briggate. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
By hearsay and description Bel knew very well what these places were like. Had not her elder son at the age of three had his clothing stripped from him in some such den? Were not reformers and social workers telling those who had ears to hear what such places were like?
“Was she a slum woman, Arthur?” she asked.
“No. She seemed to me a decent Hielan’ body, that didn’t know where she had landed. She was like a—a bird that was taken and put in a cage.”
It was not often that Arthur took to poetry. Bel did not need to look up to realise that what he had seen had moved him to a great pity.
“What did she do when you told her, dear?”
“She just stood—stood with her bairns hanging on to her.” Arthur let his voice steady itself for a moment, then he exploded savagely, “Dirty, stinking place!”
Bel said nothing. She merely bent her head over her work. Her own frivolous scheme had faded. Her mind was filled with the picture he had shown her.
As he stood looking indignantly about him, Arthur saw a tear fall upon her hand. Neither of them spoke for a time.
“What are you doing to help her?” Bel asked.
“I’m not sure yet. She’s to come to the office next Saturday anyway and get his wages.”
“I’ll come down and see her.”
“I would like if you could.” Arthur sat down again. His feelings were relieved. He had come very near to Bel. For a moment he sat thinking. “That’s a terrible place where she is,” he went on. “It’ll be the death of them. I was thinking, maybe, we could get the coachman’s house cleaned out and give it to them.”
Bel looked up. “When the man comes out, couldn’t you send them all home to the Islands?”
“He came from the Islands to get work.”
“Times are bad here, Arthur.”
“They’re worse there.”
Bel had been biding her time about the coachman’s house. She had been delighted when Arthur had bought a house that had one. They had been only six months in the West End, in this fine house in Grosvenor Terrace. That was expense enough for the moment. But, inevitably, if you had a coach-house, sooner or later you would have a carriage. Especially when everyone else around you had one. Unless, of course, you filled the living-quarters with lame ducks, and were unable to house a coachman. And here was Arthur suggesting they should do just that thing. There might be no getting rid of the McCrimmons. Bel and her family were of the sort that attracted hangers-on, and she knew it. Her prudence told her that they might be burdened with a useless, lame Highlander, a feckless wife, and an ever-increasing number of children, who took her charity and house-room, and thwarted her ambitions to have a smart carriage like her neighbours.
Arthur wondered at the silence his wife had fallen into. The idea of having a carriage of his own had not yet entered his mind. “Well, my dear, do ye not think it would be the right thing to do?”
“What, Arthur?” Bel brought herself back from her own thoughts.
“The coach-house is standing there doing nothing.”
When Bel capitulated, she had the great merit of capitulating fully and handsomely. She had done it in her life before, and she made such a capitulation now.
“Of course, Arthur; we’ll get the rooms cleared out and tell the poor woman to come when she can.”
“You’re a good lassie,” Arthur said, looking at his wife as she rose to put away her sewing.
Bel laughed, a little emotionally. “Yes,” she said, “I sometimes think I am. I must go and see what the children are doing.”
And on her way upstairs to the nursery it came to her that instead of winning her difficult battle about Lucy Rennie and the concert, the war had been carried into her own territory and she had lost disastrously.
Chapter Seven
BUT not irretrievably.
The Lucy Rennie affair was bound to come up again. For the remainder of the day Bel was content to bask in her husband’s goodwill. They were busy people. They had little enough time to water the plant of connubial tenderness. And, like a sensible woman, she knew that when it blossomed afresh, it would be vandalism to break down so delicate a blooming. She was happy to let matters be.
But on the following day things developed. Arthur had now obtained a family ticket to the Botanic Gardens—that select outdoor club of Western Glasgow. It was their custom to join the after-church parade of wealthy citizens there. They did this on fine Sundays to give themselves an appetite for their roast beef, to display Bel’s smart clothes, to see and be seen.
There was a snatch of November sunshine as they took a turn or two in front of the great glass-house, watching the passers-by and greeting friends. Suddenly Bel became aware of a hand lightly laid upon her arm. She turned round to see Miss Rennie standing beside her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Moorhouse. I have just come across to ask you to introduce me to an old friend.” She smiled at Arthur.
A little
flurried, Bel made the introduction. Arthur was gravely polite.
“I don’t believe you remember me, Mr. Moorhouse,” she said, giving Arthur her hand.
“Aye. Fine. Many a time have I helped yer father to tie corn,” Arthur replied, kindly enough.
“I mustn’t keep you,” Miss Rennie said. “I must go back to my friends. But I just wondered if you had thought any more about a drawing-room concert, Mrs. Moorhouse?”
Bel felt caught. “I haven’t had time to discuss it properly,” she said quickly. “But I’ll let you know when you come to see me.”
With a goodbye, Miss Rennie turned and went.
“So that’s old Tom Rennie’s girl, is it?” Arthur said as they moved on. “Plenty of airs and graces. And plenty of the Rennie cheek. But how do ye know her?”
“I met her yesterday at Sophia’s, Arthur. I forgot to tell you.” Forgot was perhaps not the right word, but how else was Bel to explain it?
“What’s all this about coming to see you?”
She would have to tell him now. And perhaps it was all for the best that it happened so. She told Arthur of the ragged children, of Lucy Rennie’s quick sympathy, and her offer to sing.
Arthur grunted, but Bel did not read discouragement from this and continued: “She’s been doing it in London. I said I would talk to you about it.” She looked at her husband. “I feel perhaps it’s our duty to help.”
“I don’t like the Rennies. And I don’t like public singers.”
“That’s a little old-fashioned, dear. You know, we might make thirty or forty pounds.”