by Guy McCrone
Why couldn’t he pay the woman her man’s wages and let her remain where she was for another week? she demanded huskily of Arthur as he brushed his hair. After the evasive fashion of husbands, Arthur replied that he had better see. See what? Bel demanded. But by this time Arthur was on his way downstairs to breakfast. And when Sarah, Bel’s housemaid, brought up her breakfast tray, she told her that Miss Phœbe had gone out with the master. That was that. There was nothing now for Bel to do but feel sorry for herself.
Later in the morning Phœbe came back from the meeting important and excited. She had found lame ducks after her own heart. The woman, she told Bel, was a poor, proud creature, and the two little children were sickly mites. She had arranged for them to come this afternoon. One of Arthur’s warehouse men was fetching them and their belongings in a cart.
Bel heaved a worried sigh. If she had arranged this herself, she would, of course, have been uplifted by her own kindness. But as Arthur and his sister had arranged it, she was filled with disapproval. The roses of her bedroom wallpaper danced unsteadily before her eyes. She felt feverish forebodings. These urchins would probably infect her own children with every known disease.
“I’m worried about this, Phœbe,” she said. “Did the children look clean?”
“How could they be clean?” Phœbe demanded of her with sudden and surprising passion. “I know what these slum rooms look like. Are you forgetting that once I brought Arthur out of one of them?”
Bel never forgot that. However puzzling, however maddening this girl might be, Bel was never to forget a night four years ago when her world had stood still with horror because her three-year-old son had been kidnapped. She would never forget the ragged, filthy girl of fourteen who had appeared out of the cruel darkness dragging the child to safety. That was a link between Bel and Phœbe that would never be broken. Passionate self-will could have another name even in a difficult half-grown girl. The name was courage.
This was the first time, indeed, that Phœbe had referred to it, and Bel guessed rightly that this slum woman and her children had reawakened echoes in Phœbe’s stormy heart.
“What a dirty wee brat you looked!” Bel replied with intentional triviality. After all there was no purpose in allowing Phœbe to excite herself with memories.
The handsome, flushed child, standing at the foot of her bed, did not reply to this. Her colour merely deepened for an instant, and a flicker of contempt showed in her face. “Anyway, Henry can help me with them when he comes this afternoon.” She turned and went to join the family at their midday meal.
Bel smiled to herself in spite of a swollen nose and pricking eyes. It seemed a strange sort of love-making that went on between this eager and restless couple. Either they were quarrelling or engrossing themselves in some quite unlikely occupation. And helping a slum woman with her flitting was one of the most unlikely.
III
David had not been looking forward to Tuesday. This perhaps was not unnatural. At almost no time does a young man see his own family in a more critical light than at the moment when he must present them to his future wife. At no time do relatives seem more homely and inadequate. No. Tuesday was merely an ordeal to be got through.
Grace and her mother drove into the City in the morning. David was asked to join them at their midday meal. He found Robert Dermott with them. The Dermotts were, each of them, warm-hearted people in their way, and their pleasure in David’s company was not assumed. Placed between Robert Dermott and his wife, David was compelled to listen to an account of the appalling state of British merchant shipping on one side, and on the other, to hear, minutely and at length, just what Mrs. Dermott’s plans for Christmas were, and how very greatly they must now be altered as a result of his engagement to her daughter. David did everything he could to sustain both conversations at once, which was not difficult, as his future parents-in-law were doing all the talking.
When the meal was over he rose to go. He would meet the ladies later and all three would drive out in the carriage to Bel’s house in Grosvenor Terrace. Robert Dermott came with him.
Once out in the street, the old man caught his arm. “Ye haven’t a minute to come up to the office, David?”
David thought he could find that minute.
“Come away, then.” Mr. Dermott said no more, but turned in the direction of the office of Dermott Ships Limited. In some moments they were there, and David was following on the heels of the chairman of the company through the great main doorway. He felt self-conscious as he passed through the large outer office filled with clerks, who, at the sight of the old man, had suddenly been seized with an intense interest in their work. They passed through a smaller office with some three or four senior clerks in it. Among them was David’s friend Stephen Hayburn. As he was hurried on, David allowed himself a hasty smirk of recognition, and Stephen shut one eye.
The chairman’s private room was like every other chairman’s private room in Glasgow. It had a great mahogany desk, a deep, Turkey carpet, an extravagantly blazing fire and composite photographs of various bodies of important gentlemen of the City hanging in faded gold frames against Pompeiian red walls.
“Sit down, boy.” David found himself affectionately thrust into a worn leather chair out of which the padding was bursting. For a time the old man fanned out his coat-tails in front of the fire and looked down at him, saying nothing. David waited.
“I want my son-in-law to come into this business,” Robert Dermott fired at him suddenly; then, as many businessmen will, he stood watching the effect of his words.
David’s colour changed. “It’s very kind, Mr. Dermott,” he said lamely.
“Kind? Everything I have in the world will go to you and your wife someday. I want ye to learn to look after it. Dermott Ships Limited is not all mine. But most of it is. And I don’t want ye to throw it away.”
David stood up. The Dermotts’ love and generosity were closing round him in a way that was frightening. The idea of joining Dermott Ships alarmed him. The family did not consider him a good businessman, and he knew they were right. As a boy in his teens, Arthur had taken him, drilled him, and set his somewhat frivolous feet in the ways that a sound businessman’s feet should take. The snob within him told him that he would rather be in ships than in cheese. But that was only one side of it. The proposition overwhelmed him.
“I would like to talk to my brother Arthur about this,” he said at length. “You see, I owe everything to him, Mr. Dermott.”
“I’m glad to hear you say it, David. Ye’re a good boy. But yer brother would be mad to refuse ye a chance like this.” He put his great hand on David’s shoulder. “I’ll come across with ye and see yer brother, if ye like.”
“I’ll speak to him myself first, Mr. Dermott.”
“Very well.”
“And thank you again.” David held out his hand, feeling like a boy who had been to tea with the headmaster.
“Get away with ye. Ye belong to us now, laddie.” He struck the young man’s shoulder a resounding blow of affection. David was amazed at the warmth of this great, over-emotional Highlander. He was glad to get himself out of the room, to find himself alone in the street.
IV
Bel was forever setting her stage and hoping that everything would run according to her programme. The facts of this afternoon’s arrangements were these. She had asked Mrs. Robert Dermott of Aucheneame to tea, together with her daughter, Grace. And she had asked David’s sisters to come and meet them.
Out of this, Bel had painted for herself a picture. On Tuesday afternoon she would be found by her chief visitors, calm and poised and, she hoped, not entirely without good looks, sitting in a flower-filled drawing-room, graciously ready to take her newest sister-in-law to her elegant bosom. They would have a charming talk, with just the proper amount of emotion in it, then she would give them tea from a table spread with delicate lace and covered with glittering silver and fine china. Later, David’s elder sisters would appear, drink te
a, and be presented. And through all this she herself would move, smiling and holding the social reins. Encouraging here—restraining there. And, though she did not quite admit it, the hope was hidden somewhere within her, that David’s future relatives would in due course take their leave feeling that it would be a privilege to be allied to anyone so charming and so accomplished as Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse.
That was the picture as Bel saw it. By Tuesday morning she knew that some of the details at least must be imperfect. For one thing, she herself would not be in her best looks. Her cold was receding, but her nose was still red. And when she had got up yesterday, she had felt weak on her legs and unfit to see to such important things as dusting, sweeping and the buying and arranging of flowers. Phœbe had said she would see to everything, but that wasn’t quite the same. She was much too impetuous, and prepared to think that anything would do.
Then, while she was scarcely yet ready to receive her guests, Sophia and Mary arrived. Bel was annoyed. She had asked them to come later, hoping to have the Dermotts to herself at first. Now she had only to enter her drawing-room to feel that indefinable closing of the family ranks.
“Bel, dear, what a dreadful cold you have!” Mary said. “Is it wise to be having a tea-party today? As I was just saying to Sophia and Phœbe, I think it’s wonderful how you keep yourself on the go.”
Sophia, who had been chattering to Phœbe, turned the flood on Bel. “I hope you don’t mind us coming a little soon, dear. But you see we’ve heard so little about all this. It’s been so secret. But, then, these things have to be secret till the last minute, don’t they? It wouldn’t really be suitable if they weren’t, would it? But, as I said to William just last night, ‘Trust Bel. She’ll know all about this!”’
Bel had no intention of telling David’s sisters anything of his confidences to herself. As she sat looking at Sophia, she noted with some satisfaction that she had left her muff to dry too near the fire, as some of its hair was singed, and it had lost its lustre. “It’s all been a great surprise, hasn’t it?” was all she said.
“And Phœbe tells me that Margaret Ruanthorpe is going to have a baby,” Mary said with a conventional show of pleasure.
Bel winced a little. Young girls like Phœbe shouldn’t be talking about such things. Even to their own married sisters. That was what came of being a farmer’s daughter, she supposed.
But Mary had thrown a stone that was bound to cause ripples.
“Of course, we think it isn’t wise,” Sophia said. “After all, Margaret must be forty. Well—I mean forty is not quite the age to be having a first baby.”
Bel took the precaution of sending Phœbe downstairs to see after something quite unnecessary, then the three married ladies got their heads together. She had much to tell of Margaret’s visit. What the doctor had said. In what respect she must be careful. How she had taken the news. Bel couldn’t help enjoying the telling. Nor could she think so ill of Sophia and Mary as she had done a moment ago. After all, they were comfortable, familiar creatures to gossip with. They had forgotten she had a cold, and were exposing themselves to it freely in their eagerness to catch every detail of this important family news, as it fell from Bel’s still-swollen lips. And so Bel, Mary and Sophia had quite forgotten appearances, and were deep in talk, when Mrs. Dermott, Miss Dermott and Mr. David were announced. Hurriedly Bel rose to receive them, feeling all too acutely that her reception of them lacked the poise and graciousness she had planned.
David did not enjoy this women’s tea-party. As was natural, he was very conscious of everything his relatives did. He had counted on Bel to maintain an atmosphere of refined distinction. But she had, it seemed, a bad cold, and appeared ridiculously fussed as she poured out tea.
Mrs. Dermott’s habit of talking loudly made, for those who did not know her, the easy interchange of polite and suitable ideas a difficult matter. Grace, instead of behaving as the honoured guest, was apologetically handing round bread and butter. And as for the others, David decided it was no use expecting the family to be anything else than the family. At last, however, they settled themselves down in some sort of way. Grace and Phœbe beside Bel at the tea-table, and Mary and Sophia with Mrs. Dermott.
As he moved about he saw that Grace’s eyes were upon him. It was strange how little confidence she had in herself, how often her look was asking for his approval. She was a gentle creature. He was fond of her.
He wandered for a moment to the window and looked out. The offer he had received from Robert Dermott worried him. What was he to say to Arthur? His brother had done everything for him. He felt that if Arthur wanted him to stay in the business in the Candleriggs, he was bound to do so. Yet he could not deny that it would be great advancement to be one of the firm of Dermott Ships. And he knew that it would please Grace.
David stood uneasily gazing through the bare December trees out into Great Western Road. An almost empty tramcar, its mud-bespattered horses trotting dispiritedly, was making its way to the Kirklee terminus. A couple of hansoms, their wheels casting a spray of snowy slush, were flying downhill into town.
Over there across the road in the white Botanic Gardens there was no sign of life. The gas-jets in the street lamps shone pale in the fading daylight.
Yes. It was all bound up with Grace. Everything was bound up with Grace now. He could never escape that. He was never free now from an unnamed feeling, an unnamed compulsion. He must keep compensating—making up for something he was unable to give her. He had not defined this even to himself. But it was there, influencing all his plans.
“I’ve been sent to tell you to come and talk to us.” He felt a hand in his own, and turned to find Grace beside him. He came back with her, recalled to his duty. He was pleased to see that Grace had made friends with Bel, and that even Phœbe, who could on occasion be so withdrawn that there was no understanding her, had unbent, and was telling her of some slum family that had become her latest hobby.
Sophia and Mrs. Dermott in their group were happily talking simultaneously.
“And you see, Mrs. Dermott, in a family like mine,” Sophia was saying, “it’s very difficult to have meals at regular times. You see, my husband never will tell me when he’s coming home, so he just has to be fed when he appears. And the children are worse. I was just saying to the servant this morning—”
And through all this Mrs. Dermott was explaining: “So I had to tell these women that if they were taking that attitude there was nothing more to be said. Of course admittedly it was annoying for me. I had given a lot of my time and money, and the gardener had sent several bunches of greenhouse flowers to decorate the platform first, and be sold to help the funds afterwards. But then it was silly of me to expect—”
Mary was sitting between them pretending to give this rather disjointed conversation some kind of cohesion, but in reality she was making the most of a particularly delicious chocolate cake that was one of the specialities of Bel’s kitchen, the recipe for which Bel was—Mary suspected by intention—always forgetting to give her.
This was not the kind of meeting David had foreseen, but they all seemed to approve of each other, and everyone seemed happy. He went back to the party at the tea-table.
“I’ve just been telling Bel,” Grace said, looking up at him, and blushing to find herself using Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse’s first name, “that I don’t think she should have this charity concert she’s telling me about until after Christmas. She’s got a terrible cold, David, and, as she says herself, she’s got all her Christmas things to see to.” She appealed to Phœbe. Phœbe, who had never really troubled to think about it, was quite prepared to agree.
“But Miss Rennie will have left Glasgow after Christmas,” Bel protested.
“Perhaps not immediately after. Write and ask her at once. David, couldn’t you take Miss Rennie a letter this evening, after we go?”
“Yes, of course.”
Bel allowed herself to be persuaded. It was nice of Grace to show this thoughtfulness. Gr
ace, she felt, was going to be on her side of the family camp.
The carriage was announced. Mrs. Dermott rose to go. She held out her hand to Sophia, but Sophia did not take it.
“No, my dear, I’m coming down to see you off at the door. We’ll all go!”
Bel was amazed at the state of easy familiarity between her least presentable sister-in-law and the forbidding Mrs. Robert Dermott. Sophia’s suggestion seemed to have pleased her. Etiquette was being flaunted at every turn. They all trooped downstairs and waved the carriage off. Everything was friendship and goodwill. Sophia even offered Mrs. Dermott her singed muff as additional comfort against the coldness of the journey.
Chapter Eleven
IT was quite dark when David left Grosvenor Terrace bearing Bel’s letter to Miss Rennie. His sisters had waited just long enough to express their approval of his choice—an approval that was not altogether conventional; for Grace Dermott had been anxious to please.
Bel’s note was short. It was better, she had determined, for David to try to see Miss Rennie himself and explain to her how things really stood. Bel knew that she could depend upon David’s tact. If Miss Rennie were not in, he had promised Bel to go back at a time when he should find her.
It was damp and cold as David stood, huddled in his greatcoat, waiting for a tramcar to come down from the turning place at Kirklee. He felt dispirited. After years of bachelor freedom, of few obligations, of easy friendships, responsibility was gathering itself around him.
At last a car was approaching. He signed to it to stop. He settled himself gratefully, as the horses resumed their measured trot. It had been, after all, a day of strain. And tomorrow he must speak to Arthur about Robert Dermott’s wish to have him in Dermott Ships.