by Guy McCrone
Grace wondered about Margaret herself. She belonged to a type with whom the Dermotts, as yet, had little contact. Robert Dermott’s fortune had put him among the locally important. He lived in a large house in a country place, and allowed himself servants, and, when he could, a country life. But he and his kind were not yet of the county. The industrial great of Scotland had not yet, to any extent, taken to educating their children in England, thus levelling their manners, their speech and their habits of thought with their like across the border, as would happen a generation later. They had not yet begun to mould them to the English county-squire pattern.
And thus, Sir Charles Ruanthorpe, an Englishman, with his lady and daughter, seemed as different to Grace Dermott as an American might have seemed. Their controlled good manners. Their English accent and turn of speech. Their habit of distinguished understatement. Their large hospitality, which was, unlike Scottish hospitality, never pressed. Their sureness of their own point of view. Their quick responsibility for their dependents. They belonged to a world that was trained to authority. She did not define these things, but she felt them, and like many another who uses the English language but does not possess English blood, she had to adjust. But their goodwill was unmistakable. So, quick to blame herself for any lack of warm feelings, Grace decided that Mungo’s wife and her parents were everything that was admirable.
But how Mungo Moorhouse, an Ayrshire farmer, had come to marry Margaret Ruanthorpe was a mystery to her. How these so seemingly different people had come to make a match of it was beyond her understanding. She must get David to tell her, when she had him to herself.
II
It was many years since David Moorhouse had found himself in Ayrshire for any length of time. He had not made a stay even of four days, as he was now doing, for quite ten years. As he sat beside Mungo, looking about him, this came to his mind. It struck him as odd. There had been nothing much to bring him back to the Laigh Farm house, he supposed. Mungo’s bachelor existence had been all work and no play. To a young man who had welcomed the town and its ways, the farm had little attraction. Even before the accident that had ended the lives of his father and stepmother, he had come home very little. Where Arthur was, there was David’s anchorage.
But now it was pleasant to be driving in country that was stamped on his first memories. He was surprised at his quick familiarity with the twists of the muddy lanes, the gates and thorn hedges, the clumps of high trees on the round hill-tops, the shape of the green, rolling fields. They were there as he remembered them. This midwinter Ayrshire had its own beauty. The torrents of rain at the weekend had washed the fields clear of snow. It lay now only where there had been deep drifts, sodden and stained with red mud. In contrast, the wet fields seemed in the morning sunshine to have taken on a greenness that gave them, almost, the freshness of spring. Furrows and ditches were full. Streams were raging torrents. The placid River Ayr, as they crossed the bridge, had run wild, and was dashing itself against the sandstone cliffs—a boiling, red-brown cataract. There was a newness, a promise about this Ayrshire of the Winter Solstice; a purging, a washing of the fertile lands, that again in proper season they should be clean and waiting to receive the seed and bear the annual harvest.
David, alert just now, and oddly sensitive to impression, had eyes for everything. His mind, unsettled and quick, kept darting hither and thither. Why did he find himself so much uplifted by the country this morning? It was said that as you grew older you began to put back your roots—try to touch back to your beginnings. Now he was approaching middle age. Perhaps these feelings were beginning to awake in himself. He must come to Ayrshire more often. No. They must come. He and Grace. He had been unhappy and restless in the last weeks. So unhappy and restless that he had even mentioned it to Bel. But she had given him to understand that, in her opinion, this was what being in love did to a man. That when at length he held his wife in his arms, his unhappiness would be resolved, his body and mind would find their assuagement and their peace.
Well, it would come soon. At the beginning of March. Neither of them wanted a fuss, but, when it came to the point, a fuss there would no doubt be. If it were merely as an exhibition of Mrs. Dermott’s organising talent.
There was the Laigh Farm now, over there, with the high trees in the stack-yard. There were still rooks’ nests in the upper branches. They had all been born at the Laigh—all the Moorhouse brothers and sisters. And that was the road-end where he had been used to meet Lucy Rennie on the way to school. They had cut part of the wood there, further down where they had gathered wild hyacinths in the springtime. The Bluebell Wood, they had called it.
Lucy Rennie. Mungo, who was busy, had asked David to set him down at the Laigh Farm and drive over alone with Margaret’s message. She would be glad to see Lucy at any time. But—and David was to put this tactfully—Lady Ruanthorpe had suggested that Lucy might come across to the Big House, dine with them on New Year’s night, and sing to them all. He was to put it that they knew this was asking much of a professional musician, and of a daughter who was so little at home; but that it would be giving great pleasure to two old people who had no other means of hearing real music.
As they turned into the yard of the Laigh Farm, Phœbe and Henry Hayburn appeared at the back door of the farmhouse.
“Hullo, what are you doing here?” David shouted.
Phœbe shouted back, “Showing Henry round.”
“Did you walk across?”
“Yes.”
“You must have come early.”
Mungo was jumping down. His two old collies, Nith and Doon, rushed out to meet him. The old ploughman who had been promoted to be farm grieve came out. He spied David and called to him by name.
“Oh, it’s you that’s up there, Davie? How’s yersel’?”
“Fine, James. How are you?”
“Fine, Davie. Man, yer a great stranger! Are ye no’ comin in?”
“I’m going up to Greenhead. I’ll come in when I come back.”
A sudden mood had taken David. He wanted to be away from it all. This place was a memory, with his mother and father, his sisters and brothers, all of them there. Its present reality offended him. The stones had no right to be standing any longer. It should have no existence but as an image in his mind. That shed was new. It didn’t belong. That door was the wrong colour and had hinges he didn’t know. They had made a new window in that wall. These things didn’t really exist. They were not to be found in the records of his mind. For so many years he had turned a snobbish, adolescent back on the Laigh Farm. Now it must be taking its revenge.
He took the reins from Mungo a little uncertainly. He had not driven a horse for many years.
“Wait a minute. We’ll come with you. Come on, Henry.”
Phœbe and Henry were up beside him. For some reason undefinable, his heart became lighter. He was glad they were coming to Greenhead too.
III
Lucy Rennie also had been going through the experience of coming back. This experience, indeed, was sharper than David’s, because she had left her home in Ayrshire as a rebel. Now her father and elder sister were treating her with as much forbearance and tact as their peasant manners would allow them. But she did not like being treated as a brand snatched from the burning. If she had been a little scorched, and if she chose to risk being scorched again, that was her own affair. Yet she could not but be touched at the anxiety of her family to please.
She was sitting in the best room of the farmhouse—a stiff, red-plush room, seldom used, that had been dusted and warmed against her coming—when her sister Jessie, a stocky country woman, came to tell her that Davie Moorhouse of the Laigh was there with his sister and a young man. They were talking to her father in the stack-yard. Lucy roused herself, went downstairs, and out by the farmyard door. Advancing across the yard, she made an incongruous figure as she held up her elegant skirts to avoid the mud and the puddles. When she came within speaking distance, she called to draw their attention.
“Good morning. Why aren’t you coming in?”
“We’re only here for a minute or two. It’s just to deliver a message. Your father has asked us in already,” David shouted.
Old Tom Rennie, squat and graceless, grunted assent.
She had a moment more before she came up to them. David was standing hatless in his dark clothes. His sister was standing beside him, bareheaded too. Where had these Moorhouses got their good looks? The morning sun was striking down on David’s warm chestnut hair and his long, distinguished face. Phœbe’s black hair was wind-blown and untidy, but her cheeks were glowing. And, as everybody must, Lucy marvelled at her strange, Highland eyes. They might have stepped out of Raeburn canvasses, both of them.
“So that’s what little Phœbe Moorhouse grew into!” she said, holding out her hand admiringly.
Phœbe did not attempt to make any easy reply to this. She merely gave Lucy her own hand in return.
Lucy turned to the second young man. He was wearing country tweeds in a large trellis check. His thin, bony body was buttoned up in a tight, shapeless jacket, and his long legs were in narrow trousers. He took off a hat of the same cloth with a skip back and front. He seemed a pleasant, pug-nosed sort of creature, and bestowed upon Lucy a boyish smile. David introduced him as Henry Hayburn, a future brother-in-law.
“You are a very lucky young man, Mr. Hayburn.” She looked towards Phœbe, who had turned aside to pat the nose of a cart-horse that had put his head over the fence.
Henry grinned, and went to join old Tom Rennie, who was on his way across to Phœbe.
“And how are you this morning, David?” Lucy asked, giving him her hand. She wondered why the colour had flooded up over David’s face, why he looked at her as though she were hiding something from him. He had not been like this when he had called on her in Glasgow.
“Oh, I’m all right, thank you.”
Why was he embarrassed? There were men, she knew, who could not talk to a young woman like herself without immediately becoming conscious of her sex. But she never would have guessed that David Moorhouse might turn into one of these.
As he stood giving her his message, Lucy wondered. After all, within his own narrow range, he was rather a sophisticated young man. What, then, was there about her to embarrass him?
Yes, she told David, she would be glad to visit Mrs. Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse. No, she was doing nothing this afternoon, and would be glad to come across for tea. It was very kind of Mrs. Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse to ask her sister too. She would tell her, but she did not think she would be likely to come. The Duntraffords would readily understand that Jessie’s duties at the farm would not allow it. When David and the others had gone, Lucy picked her elegant way back across the farmyard smiling with satisfaction. Her stay at Greenhead, then, was not to be so dull, after all. At their midday meal she was pleased to see that her father and sister seemed glad that the Big House should be taking notice of her. Here was her achievement in terms that they could understand. For in those days, the landlord, if he had any sort of dignity, was still held in honour, and regarded with some awe by his tenants.
Lucy looked forward to her visit to Duntrafford with pleasure and no sense of shyness. There was nothing to overawe her about Margaret Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse, and just as little, really, about old Sir Charles and his wife. Did she not, after all, earn much of her living teaching the daughters, and singing in the drawing-rooms, of personages much more important than they?
Chapter Fourteen
GRACE had looked forward with pleasure to meeting the remarkable Miss Rennie. From everything Margaret had said, she seemed an unusual young woman. This afternoon she would see this farmer’s daughter who had disappeared from her home and reappeared a polished, accomplished and independent young lady.
And yet, when Grace came to look back on this visit to Duntrafford, it was clear that things had begun to go wrong for her on the afternoon of Lucy Rennie’s call at the Dower House. It was difficult to tell just in what respect the savour had gone out of things. Grace was not a worldly person, neither was she particularly quick-witted, nor, least of all, had this gentle daughter of indulgence had cause in her life to learn the cruelties of jealousy. But she was head over heels in love with the man she was to marry, and her tenderness towards him was open to every wind that blew across it.
Miss Rennie came. And Miss Rennie was charming. Miss Rennie was quite obviously enjoying herself.
Lucy, sitting in the midst of stiff respectability, and pleasantly friendly—but very definite—condescension, found herself being given tea by the laird’s daughter. Yet, from Margaret’s manner to her, she was made to feel that, whatever she did with herself she would never rise to the level of the Ruanthorpes. And here was Mungo Moorhouse of the Laigh, safely high and dry, and out of the struggle, having joined his blood to the blood of the Big House. And these young people. So very much now the children of privilege, all of them. They were all very sure of their complacent, northern world. There was just enough of the street arab in Lucy to see the fun of it all. She had known the artist quarter of a Paris that was settling down after the Prussian occupation. There, respectability, she remembered, had been so very much a matter of ready cash. It had been as fragile a thing as that. And as for the airs the Ruanthorpes gave themselves, she was accustomed to sing in houses of people of vastly greater importance; to rub shoulders with snobs who would have looked down their noses at old Sir Charles and his lady.
But she liked David. And he seemed to like her. From her memory of him, he had been a gentle, but rather self-possessed little boy. She had wondered this morning at his obvious confusion when he spoke to her. It was the same again this afternoon. What did he think of this sweet, rather limp young woman he was going to marry. Why had he chosen her? But of course! She was rolling in money, and David was, after all, a Moorhouse. And quite right, too. Money perhaps wasn’t everything. But, look at it as you would, it lifted you up, out of the battle. She dared say David would do very well with Miss Dermott.
David had come to her side. She turned to him.
“I heard Margaret speaking to you about dinner tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes, I’m coming. It was very kind of Lady Ruanthorpe to ask me.”
“I’m glad. We’ll all be there. I hope you’re going to sing.”
“Of course. If they want me to. What kind of songs do you like?”
“I’m not particularly musical.”
“But you must like some songs. All men do. If they know no other kind, they say they like simple, old-fashioned songs.”
“I think these are the kind I do like.”
“Oh, David! David!”
Grace, who was near enough to hear this conversation, wondered what there was in all this to cause Miss Rennie’s laughter.
“Do you never sing simple, old-fashioned songs?” she heard David asking.
“Of course. A great many of them. I sing for my living.”
No, Grace Dermott did not like Lucy Rennie. She seemed to be able to play on that instrument which was David Moorhouse, to strike notes that she, the owner of the instrument, was unable to touch. Miss Rennie was quick and gay, and had a mass of small talk. She was not superficially vulgar. She was neither loud-voiced nor pushing. Her behaviour was perfect. But Grace, too, had noticed David’s changing colour, his betrayal of dispeace in Lucy Rennie’s presence. She was glad when Miss Rennie rose to go.
On the doorstep, when they had waved Lucy out of sight, Grace turned from the others to David.
“How warm it is. And moonlight! Come for five minutes’ walk. Just as we are.”
They sauntered arm in arm through the Duntrafford shrubberies. The moonshine was making silver and black velvet of the shining path and the wet leaves of the deep rhododendron bushes. They found themselves at a viewpoint on the cliffs looking far down on a sharp bend of the river Ayr. There was a churning eddy where the flood was forced to change its course. The moon had caught the water where it boiled. They could see t
he angry river emerge for a moment into the light of the whirlpool, turn itself into a cauldron of cold, white metal, then plunge on, roaring into the darkness. They bent over the balustrade hand in hand.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it, David?”
“Yes. Shall we go back now?”
“Yes.”
They wandered back to the Dower House. It was Grace who kept hold of David’s hand.
II
Lady Ruanthorpe’s dinner-party was for ten. Herself and Sir Charles, along with the party from the Dower House, made eight of them. In addition to that there was, of course, Lucy. And, with great forethought on her own part, as the old lady considered, she had invited a shy young man who made his living as a piano-teacher among the daughters of the county. Thus, Miss Rennie would not have to accompany her own singing. The two musicians were made the guests of honour, Grace having already been given her place on the right hand of Sir Charles on the previous evening. The shrinking young man was placed on the right hand of Lady Ruanthorpe while Lucy sat to the right of Sir Charles. Though these people were mere entertainers, she saw to it that they suffered no discourtesy.
The timid young man was petrified when he saw what his position at table was to be. But a glass of sherry with his soup did wonders. And he quickly found that Lady Ruanthorpe either did not hear, or did not pay attention to a word he said. She kept delivering a monologue at him. The songs she sang when she was a girl. What a wonderful voice her father had had. So good, indeed, that he might have been a professional singer, if he had not been a Lieutenant-General. How she had been piped into dinner, when she was staying with friends in the Highlands. How she had been staying near Glasgow, when her daughter was a little girl, and her host had pressed her to stay over to hear a pianist called Chopin. She had always regretted she had not done so, for she had since been told that his music had become famous. Was this the case? Or was she talking nonsense? Perhaps Mr. Wilkie could tell her. For a moment Mr. Wilkie emerged from the enjoyment of the best food and drink he had ever tasted, to tell her that yes, Chopin’s music was quite well known.