The Wax Fruit Trilogy

by Guy McCrone

  At the other end of the table, Lucy was enjoying herself hugely. Sir Charles, she was amused to note, regarded her as something of a scarlet woman, and was determined, in so far as it could be done at the age of eighty, and under the eye of his daughter—he was safely shielded from his wife by a forest of epergnes, maidenhair, flowers and candlesticks—to prove to Miss Rennie that he, in his time, had known very well what it was to sow a wild oat or two. A mention of the fact that she knew Paris set him off on a long description of a sojourn there as a young man in his twenties, at the gay, cynical time of the Bourbon restoration. He had been sent by his parents to learn French. But he must admit, he said, looking at Lucy with a twinkle in his fierce, bloodshot eyes, that he had learnt more than French, perhaps. Lucy would fain have driven him to bay by asking him to tell her just what he had learnt. But this would have delighted Sir Charles too much, and might have led to talk not quite suitable for Lady Ruanthorpe’s dinner-table. Besides, demureness, she kept reminding herself, must be the keynote tonight. So, when Sir Charles continued archly to mention the names of resorts of entertainment, and the names of the notorious who entertained there, Lucy found herself replying with gay innocence that she knew nothing of these places or people—as was indeed the case, for Sir Charles had known Paris fifty years before she had. But within the limits of discretion, she succeeded in keeping her host amused. So much so, indeed, that when Lady Ruanthorpe rose to take the ladies from the room, Sir Charles patted Lucy on the shoulder, said she was a capital girl; and where had her father got her? And she must come across and see them whenever she came to Greenhead. Now, immediately under the eye of Lady Ruanthorpe and the other women, Lucy smiled with becoming diffidence, thanked him very much, but rather thought it might be some time before she was back in Ayrshire.

  For most of them the remainder of the evening went very pleasantly. As Lucy had guessed, old Lady Ruanthorpe had invited her much more from a feeling of self-importance than from any real desire to hear her perform. The evening was well advanced before Lady Ruanthorpe, who had been enjoying her own dinner-party far too much to remember Miss Rennie’s talents, at last begged the musicians to go to the piano. A first song proved to Lucy that she could not trust the obliging young man’s playing too far. But it did not matter. They were a party who would only appreciate David’s “old-fashioned, simple songs”. She had brought a number of these, and all agreed that she sang them charmingly. Especially Sir Charles, who had talked steadily during the performance of each of them. But everyone was pleased, complimented her, and was friendly. For a moment, later in the evening, she found herself beside Grace who, fearful of showing her dislike, set herself to praise Lucy’s singing. Lucy was acknowledging Grace’s kindness when David came across and joined them.

  “Well, David! Are these songs old-fashioned and simple enough for you?”

  “I thought they were beautiful. Don’t you like them yourself?”

  “I’ve sung them very often.”

  A servant appeared to announce that a conveyance was waiting to take Miss Rennie back to Greenhead.

  “Couldn’t you sing just one more song?” Grace asked.

  “A song that you really like this time!” David said.

  Lucy went to the piano. With a friendly nod to the pianist, saying she hadn’t the music, but thought she could remember, she sat down and played and sang. It was a gentle nostalgic sort of song in a foreign language. But it was evident that she loved this music, and her voice was warm. When it was over she swung round in the stool to find David immediately behind her. On his face there was a look of embarrassment.

  “Well, David, was that too high falutin for you?”

  “No.” And in a moment—“What was it?”

  “It’s called Nussbaum, by Schumann.”

  “Will you sing it again at Bel’s concert?”

  “Yes, if you want me to.”

  Lucy said her goodbyes. And as she drove home under the stars, with the soft west wind in her face, she thought of David Moorhouse and wondered.

  III

  A winter sun, not yet far above the horizon, was shining bravely as Grace came down to breakfast next morning. She found Margaret alone behind the teacups. A bright fire was burning. The little dining-room of the Dower House was warm and cheerful.

  “Good morning, Grace. How did you sleep? There’s your porridge and ham and eggs. You’ll help yourself, won’t you?”

  Grace was getting used to Margaret’s matter-of-fact, English voice. She made everything she said, to Grace’s West of Scotland ears, sound cut-and-dried and official. It was not a voice crammed with overtones of sympathy, but neither did it contain any overtones of spleen. It was the voice, Grace had decided, of a person you could depend upon; the voice of a woman who had solved her own problems quite straightforwardly. The bright sunshine and Margaret’s crisp friendliness cheered Grace. She had not slept well. The New Year’s party at Duntrafford House last night should have been pleasant enough, but somehow, for her at least, the evening had fallen flat. Quick to blame herself, she had lain awake in bed telling herself she was a fool. Sir Charles and Lady Ruanthorpe were old, eccentric and wilful. But they had been hospitable and kind. With the others, of course, she was already on familiar terms. Surely Miss Rennie could not matter to her happiness? Or was she troubled because David had shown too much interest in Lucy? Was she, Grace, at last learning what it was to be jealous?

  She had lain in bed scolding herself. She was being quite ridiculous. David had known Lucy all his life. If she was going to resent every gesture of friendliness her husband made to other women, what kind of marriage was before her? These thoughts had chased themselves round in her mind until at last she had fallen into uneasy sleep.

  But now the sun was shining. And Margaret was sitting, the very picture of reassuring normality, rapping out observations. Where the early snowdrops were to be found. How the gardeners had planted thousands of daffodils under the beech-trees of the park. How the shrubs in front needed cutting down. And now here was David himself, followed by Phœbe and Henry, all saying good morning with pink, new-washed faces, all cheerful, and making plans for the day.

  “What do you mean to do with yourselves?” Margaret asked David and Grace.

  David turned to Grace. “Have you any ideas?”

  “I haven’t seen the Laigh Farm, you know.”

  “We’ll go over there.”

  This was pleasant. She would have David to herself this morning. They would drive out together on this pleasant morning, and her own unhappiness would be forgotten.

  It was much as she had hoped. They drove between bare hedges by fields where ploughmen, taking advantage of the soft weather, were at work. Each team looked like the last. A pair of sleek, gigantic Clydesdales. The Argonaut’s bow of the plough turning the smooth, red wave of loam. The clank of harness. The cloud of following rooks and gulls. The sturdy figure of the Ayrshire ploughman stepping steadily as he kept his furrow even—stepping in the footsteps of a great poet, who once had tilled the red Ayrshire earth not many miles from here.

  David seemed pleased to tell her about familiar things as they passed. The road the brothers and sisters had taken when they went to school. The mill where their father had taken his sacks of grain. A pool in the river where he had learnt to swim. David, a working farmer’s son, had known a childhood of interest and variety, such as she, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, had never known.

  They found Mungo at the Laigh Farm directing his men. The old grieve was pleased to see David, and shouted to him.

  “Ye said ye were comin’ back the other day, Davie. But ye didna come.”

  “Well, here I am now, James.”

  They descended, and Grace was presented. Presently she was in the farm kitchen, so familiar to the Moorhouses, so strange to herself. She had to allow tea to be made for her by the wife of Mungo’s manager as they sat in front of the great kitchen fire. She was taken round the house. She was shown the room where
David had slept with Mungo before Arthur had taken him to Glasgow. Phœbe’s little attic bedroom. The room David’s parents had occupied after they had decided to take away the concealed bed from the kitchen. Where Mary and Sophia had slept as young girls. For David’s sake, Grace was interested in everything. She tried to see the beloved ghost of a little chestnut-haired boy in these bare-scrubbed rooms.

  They wandered outside. Then through the outhousing, saw this and that, and at last said their goodbyes and drove out of the farm close.

  “Are we going back by another way?” Grace asked presently.

  “No. Not exactly,” David said. “Lucy Rennie left a piece of music, and I told Margaret I would take it to her.”

  Grace glanced at David sideways. Jealousy rose within her like a flame. “Why didn’t you tell me we had to go to the Rennies’ farm before?” she asked, keeping her voice even with an effort.

  “I thought you knew. Is it so important?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then.” David drove on saying nothing further.

  Grace looked at him again. The expression of his face was fixed. She turned. “David, I don’t want to go up to Greenhead Farm. After all, one piece of music can easily be posted. I want to go back to Margaret.”

  “But, Grace, that’s absurd. There’s Greenhead just up there.”

  Grace said no more. They drove up the farm road and into the Greenhead farmyard. Old Tom Rennie came out for them.

  “Good morning, Mr. Rennie. I have brought some music that Lucy left behind last night,” David shouted, preparing to jump down.

  “She’s no here, Davie. She’s away tae Ayr wi’ Jessie.”

  Grace saw David’s face fall as he handed the old man the roll of music, said goodbye and turned his horse.

  They drove back in silence. The colour seemed to have gone out of the morning. It was just a bleak, midwinter day. At Duntrafford a groom caught their horse’s head, and David ran round to help Grace down. Without looking at him, she turned away and ran into the house.

  Chapter Fifteen

  DAVID’S world had tumbled about his ears. He had pushed the knowledge away from him. But he knew now. It was past all hiding. He was in love with Lucy Rennie.

  On this, the first Monday of the year 1879, he sat, huddled over the fire in his lodgings, perplexed and miserable. He had brought Grace from Duntrafford on Saturday, taken her to Aucheneame, and spent the weekend there. Today had been his first day in Dermott Ships Limited. This morning he had travelled to town with the chairman of the company, and he had been received as though he were the chairman’s son. At Aucheneame, and at the office, he had had to act the part of the happy, fortunate young man into whose lap fortune was pouring everything; not a pleasant part to play, when his senses had been surprised, and when, whatever his behaviour towards the Dermotts, he must feel a cheat and an impostor.

  He wondered what Robert Dermott had thought of him in the office this morning. He had been dazed and slow. Had the old man begun to wonder if his daughter had chosen a fool for a husband? And yesterday at Aucheneame. He wondered what Grace thought of him. Had she suspected anything? He did not see how she could. Yet, when he came to think of it, he had thought her manner subdued and a little aloof. And he had been too self-conscious, too self-accusing to ask if anything were troubling her.

  David shivered, and picking up the poker, dangled it in his hand, thinking. The frosty weather had come back again. Outside it was very cold. Again skating was in full swing. He stirred the fire.

  Grace. His mind went back and forth over the short span of the weeks of his engagement to her. From the beginning things had gone well. He was getting the habit of Grace; getting the habit of her commanding, warm-hearted parents. They had turned, in that short time, into pleasant, sympathetic relatives. He was on the easiest terms with them. This had been a calculated attachment, but he had calculated well. His own measure of worldly wisdom had not, thus far, misled him. He suited Grace admirably, and she suited him. All that was lacking was the spark on his side. In every other sense he loved her. If affection can be called love.

  David, his troubled face glowing in the firelight, leant forward and again dug the poker between the iron bars. If only Lucy Rennie hadn’t crossed his path; hadn’t lit that spark that Grace, with all her love for him, had so far failed to light. The thought of Lucy troubled him. She roused the male in him. Her womanhood was coming, more and more, to obsess his mind; to open up for him a vista of enchantment, the primitive enchantment of holding in his arms the woman who could arouse this fever within him. For the moment he could not bother to determine if the feelings she had awakened were good or bad. At least they were natural. The fact of Lucy Rennie clouded his judgment.

  David, a man of thirty-one, belonged to a time, and a people who, however unfanatical their own beliefs, had inherited a strict background of behaviour, where irregularity was abhorred. In other words, David’s education as a male of the human species was almost non-existent. And the lack of it now, in his dilemma, was causing him cruel distress.

  Although he could not see clearly, this young man belonged to an honourable world. His mind was constantly on Lucy Rennie. At the same time he found himself caught up in self-loathing at his disloyalty to Grace. There was no peace, no rest for him anywhere. How could he go on with his engagement in the present state of his feelings? And yet how could he break it? Could he throw all the kindness of Robert Dermott and his wife back into their faces? And Grace? Was he to take her great tenderness towards him (he knew it now for what it was) and throw this, too, back at her?

  As he sat moodily stabbing his fire, he remembered the solemn promise he had made himself on that morning he had asked Grace to marry him: the promise to stand by her and see the thing through. But would it be right to go on? He could not even decide what was the honourable course. David got up and paced his room.

  And even if he were free, what of Lucy Rennie? Had she any interest in him? He could not tell. His infatuation encouraged him to think she was not indifferent. But he had not seen enough of her. She had been friendly and charming to him. That was all. The image of her stood before him. Her elegant person. The faint perfume she used. The moving quality of her voice. Her quick, easy gaiety. Her pleasant good manners.

  This room was intolerable. He would go across and wish Bel and Arthur a good New Year.

  II

  As David was being led upstairs by Bel’s parlourmaid Sarah he heard a hum of talk.

  “Are they alone, Sarah? Who’s with them?”

  “Baillie and Mrs. McNairn, Mr. David.”

  If David could have turned and run, he would have done so. But Sarah would have thought him crazy.

  As she opened the door to announce him, he was met by the noise of family voices—what, in a blither moment, he would have called the Moorhouse roar. They all seemed to be speaking at once, and all speaking loud.

  The first voice to succeed in disengaging itself from the general din was the baillie’s. Possibly because he was used to shouting.

  “Hullo! hullo! Here’s the shipowner himself! A good New Year to you!” George, dazzled by the eminence to which David was rising, advanced to greet him cordially.

  David bade everybody a Happy New Year. He kissed Bel and his sisters, Phœbe and Mary, and shook hands with Arthur and George. After all perhaps the family wasn’t so bad. There’s something about finding oneself among them; even if, in happier, less care-burdened times, they all seemed utterly commonplace.

  “Phœbe says you all had a splendid time at Duntrafford!” George McNairn went on. Phœbe, on being asked, had merely told him that her stay at Duntrafford had been “quite nice”. But the baillie’s mind liked to dwell on magnificence.

  Like Phœbe, David echoed that it had been “quite nice”.

  “And what about Dermott Ships Limited? They haven’t made you chairman yet?” George went on facetiously.

  There was nothing for David to do but allow George’s gloating
s over his good fortune to exhaust themselves—the good fortune that was weighing so heavily on his spirit.

  George having finished, Bel was waiting to speak. “I’m very glad to see you,” she said, “because I got a letter from Lucy Rennie today. It’s about the concert here. She writes that she is willing to sing, but she must be back in London by the middle of next week. She has engagements there. She suggests Saturday afternoon of this week. It’s giving us a very short time. That’s why I’ve asked George and Mary here tonight, to try to get people together quickly.”

  The mere name of Lucy Rennie had thrown David’s senses into confusion. He was glad that the baillie was pacing the room importantly, repeating, in what he thought was a voice loaded with modesty, that surely he, with his little bit of influence, could find one or two people who weren’t nobody.

  “We want Grace and her mother to come. And perhaps they could suggest some people who would care to hear Miss Rennie.” It was Bel’s secret hope that the Dermotts’ friends would, for smartness’s sake, outnumber the friends of the McNairns.

  David promised to do what he could. What else was there to do? The foundations of his existence might be rocking, but the bright pattern of the surface must, in the meantime, continue unbroken.

  Bel now called upon Mary and David to discuss the arrangements for Miss Rennie’s afternoon. That is, Bel did the talking while Mary, determined to do as little as possible, sat applauding every proposal that would bring no exertion to herself, and constantly looking round to see if Sarah were bringing tea. David merely sat and gave a dazed assent.

  “Well, that’s all that settled,” Bel ended gaily. “Now the next step is to let Miss Rennie know what we intend to do, and make sure that it suits her. Could you run up and see her, David? You don’t mind, do you? Perhaps at lunchtime tomorrow? It has to be at once.”