by Guy McCrone
Having at last finished with the children, and still shouting to everyone not to mind her in the least, Mrs. Dermott said she would just go upstairs and sit quietly in the drawing-room. But Bel had continually to go out and in to see to this, that and the other. And, each time, Mrs. Dermott waylaid her with observations that she had to stop, listen to, and reply to.
“Do you think it’s wise, Mrs. Moorhouse, to have the piano so near that window?”
“I do think your flowers look nice. Grace said she was giving you some from our greenhouses. Now, which are they?”
“By the way, Mrs. Moorhouse, do you know if Lady McCulloch is coming this afternoon? I wonder if I remembered to write to her?”
“I do think these are nice town houses. It’s not so very long since they were built. Now, will it be as much as twenty years ago?”
Really, dates at this moment! But Mrs. Dermott was so accustomed to making her presence felt, that merely to sit on a chair in an empty room trying to reverse the process was almost killing her.
How much better it would have been had she sent a cheque and good wishes, as Margaret Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse had done.
At half-past two Sophia arrived with her husband. She was nursing a grievance. Bel had made no move about the church people Sophia had wanted to invite. Bel, however, was long past noticing Sophia’s grievances. Without telling them that Mrs. Dermott was sitting solitary and ready to pounce, she directed them to the drawing-room, and heard Mrs. Dermott exclaim: “Ah, Mrs. Butter! There you are!” before the door closed. When, some minutes later, necessity forced Bel to look in, Mrs. Dermott and Sophia were enjoying themselves hugely, shouting across William, who sat between them, his fat hands clasped before him on his comfortable stomach, saying nothing.
But now people were really beginning to arrive. Maids were sent to their proper stations, and Bel and Arthur, with Grace to help them with names, had taken up their places in the drawing-room. Bel had every reason to be pleased that Mrs. Dermott had shown interest. Everybody who was anybody, or at any rate the females of the breed, were filing into her drawing-room. After today, Bel felt certain, the Arthur Moorhouses would be somebodies in Kelvinside. And she was glad to see the one or two town dignitaries whom the McNairns had sent. Official Glasgow was there, in addition to fashionable Glasgow.
At ten minutes to three the McNairns themselves arrived. They came upstairs, and standing for a moment breathless on the landing, hoped to make a pompous entry. But the room was so full of the highly important, that nobody took any notice of them. Perhaps it was annoyance at this that caused Mary to turn to Bel and express the hope that Miss Rennie and her accompanist had arrived safely. Bel sent Phœbe to see. No, Miss Rennie was not yet there. Had she got lost? For some moments Bel was thrown into a panic. She turned to her husband, “Arthur, Lucy Rennie’s not here! Surely she should be here by now!”
At an easier moment for her, Arthur would have teased his wife. But now, standing close alongside of her, he pressed the hand that was near his own saying: “It’s all right, Bel. The lassie knows the time.”
And presently, as the grandfather clock on the stair was preparing to strike three, David appeared from downstairs to say that Lucy had arrived with her accompanist, and that they would be ready to begin almost directly.
IV
David, conscious now of his feelings towards Lucy, had come unwillingly this afternoon. He was filled with apprehension, almost fear. Things had passed beyond his control. And he was afraid that, in some way, he might show it. Very quickly now he must make up his mind what must be done. But today, of all days, that surface pattern must still remain unbroken.
When he came to look back, this afternoon took on a nightmare unreality. Bel’s packed drawing-room. The pots of greenhouse plants. The heavy scent of Roman hyacinths. The black, shining grand piano, brought in, not to be a decoration in a rich man’s house, but as an instrument for hands that could use it. Stray, tormenting details that were to build up memory. Now, as he listened to Lucy’s singing, he felt the full force of her. Her disciplined performance. Her self-assurance, that, for him at least, had a certain gallant appeal. Her obvious accomplishment. Her ability to please. And above all her womanliness. There was nothing, it seemed, of the essential Lucy frittered away. All of her seemed to be brought to bear. He no more understood the source of Lucy Rennie’s power than he had understood the power of the great actor he had seen as “Hamlet” in the autumn. David was troubled, dazed, conscience-stricken and enchanted.
At an interval in her recital she spoke to him as she moved from the room. “Well, David, I sang your song for you.”
“Did you?” He was too stupid to dissemble.
“Oh, David! I sang it with the other Schumann songs. Didn’t you recognise it?” She passed on with a laugh.
“David dear, come here.” It was Mrs. Dermott’s loud voice. “Lady McCulloch, I want you to meet my son-in-law, at least, nearly my son in-law, David Moorhouse. Grace and he are being married at the beginning of March.”
It was as though he were acting in a terrible charade, going through movements that were merely mechanical.
But presently the other players would be gone, and Grace, Lucy and himself would have to play out this distressing game to its unrelenting finish.
Chapter Seventeen
BEL sat combing her long fair hair in front of her mirror. Arthur bent over her, tying his white tie. This Sunday morning it was his turn to stand by the plate in the Ramshorn Church. The reflection of his narrow, handsome face, with its high cheekbones, his black hair and his trim side-whiskers, was the reflection of decorum itself.
“Are ye coming to the Kirk this morning, my dear?” he asked, giving the bow of his tie a final tug.
“Of course.”
“I thought maybe ye would be tired.”
“No, I’m all right.” Bel was surprised. Normally there was never any question as to who should go to church and who shouldn’t. Arthur’s question implied that yesterday’s concert had exhausted her. Which was quite the reverse of true. Bel was living in the exhilaration of a real success. The sum she had raised for the distressed children of the city was far beyond what she had expected. And, more important perhaps, she felt she had made a social hit. The fact that certain prominent people had been in her house and had contributed generously did not put her on calling terms with them. But it had made them aware of her existence.
Arthur was pleased with her. She had grasped this from the tone of his voice. He was even prepared to spare her the discipline of Sunday morning worship, a thing almost unheard of in his orthodox Scottish family. But Bel wanted to appear in church. Sophia and Mary would be there for her to queen over. And her mother, old Mrs. Barrowfield, who had declined to come to the concert and mix with grand folks, would be there too, and would have greedy ears for Bel’s success.
Bel and Arthur finished dressing, and prepared to go downstairs to their Sunday ham and eggs. As they passed the drawing-room, there was the noise of children’s voices. All their three children were jumping about among the rows of caterer’s chairs, arranging themselves in the jungle among the welter of flowers and decorative plants, and even daring to touch the notes on the great, strange piano. Arthur commanded them sternly to remember it was the Sabbath Day, and to come to breakfast.
All this morning Bel was floating on air. Her feelings were somewhat those of a young prima donna who, after years of preparation, has made a triumphant debut. There was a wintry sunshine this morning as she, her husband, Phœbe and little Arthur set out on the long journey to church in Ingram Street. As the cab-horse jogged down through Hillhead towards town, she felt like royalty, as though almost it was incumbent upon her to bow her fair and fashionable head from the window, as she went by.
At the church door her mother met her with a “Dear me, Bel, what are ye all dressed up for?”
“Dressed up, Mother? What do you mean?
“Ye know fine what I mean. How did ye get on yest
erday?”
“Bel’s concert was a great success, Mrs. Barrowfield,” Arthur replied, preparing to take up his station by the plate.
His wife herded her mother along with the others into the family pew, smiling the while with regal affection. Having got them all seated, and seen them supplied with hymn-books and Bibles, she raised her veil and, inclining her head to her beautifully gloved hands, said her prayers with great elegance. The sermon, as it happened, turned out to be on the subject of Christian charity—a subject which did nothing to lower Bel’s self-esteem.
Everyone, it seemed, approved of her this morning. After the service, Sophia, forgetting her own grievance, did her best to envelop her in the usual flood of talk. Two baillies’ wives who had actually been at Grosvenor Terrace yesterday, and had been so much impressed by the augustness of Bel’s audience that they had given more than they had meant to, pressed forward to congratulate her. Mary, finding herself included in the aura of Bel’s glory, decided to bask in it for the time and to leave some criticism she had been incubating until later.
It was no wonder that Arthur seemed pleased, Bel reflected as, just back from church, she sat once more at the mirror straightening her hair before she went down to the Sunday dinner.
Again she saw the reflection of her husband behind her. “Well, dear?” she said pleasantly, continuing with her toilet.
Arthur sat down on a chair near her. “Something has just come into my head, Bel,” he began.
Bel cast him a fleeting smile of encouragement.
“I was just thinking that maybe it was time ye had a carriage and pair of your own.”
Bel’s heart gave a bound. Arthur had done more for her than he knew. He, the husband of her love, was giving full and final approval. Had she obeyed her impulses, she would have jumped up and thrown her arms about his neck. But she had known him too long to do anything so emotional. It would merely embarrass him. A little resistance, indeed, would fix his purpose more surely, and confirm his opinion of her careful good sense. She turned to him, her comb in her hand, and said: “Oh, Arthur! But in these times? Can we afford one?”
Arthur sat considering. His wife let him take his time.
“Well,” he said at last, “ye see, David’s not taking money out of the business now, and the papers say things will be better by the summer. And what with you getting to be such a swell and everything.”
That was too much for Bel. She got up, told him he was an old silly, kissed him and sat down again.
“But what about the coach-house?” she said presently, “and the McCrimmons?”
“They’re decent folks,” Arthur said, pondering.
“Surely we could get McCrimmon some work, Arthur. Phœbe says he’s getting an artificial foot.”
“How can we put the McCrimmons out, my dear?”
“It’s not a case of putting them out, Arthur. It’s a case of letting McCrimmon himself know that we thought it was time he was looking about him.”
“There’s not much work to be had,” Arthur said doubtfully, adding as a rueful afterthought: “And for a lame man—”
“No. But, after all, we’re not turning them into the street. We can wait until he finds something. It’s a question of giving him notice. That’s all.”
“I wouldna like to do that, Bel.”
“That’s nonsense, dear. I’m going in tomorrow morning to pay Mrs. McCrimmon for helping in the kitchen during the concert yesterday. I’ll tell them.”
“Very well.” Arthur gave a wan assent. He saw again the quarters from which he had rescued these people. He wished, now, that he had never, in a sudden burst of admiration for his wife, said the word carriage to her. She was doing very well as she was.
II
Bel’s aspirations had put her on the rack. If her feet, this morning, had trodden clouds of realised hopes, this afternoon they were weighted with lead. But her purpose held. She would tell McCrimmon first thing in the morning that, whenever he was well enough, he must find employment and take his family elsewhere.
She spent the rest of the day wrestling with her feelings.
Common sense was, as it so often is, on the side of ambition. It was ridiculous, she assured herself, that there should be any difficulty about these people going. She had shown them every kindness. Most of the actual attention had been paid to them by Phœbe, but that was because the girl had less to do than she, Bel, had; and had a mania for lame ducks anyway. But she had refused none of Phœbe’s requests for them. The little McCrimmon children had been clad in the cast-off clothing of her own children. She had invented work for the woman to do, so that her stiff, Highland pride should not feel, too sharply, the sting of charity. She had, more than once, committed herself to the laudable fraud of ordering larger amounts of meat than she knew her own household could need, so that the remainder should be taken to the coach-house by Phœbe with the request that the McCrimmons might be so good as to eat it, and thus save waste.
No, Bel assured herself, she had nothing to be ashamed of in her treatment of them. But her first duty was to her husband and her children. Arthur had come out West because he wanted to keep up “a certain position”. And very rightly. That he was able to do so was the reward of his industry. And a carriage was part of the paraphernalia this “certain position” demanded. She, herself, was doing what she could for him. Yesterday she had filled his house with the right people—people among whose children she looked, when the time came, to marry her own. Surely the first thing to be done was to live as these people lived.
Thus, for the remainder of this outwardly uneventful Sunday, did Bel struggle with her softer self. She did not dare to discuss the matter further with her husband, and still less with his sister.
Before breakfast on Monday morning she took her purse in her hand, and set forth to carry out her intentions. The earlier the better. There were, after all, times when feelings must be set aside and duty done as impersonally as might be.
The little stone staircase leading up to the McCrimmons’ living-quarters was, Bel noted, scrubbed clean and decorated with ripples of pipeclay. There was the piping of children’s voices. She knocked. On the other side of the door there was a sudden hush, then footsteps. Bel, as she stood waiting, became aware of her own heart-beats. It was not the ascent of the short stairs that had brought them to her consciousness. As the door was opened by Mrs. McCrimmon, Bel fixed a smile on her face and summoned her resolve. The woman fell back respectfully at the sight of her.
“Good morning Mrs. McCrimmon. I hope I’m not disturbing you too early in the morning, but I have a lot to do today, after Saturday.”
“I could be coming across and helping, Mam.”
“Oh, no, thanks. The men will be taking away things. But there’s nothing the maids can’t do by themselves.”
The woman made no direct reply to this, but asked Bel to step inside.
Bel looked about her in the bare kitchen. The family were at breakfast. The two little children, in mended clothes only too familiar to her, and their father, in a cast-off suit of Arthur’s, were sitting over bowls of porridge. There was nothing else on the scrubbed table but that and mugs of milk for the children. It looked a dull enough meal to Bel, but at least it was filling. The room was warm. Arthur had seen to that. And it was clean. It was furnished with the McCrimmons’ few shabby things and some old furniture Phœbe had borrowed. A discarded nursery rug lay in front of the fire. The man withdrew his footless leg from the stool that supported it, and made to stand up in Bel’s presence.
“No. Please sit down.” But he stood, balancing on one foot, and holding the table. Bel asked how his leg did and when he would be able to wear an artificial foot. She asked for the children, and tried to make them tell her their names. If there had been more to ask she would have asked it, for now she was struggling with her resolution. She opened her purse.
“I just came across to pay you what I owe you for helping on Saturday, Mrs. McCrimmon.” She took the money o
ut, laid it on the table, and smiled at the stiff woman beside her. She was surprised to see that McCrimmon’s wife had gone red to the roots of her hair, and that there were tears in her eyes.
“I should not be taking this, Mam. You’ve done a lot for us.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. McCrimmon. We can’t expect you to work for nothing.” Bel stopped. There was nothing now to say, except to tell these people they must leave their place of refuge at the earliest possible moment, so that she, Bel Moorhouse, could install a properly trained and fashionable coachman.
As she stood, hesitating and embarrassed, the two Highlanders looking at her could have no idea of the battle that raged in the heart of this handsome, City lady. It was not the first time that snobbery had assailed Bel’s tenderness. And yet, it is perfect truth to say that Bel despised herself for what she next found herself saying.
“McCrimmon, Mr. Moorhouse has decided to have a carriage.” She stopped for a moment, but the cloud of apprehension that crossed their faces made her hurry on. “And we were wondering if, when you get your artificial foot, you would like to be our coachman?”
As she crossed the back garden on the way to the house she chid her cowardice for having tied a Highlander, unstylish, uncouth and lame, about her neck, but her step was light, and a weight was lifted from her.
She found her husband alone in the breakfast-room. “I’m afraid I’ve asked McCrimmon to be the coachman, Arthur,” she said, flushing guiltily.
Arthur smiled with offensive complacency. “That’s fine, my dear. It’s just what I expected,” was all he said, and stirred his tea with what Bel considered was a ridiculously unfashionable vigour.