by Guy McCrone
“To wait for me?”
“Yes, Mam.”
“I’ll read it at once.” She broke the seal where she stood, and read Mrs. Dermott’s letter.
“DEAR MRS. MOORHOUSE,
“I wonder if I can claim the help of someone who is nearly a relative? My husband was taken unwell yesterday. The doctor came to see him, and said all he needed was rest. This morning, however, he is rather worse than better, and the doctor, who has been here again, says Robert should be seen by a heart specialist at once. Would it be too much to ask you to try to find one for us, and send him back in the carriage? …”
Here Mrs. Dermott mentioned the specialist of her choice, but begged Bel if he were not immediately available to find one who would come at once. The carriage was at her disposal.
There was nothing to be done, then, but to accede to Mrs. Dermott’s request. A few hurried inquiries as to the state of the house, a quick look round in the hall, an assurance shouted by Phœbe from an upper landing that everything was all right; and Bel found herself sitting in the Dermotts’ family carriage, heading once more in the direction of the town.
Ten minutes later she was in the region of Charing Cross and Crescents, and the horses were swinging round towards Newton Terrace, which was then, as it still in part is, Glasgow’s Harley Street.
No—Sir Hamish was not at home, a discreet male servant told Bel. At this hour he was, as usual, at the Royal Infirmary. Yes, it would be worth her while if she could drive straight there. But would the lady wait one moment?—and he would ask Sir Hamish’s colleague on the Bell telephone; just to make certain of Sir Hamish’s movements. Bel stood in the hall wondering, while the man went to a little box placed on a bracket on the wall. He spoke a number, waited, then entered into what seemed to be a conversation, although Bel could only hear his side of it. At the end of this he turned to Bel, and, as though he had merely been interrogating a third person, informed her that she was certain to find Sir Hamish at the Royal Infirmary if she went. He was likely to be there for still another half-hour.
The great man’s door, with its glossy green paint and its shining letterbox, closed behind her, as she hurried down the steps, gave the waiting footman fresh directions, and settled back inside.
III
Bel stood in the square in front of the Royal Infirmary, her task accomplished. The name of Robert Dermott had had its effect on Sir Hamish’s augustness. He must, he felt, get himself to his dear and influential friend’s bedside without delay. She stood watching the carriage swing round into Mason Street and disappear, the coachman whipping up the horses as much as he dare in the City’s traffic. She had delivered her message with decorum, and what she hoped was elegant dignity, and, even at this anxious moment, some enjoyment of the sense of her own importance. Sir Hamish had, very civilly, offered her a lift west-ward. But she had declined it, insisting that she must put no kind of hindrance in his way.
Now, as she stood under the portico of the hospital, she found herself wondering what next she had better do. She had gathered, in the brief moment she stood inside her own house, that Phœbe and the maids had dealt with the ravages of Saturday. There was nothing immediate to do, then, at Grosvenor Terrace. The excitement of finding the doctor and sending him off to Aucheneame had driven David and his problem from her mind, but now, in the blank left by the specialist’s departure, her midday meeting had come back to her. What was she to do with David? How was she to help him?
Presently it occurred to her that she might go down to see her mother. It was not far, and she would be glad, now, of the air. She took her way down the Bell o’ the Brae, down the High Street and Saltmarket to the gates of Glasgow Green on purpose to walk across the Park to Monteith Row.
Her mother received her with some surprise. She had expected that Bel would be engaged in putting her house to rights. “I didna expect to see ye today,” she said, as she sat her daughter down and rang for the inevitable cup of tea.
“No, I had to go to the Royal Infirmary.”
“The Royal Infirmary?”
Bel explained. The old lady shook her grey side-curls with much rueful gusto. “If it’s heart it’s a bad business, I doubt.” And then, after a pause, “Will the money go straight to David’s wife?”
“I’ve no idea, Mother. But we all hope the old man will live.”
But Mrs. Barrowfield would have none of it. Again she shook her head, and insisted that if it was heart it was sure to be a bad business. Bel was so used to her mother’s habit of killing off her contemporaries, that she did not bother to protest further. Tea was being brought in, so she allowed her mother to ply her with questions about the concert before old Maggie.
When the door was finally closed behind them, she came to the reason of her visit.
“I’ve something I want to talk to you about, Mother. I met David at lunch-time today. He says he’s fallen in love with Lucy Rennie.”
Bel saw that Mrs. Barrowfield had, after the fashion of the elderly, not bothered to take this in. She poured out tea and merely said, “Now, sugar it for yourself,” as she handed Bel her cup. Her daughter knew she must give her time. “Did ye say ye saw David?” she said presently.
“Yes, Mother, I’m telling you. I saw him today. He’s fallen in love with Lucy Rennie.”
Mrs. Barrowfield stirred her tea. “But surely he’s in love with Miss Dermott, is he not?” she said, with what looked like a maddening determination to misunderstand.
“That’s the whole trouble, Mother. That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. He wants to break his engagement.”
“Who’s this Lucy Rennie?” Mrs. Barrowfield put down her cup.
“The girl who sang on Saturday. David knew her when they were children.”
“And he says he’s in love with her?”
“Yes.”
“And what about Miss Dermott?”
“Yes. What about her, Mother?”
The old lady sat thinking. The facts had penetrated. Bel waited.
“When was the marriage to be?” she asked at length.
“The beginning of March.”
Again Mrs. Barrowfield lapsed into silence. When she spoke again, her tone was hot with contempt—the contempt of an old squaw, who cannot forgive disloyalty to the tribe.
“David Moorhouse is a terrible fool!”
“It doesn’t help to say that, Mother.”
“Fancy jilting Robert Dermott’s girl for somebody like that!”
“I don’t think he’s thrown her over yet, Mother. I’ve advised him to do nothing until her father’s better.” Somehow her mother’s implication that David was letting a fortune slip annoyed Bel. Had she been quite honest with herself, she would have realised that this aspect of the matter worried her, too. But there was so much more than that. She liked David, and she liked Grace. She applauded what they stood for. David’s folly was more to her than a mere business deal going wrong.
“I’ve always got on with David,” Mrs. Barrowfield continued. “He was a bit bee-headed, when he was young. But I thought he had got over all that.”
“What am I to do, mother? He asked for my help.”
“Is this woman still in Glasgow?”
“She’s going away in the middle of this week.”
“Ye canna keep him away from her, I suppose?”
“Not if he wants to go.”
The old woman thought again for a moment, then said, “He should be down at the Dermotts’, where they need him. He’ll know Miss Dermott’s father’s ill?”
“They would send word to the office.”
“Ye better go up to his lodgings on yer way home and make sure.” Mrs. Barrowfield got up, pulled her fine white shawl about her shoulders and moved about the room. She was furious with David. She stopped at her window looking across the Green, which was beginning to be lost in the growing dusk and the fog rising from the river. She was turning matters over in her slow, but not stupid mind. This Dermott-Moorhouse alliance w
ould be good for all the Moorhouse family, and, therefore, good for her daughter, who was one of them. At last she turned.
“Well, there’s just this about it, Bel,” she said. “I’ve known David a long time, and I’ve always liked him. But he’s not what ye would call a strong character. If ye could just get him married to Miss Dermott, it wouldna break his heart that he hadna married the other one.”
“That’s what I think, Mother. I got his promise to wait for a day or two, anyway.”
“Aye. The great thing is to get him to wait. It can make all the difference. And there’s always old Robert Dermott’s illness to send him back to Robert Dermott’s daughter. Be sure ye see that he knows about it tonight.”
Bel called at David’s rooms an hour later. As she did not find him there, she asked leave to come in and write him an urgent message.
Chapter Nineteen
ON this same Monday, when so much else was happening, Lucy Rennie spent most of the day packing. She was sick of Glasgow and all it stood for—so sick, indeed, that she had decided to leave it a day earlier than she had planned. She wished, now, that she had not been so obliging as to stay over for Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse’s concert. People like the Moorhouses did not deserve to be noticed by artists.
In allowing herself these reactions, Lucy was not quite just. She was deliberately choosing to forget that it was she who had first proposed the concert to Mrs. Moorhouse, with the object of helping, a little, the distress that was at the moment so widely spread in the city. But now she was in reaction from the effort she had put forth, and she was ready to blame, merely for the relief of blaming.
The truth of it was that her vanity as a musician had been hurt. Though, had she been faced with this, she probably would have denied it. She had had success. People had applauded, and called her back to sing more. That was, of course, gratifying, but just what her experience had expected. Her practised eye had seen at a glance that this well-dressed, well-fed, well-circumstanced audience would clap its good-natured, indiscriminating hands at anything which conformed to its conventions. And it certainly was better that they should clap them than not clap them. But somehow, when everything was over, when these noisy, wealthy people finished dressinghad stood about drinking tea and chatting with their acquaintance, she—the singer, the centre of this meeting, who had given her voice, her skill and her forces—had been allowed to stand aside unnoticed.
Wealthy, place-seeking Glasgow had milled about the room, teacup in hand, the lesser seeking out the greater, in the hope of catching a wan smile of recognition or a crumb of conversation.
Or so it seemed to Lucy, who was well used to metropolitan drawing-rooms. She, a Scot herself, had forgotten the Scots’ reticence, the fear of addressing an artist, lest the word of praise might seem an impertinence. She could think of other private recitals in the South, where people had come to her, wrung her hand, and talked a deal of flattering nonsense. But for one who had given of her best it was better that way. It let down strung-up nerves and gave a sense of release and relaxation.
Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse should have seen to all this. After all, she, Lucy Rennie, should have been singled out. Instead of that, Mrs. Moorhouse had shown signs of being fussed, of letting the reins slip from her hands. One pompous woman after another had borne down on the hostess, who had lost control, and allowed herself to become enveloped. She had, indeed, bestowed flustered thanks on Lucy when she said goodbye. But that had been all, except for a short and, Lucy thought, gauche little note, thanking Miss Rennie in a perfunctory way, telling her of the gratifying sum collected, and hoping formally that any time Miss Rennie found herself in Glasgow, she would come to Grosvenor Terrace to see them.
And David Moorhouse? Now, this evening, as Lucy sat musing in her gaudy little sitting-room, she wondered if David were not, after all, at the core of her unhappiness. He was so obviously attracted to her. It was absurd and disturbing. After all, the young woman he had promised to marry in some six or seven weeks’ time had been there, at the concert, too.
Lucy rose, and drew the heavy fringed curtains to shut out the last of the foggy, dying twilight. The room was warmer so, with no other light now but the flickerings of the fire, as they threw up weird, dancing shadows on the walls. It would be very easy, really, for her to become sentimental over David Moorhouse—to remind herself that they had promised to be sweethearts as children after the fashion of magazine stories. Yet this young man appealed to her. He had no artistic sensibilities. But he was gentle and quick. She had noticed more than once a sudden flush and a sharp question in David’s eyes, when he feared for a moment that his talk had been construed wrongly, feared he had given pain. Add to that his pleasant good looks and the springtime memories of childhood, and it would not be difficult to let oneself go. Lucy stared at the flames. Now she was asking herself a direct question. If David were free and asked her to marry him, what would she have to say to him? It was a pity she had not known him as a grown man sooner. They might have done very well together, and it might have saved her from more than one male friendship that she would, by Moorhouse, or, indeed, by any other standards, have been better without.
Now she could hear the little door-bell clanging on its spring in the kitchen. Then footsteps. It must be her landlord home from work. She looked about her and sighed. No. There was no question of herself and David Moorhouse. So why bother to think about it? She had weathered storms enough already. Her heart would not be broken.
II
The door of her little sitting-room was thrown open.
“Mr. David Moorhouse.”
Lucy rose. Her training had taught her cool-headedness. But for a moment her face was flooded with colour, and she found herself fighting down confusion.
“David!”
He seemed as perturbed as she was. “I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you, Lucy. I had to see you before you went away.” He closed the door behind him, and stood for a moment against it, one hand behind his back still holding the handle. The flickering firelight caught lights in his chestnut hair, lit up his face, and flung a fantastic shadow of him on the wall beyond.
She was getting possession of herself. “Come and sit down.” She forced a laugh. “Don’t stand there, as if I were going to eat you.”
He came forward, threw his hat on the table and sat down on the other side of the hearth.
It was Lucy who spoke first, after a moment of bewildered silence. “Shall I light the gas?”
“The fire’s all right.” He was tense, unnatural. He might say anything.
She had had declarations before. If he must speak, he had better do so. She bent down and stirred the fire. “There,” she said, “that’s a bit brighter. Take off your overcoat.”
He paid no attention to this invitation. He merely sat, fumbling with the gloves he held in his hand. “When do you go?” he asked presently.
“Tomorrow morning, David. I have nothing to keep me. And I’ve work waiting in London.”
“I’m glad I came up this evening.”
There was nothing to reply to this. She would neither help nor hinder what he had to say. She allowed her eyes to wander back to the fire.
“Lucy.”
She turned towards him. He was trying with difficulty to say something.
“Yes, David?”
“Lucy, if I were free to marry you, would you marry me?” He spoke the words explosively. She saw that his eyes were great with excitement; that his hands were wringing the gloves he held until they looked like pieces of rope.
She stood up and began to pace the room. He rose, too, as though to follow her.
“No, David. Stay where you are. Let me think.” She came back to the mantelpiece, and stood looking down upon him. “Have you broken with Grace Dermott?” she asked presently.
“No. I promised I wouldn’t do anything for a day or two. Her father’s ill.”
“Promised? Promised whom?” She could see that, with the sharpness of her question, he regretted
his last words already.
“I’ve been very unhappy about this, Lucy.”
“But have you discussed me with Miss Dermott?”
“Oh no. With Bel. I thought she could help me.”
“What had she to do with it?”
“Lucy, perhaps you don’t understand. I’ve always been a close friend of Bel’s. Ever since I was a very young man.”
“So this is a matter for the whole Moorhouse family?”
“Oh no, Lucy. Bel’s the only one who knows.”
She stood, gazing into the fire, one hand on the draped mantelpiece, one foot on the wrought-iron fender, her other hand catching up her dress as it rested on her knee. She was trembling with anger. So this had already been dragged before the Moorhouses? What did it matter if it were only Bel Moorhouse? She was the distilled essence of all of them—the distilled essence of everything that was complacent and Philistine; of everything that she, Lucy Rennie, had been forced to fight against.
But now, in the lightning of her rage, Lucy saw clearly that she loved this young man, whose background she detested.
When she spoke, her voice was hot with passion, with the echoes of old rebellions, with the desire to wound.
“You don’t happen to be in love with me, David, do you?”
“Of course! I—”
“Well, you haven’t said so.”
“Lucy—please! That’s why I’m here, against—”
“Against your better judgment, David? ‘Your purer self’?”
“You’re trying to hurt me.”
“But you don’t mind hurting me, do you?”
“I didn’t know I was ever going to meet anyone like you, when I got engaged.”
“And now you want to make the best of both worlds, David?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You want to make quite sure that you’re on with me, before you do anything so rash as to break with Grace Dermott. You’ve decided all this carefully with your sister-in-law. Oh, you’re smug! Smug and hard and cowardly! All of you!”