by Guy McCrone
“Impertinence!” he muttered to himself. But, as he formed the word, he knew it wasn’t quite that with young Hayburn. There had been a clash of wills, and he had not succeeded in making the young man’s will yield to his own. No. Young Hayburn might be headstrong and foolish. But this was not common impertinence. He was brilliant, and his brilliance, untempered by experience, made the boy arrogant.
But, if only for his health’s sake, he must banish his anger. And he must make his peace with the son of his dead friend, Robert Hayburn.
He bent forward and banged the brass bell on his table. “Is Hayburn there?”
Henry came back into the chairman’s private room. He carried his hat.
The old man held out his hand. “Ye’re the son of a very old friend, Henry,” he said, using the young man’s first name again now that he had ceased to be an employee. “It would be a bad business for us if we didna part friends.”
There was a childish, almost appealing look in Henry’s face as he took his hand, mumbling: “Thank you, sir.”
“I thought I was doing you a good turn taking you in here. I thought that maybe—” The chairman had meant to say things about taking Henry’s father’s place; about helping Henry back to prosperity. But he realised in time that anything he might say would have an air of falseness to this strange young man with his strong opinions. There was nothing to do, then, but shake the hand that Henry gave him, wish him well, and repeat his hope that what had passed would make no difference to their friendship.
Henry stammered assurances. But as he turned and went out, each of them knew that they had merely thrown crumbs to appearances; that their ideas were flatly opposed; that there could never be any question of Henry’s remaining in the employ of the established and unprogressive firm of which this old man was the chairman.
Chapter Two
BEL MOORHOUSE sat on the rocks, awaiting the arrival of her husband on the weekend steamer. From where she sat near the new-built pier, Brodick Bay stretched away from her in a crescent of summer loveliness. The sweep of golden sand. The little Highland village. The green woods. Above them the moors and hills, turning purple, here and there, with the first of the bell heather. And, assembling all this, giving shape to the picture, the elegant cone of Goatfell, basking up there across the bay in the July sunshine.
But Bel was not particulaly in tune with all this beauty, as she sat, too carefully dressed for this, the least conventional of islands, absently digging the point of her parasol into a crevice of the rock. From time to time she looked up from her thoughts to assess the size of the squat black dot out there on the diamond horizon. The dot was her husband’s steamer as it paddled its way across the breezy, sunlit Firth on its Saturday afternoon run to the Island of Arran.
No. It was all very well. Brodick was beautiful, of course, and the children liked running wild. But there were limits. After all, the Moorhouse family were turning into somebodies, and would have to live accordingly. Exactly a week ago, they had all spent the day at Duntrafford. Arthur’s brother Mungo, by virtue of his marriage to its heiress, was, however simple his ways might seem, a man of substance. And David, Arthur’s younger brother, had married another young woman of wealth. David was no countryman. He had poise to unite to the fortune his marriage had brought him. Bel had no doubt that he and his wife, Grace, would fly high before they had finished.
She did not suffer from any narrow jealousy, but she had no intention of being left behind. Were Mungo’s and David’s children to be allowed to grow up looking down their noses at Arthur’s children? Not so long as the mother of Arthur’s children had any say in the matter.
In the concentration of her thoughts, Bel dug her parasol into the crevice of the rock with so much force that when she drew it out again, she found, to her irritation, that the point had lost its metal ferrule. She turned it round, examined it ruefully, then laid it down by her side.
Out on the sparkling horizon the dot was beginning to increase in size. Bel experienced a quick, compensating emotion of pleasure that soon her husband would be with her. She leant forward and plucked a little posy of sea-pinks that were growing primly out of a compact cushion of green, wedged among the stones beside her. Neat-handed in everything, she began to shape these into a formal little bouquet which, perhaps, she would tie up with grass and give to her six-year-old daughter Isabel. Down there just beneath her, out of the wind, a glassy sea was rising and falling, breathing among the rocks. Looking into it, she could glimpse a waving garden of seaweed, and, now and then, the silver belly of a fish.
Bel continued with Isabel’s posy, thinking. Was it wrong to have social ambition for one’s children. She could not think so. It was someone like Sophia Butter, who was inept with the mere mechanisms of life—remembering to pay the butcher and baker, inducing kettles to boil and pots to stew—who would tell you, piously, that her only ambition for her children was to have them become good and wholesome members of society. Bel could see no reason why riches and privilege should not be added to goodness and wholesomeness.
She was glad that Sophia and her family had not taken a house in Brodick this summer. Their extreme homeliness, and the fact that Sophia was forever borrowing things she had forgotten to bring, would have annoyed her. Mary McNairn and her family were bad enough. But if, as relatives, they were without distinction, at least they were not without competence in conducting their lives. You could always reckon upon Mary providing her share of cosy, if pedestrian, hospitality.
This very afternoon, for instance, she had taken the whole of Bel’s family to picnic and bathe in Glen Rosa. Phœbe, little Arthur and the two McNairn boys had had to walk; while Tom and Isabel, being younger, had gone with their Aunt Mary, the little twin cousins, a nursemaid, and much good food, in a farmer’s wagonette. Bel sighed a little at the thought of Mary’s picnic.
A little breeze had sprung up, rippling the plume in Bel’s straw hat, and setting her wondering if strands of her fine, fair hair had come loose, thus making her untidy to meet her husband. Out in the sea the black dot had transformed itself into a midget paddle-steamer with a wisp of smoke blowing from its tiny funnel; and with little flashes of white showing, now and then, as the bow and the paddles encountered the waves that must be running out there beyond the bay. Bel turned towards the pier. People were beginning to move down to its end, for at Brodick the arrival of the steamer was ever an event of importance. Waiting at the gates of the pier were one or two farmers’ traps and a cart. She stood up, shook the grass from the folds of her dress, made sure that it lay smooth on her waist and hips, adjusted her hat and hair as best she could, and picked up the damaged parasol. As she finished doing this, she was surprised to hear Mary McNairn calling her.
II
“Bel! Bel dear! Hullo!” Mary’s flat voice was doing its best to make itself heard.
Bel gave Mary a little wave of surprised recognition, as they advanced to meet each other across the natural lawn of short sea-grass which lay between the shore road and the rocks. How matronly Mary was becoming, Bel could not help thinking, as she took in her sister-in-law’s plump figure, her too easily fitting black dress, the coloured shawl on her shoulders, and her flapping straw hat. After all, Mary was not yet forty; and Bel did not like to feel that her contemporaries were beginning to look old.
“I thought I would find you here,” Mary said as they wandered back for a moment to where Bel had been sitting.
“But how did you manage to come, Mary? I thought you were with the picnic in Glen Rosa.”
Mary explained that a friendly crofter had stopped his little cart to ask after the family. She had begged him for a lift. “You see, I was worrying about George. I felt I wanted to come to meet him.”
“George?” Bel turned to her sister-in-law.
“Yes. He’s not quite well. I’ve been worrying dreadfully.”
Bel looked at Mary, and received what almost amounted to a shock. For a moment a quick look of terror had risen to the su
rface of her plump complacence, then died away again as she took control of herself.
“But you haven’t told me anything about this, Mary. George isn’t really ill, is he?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. He was to be examined this week. There’s the steamer coming in. We’d better go.” Mary did not seem to want to speak of George’s threatened illness further.
Bel followed her, wondering. The McNairns had always been so smug. Hopes, fears and tremulous uncertainties were things you simply couldn’t connect with the McNairns. They weren’t quite human. That they could have any possible spark of passion for each other, in their squat, well-fed bodies, was the last thing that would ever occur to anyone about George and Mary. But now, surprisingly, Bel had caught a glimpse. People could love each other, then, even if they were fat and self-centred.
The steamer was in full view now. In a moment or two she would be slowing down. They could see the Saturday evening crowd from Glasgow leaning over her railings, eager to catch their first, close glimpse of the beloved island.
Bel took out the necessary coppers to pay for their admittance through the wicket gate of the pier, and they continued down its short length, preparing to meet their menfolk.
“Is anyone coming besides Arthur?” Mary asked presently.
“Henry Hayburn.”
“Did Phœbe know he was coming by this boat?”
“I don’t know, Mary—yes, she must have known.”
“It’s queer she didn’t want to come down with me to meet him. There was room in the cart,” Mary said.
“I’ve never the least idea what’s going on between these two. They don’t seem to me to behave like an engaged couple.”
Now the Ivanhoe was in the bay, swinging round in order to take the pier at a proper angle. Daring spirits were out in rowing-boats, waving in the gaiety of their holiday mood to any passengers on board that would bother to wave back to them; waiting to row into the white foam that the steamer’s paddles would presently leave in her wake.
“Do you think their marriage will ever come off?” Mary asked as they stood waiting.
Bel shook her head thoughtfully and shrugged.
“Do you think he’s good enough for Phœbe?”
The picture of Phœbe’s radiance, as she marshalled the children to take them off to the picnic today, came to Bel. A beautiful creature; and only nineteen. Why should she waste her loveliness on this graceless, talkative young man? And she didn’t even seem to care much about him. If Henry still had his father’s fortune, then, of course, it would have been different. But now he had nothing. He was, so far as Bel knew, a mere employee. And, as she had just been reminding herself as she sat there on the rocks, the Moorhouse family were turning into somebodies.
“No, Mary. I don’t think Henry Hayburn is good enough for Phœbe,” she said at last. “People say he’s very clever, of course,” she added, her eyes still on the incoming steamer.
“It’s time he showed some of it,” Mary’s flat voice said beside her.
“That’s what I say.”
“I don’t think you should worry, Bel. If she hasn’t even bothered to come down to meet the man she is supposed to be engaged to, the affair won’t last long.”
The Ivanhoe had come alongside now. There were the ringings of bells and the thrashing of paddles as she manœuvred into position. Coils of slender pilot rope were thrown up from the deck, and the heavy hawsers to which they were attached were dragged up by powerful Highland hands that seized the giant loops and slid them over over the stanchions of the pier.
Wives waved to husbands; hosts to weekend guests. There was shouting in Lowland Scots and Arran Gaelic. A rattling of gangways. Those who were coming off stood waiting on the deck, in conventional City clothes, holding handbags and overcoats, and bringing with them a breath of the town from which they were escaping. The horn was sounded, emitting a jet of pure white steam which rose for a moment to make a contrast with the cloud of black smoke issuing from the funnel; then was lost, as together, black and white, the smoke was blown down the wind. There was tumult, laughter and the bumping of luggage; and as a fitting background, a German band that Bel recognised as one that played in the streets of Hillhead at other times of the year, kept pumping out the notes of the “Blue Danube” waltz from a sheltered corner of the deck.
III
“There they are!” Mary had spied the three men among the crowd that waited while the gangway, which had now been slid across, was adjusted to its proper position on the paddle-box.
Arthur was looking up at Bel, a smile on his lean, handsome face. As her eyes caught his, he raised a hand in a friendly salute. Bel was filled, for a moment, with a feeling of keen pleasure. After a day or two of separation, the sight of Arthur meant protection, permanence and the completion of herself.
Baillie George McNairn was standing, stout and apparently unemotional, looking very much as usual, Bel thought. He, too, allowed a glint of recognition to rise up to them from his plump face.
“I hope George is all right,” Mary was saying beside her.
“I’m sure he is, dear. I wouldn’t worry if I were you.” And then, to change the subject, perhaps, Bel added: “What strange clothes Henry Hayburn seems to be wearing.”
Henry was wearing his suit of large, trellis checks, and the cloth cap of the same stuff, which it was his pleasure to affect when he came into the country. It gave him an odd, buttoned-up appearance, that seemed to accentuate the lanky gracelessess of his body. As though he knew his name was being mentioned, he suddenly turned in the direction of Bel and Mary, and his plain, boyish face was lit up in a quick smile.
Bel felt a stab of compunction. There was, after all, something disarming about Henry. She caught herself feeling annoyed with Phœbe that she had not come back from the picnic in time to meet him.
Henry wriggled his way through the waiting crowd to the side of the steamer, and shouted a friendly “Hullo” to the ladies above him. Bel wondered if the absence of Phœbe had even occurred to this strange young man.
“Hullo, Henry!” she called back to him. “They seem to be taking a long time to let you off.”
“Yes. Some of the hands are helping over there.” Henry cast his eyes along the side of the boat.
Bel’s eyes followed them. “Somebody getting a new cart?” she asked.
A gangway of planks was being laid at another part. Half a dozen deck-hands were standing ready to drag across them a brand-new farm-cart, which had been brought from the mainland. The cart looked like a giant toy, Bel could not help thinking. It was new painted, bright red and green, and the metal parts were shining.
“There we are now!” Henry wriggled back to his place beside Arthur and George.
The passengers, struggling with their belongings, had begun to come, one at a time, up the gangway. Presently the two husbands came, carrying neat weekend gladstone bags, and followed by Henry carrying a small and shabby carpet one. The elder men bestowed the responsible, conjugal kisses that husbands bestow upon wives in public, while Henry gave the ladies a hearty handshake, then began looking about him anxiously.
Again Bel felt a pang. “I’m sorry Phœbe’s been kept at a picnic, Henry. But she ought to be back by the time we get home.”
Henry merely said “Oh,” and went on looking about him. “I’ve brought my ordinary with me,” he said, using the customary name for the penny-farthing bicycle of the period, and adding: “I suppose they’ll bring it with the rest of the luggage after they get the cart off. Just go after Mary and George, and I’ll follow you. Good heavens! Look what’s coming!”
The main gate at the end of the pier had been thrown open, and a giant Clydesdale horse was being led towards them by a brown-skinned Highland lad with bare feet. The boy was grinning broadly as he came.
“It must have come down to take away the cart,” Arthur said, looking towards the animal.
“But look who’s on its back!” Henry was laughing and waving wildly.<
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No, Bel couldn’t think this funny! There was her husband’s sister Phœbe, and her own son Arthur, perched high on the great creature’s back, coming down the pier in front of all the people! Was Phœbe mad? Had she forgotten the meaning of the word propriety? For a young lady in her position to be sitting up there, hatless and dishevelled, making an exhibition of herself, was something of which Bel could not approve! And little Arthur was only eight, and might fall off and be seriously hurt! Indeed, if the horse started suddenly, they might both be thrown from the pier into the water.
“Arthur, tell them to come down at once! This is disgraceful! Mary, speak to Phœbe at once! She’s your sister.”
“Come down, Phœbe,” Mary called placidly, looking up. George had had time to tell her that his doctor’s report was good, and Mary could not feel angry, now, with anybody. And as Henry and Arthur laid down their bags and ran forward to help them to descend, Mary added: “Her mother was a Highland tinker. She looked very like her sitting up there.”
But Bel was in no mood for family history or romantic likenesses. Besides, if anyone in the family had low connections, it was time they were forgetting them. When at last they stood before her she merely said: “Phœbe and Arthur, I’m very disappointed with you,” then marched off down the pier on her husband’s arm.
“Well-put-together young woman, Phœbe is, now,” George remarked to Mary as they followed after.
“Time she was learning sense. Bel was quite right to be angry!” Mary said. Now that she had George’s assurance that his health would allow their smooth life to continue as usual, she did not in the least see why the baillie should be encouraged in his altogether too easily aroused interest in the slenderness of waists and the shapeliness of feet. The small eyes in George’s fat face were over quick, Mary knew, when it came to feminine perfection. “Like Henry the Eighth’s,” she had said to herself angrily on a more dangerous occasion.