by Guy McCrone
IV
The couple walked briskly along in the sunlight. It was strange that lovers should have so little to say to each other. But these were strange lovers and they were well accustomed to long silences together.
Henry was dismayed and puzzled. He had never been pressed about his doings in the old days. Indeed, his mother had not wanted him to take up any work seriously. She had wanted Stephen and himself to occupy their time being gentlemen. That was ridiculous, of course. Still, the scramble for fortune and position had never, until now, seemed a necessity to him.
All about them were fields of growing corn, studded here and there with poppies; fields of fresh-cut hay, of rich green pasture. Down on the right the sparkling sea. And in the distance in front of them the peak of Goatfell and the rugged splendour of the castles. White butterflies were dancing among the seeding grasses, the harebells and the dandelions by the roadside.
What did Phœbe think about it, he wondered? In his life there was Phœbe, and, far behind her, everybody else. And yet there was not much love-making between this odd couple. In times of normal happiness they fed on each other’s eagerness like two schoolchildren. If there was passion, it flowed deep, almost beyond the consciousness of either. Bel had often said of them that neither was quite adult. In one sense she was right.
“Your folks don’t like me, Phœbe,” he said suddenly.
She was accustomed to his breaking in like this. She took a moment to take in his words. “They don’t like me either,” she said. “After last night Bel thinks I don’t know know to behave myself like a lady.” Her face darkened for a moment. Then she laughed. “She’ll get over it.”
Henry plucked at a long grass that sprouted by the wayside, and sucked its tender end, reflecting. “She’ll get over anything you do. But I’m different. I’m just a stranger,” he added, using the last word in its Scotch sense, meaning someone who is not a relation.
“How can you be a stranger, if you are going to marry me?”
“I’m not sure that she wants you to marry me.”
“Nobody’s asking her what she wants.”
“They don’t think I’m good enough for you.”
“Good enough, Henry! A Hayburn not good enough for me!”
“It would have been all right last year, when mother was alive and we had our money.”
“That’s rubbish. What difference does that make?” Yet even Phœbe knew there was a difference. She could not be unconscious of it. She knew the Moorhouse yardstick. The thought roused a feeling of rebellion.
“It’s sensible enough,” Henry went on, almost as though he were thinking aloud. “After all, we can’t be married till I can earn a living.”
“You know perfectly well I can wait.”
“Do you want to wait, Phœbe?”
“Not for ever.” She turned to look at him. Their eyes met.
For an instant Phœbe caught a glimpse of the sudden, almost pitiful defencelessness that could weave itself so strangely into the texture of Henry’s indifference. And the quick of her sympathy was cut almost as it had been cut on that night of his despair; the night upon which she had promised to become his wife.
She gave him her hand.
V
Mrs. Barrowfield spent August at home. This happened every summer. Bel always pressed her mother to stay with them for as long as they should be by the sea, but much as she liked her daughter and her grandchildren, the old lady felt that a month of improvised comfort, of smoking peat-fires, of Arran downpours, of cramped rooms, was as much as she had any taste for. She began to long for the ordered quiet of her own flat in Monteith Row.
Besides, town was not unattractive to her in August. Most people were away, and such social obligations as the remainder of the year laid upon her did not exist. Her son-in-law, Arthur, who always had his holiday at the fair in July, and was, in consequence, left to himself in August, came frequently to see her. David Moorhouse, before his marriage, had often visited her at this time too. She liked these masculine attentions. It amused Bel to tease her mother about her August “young men”. This year David’s bachelor life had, of course, come to an end. But now it would seem that Henry Hayburn was beginning to take his place.
She had invited him to visit her when they were together in Brodick, and Henry, sensing sympathy at the core of Mrs. Barrowfield’s downrightness, had come. A sudden, lively friendship had sprung up between them. The strange, erratic young man had taken to dropping in of an evening. She enjoyed his excitable, self-revealing talk, his regardlessness of convention, his quick confidence in herself. She realised his great loneliness; the loneliness of someone young and eager who has not yet found his place in the scheme of things. She was flattered that he should come to her, an old woman, for understanding and support.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Mrs. Barrowfield had become Henry’s partisan. He had explained to her, with much technical and quite incomprehensible detail, just why he had to leave his last employment. Loyally, she declared that she quite saw, and was convinced that there was nothing else for him to do. She believed that there were great potentialities in Henry. Either for good or ill. His ardour would either make or break him. If he were headed in the right direction, then he would do great things.
He told her about Phœbe: how Phœbe was everything to him. But Mrs. Barrowfield sometimes wondered. Phœbe was so much a bird of the storm herself. How would these two unstable creatures fare together?
This summer of 1879 was long and dragging for the young man. World trade continued in the doldrums. Henry could suddenly appear at Monteith Row and declare that he was finished with Scotland; that nothing was any good; that he had determined to emigrate. Thousands were going to the New World. Why shouldn’t he? Mrs. Barrowfield’s experience knew not to take these outbursts at their face value. He had merely come to draw strength from her sympathy, to let off steam.
Usually he found her in an arm-chair by the open window, busy with her work. She would command him to sit down, order tea to be brought, and listen while he talked himself out. With a brisk, cheerful tact she would counsel patience. She would strive to renew his faith in himself; to remind him of his abilities. The right employment would presently present itself. It was merely a question of time. What about Phœbe, if he chose to emigrate? Did he imagine for one moment that her brothers would allow her to follow him into the wilderness?
Sooner or later peace would descend. If it were evening, there would be birds chirping in the trees outside the window. Beyond, couples could be seen in the distance, wandering across the wide, cool expanses of Glasgow Green. Presently the lamplighter would come, and the branches near the lamps he had lighted would take on the vivid look of painted scenery. In later August the gossamer mists of approaching autumn would rise from the distant Clyde and wreathe their wisps across the darkening Green. There would be the tap of an occasional step on the pavement beneath them; the voices of children playing in the gloaming; the sounds of far-off laughter.
And now Henry’s talk would be changed from shrill expostulation to comfortable commonplace, while the old woman sat sewing, saying nothing. But she would smile in secret, tell herself that young people needed their elders sometimes, and assure herself that once more she had given back to her young friend the strength to continue with the highly arduous occupation of being young, impatient and eager.
Chapter Four
MUNGO RUANTHORPE-MOORHOUSE was a miracle of good temper—or so, at least, his parents-in-law, Sir Charles Ruanthorpe and his lady, were constantly heard to declare. But on this fine September morning it was taking Mungo all his time.
The harvest was in full swing, and Mungo was busy. Arrangements of all kinds had to be made at the Laigh Farm. And, in addition, as a progressive farmer, he had purchased one of the new combined reaping and binding machines, that not only cut the corn, but actually, as it went along, forced it into sheaves, tied it with hemp string, and cast it to one side ready to be set up in
“stooks”. Everything needed his attention, especially the new reaper and binder: for if this turned out to be a failure, he would be confronted by the unpleasant fact that he had been wasting good money. In addition, he knew that his fellow farmers would smile, and, in their blunt country fashion, inform him that they could have told him from the beginning that these newfangled, mechanical devices were never any good.
Now, as he stood among his cornfields, in the yellow sunshine of this Ayrshire September morning, a messenger came from Duntrafford bearing a letter in Sir Charles’s hand. Mungo opened the letter apprehensively. Had something gone wrong? Was someone ill? Margaret? Or his three-months-old son? He was not accustomed to having messages sent to him thus while he was in the fields.
But the letter, disdaining apology or explanation, informed Sir Charles’s son-in-law that Sir Charles was sending a foreign gentleman to see the working of the automatic reaper and binder, and would Mungo be so good as to show everything and explain everything the gentleman wanted to know. He would perhaps ask young Henry Hayburn, who happened to be staying along with Phœbe at the Dower House, to bring the gentleman over some time this afternoon while harvesting was in progress. The stranger was an Austrian banker and had connections with Sir Charles’s stockbrokers in London.
The stable-boy, who had ridden across with the letter, saw Mr. Moorhouse crush it roughly in his hand and thrust it deep into his trouser-pocket. But he could not see how Mr. Moorhouse had to crush as roughly his quick annoyance at this needless interruption. What possible right had a banker, of all people, to come wasting a busy farmer’s time? What interest could this binder be to a foreigner? Margaret’s father was country bred. He should have known better. But he was eighty years old and very petted.
Mungo Moorhouse, however, was by nature restrained and moderate. “Ye can tell them it’s all right for the afternoon,” he said none too graciously; and the stable-boy rode off to deliver the message.
II
It will never be known whether Sir Charles had bidden Henry Hayburn to lunch with the intention of finding employment for him. It is not improbable. For, as Mungo’s sister Phœbe showed no sign of giving Henry up, his lack of employment had become a family problem. Besides, there was something about Henry’s spirit and quickness that appealed to the old man. A command had come to the Dower House. Henry was required by Sir Charles to come across and meet an Austrian gentleman.
Who was he? Margaret Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse did not know. Was Phœbe expected along with Henry? They did not say so. Henry went alone.
He found the old laird of Duntrafford and Lady Ruanthorpe in the great drawing-room of the house. Although the autumn sunshine was pouring through the festooned lace curtains of the long windows, filling the pleasantly rich and padded room with warmth as well as light, a bright fire was burning. Margaret’s parents sat on great chairs on either side of it. Sir Charles’s old house spaniels lay on the rug. At his elbow was a decanter of sherry. There were Michaelmas daisies, late roses, and yellow beech leaves. A country room that could belong only to subjects of the Queen.
But now, at once, a different note was struck. The rather swarthy gentleman who was being presented to Henry did not belong to this picture.
Sir Charles was doing the honours. “Come along, Hayburn. Glad to see you. I see you didn’t bring Phœbe.” Whether Sir Charles was pleased or sorry about his, Henry could not discover, as he gave his hand to his hostess, then to the old man, who went on talking: “By the way, how is my grandson, Hayburn? I haven’t seen him for two days. I must go round after tea.”
Lady Ruanthorpe expostulated. “Really, Charles! How can you expect Henry to take an interest in a baby?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Hadn’t you better stop arguing, and introduce Henry to Mr. Hirsch.”
Henry gave Mr. Maximilian Hirsch of Vienna his hand, noting the while, in his not very far-travelled mind, that Mr. Hirsch looked like a piano-tuner. But if Henry’s parochiality could only think of a piano-tuner, his common sense quickly told him that the stranger, with his bowing and smiling, his shock of black hair, and his bushy side-whiskers, cut in accordance with the fashion set by his Emperor, was much more a man of the world than he was himself.
Mr. Hirsch spoke English with an accent, but almost without fault. He knew London intimately, he said, and had many business interests and friends there. His chief occupation was banking, but it was banking in the Continental sense, which meant that he was not excluded from the practical direction of several manufacturing ventures. He was always, he said, on the outlook for new ideas to exploit. He had been sent to Glasgow by a friend in London to obtain information that would be of use to him in connection with steam river-craft on the Danube.
As Henry was sipping his sherry, he began to regard the foreigner with awe. This man had been received by the heads of many famous Glasgow firms. He talked with intelligence, much more intelligence than old Sir Charles, who was obviously bored, and impatient for his lunch.
The young man became interested. Had Mr. Hirsch seen this at such a shipyard? Had Mr. Hirsch seen that at such another engine shop? Henry’s eyes kindled and his tongue wagged. He did not know that he was revealing himself. That this intelligent cosmopolitan had come to seek after such a one as himself.
Sir Charles had become more and more testy. He did not like torrents of talk he could not understand; could not even hear properly. He grunted. He offered more sherry. He demanded of his wife when she had told Campbell to announce lunch. He adjusted his stock. He dragged his gold watch out of its spacious pocket in his waistcoat, and snapped it open and snapped it shut.
The visitor stopped, smiling. “But we are talking too much Mr.—? I do not think that I heard your name?”
“Hayburn.” Henry, brought to earth, looked about him a little abashed.
Mr. Hirsch said the name after him. “Hayburn?”
Henry repeated it.
For a moment the stranger seemed to be seeking about in his mind. “Hayburn,” he said presently, and added: “It is strange that I should know your name.” He stopped again, then exclaimed: “Ah! Robert Hayburn of Glasgow! A famous engineer. I have heard of him many times.” And suddenly: “Your father?”
“He was. My father died some years ago.”
“But you are in his famous Company, of course?”
Lady Ruanthorpe, gruff and old though she might be, felt that here was a situation with which she had better deal. She saw the blush on the young man’s face.
She interposed with resolution. “You know, Mr. Hirsch, I think it would be such a good thing if Henry drove you over to see my son-in-law’s reaping machine this afternoon. I feel you have got all sorts of things to talk about.” And then with relief: “Oh, there you are, Campbell. Thank you. Come along, everybody. I expect you’re all starving.”
And Mr. Hirsch could not at all understand why the old woman had thus cut into his conversation. Like every other Continental, he found himself marvelling at the bad manners of the Islanders.
III
Maximilian Hirsch, urbane, highly civilised and intellectually curious, was enjoying this, his first visit to Scotland. This northern land was so different, its customs so apart. When he got himself home again to his comfortable and expensive first-floor apartments in the Inner City of Vienna, with its windows overlooking the Minoriten Church, he would have something to tell his friends of the strange, rigid ways of life, and the sombrely prosperous town, where he had just been spending his Sunday. The outward appearance of the London Sunday was sober enough. But, after all, London was a great, cosmopolitan city. There was plenty of amusement to be found by a sophisticated foreigner who knew where to look for it.
But yesterday, Glasgow had been quite dead. He had walked out from his hotel to look at the City, as it lay, quiet and resting, in the September sunshine. The sound of church bells. The earnest Protestants hurrying to church. Heavily bearded, black-coated men raising their tall hats and smiling
seriously in greeting, as, together with their wives, their sons and their daughters, they hurried to foregather in tasteless yellow pine vestibules and passed on out of sight into their austere places of worship.
And yet they seemed a prosperous, well-fed people, and their faces, on the whole, appeared contented, even complacent. But what did they do to amuse themselves, to exercise their intellects, to feed their minds, on this, their day of freedom? Even the workpeople—those of them who could be seen about—seemed not to expect amusement. They roamed the traffickless thoroughfares, or stood at street corners in knots, gossiping.
He came from a city where amusement was deemed a necessary food for the spirit. He could see no attempt at light-heartedness here. At home, on an early September Sunday morning, the workpeople would be streaming to the open spaces of the Prater, Vienna’s popular and fashionable park. Or the young and enterprising would be crowding the horse-trams and singing without self-consciousness to the accompaniment of trotting hoofs and tinkling bells, as they rode towards the suburbs to spend their day eating and dancing in the gardens of one of the many restaurants, or wandering happily in the Vienna Woods.
And the fashionable world—or such of it as had already come back from the country—would have its ceremonial carriage parade in the afternoon in the Prater, and later make its appearance at the opera or in the theatres.
In Glasgow, throughout the afternoon there was nothing, it seemed, but stagnation, and in the evening another dose of church.