by Guy McCrone
“You look at this room, too, Mrs. Hayburn?” Fräulein Stephanie asked, seeing Phœbe look about her.
“It’s beautiful!” Phœbe’s eyes went everywhere. The cherry-wood furniture, elegant and frail; the faded striped coverings; the china and bric-à-brac; the coloured glass in its special cabinet; the silhouette portraits and miniatures hung in thin gilt frames against striped walls; the faded carpet of lime green with garlands of roses; the white porcelain stove. It was a room of pale tones, but, with many fresh spring flowers, it was friendly and charming.
“I am glad that you like it.” The Viennese woman was pleased. “It is old. Our mother was young in the Biedermeier times. Except for photographs and piano, we keep this room old, too. Most young people who come—” She shrugged and smiled with sad indulgence. “Na? You will come now, please?”
Lunch had been announced.
IV
Phœbe found herself in the dining-room of the flat. It, too, was old-fashioned, but elegant, and there was no doubt about its dignity. A very old man, who had been their father’s personal servant, waited upon the ladies. She noted with interest his blue tail-coat, his brass buttons and the white cotton gloves he wore as he handed dishes.
All this was old, established and strange. But Phœbe found herself responding; enjoying this new adventure; taking pleasure in the company of these stiff, but not uncharming women. The yellow muscatel wine, that the man-servant had poured out for her unasked, expanded her senses.
“I’m very new to Vienna,” she found herself saying. “If I make mistakes, you must tell me.”
“No. A young lady so charming is not able to make mistakes, Mrs. Hayburn.”
She was beautiful, this girl, Stephanie Hirsch decided. Beautiful, and likeable. And although her manners seemed casual, they were not rude, neither were they quite English. Did the Scots, then, differ from the English in these things? Phœbe’s youth moved her as she had not been moved for long. It would give her pleasure to take her guest under her wing, help her, if she would allow it. Max, their nephew, had been quite right to ask them to receive her.
“No, please! You do things so differently. It would be very kind of you to tell me.” (What would Bel have said to this? Phœbe begging to be taught manners!) “You see, there are so many things I don’t know. You could help me so much.”
It is flattering to be asked for guidance. And none the less so if one is old and conventional, with the best of life beyond recall. And especially when she who asks for guidance is young, quick and full of red blood. Fräulein Stephanie knew that most Viennese young women of Phœbe’s looks and age would have taken little pleasure in coming here to her backwater in the Paulanergasse. But she guessed that this foreign girl might be somewhat lonely, somewhat bewildered, somewhat directionless, despite—or perhaps, indeed, because of—her very recent marriage, and the great changes it had brought her.
And thus an unlikely friendship between Phœbe and Stephanie Hirsch sprang up. After their meal the elder sister went to rest, while Phœbe, pressed to remain, sat with the younger, listening and learning.
The relatives at home would not have known this Phœbe. And yet it was the same Phœbe, impelled by a sudden new enthusiasm, enjoying a new experience—a feeling of play-acting, perhaps, a feeling that now she was doing something that those at home would never do.
She had drunk her afternoon coffee, said her farewell, and promised to come soon again and bring her husband with her. Now she found herself once more sitting in the well-preserved, old-fashioned carriage.
As it clattered over the snowy cobbles, Phœbe smiled to herself. She was delighted—childishly gleeful, indeed—over her visit. Her husband did not know everything about Vienna! She was opening up ground on her own account now, learning customs she had known nothing of. Her long talk with Stephanie Hirsch had been warm and instructive.
In the last days she had been secretly doubtful of what the future would hold for her. It was very well to be brave and spirited. But these things did not make up for lack of experience, nor, for that matter, for quite blank ignorance. Today she had found another woman she could turn to. A strange, rather stiff foreign woman, perhaps, but one with whom she found herself in sympathy. And she was grateful. The thought, indeed, gave more comfort than Phœbe’s courage liked to admit to Phœbe’s nineteen years.
Chapter Nine
THEIR first quarrel since their marriage. Before it, Henry and Phœbe had spent much of their time together in adolescent bickerings, as two much attached school friends might bicker.
But now their new awareness of each other made disagreement different. These hot young people were now so much of one flesh that the inevitable divergences which, sooner or later, must arise from the clash of their strong wills could not but cause them surprise and pain.
The quarrel took place after Phœbe’s return from the Hirsch ladies. Henry had come back to the hotel in the Domgasse with news. His tutor and interpreter, Willi Pommer, had appeared this morning, and he had gone out to lunch with him. Herr Pommer had brought word from the Quellengasse. The good Herr and Frau Klem were well; and Pepi, despite some show of what Willi was solemnly pleased to call high spirits, had, at last, consented to become formally betrothed to himself.
Even Henry, who was no reader of other people’s hearts, wondered a little at the point of view Willi was taking; at the Austrian’s strange, and what seemed almost insensitive satisfaction over his now nearly certain hopes of becoming the possessor of a modest dowry, and the pretty little wife that went along with it. But Henry had long since learnt to accept divergences of outlook in this unaccountable city, and if they did not directly concern himself, he saw no reason to harass his mind with them.
And Herr Pommer had brought a message from the Klems to Herr Hayburn. They hoped that he would do them the great honour of coming to see them, and of bringing the gracious lady with him. The Klems had become very attached to Henry Hayburn, Willi assured him—rather to Henry’s surprise—and naturally they would be much interested to meet the wife he had so recently brought back. In addition, there were books, papers and clothes belonging to Herr Hayburn at the Quellengasse. Frau Klem was a little surprised he had not been to see after these, and would be glad to know what he intended to do about them.
Henry now took the opportunity of asking Herr Pommer’s advice. Would it not, didn’t he think, be a good idea if he and Phœbe went back to the Quellengasse to live for a time? Since he had returned to Vienna, Henry had been so much occupied with his work at the factory, with showing his wife Vienna, and in settling down to marriage generally, that he had had little time to think of more permanent lodgings. Now he had come to a point where everything must be sacrificed to his work. His wife understood this perfectly; and did not Herr Pommer think that she would do better to be under Frau Klem’s wing, than struggling alone, or more doubtfully befriended, in unknown rooms elsewhere?
Herr Pommer certainly thought so. The gracious lady had the language to study. He would find her a suitable teacher, and Pepi, of course, would help while she was still there, which would not be—his face flushed with complacent self-consciousness—for very long, he hoped. And when she was gone, perhaps they could have Pepi’s room as well. He was sure that his future mother-in-law was anything but grasping. She would be glad to let them have it for very little more.
If Willi seemed, at this point, rather to have taken upon himself the role of calculating son-in-law, Henry was too well aware of the advantages he was setting forth to let this disturb him. Yes, Frau Klem’s was certainly the place for Phœbe and himself. He was in no doubt about this whatever. Though the room he had occupied would be somewhat cramped, Phœbe was as anxious to save money as he was. Indeed, she, herself, had already spoken of going to the Klems. If the good Frau Klem would but have them, Henry was certain his wife would be as delighted with the idea as he was.
But in that certainty he was wrong. And this was not the reason for their quarrel.
He had no sooner
suggested that they should, this very evening, settle their permanent headquarters, than he was made aware of the fact that Phœbe had been having ideas put into her head by the aunts of Maximilian Hirsch.
“But, Henry, the younger Miss Hirsch says that only working people live out in the Favoriten.”
“Well, we’re working people, aren’t we? We’re here to work, anyway.”
“Oh, you’re trying not to understand me! You know perfectly well what I mean.” Phœbe, flushed and angry, turned from the long glass in front of which she was brushing her hair before going down to supper.
Henry was on the edge of their bed, still in the thick, fur-lined coat the Viennese winter had forced him to buy. He got up and began to struggle out of it moodily. “We haven’t come out here to live like swells, anyway,” he grumbled. His wife’s unexpected opposition in this, his new world of tenderness, shocked his senses more than he cared to admit. But that was no reason for giving way.
“Of course not, Henry. But after all, as Miss Hirsch says, we’re young and have our lives to live.”
“Lives to live? What does she mean?”
“Well, enjoy ourselves a little, and cultivate our minds, Henry!”
“I never heard such rubbish! The way to live your life is to do the work you have to do—properly and well!”
Phœbe turned back to the mirror, brushing her hair savagely. At another time she might have smiled at her own glum reflection. But now she was too angry. She knew that when Henry spoke of his work, he was speaking of something that was his obsession. So long as he was left to that, he did not care where he—or she—lived. It was his enjoyment. But what about herself? What did she get out of it? No. This was downright hypocrisy. As his wife, she must not allow it. He had no right to treat her like this; pushing her into the house in the Quellengasse so that he could conveniently forget about her!
Phœbe was not yet twenty. Rights and wrongs were still black and white. She had not yet learnt that the colour of compromise is grey. And she had come back so uplifted, so enchanted, as only a young girl can be, with the new friend she had found today—a friend who must know so much more about life in Vienna than Henry possibly could. She turned to Henry once again: “But, Henry, surely we can afford—”
“How do you know what we can afford?”
“You told me yourself before we were married that we were earning enough to live comfortably.”
“But not enough to squander!”
“Oh, of course not! But Miss Hirsch says—”
“Damn Miss Hirsch!”
“Henry! Don’t you dare!” Phœbe stamped her foot. Arthur and David would never use language like that! She stood close in front of him, her hair down, her colour high, her eyes blazing.
Suddenly this new facet of her strange beauty, joined to his own trembling feelings, overcame him. He caught his wife’s lonely unwillingness into his arms—unwillingness which did not last.
And when they came to descend for their evening meal, Phœbe, a hand through Henry’s arm, had promised she would go with him to visit the Klems that evening. They would decide everything after they had been there.
II
Like many who glory in the adventures of the mind, who are inventive and bold in their vocation, Henry felt a timidity, a dislike of change in the background of everyday things. His homing instinct was strong. It had been a wrench, an uprooting, for him to come to Vienna in the autumn. Only the strongest pressure of circumstances could have forced him to the step. But, having got himself there, and having found a room in the Quellengasse, his homing instinct had reasserted itself. It was there he had managed to settle down.
Frau Klem had been kind. She had looked to his comfort almost fanatically. Recognising him to be eccentric, she had cooked his meals at whatever times of the day or night he had chosen to appear, regardless of the fact that he might have spared her by eating at the suburban restaurant nearby. She had looked to his mending and his linen. And, when the cold came, seen that the fire in his stove burned brightly. It is doubtful if Henry noticed any of these attentions. But it had made him aware that the Klems’ was a very good sort of place to have a room in.
Besides, there had been Pepi. Gay, light-headed and ridiculously pretty, she had run about, serving him as her mother did; helping him with his German when he asked her; teasing him when she thought his mood was dark. Deep in his preoccupations, Henry had taken almost as little notice of her as he had of her blond, leonine father. They were, one and all of them, part of a convenient background—nothing more. If Pepi had conceived an interest in the gesticulating, innocent young stranger, the last person who had been aware of this was the stranger himself.
What, then, could be better than the Quellengasse, if Frau Klem would have them? Thus, in the evening, after their meal, Henry set out with Phœbe.
The night was cold and brilliant. There had been a powdering of snow earlier. As they crossed the Stephansplatz, they could see smooth drifts, new, white and unsullied, blown into corners of the great cathedral’s walls. Looking down the Graben, they saw that a full moon was flooding the white roofs of the central booths and the straw-covering of the rococo fountain, with a light that seemed almost blue, against the yellow warmth of flaring, gas-lit windows. Overhead there were stars.
Despite the cold, the evening promenade in the Kärntnerstrasse was in full swing. Shops and restaurants were blazing with light. Even on this winter night, the street was teeming. Men and women wrapped in heavy furs. Officers of line regiments. Demi-mondaines in the height of winter fashion. Personal servants brought from the further parts of the Empire, bearing themselves proudly in the full consciousness of their magnificent regional clothes. A Slavonian woman, her many petticoats ballooning out beneath her heavy sheepskin coat, and wearing hessian boots and a turban. A Polish woman, seen through the plate-glass windows of a famous coffee-house, wearing a white skirt braided with gold, red-leather boots, a white fur-lined attila and a lancer’s square-topped cap. Hungarians. Bohemians. Transylvanians. All of them aware of the spectacle they made in this incredible, glittering street. All of them adding to the brittle brilliance of their Empire.
Phœbe hung on Henry’s arm. Her heart was singing. It was a far cry from here to Grosvenor Terrace. Tonight Henry and she were very near to each other. The storm had blown up between them, changed to a tempest of the feelings, found its appeasement, and now there was a tender, shining calm. She stopped at one of the several toy-shops in the Kärntnerstrasse. There were dolls dressed in the absurd peasant costumes of these men and women here in the street. She must buy one and send it home to little Isabel.
It was typical of them that they did not think to hire a Fiaker or a Komfortable to take them out to the Quellengasse. A cab was an expense, a luxury in Glasgow. Unless you were old, or ill, had much luggage or were very self-indulgent indeed. Phœbe and Henry were none of these things, so why hire one, even in Vienna? A tram ran from the top of the Kärntnerstrasse at the Opera house up into the Favoritenstrasse, and they could walk the rest of the way.
All entertainment was early in Vienna, and the opera made no exception to this rule. Thus an hour of the performance must already have passed as they reached the stopping-place near the Opera House and stood waiting. Yet even now fashionable people were arriving, alighting from hired Fiakers or private carriages, and passing on into the lighted building.
It would have pleased Maximilian Hirsch to see Phœbe now, as she stood, her shining eyes taking in the extravagance of this lovely, flaunting city. She hugged her husband’s arm. It was all so strange, so unreal, so enchanting! Everything was new, everything adventure. If there was another side to Vienna’s glamour, Phœbe had not yet even thought about it.
Now the little horse-tram was coming, the many bells on the horses’ collars emitting a continuous metallic sound, a cascade of brassy rustlings, as the steaming horses came along the moonlit Ring. Now she was sitting close to Henry in the dim, oil-lit car. Now they had turned a
nd were heading uphill towards the Favoriten suburb.
III
The Klem family made a picture of domesticity this evening. Joseph Klem lay, stretching his comfortable and corpulent length, on the plush sofa, that stood to one side of the stove. Now and then he withdrew a plump hand from behind his head to stroke his side-whiskers, smooth back his thick, blond mane, or remove from between his teeth for a moment the carved meerschaum pipe he was ruminatively engaged in smoking. He wore a patched jacket and embroidered slippers, that had once been worked for him by his schoolgirl daughter, Pepi. The colours of these had been of a child’s bright choosing, but a homely dinginess had long since claimed them, and now they were merely comfortable. A shaded lamp stood on the round, baize-covered table, where Pepi and her mother sat sewing. Their busy hands, and the rough, coloured table-linen they were hemming, were caught in the circle of bright lamplight. Their faces, as they bent over their work, were thrown into the warm glow made by the coloured shade.
Though her hands continued steadily occupied, now and then Pepi’s mother raised her eyes to look at her daughter. Pepi’s behaviour was somewhat unaccountable these days. The child was so demure, so well-behaved. Was her daughter, Frau Klem wondered, feeling the weight of the responsibility betrothal had brought with it? Joseph and Martha Klem were well aware that they had rather forced this betrothal to Willi Pommer. But they did not take blame to themselves for that. Pepi’s future had to be provided for. And Willi, if he was not the Apollo Belvedere, was at least diligent, honest and, they judged, sufficiently in love, or at all events, good-natured enough to put up with Pepi’s tantrums.
But now, almost alarmingly, there were no tantrums. Almost alarmingly, for it was so unlike Pepi. What had happened to the child? What did all this docility mean? Pepi—their temperamental, sparkling, naughty little Pepi—had, since Christmas, turned herself into an obedient mouse. Frau Klem’s plump face wrinkled with anxiety, and she scratched her greying head with a thimbled finger. No. She knew Pepi too well. She could be a deep little creature when she liked. Now the waters of the girl’s behaviour were running so smooth that her mother could not but think they must be running deep.