by Guy McCrone
“But what happened, Sophia? What was David’s reply?”
“He sent no reply. And then William went to see him.”
“But David’s not like that, Sophia. There must have been—What did he say to William?”
“He made an excuse about his mind being taken up with Grace. It was at the time of the baby’s birth. But he must have come to the office every day. He must have written other letters.”
“But what did he say to William about giving Wil his training?”
“He put on a far-away look and said that times were so difficult that he couldn’t make any promises just now. That perhaps later on—” Sophia put down her cup, pulled a handkerchief from her belt, blew her nose and added: “There won’t be any later on, Bel. If it had been the son of one of David’s grand friends—” To recover her poise she took up her cup once more.
“Do you think Grace knows about this, Sophia?” Bel asked after a pause of bewilderment.
“Oh no. I don’t suppose so. Besides, Grace is not like that.”
“No, Grace is not like that.”
There was a silence for a moment, then Sophia burst out: “Do you know what about my brother David, Bel? He is getting mean and pompous! I would never have believed it! All Grace’s money has been bad for him!”
“I’ve always been very fond of David.”
“I know you have.”
“He was quite like his old self last night, Sophia,” Bel said rather lamely, pouring out fresh tea for both of them.
She sat herself down by the table, reflecting. It was difficult to judge the rights and wrongs of this. It did seem a little thing for David to take his sister’s boy into a great office where there were already so many. Was it true, what Sophia said of David? Was a large fortune taking away the gift of understanding? Blunting him to the hopes and fears of others? Robbing him of the common touch? It was a pity if the rudimental weakness of his character should betray him in this way; should destroy the quick sympathy she, Bel, had always loved in him. Could he really be afraid that his coltish nephew should not seem presentable enough to do him credit? Was snobbery sapping David’s courage?
She felt a self-accusing pang. In this respect she, too, was not without stain. She had to admit it. But now her own snobbery—a snobbery that was constantly breaking down before her womanliness—allowed her to understand David and be sorry for him. No. It would be a great pity if, with his large way of life, he should begin to grow small.
“Perhaps if Arthur spoke to David, Sophia—” she began, coming once more to the surface.
“No, Bel dear. If David can’t do that for his own flesh and blood—”
“But perhaps there was some mistake.”
“I don’t see how there could be. No, dear, please leave it.”
“Or Grace, Sophia?”
“Not for the world, Bel! We are not proud. You know that very well, dear. But there are limits.”
“I’m sorry, Sophia. I do hope it will come right.”
For reply, Sophia held out her cup. “But it is all right. We’ve forgotten already. Don’t bother any more about it. I shouldn’t have told you, Bel dear. And we’re not going to make a family quarrel out of it.” She took her cup back from Bel, thanked her, then asked: “And when did you have a letter from Vienna last?”
III
Bel was glad that Sophia had changed the subject. There was nothing more she herself could say without appearing to take sides. And she had no wish to do this. She was grateful to her that she had not tried to engage her sympathies more deeply. Later, when she had Arthur to himself, she would ask him what he thought.
“We had a letter from Phœbe this morning,” she said, following Sophia’s example and having a third cup of tea. “We were glad to get it. She doesn’t write very regularly. We were beginning to wonder.”
“And how is poor Phœbe getting on?” The adjective “poor” as applied by Sophia to the Phœbe of these days denoted a regret that her sister should have married so rashly and so young, should have attached herself to such an odd, erratic husband, and that she should be forced to live anywhere that was not Glasgow.
“Oh, she’s getting on very well—in a way.” Bel looked about her. “I should have the letter somewhere.”
“Why ‘in a way’, Bel dear? She’s in rooms, isn’t she? I was very pleased to hear it. How could poor Phœbe keep house for herself? And with all these foreigners about! I was glad to hear she was being looked after.”
The thought crossed Bel’s mind that Phœbe’s wit might, with little trouble, quickly bring her skill in housekeeping well above Sophia’s. But she merely went on: “I say ‘in a way’, Sophia, because I’m not too sure about the people she and Henry are staying with.”
“I thought he was a respectable bank clerk.”
“Yes. But there’s a daughter. Phœbe mentions her in this letter. She ran away from home just before Phœbe and Henry went to stay. Her parents had no idea where she had gone. It was a week or two before she was found singing in a theatre in some small Austrian town. I don’t like houses that daughters run away from, Sophia.”
“No, indeed, Bel dear. They must be light-minded sort of people. Have they brought the girl home?”
“No. She wouldn’t come.”
“Better not.”
“Much better not, Sophia.”
“There could have been no question of Phœbe staying on if she had come, Bel.”
“No.”
“Especially running away to a theatre,” Sophia added.
Bel had heard that there were worse places than theatres for daughters to run off to. But, according to Moorhouse ways of thinking, not much. “Well, anyway,” she said, “they’re talking of finding a place for themselves before long, and that would be best. Oh, here is the letter.” She had found it in her work-basket.
Sophia took it and settled down to read. She read slowly, punctuating her reading with mild exclamations of sympathy, surprise and bewilderment. Once she laid it down on her knee, looked across at Bel and exclaimed: “You would wonder from all this what kind of place Vienna is, at all,” then picked it up and went on reading.
The part about seeking a place of their own came at the end of the letter. Sophia re-read it aloud:
“It’s all right here. But Henry’s books and papers take up a great deal of room. And we may want more accommodation for all kinds of reasons later this year.”
Sophia folded the letter, and, looking at Bel, repeated the words: “All kinds of reasons.” She was surprised. For once, her own pedestrian wit had moved more quickly than Bel’s. “So there’s to be a Hayburn baby, is there?”
“What do you say, Sophia?”
“Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it? That’s what Phœbe’s trying to tell you.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Well, I must say you surprise me, Bel dear. Remember, Phœbe’s very young, and it will be the first. I remember I didn’t know how to tell anybody when Wil was coming. And if I had had to write it! Poor Phœbe! So far away! Dear me! It’s that o’clock already? How the time flies!” Sophia got up and began putting on her things without breaking the flow. “Well, it’s been lovely, just what I needed to cheer me up. And you won’t say a word to anybody about our little difficulty with David, will you, Bel dear? You see, William was just saying he couldn’t bear—” Bel accompanied her to the door. If Sophia had remained sensible she would have discussed Phœbe’s letter further with her. But the sluices looked like opening. And there was nothing now to do but bid Sophia and her flood of chatter good afternoon.
IV
She shuddered as she closed the door behind her. The wind cut like a knife. Bel bent down and stirred the hall fire. Its reflection jumped and glittered on polished brass and varnish. But even here it was chilly.
She hurried back to the warmth of the parlour, her mind full of Phœbe’s letter. She took it up and read the end of it once again.
Yes, almost certainly
Sophia was right. Odd, that she had missed the sense of it when she had read it this morning. Now she must write to the child at once to make sure.
Bel crossed to the parlour window and looked out thoughtfully upon her own back garden. The door in the wall by the side of the coach-house leading to the lane had been left off its catch and was blowing back and forth. The grass was powdered with March dust. Bleak, shrivelled leaves eddied against a corner of the garden wall. There were shouts of children playing. They must be McCrimmon the coachman’s, children playing with their kind in the lane. Presently a half-grown kitten ran into the garden, and was immediately followed by the eldest McCrimmon child, who caught it up in her little purple hands, clutched it to her, and carried it out of the back garden, shutting the door behind her. Bel wondered that the child could bear to play so gaily in this cold wind. But, except for her hands, she was warmly, if somewhat miscellaneously clad, and health rounded her cheeks. A different child from the pale little creature Phœbe and Henry had brought from the slums that Saturday afternoon over a year ago.
Phœbe. Bel realised now that she had really been thinking about Phœbe all the time she had been standing here; that she had been apprehending what she saw at the merest surface level.
Phœbe to have a baby without herself being with her? It was unthinkable. Had this been her fear from the beginning? Yet what could she have done with this headstrong couple? And it might be that Sophia was wrong. She must write to Phœbe at once, demanding an immediate answer.
But, if Phœbe said yes? How could she go to her? With this house, a husband and three children? Gazing before her, Bel twisted the blind-cord in her fingers, her eyes gazing out on the walls, roofs, and swaying naked trees, all of them a monotonous grey in the bleak evening light.
But her heart held the glowing picture of the stormy girl who, now that she had gone from her, Bel was coming to miss more and more.
Her mother had told her just the other day that she, Bel, was too possessive; that she tried to manage everybody; that she was too sure of her own judgments. That might be, Bel muttered, tangling the blind-cord and arguing with herself defensively, but Phœbe wasn’t everybody. She was almost her daughter. She was someone very dear. And she was young and foolish. And Bel didn’t even know if she was with respectable people.
The walls and windows began to tremble in Bel’s vision. She dropped the tangled blind-cord, and, coming back to the fireplace, leant her brow on the mantelpiece, gazing into the fire.
No. She must write to Phœbe tonight, and if things were as she suspected, Phœbe must come home. She was having no nonsense. Henry would have to bring her. Or, if that was impossible, she could join with some other woman who might be travelling. Phœbe had written that she and Henry had taken to going of a Sunday to a Presbyterian service conducted by a missionary of the Free Church of Scotland. Bel had regretted that it was the Free Church and not the Established Church of Scotland. Moorhouses were all Established Church people. Still, on the whole she had been glad. Surely Phœbe could find a respectable companion among the congregation.
Bel was a planner, and this burst of planning soothed her. Now she felt she was getting things into some kind of order in her mind. Her sense of tidiness reasserted itself. She rang for tea to be removed, went to the window, disentangled the cord, pulled down the blind, then drew the heavy curtains. The afternoon was almost gone. Arthur would presently be home, and, anyhow, she had had enough of the cold, comfortless light of the long March day.
Now the darkened room glowed in the firelight. That was better. She took a taper from the mantelpiece, held it to the fire, lit a wall-bracket beside her chair and sat down once again to her mending.
Tonight, when things were quiet, she would write to Phœbe.
Chapter Eleven
MRS. ROBERT DERMOTT was so enchanted to find herself a grandmother that her friends were beginning to think her a menace. Even at the committee table, where it was her habit to assume a manner that was forthright, purposeful and stern, she had, more than once, softened, changed colour and, catching at the straws of her importance, referred to the fact that it had been somewhat difficult for her to see to everything just recently on account of family ties. After that she would look around her with an expression which proclaimed that of course she couldn’t go into that sort of thing here, thrust her spectacles back on her nose, and sharply demand of the secretary what was the next item on the agenda.
Outside of her committee work, Mrs. Dermott’s obsession was completed. If she were not at Aucheneame instructing the monthly nurse in her duties, and explaining to her just how she herself had felt when Grace was born; then she was visiting friends, and even mere acquaintances, in order to keep them posted in the progress of the new Robert David Dermott-Moorhouse. With a flash of his old humour, David had taken to teasing his mother-in-law about the baby. He was forever pretending to receive letters from his brother Mungo reporting the progress of the Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse baby, and how surprisingly his mind and body were developing. But Mrs. Dermott would have none of it. She affected to meet David’s teasing with the coldest of disinterest, and returned his rally by telling him that, if his nephews were going to matter more to him than a son of his own, then it was a pity Providence had bothered to send him one.
All these pleasantries pleased Grace. Everything about the advent of this child was a matter for gratification. And not least that her mother had taken a new lease of life, and was beginning to find some compensation for the loss of her father.
But if there was endless patience for the new Robert Moorhouse at Aucheneame and at the smart little house in Hamilton Drive, where his grandmother now had her home, patience was not quite so endless in other quarters.
Bel had had rather a lot of Mrs. Dermott. Being in the process of successfully rearing three children of her own, she was not without the necessary small talk on the subject of babies. But she had long since learnt to take her family, its ailments and its nourishment, in her stride, and the infatuated grandmother, however important Bel might consider her to be, was in danger of becoming a bore.
When, therefore, on the day following Sophia’s visit, Mrs. Robert Dermott’s card was brought to Bel, together with the information that Mrs. Dermott’s carriage was standing at her front door, and would Mrs. Arthur Moorhouse drive into town with her, Bel, catching still the overtones of command in Mrs. Dermott’s invitation, could not but feel a sense of persecution.
But she had planned to visit her mother this afternoon to discuss the problem of Phœbe. And as her own carriage was at the coach-builders having Arthur’s monogram painted discreetly in yellow on its shining doors—there had been a battle with Arthur’s modesty about this—Bel decided to take the line of least resistance and accept Mrs. Dermott’s offer.
It was as cold as it had been on the previous afternoon. Mrs. Dermott’s hackneys stamped the ground impatiently as Bel mounted the carriage-stone and entered the carriage.
“Oh, there you are, Bel, my dear. I am so glad you were able to come with me. Bitter weather for late March, isn’t it? Now, take this spare rug all to yourself, Mrs. Moorhouse. You mustn’t get chilled.” Since Grace’s marriage, her mother had announced that she was going to call all Grace’s brothers and sisters-in-law by their Christian names—a gesture which, on the whole, pleased everybody. But Mrs. Dermott’s memory was like a defective fly-paper. Sometimes things stuck; and sometimes they didn’t.
By this time Bel was well used to being pulled forward into a first-name intimacy, only to be thrust back later to the level of plain Mrs. Moorhouse. She thanked Mrs. Dermott, and wound the rug about her as the horses swung round into Great Western Road.
“I’m just going down to Albany Place to visit Mary,” Mrs. Dermott said, triumphantly remembering Mrs. George McNairn’s name. “She sent me a very nice letter the other day, with a little subscription I had asked her for, and also hoping the baby was thriving. I acknowledged it at once, of course; but I suddenly felt I ought to
drop down and pay her a little visit, and tell her just how the baby was. I really must say, Bel, everybody has been most kind and interested about Grace and David’s child.”
Bel dug her hands into her muff, smiled a misty, elegant smile, and said: “Such a dear little baby!”
“Yes, indeed, my dear. Now, Mrs. Moorhouse, when your children were as young as that, did you—?”
Bel was engulfed until the horses were standing before Mary’s house in Albany Terrace.
“You know, I’m a terrible old woman! I’ve never even asked you where you were going!” Mrs. Dermott said, preparing to descend herself. “But of course you’ll come in to see Mrs. McNairn, too, before I take you anywhere else?”
But Bel stood firm. She had no wish to see Mary’s embarrassment at Mrs. Dermott’s sudden descent. And, in addition, she felt she had paid for her drive handsomely in pandering to Mrs. Dermott’s pride and interest in her grandson. The least Grace’s mother could now do was to send her to her destination. She hastened to tell her, therefore, that her mother expected her at Monteith Row at the earliest possible moment this afternoon—a lie which was not, perhaps, white enough to leave Bel’s conscience quite in peace—and that she could easily get out here and pick up a hansom.
Mrs. Dermott gave her coachman instructions to take Mrs. Moorhouse to Monteith Row and call back here for herself at a stated time later.
II
There are many reasons for gossiping. And not all of them are bad. Sophia was sitting comfortably with her sister Mary this afternoon gossiping over David’s unhelpfulness with young Wil, all unconscious that David’s formidable mother-in-law was about to descend upon them. Sophia was not ill-natured. She was gossiping to distract her sister Mary’s anxiety, quite as much as to relieve her own feelings.