by Guy McCrone
For this afternoon Mary’s spirits were low. Her husband was ill with an illness that was becoming more and more evident. It was beginning to show itself in the diminishing plumpness of his naturally heavy body, in his sallow skin, in the lack of spring in his gait. In his forty-fifth year, George McNairn was quickly turning into an old man. And the worst of it was, as Mary had just told her sister, George would admit none of it; would not even discuss it with her. But his placidity had given place to a very uneven temper, and he had taken to working at his business like a fanatic, spending his diminishing energies in a way that distressed his wife acutely.
Having heard Mary’s recital of her troubles, therefore, Sophia’s good-nature, rather than her reason, had prompted her to apply David and his iniquities as a counter-irritant. She was thus in full flood when David’s mother-in-law broke in upon her.
If it had been anyone other than Mrs. Dermott, she must have wondered why Sophia’s face was bright scarlet, why it wore an unmistakable expression of guilt. But Grace’s mother, large in body and mind, had little proficiency in subtle deduction—prided herself, indeed, in the lack of it.
She advanced into Mary’s stuffy drawing-room beaming with pleasure. “My dear Mrs. McNairn, how cosy it is in here! And Sophia! How nice to see you! I’ve just taken the liberty of coming in for a moment to thank you for your very kind letter about the baby, Mary, and to tell you how he was getting on. And how is your family, Mrs. Butter? I seem to hear of nobody but ourselves these days.”
The two sisters did not see so much of Mrs. Dermott as Bel did, but even they were becoming accustomed to her confusing modes of address. They stood up, received Mrs. Dermott with the best grace their embarrassment would allow them, and Mary, leading her to the fire, insisted that she should take tea and making the excuse of giving orders, hurried from the room, leaving her over-powering visitor with Sophia.
To be left alone with Mrs. Dermott was like being left alone with a friendly battleship. She sat leaning forward warming a large, red, diamond-ringed hand at the fire, and launching benevolent broadsides at Sophia.
“I’m so pleased to find you here, too, my dear. How is your nice husband?”
“William’s very well, thank you, Mrs. Dermott. I wish I could say the same for Mary’s husband. She’s just been telling me that poor George—”
“I brought your sister-in-law, Bel Moorhouse, down into town with me in the carriage. Such a dear woman! So kind and straight-forward!”
“We all like Bel, Mrs. Dermott.” Then, feeling she must, however guilty her feelings, Sophia added: “And how are Grace and her wonderful baby?”
Mrs. Dermott went solemn at this, a little. “Oh, I don’t know that he should be called a wonderful baby, Sophia,” she said, almost stiffly. “Indeed, only the other day I was giving Grace and David a lecture: telling them they must keep some kind of proportion; that the baby might be everything to them, but they must really remember not to bore other people about him.” And, still further to Sophia’s amazement, she added: “But why did you say poor George? Is Mary’s husband ill?” The reference to George McNairn had, after all, become stuck to the fly-paper of Mrs. Dermott’s mind.
Sophia had just time to tell her of Mary’s apprehensions before her sister’s step was heard outside the door. For a moment Mrs. Dermott’s eyes filled, and her large face took on a soft uncertainty that gave her, of a sudden, a strong likeness to her daughter Grace. “Poor Mrs. McNairn,” she said. “I know what that is. It’s just over a year—” and then, as she saw Mary, she added with a heartiness that could deceive nobody: “There you are, Mary! Taking all sorts of trouble about me.”
And thereafter her behaviour was odd. Her sympathy seemed to keep wheeling round Mary in strange, wide circles. As was to be expected, she spoke much of her grandchild as she drank tea. But every now and then her mind swooped down to ask Mary questions. How did her boys do? How were the little twin girls? Were they at home, and might she see them? When they came, she kissed them majestically, bestowed half-crowns, gave each a pat of dismissal and a far-off smile as they scampered off giggling, then she turned as though they had never existed to go on with what she had been saying. Of George McNairn, it seemed, she could say nothing whatever to his wife.
III
Suddenly the door was thrown open and Mary’s schoolboy sons came in, bringing with them their cousin, Wil Butter. And as suddenly the noise of their entrance was muted at the sight of their Aunt Grace’s formidable mother. At the unexpected appearance of Wil a feeling of guilt returned to Sophia. She well understood her own son’s heightened colour. She stood up to say she must go, and demanded of Wil if he were coming with her.
Wil’s cousins claimed him. They had brought him to show him a model steam-engine they were attempting to build, and they begged their aunt to allow him to stay and share their schoolroom tea.
“I’ll take you home, Sophia. I want to talk to you. See if my carriage is there, will you?” Mrs. Dermott said, turning to Sophia’s son and smiling to herself at his Moorhouse good looks that so much reminded her of David—looks that even grubby adolescence could not quite extinguish.
“I’m distressed to hear about Baillie McNairn’s illness,” she said to Sophia, as they settled back in the carriage some minutes later. “I felt I couldn’t say much to his wife, but if there’s anything I can do, you’ll tell me, won’t you, Mrs. Butter?”
Sophia, a little overcome at finding herself alone with Mrs. Dermott, and touched, perhaps, at what she had just said, told her, with rather less periphrasis than usual, that she would certainly let her know, and that she was being very kind indeed.
With a “Don’t talk nonsense, Mrs. Butter,” said with what sounded so like rudeness that Sophia blushed once more, wondering what now she had said to offend, Mrs. Dermott turned her head away, and seemed for a moment to have found some object in the street at which to gaze intently.
Sophia waited. For a time there was nothing but the movement of the carriage and the trotting of the horses.
Suddenly Mrs. Dermott turned. “That’s a handsome boy of yours, Sophia. What are you going to do with him?”
Sophia found herself forced to collect her wits before she answered. Obviously David’s mother-in-law knew nothing of David’s refusal. “Well, Mrs. Dermott, you see, William has been trying to place him in a nice office. Oh, just for training. After that, of course, he’ll—”
“Then why on earth doesn’t he go into Dermott Ships? Surely that’s good enough for him?” The tone of her voice sounded in Sophia’s ears almost like insolence.
“Well, we thought of that, but—”
“I’ll speak to David.”
“Oh no! Please!”
Mrs. Dermott turned her bulk round and looked at Sophia’s confusion. “My dear Sophia! Why ever not?”
“Please, Mrs. Dermott! I don’t think William would like it.”
“But why? My husband’s office is the best in Glasgow!”
“Oh yes, we know that. But—”
“Well, then, Mrs. Butter! Isn’t your own brother, now that he—? My dear girl! What’s upsetting you?”
Sophia, beaten, had extracted her handkerchief from her shabby muff and was wiping her eyes. Her companion sat looking down at her, as much at a loss as she was. Again there was a pause. The carriage swayed and rattled.
“I wish you would tell me, Sophia,” Mrs. Dermott said at last. Now her voice was not so peremptory.
“William did ask David. But there wasn’t any room.”
“Room? Room for his own nephew!”
Sophia did not answer. How could she accuse David to his wife’s mother. How could she explain her own humble, good-natured estimate of herself and hers, to this commanding, wealthy woman?
“David must have misunderstood.”
Sophia merely shook her head and blew her nose.
The horses had come to a standstill before Sophia’s house in Rosebery Terrace. The footman had jumped down to open th
e door for her. His mistress motioned him to re-close it.
She sat contemplating David’s sister. She was used to managing people, and here was a situation to be managed high-handedly. It was very well for David to be carrying on a quarrel with Sophia, or Sophia with David, or however it was. But all that must be nothing to her. She was forever dealing with contention on her committees. She had better deal with this family one, or young Wil Butter would lose the chance of the best business training in Glasgow. In the eyes of Robert Dermott’s widow, there could be nowhere like Robert Dermott’s office.
She laid a hand on Sophia’s arm. “I’ll speak to David, and get it all arranged for you at once.”
“Oh no! David doesn’t want him!”
“Doesn’t want him, Mrs. Butter? I don’t think it’s very nice of you to say anything so unkind about your own brother. Of course David must want a splendid boy like that! Who wouldn’t? I’m proud to have him as a relative. Why shouldn’t David be? I never heard such nonsense!”
Sophia’s wits were confused with this alternative slapping and patting. But her modest pride held. “We couldn’t have David think for a minute that we had come to you.”
“And why not? I belong to your family, don’t I?”
“But William and I are not asking favours!”
“Asking fiddlesticks! It seems to me the favour is to David. And even if it were a favour, surely I, at least, may ask a favour in the business I watched my own husband build up?” She paused for a moment, then she added: “I don’t think David will want to refuse me.”
Sophia brightened enough to smile. “It’s very kind, Mrs. Dermott,” she said. “But I don’t like the idea of my boy going into Dermott Ships, then feeling uncomfortable because he’s forced his way there.”
“Really, Mrs. Butter, you talk as if your brother David was a monster! You know very well that if I ask him he won’t have the—well, anyway, my dear, the horses are getting cold. I’ll have this all seen to, and let you know.”
In another moment Sophia found herself standing on the windy pavement waving her muff at the retreating carriage and wondering if the word Mrs. Dermott had omitted to say was “courage”.
IV
For a terrible moment old Mrs. Barrowfield, looking down by chance from a window in Monteith Row, thought that Mrs. Robert Dermott had come to call. She knew her carriage, for she had seen it more than once at Bel’s. But, strong-minded herself, she had no wish for closer acquaintance with Mrs. Dermott’s forcefulness. Bel’s mother thought she was doing quite enough if, when she met her by chance in Bel’s drawing-room, she managed to be civil. Once, indeed, calling spades spades, she had bluntly said to her daughter: “Now, Bel, see that ye don’t bring that upsettin’ old body here!”
Bel had promised; smiling to herself a little, that her mother had called Mrs. Dermott old, despite the fact that she, herself, was eight years older.
Behind the lace curtains of her sitting-room window, however, Mrs. Barrowfield’s perturbation faded as she saw that her daughter’s fashionable bonnet was the only one to emerge from the carriage. Indignation, alarm and thoughts of a hasty change into her best shawl subsided pleasantly, and now she was standing, a poker in her hand, stirring flames of welcome from the fire.
Seated opposite her mother now, Bel answered questions. She gave the reasons for coming as she had; how little Isabel’s cold was keeping, and how everybody else at Grosvenor Terrace fared. These preliminaries having been got through, Mrs. Barrowfield rang for the tea-tray and astonished her daughter by saying:
“So Phœbe’s expecting?”
“Now, Mother, how on earth did you know that?” Bel jumped up, and leant against the mantelpiece.
Mrs. Barrowfield was delighted with the effect she had made. It gave her a feeling of still being in things; of not being laid aside. She smiled triumphantly. “How do you think? I had a letter.”
“From Phœbe?” There was a ring of jealousy in Bel’s voice.
“No. Henry.”
“From Henry!”
“You forget that Henry’s a friend o’ mine.”
“Has he been writing to you regularly, Mother?”
“Well, I wouldna say regularly.”
“And you never told me.”
For reply, Mrs. Barrowfield gave a chuckle that her daughter considered both offensive and sly. “Am I not to get keepin’ anything to myself?”
Bel’s colour rose a little. “No, really, Mother! A thing like that!”
“But I just got it yesterday,” the old lady said, by way of laying a resentment she had naughtily striven to arouse.
“I had one from Phœbe. I’ve got it here,” Bel said, feeling there was much too much of importance to talk about to indulge in childish annoyance with her mother. They compared letters. Henry’s was the more explicit.
Phœbe’s child was expected in October. Presently they laid down the letters they had exchanged and looked at each other.
“She’s young,” was Mrs. Barrowfield’s comment.
“She’s far too far away!”
Old Maggie, who had come in with the tea-tray, wondered who was far too far away, and why Miss Bel had spoken the words in tones of vexed exasperation, standing, flushed, before the fireplace, her bonnet thrown carelessly down, a strand of her smooth, fair hair straggling out of place.
“Listen, Mother. Phœbe must come home.”
Mrs. Barrowfield said nothing. She rose heavily to her feet and began pouring out tea, forgetting in her abstraction that her daughter might very well have done this for her. She liked Phœbe Moorhouse; always had liked her—ever since, indeed, she had seen her, a little girl of ten, help to push her own luggage up the hill to Ure Pace. But Phœbe could look after herself.
In a drawer in her bedroom she had a little pile of letters written in Henry Hayburn’s strangely adolescent hand. Letters written before his marriage. Letters of homesickness, of self-distrust, of crushing loneliness; or again, of self-praise, of over-confidence, of boyish boasting—according to his mood. She had held her tongue about them. Why should she expose these raw confessions of his heart? Better than anyone, she felt she had understood his arrogance at Christmas. It was an armour his half-developed poise had forced upon him before the family.
Little did Bel and Arthur know that it was she who had urged him to come home and marry Phœbe. She had guessed from his letters that his loneliness in Vienna was stretching him to breaking-point. And she had felt responsible. She had told him to go. His marriage was, as she saw it, the remedy. And the happy and few letters he had written since had told her she was right.
She sat gazing into the fire, her tea untasted. Why had she, an old woman, become so attached to this young man? It was strange and unusual, but it was so. Was it because he needed her?
And now here was Bel, her own daughter, but yet in very essence a Moorhouse, proposing to take his wife once more from him. She raised her eyes to meet Bel’s.
“Well, Mother?”
“Phœbe had better stay with her man.”
“What? And have her baby in Vienna?”
“Well? What for not?”
“Oh, how can she, Mother? The girl’s not quite twenty!”
“And what about Henry?”
“Henry will want his wife to have the best of attention.”
Mrs. Barrowfield looked again at her daughter glumly. This was Bel back at her high falutin. Carried away by her own fine phrases. Taking upon herself the right to arrange for everybody. Never for once doubting the soundness of her own judgment.
“And what do the other women in Vienna do?” she asked. “I havena heard that they all come to Glasgow.”
“Oh, Mother! What am I to say to you? I thought you would be reasonable about this! I came down for your advice.”
“Well, you’re gettin’ it! Leave man and wife alone. Don’t interfere. They’re young, but it’s their business. Not yours. Don’t try to be a Providence for everybody, Bel!”
“But don’t you understand that Phœbe will be quite alone?”
“Dear me, Bel, she’ll have her man!”
“A lot of use he’ll be, Mother.”
“Well, it was your father I wanted when you were coming.”
“But you were at home, Mother! And father was a doctor!” Bel was almost shouting now. And there were tears. “And don’t you understand, her life may be in danger?”
“I was forty-one when you were born. So was my life in danger. And yer father was ower old-fashioned to let them use chloroform!”
Oh, it was no use talking to a woman of seventy-five about these things. Bel smoothed her hair, wiped her eyes and sat down to drink her tea. For the remainder of her visit her demeanour towards her mother was sweet, tactful and controlled, as though she were talking to a child of twelve.
And presently, when she rose to say goodbye, the old lady found great difficulty in withstanding the temptation to box her daughter’s ears.
Chapter Twelve
A FINE, unusually warm morning in Holy Week. Henry Hayburn sat in one of the great coffee-houses on the Ring. On account of the unexpectedly warm weather, the large plate-glass window near which he found himself was thrown open. From where he was, Henry could have put out his hand and touched the shoulders of those who passed him down there on the pavement.
It was not yet April. Easter was early. But today there was bright sunshine. Already there were one or two straw hats and parasols in the street.
Mrs. Barrowfield had been right. Henry’s marriage had given him the background his work demanded. Now that he had a wife to accompany his scanty leisure, to listen to him, to fulfil his manhood, Henry’s mind was free.
His work fascinated and engrossed him. The adventure of setting up a factory in a strange land, employing foreign workers and meeting new technical difficulties, filled him with a keen sense of romance. An odd kind of romance, perhaps, and one little known in this, the romantic city. But romance nevertheless.