by Guy McCrone
Henry watched her, puzzled. Here was a Pepi he had not expected. She was gaily dressed, confident and full of high spirits. There had been tears, tragic predictions and endless talk in the Quellengasse at the time of her going. Phœbe and he, when they had mentioned her to each other, had spoken of her as a brand gone to the burning. Now here she was, delighted with herself. His artlessness could not believe that she was in any way changed. She seemed the same friendly little Pepi she had always been. He was glad. Last autumn she had been a very good friend to him.
“I’ve been in Lemberg, in Galicia,” she said at length, looking up from her game with the toothpicks. “The Mama has probably told you. It wasn’t much of a place, but I got an offer of work in the theatre there. I had to start somewhere.”
And, as Henry had no comment to make, she added, with a glint of mischief: “Besides, it might have been worse. It’s the Headquarters of an Army Corps. The officers helped to amuse us.” Her eyes dropped to the table once more, and she continued with her squares and triangles.
“And what exactly were you doing?” he asked for the sake of saving something.
“Singing in the chorus. Doing anything. Studying.”
What would he have expected, had he been told he was going to meet her? A weeping magdalen? A broken creature who could not raise her eyes to those of an honest man? But now her eyes as she raised them regarded him humorously and calmly—the eyes of a young woman who is no longer afraid; who has taken the measure of emotion and knows where it leads.
But she wasn’t establishing the old friendship with him. She must try again.
“Were the poor Papa and Mama very anxious when I went away, Herr Hayburn?” she asked, with exaggerated sympathy.
“Yes, they were. They thought you were murdered or something.”
She laughed. “Well, it didn’t last long. I wrote whenever I could. I had always wanted to make a career on the stage. But they would never hear of it. Now they realise that I’m in earnest.”
“Then you’ll come to see them?”
“Of course! I only got back to Vienna yesterday. I’m staying with my cousin for a few days. I’ve got a summer job in the Prater. It’s only the chorus again, but I want to be in Vienna to have singing lessons. You see, I want to study and turn into a real artist.” She looked at Henry, sighed and added: “The poor Mama! If I don’t manage to see her today, please give her all my love and say I’ll come tomorrow.” She stood up, tied the green ribbons of her bonnet, pulled on her gloves and held out her hand. “Well, then, dear Herr Hayburn. Until very soon.”
Henry had risen, too. He stood now at the door of the little eating-house, watching her as she took her way across the paving-stones of the shadowy passage towards the arch of white sunshine at the open street. Now he could see her standing framed in the light for an instant, as though she were halted by the sudden brightness. Now she had flicked open her frivolous green parasol, gathered her skirts in one hand and tripped off up the Herrengasse out of sight.
Henry turned back, paid his bill and looked at his watch. Already he was a little later than he liked to be. It was bad for discipline to give the impression that he had allowed himself a leisurely lunch.
He made his way towards the Neubau, walking fast and taking as many short cuts as possible.
So that was Pepi? He had not disliked seeing her again. She had always been a friendly little thing, and had helped him through those first lonely months when he had not had Phœbe. He would be glad to tell her mother she was in Vienna once more, if she herself had not already appeared and done so. And he could assure Frau Klem, too, that she looked very well and seemed rather the better than the worse for her adventure.
Chapter Thirteen
TO Phœbe it seemed as though in the last day or two a curtain had been lifted—as though the strange, dull veil of commonplace that had, somehow, so quickly fallen between herself and Henry—between herself and the first, shining happiness of her marriage—had suddenly been torn asunder and they were back once more in the radiance of their first days in Vienna.
How had it come about? From the sudden burst of warmth and sunshine that had taken possession of the city as though the weather knew what was expected of it in Easter Week? From the extravagance of joy that now was reigning in the Quellengasse? From the fact that the simple father and mother Klem, having had a visit from Pepi, and having received her assurances that she was really studying and would one day be a great prima donna, had—rather inconsequently, the Hayburns thought—turned right about and, instead of making a tragedy of Pepi, had decided to make an idol of their prodigal daughter?
Or was it merely that Phœbe felt, during these bright days, that there was now no need to be jealous of her husband’s work? For a change had taken place in Henry. He had become boyishly tender towards her; gauchely apologetic. The mask of self-importance that Vienna had given him fell from him now when he was with her. Once again they had come very near.
Phœbe found herself wondering how this had come about. Even when, some days ago, she had told him she hoped to be the mother of his child, Henry had not perhaps responded with the tenderness she had expected. Now in his own way he sought to serve her lightest wish, as though he were seeking to right some wrong he had done her. To Phœbe it was incomprehensible. But it was pleasant, and she was uplifted and happy.
And this Eastertide in Vienna enchanted her. It was as though this ancient capital of the Holy Roman Empire had set aside her frivolity, and let herself be washed clean for the festival of Death and Resurrection. Her church spires stood up, hard and pure against the pale Easter sky. Behind them the outline of the mountains. And in the streets everywhere, the Viennese in their holiday clothes. Some mere promenaders; others going to church. Fashionable men and women. Comfortable burghers with their wives. Harassed mothers with worn prayer-books. Children with gleaming, holiday faces. Officers and soldiers wearing their white linen tunics for the first time this year. A cheerful crowd of high and humble. Shop-windows full of coloured Easter eggs, Easter presents, Easter food.
Sometimes by herself, sometimes in the company of Henry, Phœbe visited the churches. She had, in these months abroad, lost her Puritan and provincial hesitation—almost fear—of entering a popish building. And, though it never crossed her mind to question the rightness of her own faith, she found herself taking pleasure in these foreign churches; even in their ritual. She had come to love the smell of incense, the guttering candles, the sacristans with their keys, the dim, praying women, the solemn bursts of music. Even the beggars at the church doors holding back the leather curtains and begging alms. To her it did not mean religion; it meant romance.
And now for Easter, that the simpler people might better remember the story of the Agony, each church had set aside a chapel, and there had arranged, in effigy, the Holy Tomb. In the great churches, in the Votive Church, the Hofkapelle, the Church of Saint Stephen, the arrangement was elaborate and rich. In lesser churches it was simple. But each, according to its resources, had its Tomb, its plaster Roman soldiers and angels watching over the effigy of the weary, bloodstained Redeemer who now, His agony over, lay at rest.
It seemed strange to these young Presbyterians that sometimes people could be seen turning away from these stiff images, the tears shining in their eyes. These Holy Tombs appeared to the Hayburns unreal, foreign and strange.
Henry had told Phœbe of his plans for finding a little house somewhere on the edge of the Vienna Woods. He had mentioned it as though the idea were quite his own. He did not tell her of the scolding he had received from Maximilian Hirsch, and his consequent feelings of penitence. And with this planning for her, Henry was pleased with his own new-found sense of responsibility, his protective masculinity. The Klems might be sorry to lose them, he argued; but, after all, Pepi had reappeared in Vienna, had made her peace.
Further, he suggested that Phœbe should call once more upon the ladies Hirsch, tell them of her condition, and beg their very kind a
dvice. At this Phœbe was really astonished. She had taken Henry to call on the ladies some weeks ago, and when, after a very formal cup of coffee, they had found themselves once again in the street, he had told her bluntly that she must not expect him to visit these “old tabbies” any more.
Phœbe was almost as little a reader of hearts as was her husband. But now even she began to suspect that someone had intervened to change his mind.
II
It was into this pool of re-established happiness that Bel’s letter, bidding Phœbe come home to Scotland, dropped like a stone. But they did not allow it to do more than ruffle the surface. There was nothing now quite real to the young couple except each other.
She held out the letter to him one evening as he arrived home.
“Here’s a letter from Bel.”
“Any news?”
“Nothing much. Except that she wants me to go home if there’s to be a baby.”
“Why?”
She was surprised at the rush of colour to Henry’s face; at the quick, angry question. It was as though she had touched the trigger of a gun.
“It’s all right, dear! I’m not going! Do you want to read the letter?”
“No.”
She folded it up, and that, for the time, was the end of the matter. She would write later and tell Bel how they both felt about it. It was natural enough, perhaps, that Henry should not see things through Bel’s eyes; that he should want to keep his wife by him. She would say no more about it.
And now, in and around Vienna, the tide of spring was rising—fresh, sprouting days that had little to do with the spring-time of her comic operettas. The thrushes were singing in the Volksgarten and Votivpark. In all green places, flowering shrubs were budding. Presently there would be laburnum—golden rain, as the citizens call it—and lilac in profusion. When the fitful sunshine appeared for long enough to make its presence felt, there was the scent of lime and elder. In the Haupt Allee—the great main drive of the Prater—with its double row of giant chestnut-trees stretching, as it seemed to Phœbe, to infinity, the pale green leaves had begun to fan themselves out above the now-emerging fashionable world, whose ritual it was to drive in their elegance beneath them. In the People’s Prater the booths and merry-go-rounds had received their yearly coat of paint. The voices of showmen—good-natured, crude and coarse—could be heard insisting that all and sundry should walk up and try their luck or find amusement.
Times had been bad this winter here in Vienna, as in most other towns in Europe. But what was that to a young Viennese, who could find Kreutzers enough to take a girl to have fun in the Volks Prater?
On more than one fine April Sunday, the young couple, having done their duty by attending the Scotch service in the morning, had gaily agreed that in Rome one must live as the Romans, and had spent the remainder of their day in the Prater. If their behaviour towards each other was a little ashamed, a little conscience-stricken, a little indulgent towards the reckless, laughing inhabitants of this carefree city that had not seen the Presbyterian light, it did, perhaps, no harm to anyone, and may even have given spice to their own enjoyment.
On one of these occasions they encountered Pepi Klem. She was in the company of a spirited young man, whom she was pleased to introduce to the Hayburns as her cousin. He seemed a gay, affectionate sort of cousin, and, on Henry’s suggestion that they should drink a cup of coffee together, readily assented. Before the Hayburns had done with them, they had made the round of the People’s Prater. They saw the traditional Viennese Punch-and-Judy show, made up of two clowns and a rabbit. They had visited fat women and strong men. They saw “the lady without a body”—a young and cheerful head and shoulders on a stand; like an animated barber’s dummy. They saw the ladies of an Eastern harem. Henry had swung Pepi so high in a red, plush-lined swing-boat that she had screamed to Phœbe and her “cousin” to stop him. On a merry-go-round they had rotated to the Miserere music from “Trovatore”, Pepi riding side-saddle on a spirited wooden horse painted and harnessed to look like one of the Emperor’s Lippizaner horses from the Spanish Riding-School; Henry was seated on a pig; the “cousin” occupied a large and comfortably upholstered giant model of a teacup; while Phœbe rotated demurely in a comfortable seat set between the wings of a giant swan.
It pleased Phœbe to see Henry in this mad mood. This crazy, dare-devil Henry. It was a Henry she had never seen before, a Henry she had not even suspected. Pepi Klem and he behaved like children. The switchback railway. The spiral slide. The house of mystery. Where she judged it was prudent for herself, she took part; where not, she stood by and laughed. It was as though her husband had opened a safety-valve of high spirits. Phœbe welcomed it. The weight of the winter seemed to be lifted from him. She was grateful to this madcap girl for breaking down his seriousness; for releasing the boy that was still in him. If they were all a little above themselves; even a little hysterical; then that, indeed, didn’t matter.
That night they lay in the darkness side by side, still too excited to sleep. After a time Phœbe spoke:
“Henry.”
“What, dear?”
“Today was Sunday. Isn’t it awful to think!”
“Think what, dear?”
“How we’ve both been behaving.”
“Awful, wasn’t it!”
But she could feel the bed shaking as he laughed silently to himself.
III
The Hirsch ladies’ reception of her was a little stiff, Phœbe felt, when next she went to call in the Wieden. The younger Hirsch sister had been so ready to open her formal heart to this foreign girl her nephew had begged her to befriend, that Phœbe’s casual treatment of her, Phœbe’s disregard of her advice over such matters as lodging and a language teacher, had looked like a rebuff.
And young Frau Hayburn’s husband had made none too favourable an impression either. His awkwardness of person, his pronouncements on matters Viennese about which he could not possibly know, his British off-handedness—all these things together did not recommend him. And his table manners were deplorable. He did not seem to have the faintest idea how to manage his coffee-cup, the little cakes or the thimble-glass of cognac, which were provided for his entertainment. Max said he was clever, and this Max’s aunts were quite ready to believe. Herr Hayburn’s knowledge of German, if it were gained in the short months he had been in Vienna, was quite astounding, mixed though it might be, here and there, with the language of his workmen. Even his grasp of Austrian politics, if unconventional, was remarkable. But he was an odd, angular sort of young man to have paying a visit, and the ladies had been glad when his wife had taken him away again.
But now Phœbe’s condition and her need of their help held an appeal that was irresistible. Of course dear Frau Hayburn must come to them whenever she felt like it! Yes, a little house on the edge of the Vienna Woods was just the place for her to spend the summer waiting for her baby! That was to say, if her dear husband really insisted that he was unable to leave Vienna for a proper holiday, because of all this new and very important work he was organising.
Besides, they themselves would only be out of town for four weeks. They had quiet rooms in Gastein where they went each year, so that Helene might take the cure. For the rest of the summer they lived very well and much more quietly staying at home, taking the air in the Prater, or even, if they felt adventurous, driving out into the surrounding country. If fashionable Vienna was pleased to disport itself in the Salzkammergut, on Tyrolese mountains, or by the Adriatic, that was fashionable Vienna’s affair. And so, for the greater part of the summer, these well-intentioned and rather sentimental ladies would be at dear Frau Hayburn’s disposal.
Left alone with Fräulein Stephanie, Phœbe spoke of doctors. She told her of Bel’s letter insisting she had much better go home.
Her friend called the proposal ridiculous. Why, she demanded, should dear Frau Hayburn leave the city where the most famous specialists in Europe were to be found. Did not the whole world of medicine c
ome here to learn? Where could Frau Hayburn better be looked after? Had she never heard of the great medical school and hospital founded long ago in the time of Maria-Theresa by the great Queen herself? And was there not at this moment an excellent maternity hospital in the Alsergrund?
Phœbe did not know that she had done the one thing that no Viennese would allow. She had implied a criticism of Vienna. She had an idea that doctors in Glasgow were not quite ignorant, that the city in the Clyde had contributed more than its share to the store of medical knowledge; but never having had much interest in these things, she was unable to find names and facts to set against those of Stephanie.
And yet she was glad her friend was so insistent; glad that everything she said supported Henry. For Bel’s influence with Phœbe was strong. Stronger, indeed, than Phœbe knew.
Though a week or more had passed, she had not yet brought herself to answer Bel’s letter. It was nothing to run counter to Bel’s advice in unimportant things. But in this, a great happening in her life, all Phœbe’s instinct turned towards Bel’s judgment.
She was happy in Vienna. The tenderness that had somehow been re-born between herself and Henry was everything to her. She loved her husband, and had no wish to leave him. Yet, she had kept Bel’s letter, wondering.
Now her decision was taken. Tonight she would write to say she was staying where she was. That she had good friends. That everything was available for her well-being. That Henry could not possibly do without her.
Presently she realised that her friend was sitting watching her, her white hands slowly smoothing out the folds of her stiff black silk.
“Na? Frau Hayburn? You have come back?” Stephanie Hirsch was smiling with quizzical affection.
“Back?”
“You were not here. You were lost? No?”
For reply Phœbe stood up, smiling herself in turn, embarrassment adding colour to her face. She held out her hand.