by Guy McCrone
But Phœbe? Supposing there was to be no Phœbe either?
He didn’t know. He wasn’t the kind of man who could manage himself, who could command his stunned feelings.
Now there might be no Phœbe.
His landlady came from the house. She had a glass of cognac in her hand. She sat down at the table beside him.
“Take that, Herr Hayburn.”
He took it from her and swallowed it obediently.
The good woman was encouraged. “It’s getting cold, Herr Hayburn; come inside.” She led Henry into her kitchen. “I’ll make you some coffee. You’ve eaten nothing.” He came with her, obediently, like a boy.
Now he was sitting warming himself by the stove and drinking the coffee she had given him.
“Na? Herr Hayburn? Better?”
He nodded. She was a motherly woman, this, with the kindliness of peasant Austria.
He began talking, his year-old German stumbling here and there. His wife had caught a severe chill, bringing on high fever. Following on that, she had crossed the North Sea in an August gale. She had been very sick. They had taken her straight to hospital in Edinburgh where her baby was stillborn and where she, herself, now lay in danger.
It seemed to give him relief to tell them; to loosen the tension.
The old man tried to encourage him. The gracious lady would be well soon. She was young. Many young people had lost a first child. Their married life was only beginning. Would it not be better now that Herr Hayburn should go and lie down?
Henry went. Their wooden bedroom was still redolent of Phœbe. Of her clothes; of scent Stephen had bought her; of herself. There were one or two odd belongings she had left behind. Some ribbon. A handkerchief. Some books.
He sat down on his bed and re-read his letters. One from Arthur Moorhouse. One from Mrs. Barrowfield. Arthur’s was a formal letter, stiff, sympathetic and put together with difficulty. Henry must believe Arthur when he wrote that Bel had acted out of her great affection for Phœbe. Bel and he were deeply sorry. Bel was refusing to leave Phœbe’s side.
Mrs. Barrowfield had taken upon herself to write to Henry, too. Her letter was full of an old woman’s love, and—if Henry’s wit could have read beyond the restraint she had imposed upon herself—rage, at what had happened. She, too, had come to Edinburgh. And while the doctor had assured her that Phœbe would recover, she thought it would be wise for Henry to come home.
III
It was four o’clock in the afternoon some weeks later. Vienna lay drowsing beneath a late September sun that was bland and golden. Fashionable streets were beginning to give signs of life. Show windows had begun to display the novelties of the early winter.
In the many public gardens there were riots in the flower-beds. Trees and shrubbery were beginning to take on the brilliant reds and yellows of the autumn. The City was shaking itself free from the dust and heat of the summer.
Next week the Emperor Franz Joseph would have returned from his hunting-box at Ischl; the Crown Prince Rudolf from boar-hunting in Moravia; and it was believed that the Empress Elizabeth, who was somewhere on the Adriatic, would be returning to the capital shortly.
The autumn season was beginning. Everywhere friends met friends. Where had they been? In the Tyrol? In the Carpathians? On the Baltic coast? In Carlsbad or Gastein? At all events, it was splendid to see everybody again, and to look to the excitements, artistic, musical, and social, that their City had in store for them.
Maximilian Hirsch came down the Kärntnerstrasse humming to himself. A pleasant lunch-party, the weather and Vienna were having their effects upon him. For a moment he stopped before a flower shop to look at its triumphant display of colour. He meditated for a time as to whether he should commit himself, just at present, by bestowing these dark red roses in a certain quarter. But he decided with a chuckle, which interrupted but did not stop his humming, that, much as these wonderful flowers were crying out to be sent somewhere, it would be better, perhaps, just at the moment, if he avoided new complications. Having made up his mind thus momentously, he continued humming on his way.
Suddenly he became aware that he was being hailed from a carriage.
“Max! Max!”
“Aunt Steffi!”
“You bad boy. Were you trying to walk past me?”
“Of course not!” It was nice to be called a boy at fifty.
“Jump in beside me. I want to talk to you.”
“Do you want to scold me for something?” He stepped up into the carriage, and put her hand to his lips.
“Not this afternoon, Maxerl, although you look as if you needed it. Next time, perhaps. No. I want to ask you about that poor child.”
“Who? The little Hayburn?”
“Yes. Have you got an hour to spare?”
“No. But I shall spare it.”
“That’s a good boy. I’ll drive you across to the Krieau, and you can give me a cup of chocolate.”
“But with great pleasure! Oh! One moment! What about the silk stockings you were going to buy?”
“I wasn’t going to buy any silk stockings. I won’t tell you what I was going to buy.”
“I’m quite sure it was silk stockings. Never mind. I’ll buy a pair, and send them to you.”
“Please, Johann. To the Creamery in the Krieau. Oh, I dare say you’ll buy the silk stockings. But you won’t send them to anyone so old and ugly as your Aunt Steffi.”
The old coachman drove off laughing. The young Herr Maximilian had so much fun about him! He always had the effect of making his old ladies quite witty.
Maximilian was pleased with this encounter. It suited his mood. It was just right to go driving on this golden autumn afternoon with a fond and flattering woman, who, being old and a relative, did not make any claims upon him, other than those of family affection. “Tell me,” Stephanie began presently, “has her husband come back?”
“Oh yes. Two or three days ago.”
“He might have come to see me, Maxi. He knows I love his wife.”
“He has been very busy. Actually, it was very difficult to let him go. But of course, I had to.”
“Of course. And what did he say?”
“She has been very ill, but now she is out of danger.”
“Thank God!”
Maximilian turned and smiled at the facile tears in his aunt’s eyes, as, ranging from one side of the Ring to the other, they seemed to be seeking solace, at one moment in the Stadtpark, at another in the high buildings that faced it. “Was the child she lost a boy or a girl?”
“A boy.”
“What a tragedy!” The loss of a male child was, of course, more serious.
“Yes.” Maximilian said nothing more for a time. He sat back comfortably in the sunshine, letting himself be lulled by the motion of the carriage.
“Poor young people!” Stephanie said after a time, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Then, by way of taking comfort to herself, she added: “But there will be more children and they will forget.”
“The young Hayburn told me there will be no more children.” She hesitated for a moment, then asked: “Maxi, do you mean he is afraid for her to have them?”
“No, not that. They told him it would be very unlikely.”
Stephanie did not ask anything more for a time. Her misted eyes looked about them unseeing as they made their way down the Praterstrasse. She loved this odd, foreign young woman.
Oh, if they had taken her advice, and the little Hayburn had remained here in Vienna, where there were the best doctors in the world! Why had her relatives forced her to go home to that cold land, where no one knew anything! And that sister-in-law! She must be hard and possessive, as she had heard so many Lutheran women could be!
Now they had passed the Prater Stern and were in that part of the Haupt Allee which lay on the way to the Krieau. The memory of the May Corso and Henry’s comically gloomy face brought her back.
“What about Herr Hayburn?” she asked.
“He
’s very unhappy. He’s stupid with unhappiness.”
“Poor boy!”
For reply, her nephew Max shrugged, casting his eyes around at the very considerable press of fashionable traffic about them, and the high, yellowing chestnut-trees.
“Is he still in the little house in the forest?” she asked.
A smile played round Maximilian’s mouth. He was certain that what he was going to say next would make her very angry. “No,” he said, “he has gone back to the apartments in the Favoriten. He says he can work there.”
Much to Maximilian’s surprise, Stephanie did not explode. She merely turned round and looked at him with interest. “Tell me, Maxi,” she said, “there’s a young girl there—a music student—isn’t there? I seem to remember the little Hayburn telling me. Do you think he has—a friendship?”
Again he shrugged, and threw his eyes upwards. “Who knows? These British people are so strange! One can guess nothing!”
Chapter Seventeen
ON the first of October, 1880, Baillie George McNairn died. The news found Bel at the breakfast table after everyone else had gone out. She sat wearily, leaning on her elbows, swallowing tea and staring before her out of the window. Sarah had come to her with a note, and Bel had directed her to tell the messenger she would come down to Albany Place this morning.
Bel poured herself yet another cup and leant forward pondering. Sophia, who had written her the note she had just received, was with Mary, so there was no need for her to go to Albany Place at once.
George’s end had been expected for some days now. Bel’s grief was not deep. But she was sorry for Mary, that her husband should be taken from her at so early an age as forty-five; she was sorry for Mary’s children; she was sorry for Arthur, upon whose shoulders the worries of Mary’s affairs would certainly fall; and she was a little sorry for herself.
Bel went on swallowing and staring in front of her, putting off the moment when something must be done. Whatever happened, she reflected, whatever blunders she might make, it was always herself and Arthur to whom the family turned.
She thought of Phœbe. That had been her great blunder this autumn. Those weeks in an Edinburgh hospital when she had scarcely left Phœbe’s side. It had been so exhausting, and she, Bel, had felt so repentant. When Henry Hayburn had come, she had wept and blamed herself to him. But Henry had been stony and bewildered. He had not shown her whether he forgave her or not.
Yet it was herself, Bel, who sat yearning by Henry’s wife through the days her life was in danger; herself whom Phœbe had wanted. And, knowing that the young couple’s purse could be none too long, it was her husband, Arthur, who had defrayed the expenses of Henry’s journey from and back to Vienna.
And yet, when at last Phœbe was out of danger, and she, Bel, had come back to Glasgow, she discovered that Henry had been to see her mother, and unburdened his outraged heart in Monteith Row. The old lady was now waiting, armed and ready with accusation and reproof, for Bel’s long-suffering self.
Bel had not, of course, intended to tell Mrs. Barrowfield of the Duntrafford conspiracy. The old woman, knowing her daughter, had got it out of her. And thereafter Bel had to stand naked and ashamed before her mother’s fury, forced to account for her actions towards a young woman about whom she need never have bothered, on whom she need never have expended any affection whatever.
Well, she supposed she and Arthur would always go on being like that. Always taking responsibility, and often receiving blame for the responsibility they took. Always being asked for help and advice, and often having their help and advice called interference.
Bel sighed, set down her cup and prepared for action. Thank goodness Phœbe was now safely in the Duntrafford Dower House, whither her convalescence had now allowed her to travel. Margaret had been insistent that she should come to her at the earliest moment possible; that she would find health in her native countryside more quickly than elsewhere. Bel, occupied with Mary, had relinquished her grasp of the beloved invalid.
But what was there to do now?
Mary’s boys—Georgie and Jackie McNairn—were staying here in Grosvenor Terrace at present. Only half an hour ago she had packed them off to their school at the same time she had seen young Arthur off to his. She had better call for them, she supposed, and take them down to Albany Place.
She would need the carriage for that. Indeed, the carriage would be needed all day. To fetch Arthur and David. To take clothes to be dyed black, and to take herself to buy not unbecoming mourning. To take Arthur—it would, of course, be Arthur—to make the funeral arrangements. To do endless errands.
While she waited for it to come, Bel wrote to Grace at Aucheneame, who had in her charge the little twin girls, Anne and Polly. Bel offered to see to their clothes. George McNairn’s daughters, who were not yet quite six, must appear at his funeral in all the black correctness of Victorian mourning.
II
A strange, unfamiliar Mungo stood at the door of Duntrafford Dower House looking about him at the rich autumn beauty of this quiet, sunless morning. His sturdy body was clad in the formality of a black frock-coat. On his head was a tall hat, and in one hand he carried black kid-gloves. The merest onlooker would have known that this was not a dress to which he was accustomed. It was the day of George McNairn’s funeral, and in a moment he and his wife Margaret must leave for the City.
His other hand was given to his fifteen-month-old son, Charles Mungo Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse, a person of much importance, in spite of his childish petticoats and his still inarticulate tongue.
He was not a beautiful baby. As yet, there were none of the Moorhouse good looks about him. His little snub face and popping eyes gave him a strong resemblance to his grandfather, old Sir Charles—a resemblance which became quite remarkable when the baby laughed, as he was now doing at a yellowhammer that had alighted for an instant on the gravel of the drive only a few yards in front of him. As he pointed and looked into his father’s face, Mungo was seized—not for the first time—with an odd feeling that, somehow, he was bending to hold the hand of a strange, miniature Sir Charles, with little dark curls and a pink face.
“That’s a yella yite, son,” he said, giving the yellowhammer its Scotch name.
In reply, the baby laughed louder, and the bird flew away.
Mungo turned to find Phœbe standing beside him. “Hullo. What are you doing out of yer bed at this time of day?”
“It’s after ten.”
“Well, that’s early for you. Has Margaret allowed ye?”
“I didn’t ask her.” Phœbe bent down and put her arms about the baby.
“Now, Phœbe, don’t try to lift up that bairn. He’s ower heavy for ye.” Mungo spoke sternly.
“It’s all right. I won’t.”
Mungo watched his sister as she supported Charlie’s steps across the gravel of the drive in the direction of a wicker chair that had been placed for her on the lawn beyond.
“Will ye be quite warm?”
“Of course. It’s stuffy this morning. When do you go?”
“In two or three minutes.”
He looked across at Phœbe. His countryman’s eye did not approve of the thinness that gave her body too much elegance nor of her pale face with the dark rings about her eyes. But in spite of these, or indeed because of them, Mungo—at most times slow to notice—did not fail to remark the unreal, almost ethereal quality that suffering and a great disappointment had given his sister. She looked fragile and lovely as she sat there bending over the little boy.
Too fragile. For a moment Mungo felt misgivings. But immediately he reminded himself that once before, as a child, Phœbe had suffered a great shock and that her country stamina had stood by her.
Now his wife had appeared.
“Hullo, Mungo. Where’s the trap? If it doesn’t come now, we’ll miss the train.”
“I think I hear it.”
“Oh, hullo, Phœbe. I didn’t know you were down. Are you all right over there? They’ve be
en told what to give you for lunch. And don’t let that child worry you. Call Mrs. Crawford and hand him over the moment you get tired.”
Now a groom had come with the pony-trap. Margaret crossed to her son, gave him a purposeful kiss, patted Phœbe, then took herself, her black finery and her husband into it.
“See you at dinner,” she called as the pony trotted out of sight.
III
Now her nephew was quiet in her lap, pulling a spray of Michaelmas daisies to pieces.
“Don’t, Charlie. Don’t put them in your mouth.”
It was comforting to sit here on this warm, sunless morning, pressing this little creature against her. And Margaret was good. Her kind brusqueness suited Phœbe. She didn’t nag or insist. And yet her attentions did not falter. Phœbe was glad she had come here almost directly from hospital.
She had received a letter from Stephanie Hirsch this morning—a foreign letter full of bad English, love and regret. Had it been from anyone other than Stephanie, she would have despised its sentimentality. But Phœbe was learning. She had begun to realise that even the sentimental, even those who expressed themselves too easily and too much, could feel as deeply as the stern and the reticent.
Stephanie had seen little of Henry. She thought it was a pity that he had gone back to the Quellengasse. But Phœbe did not think so. Her husband was a lonely, vague sort of creature. Frau Klem, she knew, would look after him.
She lay back in her chair thinking of Henry. The two days he had spent with her in Edinburgh had been a wordless misery. Neither of them had Stephanie Hirsch’s ease in expressing their feelings. She had been glad when Henry had gone away again.
But she must get well and go back to him. Now that she only had Henry, would always only have Henry, the thought of him seldom left her.
As she sat thinking of him, tears of weakness sprang to Phœbe’s eyes. But at once contempt sprang after them. These were not Phœbe Hayburn’s tears. They were the maudlin tears of a foolish invalid.