by Guy McCrone
She became aware that she was pressing the child so tightly to her that he was kicking to be set down. “Poor Charlie! Was I squeezing the life out of you?”
Mrs. Crawford appeared at the door with something she must take.
“Oh, Mrs. Crawford, is it time for that already?”
Phœbe swallowed what she was given, handed over the child to his nurse and went inside to write letters to her husband and Stephanie.
IV
Today Sophia’s chatter helped rather than hindered. And it was unceasing.
“Now, Mary, I don’t think you feel well enough to come downstairs to the service. You’ve been wonderfully brave, dear; but remember, it has been a long strain for you. Well, if you feel you ought, there’s no more to be said. I’ll sit beside you.
“Oh, Bel dear, there you are! Are you all here? Only the two Arthurs and yourself? Yes, of course. The other children are too small. Still, I thought, maybe Isabel—But what about Phœbe? No. Of course. She’s at Duntrafford.
“Don’t bother about that, Mary. I’ll do it.
“Good morning, Margaret. We were just talking about Phœbe. How is she, poor child? Well, of course. When you think what she has just come through. And how is that wonderful son of yours? The image of his grandfather? Fancy!
“Oh, Grace dear, there you are! Yes. Poor Mary! It’s terrible, isn’t it? Oh, of course, yes. I was just saying that to William this morning. We must all make sacrifices according to our ability, to help Mary through. It was very kind of you to keep Anne and Polly. Hullo, dears! How are you? How nice you look in your new dresses! Your Auntie Bel did get neat ones for you, didn’t she? David! Come and kiss your old sister! You’re not too grand for that, are you? How’s little Robert? Wil says he’s just terrified of you in the office. You’re so great and important!
“Oh, here you are, William, and the children! William, have you got the black gloves I bought for you? What do you say’s coming down, Margy? Wait a minute. I think I have a pin. There, that’s better. Remind me to sew it. Now, children, go and kiss your Aunt Mary and say how sorry you are.
“Oh, Arthur, are you coming back here to read George’s will? Yes, I thought you would. Well, of course we’ll help as much as we can. But remember, William is a poor man! He hasn’t got what you and Mungo and David have. Isn’t that so, William?”
William Butter said nothing.
“Oh, here’s the minister! Now are you sure you feel quite up to the service, Mary dear? Very well. But I’ll sit with you at the end of the front row, so that we can just slip out if it is too trying. Georgie, Jackie, you’re the chief mourners. You had better sit with Anne and Polly in the front row, too. That’s right.”
And so, in Mary’s darkened dining-room, the service was read over the remains of her husband. And when that had come to an end, Baillie George McNairn was followed by the men of the family to his last resting-place.
Later in the afternoon, Mary’s brothers, together with William Butter, sat round the dining-table while George’s lawyer read his will.
Only the tongue of flattery could possibly have called George McNairn clever. And he had died at the early age of forty-five. But, after his kind, he had been shrewd and acquisitive. His affairs were in good order. In the time that was given him he had been able to save a sum which, if it seemed small now, to David’s and Mungo’s magnificence, would provide for his widow the necessary upkeep of the house in Albany Place.
There was, then, Arthur said, looking round the table, only the education of the children to be considered. Georgie was fifteen and would soon be earning. But Jackie was twelve. And there were the little twin girls, whose education had not yet begun. But girls did not need much education. They had only to grow up, stay at home, learn to dust and find husbands.
What, then, Arthur asked, was everybody prepared to do? For his part, he would see to all the immediate payments, thus saving Mary embarrassment in her first distress. And thereafter he was ready to take his full share.
Mungo said Arthur had better find out exactly how things worked out as they went along, and promised he would not see Mary and her children stuck.
David pointed to the fact that times were bad, and that his mother-in-law still drew a very substantial income from Dermott Ships, in addition to Grace and himself. But, yes, certainly they could count upon him putting his hand into his pocket for Mary and her children when necessity arose.
If anybody had been looking at William Butter, they would perhaps have noticed that the colour in such parts of his face as happened not to be covered with black hair had deepened a little at these declarations of generosity; that his lips had parted for a moment as though he might even bring himself to some kind of articulate utterance. But as no one was looking at him, his lips closed again, his colour receded once more, and William did not feel himself called upon to make any more definite gesture.
When they joined the women upstairs for tea, Sophia was still voluble. “Oh, there you are, boys,” she said, presiding at the tea-table in place of the afflicted Mary. “Now you must tell me how you like your tea. I should know, but I keep forgetting. And I’ve just been saying to Mary how she had nothing in the world to worry about, Arthur. You and William are really just on her doorstep, ready to help at any minute, and Mungo and David are not really so very much further away.”
Bel turned from the window where she had been standing, cup in hand. “There’s McCrimmon with the carriage, Arthur.”
As the horses trotted westward, Bel’s curiosity overcame her. “How did things go downstairs, Arthur?” It was difficult to ask questions with their small, sharp-eared son sitting opposite, but she could not help herself.
In reply Arthur grunted.
“I suppose you’ve offered to pay everything and take the responsibility?”
Again Arthur grunted. But his grunt contained a note of assent.
Bel sighed, looked out of the window and said: “I suppose you and I are like that. We just can’t help it.”
The eyes of Arthur the Second remained deceptively innocent. But what he had heard had done him no harm.
V
It was the first week in December. Bel sat looking at Phœbe as they drank tea together before a blazing fire in the drawing-room of Grosvenor Terrace. Phœbe was recovering—but slowly. Her disastrous journey had occurred at the end of August, but still, even now, there were the marks of her ordeal upon her.
Phœbe folded a letter she had been re-reading, put it back in her workbox and took up her cup of tea. Her eyes met Bel’s.
“How is Henry, dear? You never give me any news.”
“Oh, Henry’s all right, I suppose.”
“You suppose? Doesn’t he write to you regularly?”
“Not regularly. But he writes.”
Bel laughed.
“That letter I was reading wasn’t from Henry, if that’s what you mean. It was from a friend in London. I met her at the Mission Church in Vienna. She’s going back there at the end of the year.”
“Who is she, Phœbe?”
“A governess. She wants me to travel back with her.”
“You can only do that if you’re well enough.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“But is she quite a nice person, Phœbe?”
“She’s at least sixty.”
Bel gave a satisfied “Oh.” Age and niceness went, apparently, together.
“I was hoping Henry would come home for you.”
“He’s very busy.”
“Still.” Bel looked at the fog outside the window for a minute, then turned her eyes to the fire.
“I’ve been thinking,” she began. “Arthur says things are getting better. Wouldn’t it be a good thing for Henry to try to get something here at home? Surely with all the experience he’s had—”
“But how can he? He’s too far away to look for anything.”
“Arthur would help. And look at David. He knows everybody now. You don’t want to stay in
Vienna all your life, do you?”
Phœbe considered this for a time, then said: “I don’t know.” For a moment her thoughts carried her back to the Imperial City. She had known rapture there. Her eyes had been taught to see, her senses given a new awareness. Whatever her outward seeming, she was a different young woman from the one who had gone there less than a year ago. Now, once more, they were standing, she and Henry together, in the cool magic of an early May morning. They were in their nightdresses by the window in the Quellengasse. Over there in the mist, the Prater. And there the Arsenal. And there the Karlskirche. And further off the spire of Saint Stephen’s. There had been nothing more to ask of life that morning. The universe was bursting into bloom.
Deliberately, Phœbe drew out the dagger of grief and disappointment that was stabbing her. She examined it calmly. She was even a little proud that she could find strength now to perform this trick.
Bel wondered why she was biting her lip. “Don’t bother about these things now, dear,” she said. “Only, I thought it would be nice to have you both at home.”
Phœbe paid no attention. She put back the dagger. Things must go on.
Yes, there was Henry. So long as they were together it didn’t much matter where they were. She would write to this woman, in London and tell her she would travel back to Austria in her company.
Chapter Eighteen
FRAU KLEM was at her wits’ end with Herr Hayburn this autumn. She had not meant to have a lodger in the Quellengasse now that Pepi was at home again and contributing something to the household from odd work in the theatres. But on his return from Scotland the young man had come, told her of his misfortunes and begged her to let him have his old room once more.
The good woman had been moved and flattered. Moved by his loss. Flattered that he should look to her and hers for comfort. She did her best for him. She saw that he was fed; that he was kept warm; that his clothes were looked to. There was little else she could do. But, together with her daughter, she held many a conference about him.
Pepi grew hot at Phœbe’s treatment of Henry. Frau Hayburn had been a fool to go back to Scotland to have her child; and now, having lost it, to leave him all alone like this. It would serve her right if Henry—
No. Pepi must not talk like that. You had only to look at Herr Hayburn with his wife to know that there was only one woman in the world for him. And these Scottish people were very strict, Frau Klem had heard; as strict as—well, any decent persons ought to be. But she noticed a toss of Pepi’s head, and wondered if, after all, life in the theatre was good for a young girl. Besides, Pepi must remember what poor Frau Hayburn had been through.
But Pepi did not seem to be much touched by the thought of poor Frau Hayburn.
After these discussions Frau Klem would end with a sigh and go back to her housework; while Pepi went back to her singing practice, taking her scales as high and as loud as she could, until her simple mother was driven to wonder if these slate-pencil sounds could really have anything to do with music.
But in the first weeks he had come back to her, Herr Hayburn seemed a poor creature enough. Frau Klem had seen him one day by chance in the Favoritenstrasse. As he passed her by, his eyes had the same look of suffering witlessness that she had seen in the eyes of the oxen as they were driven down this same street on their way to the slaughter-house. But presently, as better news of Phœbe came, things turned more bearable for Henry. He was glad now that his homing instinct had brought him back to the Quellengasse. These people were kind. They helped him to keep going. To take a hold of himself.
Once more he allowed himself to become one of themselves, as he had done in his first months in Vienna. On Sundays they went together on little jaunts. Often Henry stood treat in some suburban wine-garden, where, in the splendour of the dying Austrian autumn, they ate their Schnitzel and drank the year-old wine.
He began to take long walks. Often Pepi Klem would go with him, chirping along by his side, talking good-naturedly of anything that might distract him. Henry readily fell into the habit of having her with him. Soon he was paying no more heed to her than he would to his brother Stephen. She asked him to talk English. They began to call these walks her English lessons.
October, November. Still Phœbe’s letters did not say when she would be with him. What was wrong? She had assured him she was recovering. Very well, then. It was impossible for him to go back to Scotland to fetch her, but her coming could be arranged. He had written about her coming, many times, and she had replied that she would come soon. Why, then, didn’t she do it?
He was a man now. Fully awake. He longed to hold his wife once more in his arms. This thought, indeed, had become an obsession that blinded him, in part, to what his wife had suffered. He began to nurse a grievance. He began to forget she must be given time.
In the second week of December he wrote, telling her yet again of his loneliness, and begging her to return to him. Phœbe replied with a letter that was gay and teasing. Sending him all her love, telling him nothing definite, wishing him a Merry Christmas, and saying she would see him soon.
From her letter he did not guess that she planned to surprise him.
II
It was twelve o’clock on the last day of the year. Henry crossed from his office in the Neubau, making for his usual mid-day eating-house in the passage off the Herrengasse.
Vienna lay under snow. It had been swept up into great heaps on either side of the Ring. A silver sun had broken through, and its glitter upon the snow, in the Volksgarten, on the Burg Platz, on the palace roofs, threw back reflections that forced Henry to contract his eyes to mere slits.
But presently he was in his little restaurant, bidding his usual vague good-day, and waiting to have his meal set before him. Except for himself the room was almost empty. It contained Christmas decorations, but few customers. The habitués, it seemed, were elsewhere. Most of them were not at work today, and thus they had not sought their usual eating-place. Henry, too, was finished now.
“Der Mister” seemed out of spirits, the rotund proprietor said to his wife; out of spirits, and downright bad-tempered. They watched him as he sat, slumped in his chair, tugging his beard and staring at the glowing ribs of the tiled oven, the door of which had been left open. The good woman gave it as her opinion that he looked ill.
Henry had been living in daily expectation of news telling of Phœbe’s return. She had not written for a fortnight. Yet since Christmas he had got a letter from Mrs. Barrowfield saying she had seen her, and that she looked very well. He could not understand it. With the prospect of nothing to do, either this afternoon or tomorrow, bitter loneliness had fallen upon Henry like a beast of prey. The Klems, he had been told, would be little at home. Pepi was not in work just at present, and able to go visiting with her parents.
There were many things he might have done, acquaintances he might have seen. Even the ladies in the Paulanergasse would have been glad to see him, for his wife’s sake. But in these last weeks Henry had clung to the routine of his work. He had tried to think of little else. It had been his lifebelt. Now, for the next days, there would be no work for him to do.
As the old man brought him his soup, he asked if the gracious gentleman felt well? Henry said he did. His host said that it was very cold, but sunny. Henry admitted that this was so. The old man asked what the gracious gentleman did on Sylvester Day in England. The gracious gentleman snapped ungraciously that he didn’t know, as he did not come from England. Defeated, the old man retired.
Shortly he came back, however, professionally cheerful, with Henry’s meat, fried potatoes—and a bottle of wine, which he begged Henry to drink with his own and his wife’s compliments. It gave them pleasure, the good man said, to make a present of this bottle of Hungarian red wine to one who patronised their modest house so regularly.
Henry unbent a little. The determined friendliness of the couple had penetrated. He thanked the man and, remembering some kind of manners, bade him bring two more gla
sses. His host and hostess must drink with him to the New Year. The man did as he was told. His wife came from behind, wiping her hands on her apron, and beaming. The glass of wine warmed Henry.
He was inventing yet another toast, and filling up their glasses once again, when Pepi Klem came in. Coming from the dazzling sunshine, for a moment she could see nothing in the dim gas-light. He had seen her in this place only once before. That had been last spring, when she had just returned to Vienna. In his desperate, mock heartiness, Henry called to her:
“Hullo, Pepi! Come and drink to the New Year.”
She gave a little start, then smiled in recognition. “Oh! I didn’t know you still came here. I expected to find some friends.”
Another glass was brought and another toast drunk. The couple were pleased to see that so bright a companion had come to chase away “der Mister’s” glumness.
The old man laid a place for her, smiling; taking it for granted that this was Henry’s girl for whom he had been waiting, impatient and angry.
Henry’s loneliness responded to Pepi at once. Here was someone he knew who was gay and friendly. For the time, at least, he need not be miserable. He bade her choose her lunch, and ordered another bottle of wine.
Now it was pleasant in the little warm restaurant. Pepi talked nonsense, hummed snatches of songs and laughed at nothing. He watched her; half smiling, half bewildered. But she was cheerful and feminine, and her presence soothed him.
She asked him if he were working this afternoon and what he intended to do. He told her he was not working and had no plans.
She said nothing to this—merely went on humming dreamily. One or two others came in; along with them two students, friends of Pepi’s. But they only nodded in recognition, and crossed to their own table.
Henry asked her if she did not want to join them. She smiled vaguely and said that the wine had made her sleepy. He said that he felt sleepy, too. They could hear, somewhere, a church clock strike two.