The Hayburn Family

by Guy McCrone

  He was standing watching them when his cousin Anne came into the room.

  “Hullo, Robin. Still like playing with dolls?”

  Robin turned to look at her. “Hullo, Anne. What are you doing here? I thought it was to be only uncles and aunts. I was asked, of course, because the party is for us.”

  “I suppose I was asked because Mother hasn’t got Father to bring her.”

  Caught by the dispirited tone of her voice, Robin turned to examine Anne McNairn’s too-mature figure, her stupid, gold-fringed evening dress, and her round, freckled face. He did not see much of this cousin, and did not particularly want to. But now a show of sympathy might yield him some amusing talk from this twenty-six-year-old spinster. “Do you remember your father, Anne?” he asked.

  “Yes. I was six when he died.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was big, and had a beard, and I was a little frightened of him. I think we all were. The boys and Polly, too,” she said, referring to her brothers and her twin sister, Mrs. Wil Butter.

  “Are you sorry he’s dead?”

  “Of course! What a queer thing to say! He was my father!”

  No. Anne was too conventional to yield much by these tactics. Robin changed his ground. “I have frightful rows with mine. Fathers are not always perfect, you know,” he said. “And I don’t think it has anything to do with only being adopted. It’s because I want to do things that I don’t suppose anybody in this family would approve of.”

  “What kind of things?” Anne’s plump face looked at him a little blankly.

  “Something, I don’t know. Write. Do something original. Out of the ordinary.” Robin began to wander about the room. “I wish I had a real, obvious gift,” he added. “A singing voice. Or a hand that could use a paint-brush.”

  “No. You wouldn’t be encouraged in anything like that in the Moorhouse family.”

  Robin turned in surprise to look at Anne. She was speaking with some heat. “Would you like to do something original?” he asked.

  “I would like to do anything rather than what I am doing!”

  “Anne! What do you mean?” He looked more solemn than he felt.

  “Well—” Anne coloured, half turned away, then, speaking low and almost angrily, she continued as though to herself: “What have I got, living alone with Mother? Dull church meetings among old women. Shopping. Sewing. Housework. Visiting a twin sister, and seeing her happy with her babies and her husband. Oh, I’m not jealous of Polly and I love the children. But—” Here Anne stopped to dab an eye that threatened to become moist, and to gaze bleakly into a future that kept looking less and less promising.

  All this was too uncomfortable for Robin. He didn’t much like his Aunt Mary McNairn himself, if it came to that. A dull woman who was inclined to be sanctimonious. He quite saw how Anne felt. But he didn’t want the embarrassment of hearing about it.

  “I wonder if you ever see the Moorhouse family as I do,” he said, deciding to move to less personal ground. “The Old Brigade, I mean. Uncle Mungo, Uncle Arthur, Uncle David, Aunt Sophia, your mother, my mother. There they are, standing square to the world like the Guards at Waterloo. And they’ve got us, their families, well inside the square, protecting us and keeping us prisoners at the same time.” He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and took a further step or two. “Funny to think how I managed to wander into that square,” he added.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Robin turned away and continued to walk about. Anne’s real trouble was that she was stupid. She had a certain sharpness of tongue—there was that remark about his playing with dolls—but she was blunt-witted. The only possible thing for her to do was to stay at home with Aunt Mary as her unpaid companion. But he could not tell her so. “You may not know what I mean, but you feel it. Just as I do,” he said. “You feel the family pressure. Pressure of approval, pressure of disapproval, pressure of criticism, pressure of curiosity, of interest, of gossip, of poking their noses into what isn’t their business. It’s all so stuffy, so provincial!”

  “Mother says we should all be proud to belong to a family that has always paid its debts and worked for what it has got.”

  Robin gave up. Really, if Anne couldn’t do better than quote her mother’s platitudes, what was the use of going on? Instead of replying, he reopened the glass door of Bel’s cabinet and once again set the little mandarins wagging. “Look, they all just keep doing the same thing all the time.” Then, turning to Anne: “Allow me to introduce you to the Moorhouses!” he said.

  V

  This thought was to amuse and sustain Robin through what would otherwise have been a dull family party.

  Here, for instance, was his Aunt Mary McNairn coming into the room, followed by Aunt Bel. Now what would Aunt Mary do? How would she wag? Aunt Mary would be serene and entirely selfish.

  The widow of George McNairn, sometime Baillie of the city of Glasgow, was a personable woman of sixty. Mary Moorhouse had once had the oval face of a Madonna. Even now, her eyes and her skin were fine. Her dowager black was set off by neat little cuffs and a collar of fine white lawn. A white cashmere shawl hung over one arm, to be fixed presently by Anne, her daughter and handmaid. Her still dark hair, parted in the middle and made sleek, was surmounted by a cap composed of many tiny, snowy frills.

  “How are you, Robin dear?” she said, presenting an ivory cheek to be kissed. “I hear you haven’t been very well.”

  “I’ll be all right, thanks, Aunt Mary. How are you?”

  Mary smiled a calm little smile with the right amount of indulgence in it.

  “Oh, I can never say I’m well, Robin,” she said. “You see, I’m getting old, and I daresay I’ve had more than my share of ill-health and sorrow. But—oh, I’m very happy, really, dear,” she added, putting a brave face on it. “Anne, will you fix my shawl for me, please? And after that run up to the bedroom where we put our things and look to see if I left my spectacles. I may not have brought them, but please make sure, dear.”

  Anne interrupted the fixing of the shawl to say: “I’m certain you didn’t bring them, Mother.”

  Robin marked the steadiness of Mary’s voice as she said: “Go, Anne dear. When your mother asks you.”

  Yes. Aunt Mary was wagging exactly as he had expected.

  VI

  And now here was his Uncle Arthur Moorhouse bringing in his Aunt Sophia and Uncle William Butter.

  Uncle Arthur, for whom Robin had a wholesome respect, would be simple, distinguished, and noncommittal. Aunt Sophia would be talkative, scatterbrained, and untidy. Uncle William, her husband, would stand about and say nothing.

  Sophia Butter, born Sophia Moorhouse, was flooding towards her hostess. “Bel dear! This is wonderful! Such a good idea! Just a party for all the funny old brothers and sisters to congratulate Henry and Phœbe. None of the young ones to take the shine out of us.”

  Bel disengaged herself from Sophia’s untidy embrace, smoothed her new dress, and took another hasty, indignant glance at her own fashionable reflection in the drawing-room mirror. Which of the next generation shone so brightly, she wondered, that she, Bel, would be forced to become a mere moon in the younger, dazzling sunlight?

  “Except you, of course, Robin dear. You’re a guest of honour, aren’t you? Oh, and I saw Anne going upstairs. How are you? Are you going to your father’s investiture? Oh, but, Robin dear, you must! Mustn’t he, William?”

  Sophia’s husband said nothing.

  William Butter was a fat man. His grizzled, untrimmed beard and whiskers grew so luxuriantly that they covered the greater part of his face, thus depriving it of the ability to express joy or sorrow, pleasure, or pain. Indeed, after some thirty-nine years of marriage to their sister Sophia, the Moorhouse family still very much doubted whether William had ever felt any of these emotions.

  But Sophia was going on: “There you are now, Robin! Your uncle says you must.”

  Arthur Moorhouse took one hand fr
om behind his back, smoothed a trimmed, white whisker, straightened his discreet black waistcoat, rubbed his firm chin with elegant, bony fingers, looked at his patent-leather boots, at the ornate moulding round the gasolier, then at his wife, towards whom he directed the wraith of a smile.

  Sophia should really get a new dinner-dress, Bel was thinking. She remembered a dress very like this one some eight years ago at the wedding of Sophia’s daughter Margy. Not that Sophia at sixty-odd could ever attempt to be smart, but at least she need not look shabby—positively dirty, in fact.

  “And, do you know, we heard the most awful story, the other day, about some man who was to be knighted! Didn’t we, William?”

  William made no remark.

  “Yes. I can’t remember who it was, but I’ll remember in a minute. Somebody Scotch. Oh, dear me! A name we all know! At any rate, the Queen was at Osborne, on the Isle of Wight. And evidently you have to get a boat at Portsmouth—or is it Southampton, William?—Portsmouth, that’s right—and cross over. And then they meet you with carriages and there’s a great luncheon affair and everything. Well, this man missed the boat! Wasn’t it awful? Fancy! Going to be knighted by the Queen and missing the boat! I would have died!”

  “And what did he do, Sophie?” Bel felt impelled to ask.

  “Well, I’m not sure, Bel dear. I suppose he would have to invent an illness or something. But I think he got his knighthood. Oh, I daresay they would just post him his medal or his certificate or whatever it is you get. In an envelope. Still, the very idea of missing—”

  VII

  And here were some more of them. His Uncle Mungo Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse and his Aunt Margaret. Now what would they do? Robin looked back at the little figures in the cabinet.

  Uncle Mungo, the oldest Moorhouse, had always been a countryman, and showed it. And Aunt Margaret, who was the daughter of a baronet and had heired the estates of Duntrafford in Ayrshire, would show her background too.

  Margaret Ruanthorpe-Moorhouse was a sturdy woman. Her face looked red and weather-beaten, now that the hair that surrounded it was almost white. But her eyes were dark and commanding. The dress she wore had been put together by a village sewing-woman, but it was embellished with family lace, and it had the look, somehow, of being a kind of uniform she was used to. For ornaments she had her mother’s handsome diamonds, old-fashioned and set in thick gold.

  Her imperious tones were making themselves heard above the family din, as she greeted her host and hostess. “It was kind of you to want us to stay, Bel, but we knew you would have quite enough. And St. Enoch’s Hotel is really perfectly nice. My dear, what is your news from South Africa?”

  Robin could not hear Bel’s reply.

  But his Aunt Margaret’s voice went on: “Well, soldiers’ mothers must just keep smiling, mustn’t they? We’re having an awful time with Charles—” Margaret was referring to her only child, a young man of twenty-one—“You heard, of course, that the doctors wouldn’t pass him? I was sorry for Charles about that. Soldiering is so terribly in his blood. All our family—” Her voice kept a bright, disciplined impersonality.

  But Robin, who had come nearer, could hear his Uncle Mungo say: “Well, I’m not sorry. And the boy will just need to stop his girning and content himself. Oh, I’m not saying he wasna right to offer himself. But that was surely doing his duty well enough.”

  Uncle Mungo was stolid and downright. Dignified, and a Moorhouse in looks too. His farmer’s body was broader, more filled-out and stronger than his brothers’. There was a slow confidence about him.

  Looking at them, Robin’s sharp wits wondered how this plain man had ever come to marry the heiress of Duntrafford. “Mr. and Mrs. David Dermott-Moorhouse!”

  Robin turned to look at his Uncle David and his Aunt Grace. They were easy figures in the row.

  Uncle David would start pompous, but might, with luck, end up waggish and gay. Aunt Grace would agree with everybody. And that would be all about her.

  Having greeted Bel and Arthur, David and his wife caught sight of Robin and came towards him.

  Grace Dermott-Moorhouse gave him her hand. “Robin, I’m so glad to see you here. We heard you had been ill, and didn’t think you—”

  “Oh, I’m all right, Aunt Grace.” Robin smiled back at this rather faded aunt, whose only attribute seemed to be gentleness. And then, finding his Uncle David standing over him, aloof and, Robin somehow felt, censorious, he added: “I’ve been bone idle, and idleness suits me.”

  David continued to look important. “It’s a very bad thing for a young man to be idle for long,” he said.

  “Grace dear! I must tell you what Margy’s wee Billy said the other day! He looked at his baby sister and shouted—” and the good-natured Grace was taken aside to endure the incontinent grandmotherhood of Sophia, leaving David and Robin together.

  Robin gave the appearance of turning over David’s pronouncement in his mind. “Do you really think so, Uncle David? Do you really believe that ‘Satan finds some mischief still—’ and all that sort of thing?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Were you never idle when you were young?”

  “Never.” But now, at last, there was a gleam in David’s eye.

  “And didn’t you ever get into any kind of mischief?”

  “Never.” David allowed himself a look of patronising amusement at Robin’s presumption.

  “What about the spangled ladies in the Old Scotia and the Whitebait?”

  “Look here, Robin, who’s been talking to you?” Uncle David had actually grown pinker and was throwing alarmed glances towards Aunt Grace.

  Robin was delighted. “Only Uncle Stephen.”

  David had withdrawn into himself again, but this time he was on the defensive. “What did your Uncle Stephen tell you, Robin?”

  “Oh, not very much. But I can’t help guessing, can I, Uncle David?”

  “Well, don’t guess too much, Robin. For it won’t be true.”

  “How can I be sure, Uncle David?”

  “And take that innocent look off your face! Do you know what you are? You’re an impertinent young monkey!” But David’s importance was melted now. He twisted his nephew’s ear and turned away laughing.

  Robin was pleased with himself. He had succeeded in getting that Moorhouse mandarin to make his own characteristic nods in the row with the others.

  IX

  And now Uncle Stephen Hayburn. But he didn’t count, of course. He wasn’t in the row. Wasn’t a Moorhouse.

  There was something amusing and old-fashionedly foppish about him, with his sparse oiled hair, his black stock, and his eye-glass—an affectation he had the sense not to permit himself at the office—suspended on its broad black ribbon. He was so very unlike any of the others, was, indeed, as Robin well knew, held a little in contempt by them.

  Robin liked this uncle. He liked his tolerance of life, his lack of striving. If the moon did not feel disposed to drop into Uncle Stephen’s lap, then Uncle Stephen did not put himself to the trouble of crying for it. There was something of the artist about him. Something that met Robin’s sympathy. Of all his elders, his father’s brother was the one to whom Robin seemed to come nearest. It was, almost, as though Uncle Stephen were his real uncle.

  The boy watched him now, as, urbane and detached, he returned the greetings of the family. And he knew that Uncle Stephen was amused, even as he, himself, was amused.

  No. Uncle Stephen did not belong to the Moorhouse row.

  X

  And those two strangers, Phœbe and Henry Hayburn? Now Robin tried to see his adopted parents as he saw the others tonight, apart and impersonally. But he could not.

  As a little boy, he had taken it for granted that his mother was the most beautiful being in the world. And now, again, as he watched her, he told himself he had not been far wrong. She was, indeed, more “tremendous” than Aunt Bel. But you could never tell her so. You could please Bel with flattery, but you couldn’t please Phœbe.

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sp; And his father. Everything about Henry Hayburn was now expressing excitement and force. His wiry, angular body. The clenched fist driven down on the palm of the other hand, as he sought to underline some point of talk. His bluff features. His cropped hair. There was a look of agelessness about him. In twenty years, probably, he would look and behave exactly as he was doing now.

  Robin was afraid of him. Afraid of the enthusiasms, that were the mainsprings of his life. The enthusiasms of his inventive mind. They seemed to leave him so little personal life. So few softnesses.

  Yet Robin could look back to a time when he had seemed different. When he had crawled about the floor, playing with his toys, mending, as it seemed, by magic, those that had gone wrong. In those days Henry had been Robin’s hero.

  Chapter Five

  PHœBE wished Robin had not come to see her off. For, though the afternoon sun was bright, here on the Riviera in early February it might suddenly become treacherously cold. She could have said goodbye to him in their hotel. There was no sense in taking risks.

  But he had insisted upon bringing her here to the little Garavan Mentone railway station. And now, having brought her, seen to her luggage and found her sleeping-carriage, he was feeling the embarrassment of waiting until such time as that part of the train which came from Ventimiglia in Italy should appear, hitch on the sleeping-cars and start the long journey to Paris, the first stage of her journey home. But finding nothing more to say Robin had gone off to buy unwanted newspapers and seek needless railway information.

  Phœbe knew why he had left her. This boyish, last-minute neglect did not wound her in the least. She took a slow step or two up and down the platform awaiting his reappearance.

  She hated leaving him. This fortnight during which she had been with him here in Mentone had been a time of close affection. Their relationship in these silver days had been brittle, happy and, somehow, anxiously precious to her.