The Hayburn Family

by Guy McCrone

  III

  Outside in the hall she saw Sarah’s comfortable, middle-aged figure standing at the open front door. Bel was about to draw back again, when the sight of a telegram froze her where she stood, her discontent swallowed up in an ecstasy of dread.

  She took the telegram from Sarah, who remained standing before her, making no move to go. The boy stood waiting.

  “Nasty things, telegrams, these days, Sarah,” Bel said, seeking thus to conquer the quick stab of alarm.

  “Yes, mam.” Sarah’s voice was hoarse. She saw her mistress break the trembling envelope, saw her face turn grey and fixed, heard her say: “Thank you. There’s no reply.” And watched her as she moved to close the door.

  “Oh, Mrs. Moorhouse, what is it?”

  Bel’s voice seemed infinitely tired. “Seriously wounded.”

  “Not our Mr. Tom?”

  Bel nodded. There might be days of paralysing anxiety, now, until they knew more. And then? No, the ultimate fear must be pushed away.

  “But is that all it says?”

  Again Bel nodded. She stretched out a hand towards this old friend. “Come into the parlour and stay with me for a little, Sarah. I’ll be all right if you do that. Just the two of us alone. Before I telephone his father or anything.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE waiter came in as usual, left Robin’s morning coffee tray by his bedside, threw open the long sun shutters, and went.

  Now Robin lay, his hands behind his head, looking out at the brilliance of the sky, which, but for the top of a palm tree, was all he could see from his bed.

  His feelings were flooded with pleasure at the thought of a new day. What a stroke of luck that he had met Denise St. Roch down here! That a writer so accomplished, so entirely charming, so sympathetic to himself, should give him her advice and friendship was a joy he could not have foreseen. He wished he could write home telling them what Denise was doing for him. But Sir Henry, he was afraid, would disapprove. Now, for a moment, as he lay thinking, resentment clouded Robin’s face.

  But with so much approval down here, why think of its lack elsewhere? To banish the picture of Sir Henry disapproving, he made for himself another that he liked better: the picture of his friend as she looked the other day sitting perched on her grey mule while it made its way up the dusty mountain track to Castellar. Her quick smile; her elegant boyishness; her tart, American gaiety.

  Robin had, indeed, become much obsessed by the thought of Denise. But the obsession was still strangely unaware, strangely virginal.

  At last he stirred, and drew the tray towards him. Now, as he did so, he saw a letter addressed to him in his father’s hand. He cut it open with no expectation of interest. His father had written him several letters since he had come here: letters filled with enthusiasm over the happenings in Hayburn and Company, enthusiasm he did not share. His mother’s, he reflected as he unfolded the sheet, were better. She wrote of things he liked to hear about.

  “My dear Robin,” the letter ran, “this must be very short, but it has good news for you. I have bought the house and property of Whins of Endrick near Drymen. Your mother likes it and is very pleased. It is, as you know, a grand district. We can see the Ben from the windows. You will be coming home when the weather is warmer, which should not be long now. We will certainly try to be settled in time for your arrival. A summer out there should put you right on to your feet and let you get on with your studies. Your mother will be writing to tell you what the place looks like.

  “We are both very well. Warm love from us both. Tell the uncles about this.

  “Your affectionate father,

  “HENRY HAYBURN.”

  For a time Robin lay back on his pillow. This letter had, somehow, fallen like a stone through the brittle surface of his happiness.

  Now he threw back the bedclothes, put his bare feet to the floor, then, taking the letter into his hands, flung himself into a chair by the window. Here in the sunlight he re-read what Sir Henry had written. His father called this good news, but Robin could not see it so. “You will be coming home when the weather is warmer, which should not be long now.”

  But Robin wanted to stay where he was. This letter made him realise how much. Here, in these few weeks, his spirit had grown wings!

  Thanks to Denise St. Roch. Robin folded the letter once more, and bent forward, his dark hair hanging, his elbows on his knees, contemplating the sunlight as it fell upon his veined feet. No. He did not want to leave her. If Mentone meant Denise, then in Mentone he must stay. Until now he had let himself drift in a dream without a future. That was finished. His father expected him to come home soon and follow the old, dull ways. Robin hoped he would not be well enough to go. He felt, even, that a continued threat of illness would not be too high a price to pay for his liberty. And this new country house? He neither knew just where it was, nor cared. For him it would be prison.

  There was a knock at his door. Robin stood up hurriedly. Before he had time to throw his dressing-gown about him, Stephen Hayburn entered, bathed and shaved, but not yet dressed.

  “Morning, Robkin!” The name this uncle gave to Robin. “I was on my way from my bath. Hullo? Is everything all right? Let me have a look at you.”

  “I’m all right.”

  But Stephen took hold of Robin’s shoulders and turned him to the light. To distract attention from himself, Robin held out the letter.

  His uncle sat down in the chair he had just quitted, and, being without his eyeglass, held it at a pompous arm’s length. “Oh! Your father has got that house, has he? I know it. Nice place. Of course! I did hear the old woman had died, and that she had no heirs. Well, that should be very nice for you.” Stephen looked up. “My dear Robkin! What on earth is the trouble? Look here. You’re too excitable; that’s what’s wrong with you!”

  Robin’s face was flushed, and he looked unhappy. “See. You haven’t had your coffee yet. Have it quick and get dressed. And I’ll come back and talk to you.”

  But the last thing Robin wanted was a searching talk with his uncle. What purpose could it serve? What was there to say? He must be dressed and away from here before Stephen returned.

  He washed, flung on his clothes, gulped down a cup of coffee, and left the hotel by a back way in a shorter time than he would have believed possible.

  He had told himself that he wanted to escape merely in order to think. But now he found his feet taking him up in the direction of the Rue Longue. And why not? Why not go to Denise? It was still early. But it was her custom, he knew, to be early at work.

  As he stood on her landing, panting, a shyness overcame him. What could he say to her? Why, indeed, had he come? Yet he could not bring himself to turn and go downstairs again.

  Having regained some breath, he knocked. There was no answer. He knocked once more, and yet no one came. This was strange; strange that she should have left her studio at this hour. He put his ear to the door to hear if anyone moved inside, but the door was old and thick, and there were other noises on the staircase and from the street below.

  Robin turned and went down slowly. He spent the rest of the morning aimless, unhappy and alone.

  II

  Philomene wondered what was wrong with Mademoiselle St. Roch. She could see her out there ranging up and down her balcony in a dressing-gown, unable, it would seem, to settle down to anything. Philomene was the Mentonese woman who came to clean the studio each morning. She knew, by this time, that Mademoiselle was a writer, and that she liked thus to wander back and forth, thinking out her work.

  But today there was more annoyance than thought in Mademoiselle’s face. Something had upset her. What was it? Why didn’t she come in, have that shower-bath of hers, and get dressed?

  For a time Philomene gave herself over to reflections about Mademoiselle’s toilet. It was strange, speedy, and almost masculine. Standing there in her shallow tin bath, she allowed that shower she had somehow rigged for herself to play on her head, while she soaped down
her firm, slim body. Philomene liked helping Mademoiselle dry herself; to watch her bend to rub her dripping hair with a thick towel; to see the close fair curls spring back into shape all over her head, crisply like a boy’s. And Philomene had seen little evidence that Mademoiselle did much, or indeed anything, with her skin to get that look of brilliance. Indeed, she seemed to take all that for granted. Now, if Mademoiselle had been French—

  But Philomene was right about Denise. She was restless and out of temper. As usual, she had risen early and begun to work. This morning, however, the going had been slow, ideas had refused themselves, and presently she had made up her mind to stop trying and have coffee, hoping thus to induce them to come.

  But after breakfast things had gone no better. She had downed tools and come out here determined to look for reasons for this mental standstill. There had been a letter from New York yesterday telling her that a set of magazine stories had been rejected. That, of course, was annoying. She had written them by request. Still, these stories would sell elsewhere. Such things had happened before. No. That might keep certain hypersensitives from work for a day, but she could not afford to be so temperamental. Denise liked to see herself as a disciplined craftswoman, ever fit and ready to take up her pen.

  Indeed, she had been talking to Robin Hayburn about this just yesterday. “If you must have moods,” she had told him, “then you must learn to turn on the right mood at the right moment, or you’ll never get anywhere.”

  Which brought her to Robin. Thoughtfully, Denise stopped to twist with mechanical affection the pointed ears of her great wolfhound as he lay out here in the sunshine. Down below in the harbour and beyond the morning sea lay calm and blue, except where a yacht, moving across its surface, left a fan of waves—broken waters that sparkled.

  Now somehow the thought of Robin filled Denise with a sharp sense of irritation. Was he beginning to take up too much of her time? Of her thought? Was his eagerness somehow taking possession of her—of her work?

  Denise turned from her dog and continued to pace the balcony. Was Robin altogether too unaware? Was he too ready to accept that theirs was only a friendship? She wondered now what would happen if she decided otherwise. But today, at all events, work was no good. Perhaps in the evening. Now she might as well give herself a holiday.

  III

  As she came inside to dress, there was a knock at her door. “See who it is, Philomene,” she said, “A message? For me?” She broke the hand-delivered letter open.

  This was opportune. A friend she had believed to be on his way to New York had sent an early messenger from Monte Carlo with a note to say he was dropping over to Mentone to see her. And could she meet him at the railway station?

  Denise was pleased. Had it been a day when ideas were coming, she would perhaps have welcomed the interruption less. But even then—well, Sam Carrick was the best of men and a good friend. She would have felt obliged to stop work for him.

  As she hurried with her dressing, there was another knock. Again she was about to tell the woman to answer when she recognised it as Robin’s. She laid a finger on her lips and motioned to Philomene not to stir. She did not want to see him this morning. She wanted to give the day to Sam Carrick, to enjoy his company and hear the Paris gossip.

  The two women stood still for a time. The knock came again. They continued to stand. At last Denise crossed barefoot to the door. Through its thickness she caught the sound of footsteps descending. All was well. Presently she would go to meet her friend.

  “Hullo, Denny, you old humbug! How are you? It’s good to see you!”

  “Humbug? You’re the humbug, Sammy! I thought you were on your way home!” She was fond of this great, loose-built countryman of hers. His thirty-five years sat proudly on his large shoulders. When his hand took yours, you felt it crushing in the bones. “Sammy,” she had once told him, “there’s an awful lot of you!” To which he had replied: “Well? Can’t have too much of a good thing. Can you, Denny?”

  They had to disentangle themselves from the crowd at the railway station, and were making their way towards the public gardens before he had opportunity to say: “I am going home. But I was sent down here on a special assignment. Nothing much. Scandal among crowned heads, that I didn’t particularly want to handle. But I got what I was told to get and sent it.”

  “Interesting?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  He was comforting, somehow, this great creature. He radiated an easy strength, an abundance of masculinity, as he ambled along beside her. In times past, Denise had known pangs of jealousy over the neurotic wife he had left behind him somewhere in upstate New York. “How’s Barbara and the boy?” she asked.

  “Grand. Well, the boy is, anyway. I’ll see them soon now. I sail in three days.”

  “I hope you didn’t mind me sending you those stories of mine to take with you to New York?” Denise said, trying the while to think kindly of Barbara’s nerves.

  “Mind, Denny? Do I ever mind anything you want me to do for you? And what about that story you sent along with them? Who’s this youngster Hayburn, anyway? I’ve got a letter about him for you. That’s partly why I came to see you.”

  But now Denise had turned to greet some friends who were sitting in a café by the gardens taking mid-morning coffee.

  IV

  Lucy Hamont had been drinking a solitary cup, when all at once she had become aware that Stephen Hayburn was bearing down upon her.

  Stephen’s middle-aged distinction was enjoying the sunshine. The coat and trousers of pale grey, the checked waistcoat encasing his neat rotundity, the black stock with the large pearl pin, the grey top hat and gloves all suited their wearer admirably. He was coming up the street as though he owned the Riviera. Now and then he held his glass to his eye in order to take in some detail of the fashionable rabble. This elegant girl. That bedizened dowager in the wheeled chair. These roses and carnations in a flower-woman’s basket. Those fluffy white puppy dogs, held out for sale in the rapacious brown hands of that fellah who looked like a bandit. A stranger would have guessed that here was some gentleman of consequence, who had, for half an hour, felt it his duty to remove his magnificence from the precincts of his stucco palace, for the purpose of bestowing lustre upon the morning promenade.

  As he came up to Mrs. Hamont sitting there on the pavement beneath the striped awning, Stephen raised the grey top hat and allowed himself to smile.

  Lucy’s face lit up. “Hullo! What have you done with David?”

  Stephen stopped, leant upon his cane, and looked down at her. “David? Oh, writing letters. Dutiful husband and all that sort of thing, you know.”

  “It’s much too fine this morning for duty.”

  “That’s what I said.” Stephen’s smile had become a little jaunty.

  “Have you had coffee?” Lucy hazarded. She liked Robin’s cheerful, rather dressy Hayburn uncle. Much better, indeed, than she now liked his Uncle David.

  “Yes. But how can I refuse to have some more?” He replaced the grey hat and sat down beside her.

  Stephen Hayburn looked about him with approval; at the palm-trees, drowsing over there in the public gardens, at the riot of flowers, at the colourful crowd. He smiled at Lucy with friendly intimacy. It was pleasant sitting here with this agreeable woman. He felt it was his right setting. He was glad David had refused to come out this morning. Now, with the sun’s heat penetrating his bones, Stephen felt not unlike a sleek and well-fed tom-cat whose days of mousing and the tiles were, perhaps, not so active as they had been, but were not yet so very far behind.

  “You haven’t seen my nephew Robin anywhere, have you?” he asked conversationally.

  “No. Why?”

  “He was a little unreasonable this morning. He seemed absurdly upset by a letter from my brother. He showed it to me. No bad news or anything. It was just to tell him they had bought a house and property outside Glasgow.”

  “They?”

  “Yes. His parents. Said som
ething about expecting Robin home soon to see it, and that sort of thing. Robin doesn’t appear to want to go or something. Which is a mystery to me. You would think—”

  “But didn’t Robin tell you why?”

  “No. I looked into his room after my bath. Said I would go and dress, and then come back and talk to him. But the bird had flown. Looks as if he meant to give me the slip.”

  Lucy looked at Stephen seriously. “The boy is living under some strain, Mr. Hayburn. I like him, I know why he’s been sent here and it worries me. I’m glad to be able to talk to you.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hamont.” Stephen sat drinking his coffee, while his eye followed the come and go on the pavement. (Dam’ smart-looking girl that with the grey poodle! French.) He decided he might now put a question to this woman beside him. “Then perhaps you’ll forgive me for asking: but, after all, this boy belongs to my brother, and you’re a friend of the family. Has Robin started some love affair down here?”

  Stretching a glove over her knee, Lucy considered this. “I’m beginning to think it’s quite possible.”

  Again Stephen took to watching the passers-by. Robin? Who would have thought it? No time since he was a little thing in a pram. Still, boys must keep growing up, he supposed. It made their uncles feel old, though. (Funny how foreigners never wore their clothes well. That man there, for instance. Expensively dressed and so on. But the hang of his coat was wrong.) He turned back to Lucy. “What about this American? He seems to be seeing a lot of her?”

  “Have you met Miss St. Roch?”

  “No, I haven’t. You know her well, do you?”

  “Miss St. Roch is a friend of mine.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” Then after a pause: “Well, after all, what business is it of ours?”