by Guy McCrone
He walked on, his feelings pulled in many directions at once. Why hadn’t he got this when he was happy and unconfused? When he had nothing to bother him? He would have been able to give himself up to the pleasure of it. But now there was this morning’s letter from his father, expecting him home soon. A letter he had hoped to talk over with Denise. Talk over with that unfriendly Denise who, it seemed, didn’t want him!
All at once, jealousy flared like a meteor across Robin’s sky. He halted, hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should go back, then angrily he thrust his hands once again into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and continued down the street. Was it possible that Denise was in love with this Sam Carrick? The idea was unbearable!
Robin had taken no account of where he went. Now he had come down behind his own hotel and was on the promenade by the sea. Confused, he stood for an instant. A man on a bicycle swerved to avoid him. An elegant French automobile tooted its horn stridently, then powdered him with dust, as, grazing him, it rushed by. The ladies in their fluttering veils looked back to make quite sure he was unhurt. The driver in his linen dust-coat took one hand from the steering-wheel to shake an angry, leather fist. Scarcely noticing, Robin crossed the road, and continued to walk by the sea.
Unbearable! But why should he care so much? Why should he feel this misery? Had he fallen in love with Denise St. Roch himself, then? It seemed so. And he had always been told that love, when it came, would make him happy! But she didn’t want him. Didn’t, even after this letter, seem interested in his work. Didn’t want to see anybody but that man Carrick.
The Mistral, blowing along the Riviera today, had evaded the mountain defences of Mentone. Papers and dust followed Robin as he strode along in the direction of Italy. Little waves slapped the rocks.
He had better go home, after all. Better get back to where he belonged, whenever health allowed it. And yet, no. Now he had been told he could do something. Told he had a gift. If only he knew how to find a market for it! But he would find out somehow. He would stay here and work. He would earn something and lead his own life. And Denise could—
But he had better go and see her again. Just to be quite certain how he stood with her. The more he thought of this, the more it became a compulsion. But not now. Not while that man was there. Carrick would be gone tomorrow. Or hadn’t there been something about a tram-car back to Monte Carlo just after dinner? Well, tonight, then. If he felt he had enough command of himself to behave with proper dignity.
Robin turned to go back. He put up the collar of his jacket. He was feeling cold.
IV
Denise, having seen Carrick mount a tram-car for Monte Carlo, was returning through the lighted town to her studio.
She had been sorry to let her friend go. He had brought with him a breath of the cheerful tolerance, the pleasant bohemianism that went to make up what had come to be her normal life here in France. She thought of Paris now, and felt homesick for it. In Mentone the atmosphere had somehow become emotionally sultry. Robin’s friendship, casually begun, had become too intense.
She had climbed up from the West Town into the older streets and now, for a moment, she was leaning on the balustrade of the stone terrace commanding the little paved cathedral square. Here she stopped to regain her breath, look about her, and allow herself to think. Down there, across the square and beyond the wide steps by which she would presently descend into the Rue Longue, she could see the lights of the villas encircling Garavan Bay, the lights of craft in the harbour and, far away, the diamond pinpoints ringing the bay of Bordighera.
Now as she came down to cross over she could hear church music. Now there was a breath of incense. Now, for a moment, she was a child at home again in New Orleans, kneeling in the great cathedral of St. Louis, fronting Jackson Square.
But an evening breeze blew away the memory, along with the incense that evoked it. No. She stood alone now, doing as she pleased, following her star.
As she turned into her own entrance, she heard footsteps descending, and prepared herself to give good evening to a neighbour as he passed her on his way down. But in a moment she found herself looking up at the shape of Robin Hayburn, dimly outlined against a feeble staircase light.
“Hullo, Denise. I’ve just been at your door.”
“Have you?” In her present mood she was not particularly glad to see him. “I’ve just been seeing Sam off. We had dinner in town together. I’m tired now, Robin.” But he seemed determined to ignore this. She had passed him on the stairs as she spoke, but he was coming up behind her. At the top he held out his hand.
“Give me the key. I know best how it works.”
When he had opened, she went in before him and struck a match in the darkness to find the lamp.
“Look. I’ll light it. Give me the matches.”
She let him do that, too, although this boyish possessiveness did nothing to soothe her feelings.
“Tell me about Mr. Samuel Carrick.” Robin’s superior tones were full of jealousy. But whatever they were full of, Denise had little patience for them.
“What do you want to know about Mr. Samuel Carrick?”
“Oh. Everything.”
“That’s a great deal, Mr. Hayburn.”
“Well, perhaps not everything, Miss St. Roch. But is he a great friend of yours, for instance?”
“A great friend.” Denise took off her long cloak and threw it across the sofa. Now, leaning against her table, she stood watching him, her exasperation mounting. “Well?” she said. “Anything else you would like to know about Sam Carrick?”
His voice was aggressive, as he turned to ask the next question. “How long have you known him?”
“A few years.”
Robin took to walking gloomily about the lamp-lit room. At length, however, he stopped to say: “You don’t happen to be in love with him, do you?”
Denise had no intention of standing this. “Look here! You had better go home! If it’s my life-story you want you won’t get it tonight!” And seeing him hesitate: “Go on! Go away!”
“Denise! I didn’t mean—!”
“Go away! Now!”
“All right. I’m going.”
But as he went to the door he heard her say: “All the same, you may as well know that Sam has a wife he adores. In three days’ time he’s sailing for home.”
“I don’t care what he’s doing!” Robin slammed the door behind him.
Denise felt her pulses beating, as she set about making herself some coffee. Had she been too harsh with him? Well tonight she didn’t care. And he was badly needing to grow up. That Robin Hayburn—a man, after all—should show such childish jealousy was utterly absurd. But she did not really want to lose him. She would make it up soon by sending round a note or something. She liked him too much. And there was no need to worry. Of course she could whistle him back whenever she felt like it.
But was there knocking on her door? Was that Robin? Hadn’t he gone away? She went to it, calling loudly through its thickness: “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Denise! Let me come in and speak to you.”
Her laughter was a little out of control as she turned the handle from inside.
As he came back into the room he, too, seemed over-wrought. “Denise, I’m very sorry! I had no right to talk to you like that. Please forgive me!”
His foolish look of repentance as he stood there awkward before her, touched, suddenly, the hot quick of her sympathy. Thus surprised in her feelings, Denise clutched at the first words that came. “Are those the kind of manners you keep in Scotland, Robin? I’ve always heard that your people—”
“They’re not my people!” Robin burst in. “I haven’t a drop of Scotch blood in me! I’ve never told you! They picked me up in Vienna!” And as she had nothing to reply, he went on: “Denise, I don’t want to go back! My real parents were artists! I want to stay here working beside you, earning my own living!”
What was wrong with the boy? What was he talkin
g about? Was this nonsense or the truth? And why at this moment? But now, somehow, she could not bear his unhappiness. She went to him, put her arms about him, and kissed his cheek. “Robin,” she said, “what is it?”
“Denise!” In his turn he clung to her. “I tell you, I don’t belong to him at all!”
Him? Who was him? “Well, it doesn’t matter tonight, surely?”
“Yes, it does! I tell you it does matter!”
He was shouting, and she could feel his body trembling in her arms. How could she bring comfort to him? Resolve for him this unexplained crisis? Loosen these fiercely stretched strings? “Quiet, Robin. Quiet.” She put her lips against his mouth.
Now she felt his grasp tighten, his own lips press harshly in return. Now his body did not tremble. It had become importunate and male. “Robin! No!” But as he held her thus, refusing to let her go, this very refusal turned sweet to her feelings.
She would go to meet his inexperience.
V
When Robin got back, he went to his room, threw himself fully clad upon his bed, and lay there staring at the ceiling. He sought to recall those moments of trembling excitement: those moments of emotion, dazzled and seeking, then utterly resolved. How had this come about? And what would happen to him, now that he knew what it was to be a man? Would this knowledge change him fundamentally?
His vibrant senses remembered everything and nothing. Was he glad or sorry? He did not think of this. He felt bewildered and released. That was all. The world of adult awareness had opened to him; a world of fulfilment towards which, so far, his fledgling instincts had only groped and stumbled.
Chapter Fifteen
AS he came outside, Robin found Mrs. Hamont and his uncles sitting round a table in the garden. “Good morning, everybody,” he said. “Good morning, Mrs. Hamont.”
Lucy looked up at him. “Good morning, Robin. Had a good night?”
“At any rate, he didn’t hear me when I looked into his room about eleven,” his Uncle David said.
Robin shook his head. As he did so, his eye caught Lucy’s, and at once he looked away again, turning to address the black Persian cat that had just then jumped up on the table. “Bonjour, Grimaldi,” he said, making a ring of his fingers and running them down the creature’s waving tail. “I’m going into town for a scribbling-pad, Uncle Stephen,” he added. “Would you like to come with me?”
“Must I come at once?” Stephen asked.
“Yes. This minute.”
Good-naturedly, his uncle got up to go with him.
Lucy sat watching the two retreating figures. The more she saw of Stephen Hayburn, the more she was coming to like him. He took life, she found, very much on her own level. He liked clothes to be smart, manners to be good, the corners of life to be round and polished. They had begun to establish an intimacy, too, over Robin and the problem of Robin. Stephen’s attitude of tolerance suited Lucy’s ideas exactly. “I like your friend Mr. Hayburn, David,” she said presently.
“Stephen? But you’ve met him before, surely?”
“You forget how little I’ve been in Scotland, David. Sir Henry and Stephen Hayburn come from an established Glasgow family, don’t they?”
“Well, it depends what you mean by established. The Hayburns lost their money in the City Bank failure, you know. Henry, of course, has made his again. But well—” here David became confidential—“between ourselves, Lucy, I’ve had to keep Stephen ever since.”
“Keep him?”
“He was my greatest friend. And I’m the chairman of Dermott Ships. You knew that, didn’t you?”
Lucy inclined her head.
“Well”—David puffed his cigar for a moment—“there it was. Poor Stephen had to have some kind of life arranged for him. So I made a place in the firm.” David looked about him with conscious benignity, then added: “He’s my guest here, of course.”
Lucy did not like this. She thought it ill taste that David should thus crudely demonstrate his own goodness by exposing his friend’s lack of worldly gear. Now David was looking as though he were awaiting her praise, but instead of giving it she merely asked: “Did Mr. Hayburn never marry?”
“No money, poor chap.”
She smiled. “He might have married it, you know.”
“Not so easy for a man who has none of his own.”
Lucy stood up. She had almost to bite her tongue to keep from saying: “What about yourself?” This smugness in the Moorhouse family had always displeased her. But again she only smiled. “I really must go. I’ve promised to meet someone. Goodbye, David.”
She put up her parasol, caught her skirts from the dust and went.
II
“I’m glad to get you by yourself, this morning, Uncle Stephen,” Robin said as together they walked towards the old town.
“Why this morning, particularly, Robkin?”
By most standards, Stephen Hayburn’s life had been ineffective. He had made a cult of leisure, of taking the easy way. The current of his purpose, if ever he had a purpose, had not run deep; it had tended to disperse itself, running over the side-shallows, many of them sunlit and pleasant. Stephen had not been a striver. And the lack of this very quality had, perhaps, allowed him to taste life, to develop the tolerant sympathy that Lucy Rennie admired.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Uncle Stephen, and I want you to help me,” Robin said.
Stephen turned to look at him. “Of course, Robkin. Well?”
As they passed under the plane-trees of the Quai Bonaparte, the half-sprouted leaves on the branches above them spotted the cobbles with shadow. A fisherman sat on the ground. Part of his net was dragged over his knees as he mended a rent in it. His thick fingers worked quickly, joining and knotting; muscle and sinew stood out on his spare brown arms. Across the Quai, the little eating-houses were getting ready for the day’s business. Chairs were piled out of doors, water was thrown down, tables were scrubbed and floors sanded.
“Would you like to walk along the jetty, Robin? Or do you want to get to the shops?” Stephen asked. The boy, it seemed, had something on his mind, something he was finding difficult to say.
“Yes. We might.”
As they climbed up the stone stairs to the high walk along the wall, a light south breeze met them. Lazy waters rose and fell, green and frothing a little, among the broken rocks placed there to protect the jetty on the seaward side. Looking down, they could see the dark shapes of fish moving hither and thither in the swell.
They sat down together by the lighthouse. There was something incongruous in the sight of Stephen dangling his immaculate legs over the end of the wall. But here they were undisturbed in a world of light and water.
“I’m glad you saw that letter, Uncle Stephen,” Robin began.
“It would certainly be encouraging, if that was what you were setting out to do.”
“But that’s what I am setting out to do!”
His uncle turned to look at him. “I want to understand this, Robkin. Are you trying to tell me that you want to be a full-time writer?”
“Yes.” Robin looked at Stephen intently. “I’ve found my vocation in life. Can you doubt it now? And I want you to help me.”
“Help? In what way? How can I help?”
“You’re my father’s brother, aren’t you? You could explain to him.”
“Explain?”
“That I can never go into Hayburn and Company now, of course! Oh, that letter has made me so happy! I can’t tell you!”
But Stephen was by no means sure about this. Or rather he was sure. Very sure. He knew exactly how his brother Henry would take this decision of Robin’s. Besides, it was a rule of Stephen’s life never to mix himself into others’ quarrels, to avoid taking sides. For a time he sat looking about him. At the moving sea. At a steam yacht there close in front of him, rounding the jetty and coming in. At a tiny David, still by himself in the garden, yonder in the distance across the calm waters of the harbour.
“Ple
ase, Uncle Stephen!”
“It’s asking a great deal of me, Robkin. We both know very well what your father will say.”
“You’ve got a great influence with Father. More than anybody else.”
Stephen could not deny this. He knew it was true. Though why, he could hardly tell. “But, Robkin, you’ll soon be going home yourself.”
“I’m staying where I am!”
“What do you mean? How—? See here! If you want me to help you, you had better tell me what you have been doing since you came to this place.”
“Things have happened, Uncle Stephen. Everything is changed for me.”
Stephen turned to look at him. “Changed, Robkin?”
Robin appeared to be struggling with embarrassment. For a time he did nothing but stare down into the green waters there beneath them. But at last he clasped his hands between his knees, turned to his uncle, and blurted: “I’m terribly in love, Uncle Stephen!” He spoke in tones that might have been extorted on the rack.
“In love, Robkin? That’s no unusual thing at your age. I was—well, it doesn’t matter about me. But of course that explains all kinds of things. Why you want to stay here and all the rest of it.”
“No. Only partly. Or rather, it’s all mixed up together.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“But don’t you see? It’s Denise St. Roch who has changed everything for me!”
“You mean you’re in love with Miss St. Roch?”
“Of course!”
Stephen did not see any ‘of course’ about it. It could easily—more conveniently—have been some pert little baggage of Robin’s own age. A little Mentonese girl in a cake-shop. Or perhaps the pretty daughter of a British resident. But Miss St. Roch! A woman of the world who might be some ten, some twelve years older than the boy beside him!
Now his yesterday’s talk with Lucy Hamont came back to him. Had Miss St. Roch allowed Robin to make calf love to her? But the boy’s eyes were upon him, waiting. “Well? What do you want me to do about it?” Stephen asked.
