by Guy McCrone
Upon his eight o’clock coffee-tray he found the following letter:
“Dear Stephen Hayburn,
“I have been sitting up most of the night trying to write this.
“It would have been much easier for me never to write it at all, much easier, in one way at least, just to say goodbye when your stay here was ended and let you go. But I have taken more than one blind step in my life, and now, risking your good opinion of me, I am taking another. What you said to me tonight has at last decided me, unusual as it most certainly must appear to you.
“You seemed surprised that David Moorhouse had not told me of your circumstances. I did not answer you directly, because David had, indeed, done so. But it was one thing for David to tell me, and quite another thing for you to tell me on your own account.
“I wonder why you did it? Was it because you felt, as I myself have felt, perhaps wrongly, that a certain kind of sympathy was growing up between us? And did you feel it must not grow farther without my knowing how you stood in the world? That is what I should like to think—what, indeed, I did think, tonight—what touched me—what forced me to get up quickly and leave you.
“I am a lonely woman, Stephen Hayburn, who married, as I told you, late in life, mainly for companionship. My husband’s death has left me with a fortune which is free, well-secured, and quite in my own hands. It is large enough to provide a comfortable home for more than one person. My reason for not having had such a home is that I have felt unsettled and without roots in these last years.
“That, then, is what I have taken the risk of telling you, however awkward the telling; though such a letter from a woman to a man must always surely be awkward. And yet why should I, at my age, finding myself in a position to stretch out a hand towards a chance of happiness, not, indeed, do so? If, however, this letter seems to you a mere impertinence, then I must beg you as a gentleman to destroy it at once, saying nothing to anybody.
“I shall be on my way to Monte Carlo when you get this with your coffee. If you want to see me, then you will find me walking in the casino gardens at eleven this morning. If you do not come, I shall understand very well, and you will never see me again.
“God bless you.
“LUCY HAMONT.”
Shortly afterwards David looked in upon his friend. He found him standing in front of his dressing-table.
“Hullo, Stephen; up and about early?”
“Well, yes, I am, David.”
What was wrong with the man? He looked pink, troubled, and fussy. “Feeling all right, Stephen?”
“Of course!”
“What are we doing today? We arranged nothing last night.”
Stephen’s face turned lobster red at this and it took on a look of guilt. “Oh—do you mind, David? I find I have to meet a friend in Monte Carlo.”
“Friend? I didn’t know you knew—”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Someone has turned up.”
Stephen now looked so desperate, that amused malice took hold of David. “I might come with you. We could separate there if you don’t want me.”
“Much better not, David. Much better.”
“My dear boy! What is it? Invented a secret gambling system or something?”
“No. Not gambling. It’s something I can’t tell you now, David. If you’ll only leave me, I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
“Good. Of course. But why didn’t you say so at once?”
Without replying, Stephen turned to brush his thinning hair with hands that seemed none too steady.
There was nothing for David to do then but to close the door, withdraw to the garden and his newspaper, and spend the remainder of the day consumed by curiosity.
Chapter Seventeen
“THERE ye are, my dear. There’s something that should interest ye.” Arthur Moorhouse tossed a folded Glasgow Herald across the breakfast table.
Bel took up the newspaper. “What is it, Arthur? What do you want me to look at?” She turned to Sarah who had just come in to remove plates and to ask about fresh toast. “My spectacles should be on the mantelpiece, Sarah. Can you see them?”
Sarah found them, took them from their case, and came across to give them to her. These last weeks had left their mark on her master and mistress. This waiting for further news of Tom was a strain on all of them. Mr. Moorhouse looked thin, even for him, and his naturally deep-set eyes were beginning to have that sunken, luminous look that sometimes goes with old age. And the elegant face of Mrs. Moorhouse was showing lines that told of the lack of sleep; and now, as Sarah bent over the familiar head, it seemed to her that more grey hair was showing.
She did not, of course, express any of this. She wiped her mistress’s spectacles fiercely with a table-napkin, gave them to her, looked at her master, and said angrily: “Ye havena eaten yer porridge again this morning, sir! And no’ much ham ither! Have ye made up yer mind to leeve on air?”
“I’m gettin’ on fine, lassie! Never you heed!”
With the spring of her eye-glasses pinching her nose, Bel’s expression was even more severe than she intended, as she arched her brows in criticism, first of her husband, then of her maid. Must the language of the Glasgow streets invade Grosvenor Terrace? “Well, really!” she said quietly, after what she judged to be a pregnant pause. Thereafter her eyes dropped once more upon the morning newspaper.
“Where is it, Arthur? How am I to know what you mean?”
“Marriages. Second from the bottom.”
“Help me to find it, Sarah.”
Sarah was taking a pair of thumbed steel spectacles from a pocket of her morning wrapper as her mistress exclaimed: “What! Stephen Hayburn! And the woman must be Lucy Rennie! Phœbe met her. Well, that’s extraordinary! At his age! And at hers!” She turned primly to Sarah. “Sir Henry Hayburn’s brother, Mr. Stephen Hayburn, has just been married in France to a lady we knew years and years ago, Sarah. That’s what the master wanted me to see. It was quite unexpected.”
Sarah found nothing to reply to this. She had hoped it might be something worth reporting to old Bessie, the cook downstairs. Disappointed, she put her spectacles back into her pocket, collected the plates with gestures which told more plainly than speech that for her Mr. Stephen Hayburn could marry a female Hottentot if he felt so inclined, and went off to her pantry.
Arthur smiled to himself at his wife’s eagerness. This was what he had intended. Anything to tear her mind from the care that beset it. Here was a glint of the real Bel, genteelly reproving, and hard on the scent of family gossip. It was a glint that pleased him.
She laid down the newspaper. “I wish I knew more about this!” she said, looking out of the window behind him, at the trees over there in the Botanic Gardens, at the traffic on Great Western Road as it passed up and down in the pale, watery sunshine.
Arthur got up. “Oh, ye’ll be hearin’, my dear! David’ll be back one o’ these days. It’s time I was away.” He bent down to kiss her, a custom he had revived after many years of morning forgetfulness and hurry, revived to show he shared this tension, revived as a comfort to himself. In two minutes more he was swinging himself up the outside steps to the top of a city tram-car, still with the agility of a young man.
II
On this same morning David Moorhouse appeared at Bel’s front door. He had travelled by night from London and breakfasted alone at a station hotel. He had looked in neither at club nor office, for he was determined to see Bel before others knew of his arrival.
David and Bel were confederates of long standing. From David’s first days in Glasgow, the happy, rising days of Bel’s early married life, they had been close friends, each understanding the other’s point of view, in a way that the rest of the family could not. Now he had come to consult her about Robin, before he saw either Henry or Phœbe Hayburn.
Just before David left the Riviera, Stephen, who was now remaining for some time longer with his wife, had judged it best to tell David what he knew. It was b
etter, Stephen felt, that nothing should be set down in a letter.
A pompous indecision, coupled with a nervous overdiscretion, and, too, a genuine desire to help, had been weighing upon David more and more, the nearer he got to Glasgow. Last night he had lain in his sleeping-berth as he flew northward, turning this way and that, wondering how and what to tell the Hayburns. But at last the thought of first seeing Bel had dropped into his mind as a lifebelt drops into a stormy sea.
He found her in the back parlour, which she chose to call the library.
“David! I heard you were coming home this week, but I had no idea when. Are you alone? Did Grace meet you?”
“No. I wanted to see you first. I came on the night train.” He bent to kiss this sister-in-law, who had long stood closer to him than any of his own sisters.
“See me? Have you had breakfast?”
“I’ve had breakfast. I’ve come to talk to you. To get your advice.” He took off his travelling coat, and was laying it over a chair, settling himself down, when the change in Bel’s appearance prompted him to ask: “What about Tom, my dear?”
“Still waiting, David.” She sat down by the fire, clasped her hands in her lap, looked up at him and smiled a little. “It’s a strain. But we’ll get news soon. Sit down and tell me everything. This wedding of Stephen’s. And to Lucy Rennie, of all people! How did you feel about that?”
The colour in David’s cheeks rose. So Bel remembered.
She saw his embarrassment and laughed. “I never really knew just how near you got to marrying Lucy Rennie yourself,” she said. “I often wondered. I think you might tell me now that it can’t matter.” But as the plump, handsome man on the chair across the hearth merely stroked his head with one hand and said nothing, she added: “Well, for everybody’s sake, she’s much better to be married to Stephen Hayburn than to you.”
But David was somehow looking as though he did not quite agree with that either.
“You wouldn’t change her for Grace, would you, David?”
“No. Oh no, not now.” He said this with so little enthusiasm, however, that Bel decided to give up teasing him.
But really! What did men want? There was David. He had married Grace Dermott, who had given him his wealth, his position, his influence, and everything else; in addition to her own charming and gentle self and the two fine children she had borne him! And yet he could still, it seemed, cast back a lingering regret in the direction of a second-rate might-have-been, a woman who had neither bank account nor background, a paid performer!
“And tell me about Robin,” she said, determinedly changing the subject.
“It’s Robin I want your advice about. That’s why I’m here. He has got himself mixed up with a young woman in Mentone, and Stephen thinks I should speak to his father.”
Again, for an instant, Bel wondered at the ways of men. Now David had lost all embarrassment. Now he had become the serious uncle, one of the reproving family pillars upon which the Moorhouse good name must rest. That he had once been “mixed up”, as he called it, with Lucy Rennie, and this, when he was years older than Robin and already promised in marriage, had already, it seemed, dropped from his mind.
But Bel’s interest was caught. “Speak to his father, David? But you talk as if this were serious. The boy is only twenty!”
“It is serious, Bel. Even if the boy is only twenty.” He got up, stood with his back to the fire, looked down upon his sister-in-law, and repeated: “Very serious, indeed.”
III
A door flew open to admit David’s oldest sister, Sophia Butter. “Bel, dear! David! What luck! You’ll be able to tell us everything! Mary’s in the hall taking off her galoshes! Anne’s helping her! Fancy! Lucy Rennie and Stephen Hayburn! Of all people! And were you at the wedding? Mary, here’s David! And are you just back, David? Mary, David’s just back. It would be a funny French wedding, was it? I saw a picture once, and they all had on evening clothes and white ties. How are you, Bel dear? Taking care? That’s right. And David’s all sunburned and well! Mary, doesn’t David look well?” Sophia kissed Bel and David impulsively, drew a wisp of worn fur from her neck, and was already sitting down by the table as Mary, followed by her daughter Anne, came serenely into the room, presented an ivory cheek first to her sister-in-law, then to her brother, and sat down in the chair he had just got up from.
Bel sent David a look of despair, which David acknowledged with a look of annoyance. Their niece Anne saw this, understood, and wondered what could be done. Bel had suffered these sudden invasions—on the whole good-naturedly—all her married life. But now she was angry. “I didn’t hear you coming in,” she said coldly.
“The door was open, dear. Your cook, Bessie, was polishing the letter-box,” Mary said.
This did nothing to soothe Bel. Letter-boxes in Grosvenor Terrace should be polished before breakfast, not at eleven in the morning. She must speak to Cook about this. But that did not excuse Mary’s tale-bearing, nor yet her smug tones. Bel, in her annoyance, decided that there would be no morning tea for any of them.
Now Mary was sitting, regal in black silk and sealskin—the sealskin a present from Arthur, who, in a fit of highly provoking generosity, had said he did not like to see his widowed sister going about shabby—placidly leading the talk. “And when did you come home, David?”
“This morning,” he answered shortly.
“Only this morning, David dear? We had heard you were coming home this week. But I said to William, you’ll see—”
“Sophia! Sophia, please! I’m talking to David!” Mary’s voice was seldom loud, but it would be firm.
“But I just wanted—”
“No, Sophia! And, David, tell us about this wedding.”
“Well? What do you want to know about it, Mary? I don’t see why you should be particularly interested. They were married last week in Nice. Robin and I were witnesses.” David spoke querulously. It was intolerable that these foolish sisters of his should be here to waste his time.
But Mary, her curiosity still unsatisfied, chose to disregard this querulousness. “You forget I’ve always known Lucy Rennie. Why shouldn’t I be interested, dear?” she said, adding pleasantly: “And where are Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hayburn now?”
“Still in Mentone, of course!”
“I don’t see why you should say ‘of course’, David. They might quite as well be somewhere else. But I am sorry to hear they’re still there. Especially with you away now. I’ve always thought—haven’t I, Bel?—that a woman like Lucy Rennie was no kind of friend for any young man.”
“I don’t remember what you thought, Mary,” Bel said.
“Oh yes, Bel, dear, surely you do!” Sophia hastened to interpose. “Mary has always thought so. And William and I have always—”
“And what have they got to live on? Lucy must have some money now, I suppose.” Mary raised her voice a little, managing thus once again to stem the flow.
“I really don’t know, Mary! Why don’t you write and ask for all particulars?”
It was not often that David showed temper like this. The ivory of Mary’s cheeks became tinted. But her smile was controlled and kind as she shook her head and said: “David! David! It was only a very natural interest in an old friend!”
“Friend!”—David was beginning, when his niece actually dared to come to his rescue.
“Uncle David looks very tired after his long journey, Mama. And I’m sure he has come in specially to see Auntie Bel. I think we should go. Don’t you, Auntie Sophia?” This was a rare outburst of courage for Anne.
Sophia at once became an incontinent flood of compassion and apology, which was just what Anne had intended. A flood that swept Sophia, her niece, and her astonished sister out of Bel’s front door.
IV
“Somebody should rescue Anne from that mother of hers,” David said.
Bel scarcely bothered to consider this. Anne’s only chance was marriage. And that chance, Bel felt, was becoming increasingly re
mote. “Tell me about Robin, David,” she said, dismissing her unwanted visitors from her mind.
He settled down to the story that had brought him to Grosvenor Terrace. Stephen and Lucy had, he said, come to his room on his last night in Mentone and told him everything. They had decided that he should share the responsibility of knowing. Now in his turn David had come to Bel.
Gazing at the flickerings of the parlour fire, she sat considering for a time. Henry Hayburn’s own son. There was much in that. Now, raising her eyes for an instant, she looked at David. No. David, had never been ‘mixed up’ as badly as this. He was too canny, too much of a Moorhouse ever to have given way to real foolishness. But she was genuinely sorry. She had always liked Robin. “Pity to send him down there, just to be caught like that!” she said presently.
“Caught, Bel? Who’s caught him?”
She raised her eyes to him once more. “That woman, of course! What does she look like?”
“Attractive.”
“I thought so. Well, don’t you see, David? You say he’s talking about marrying her?”
“Yes. He did to Stephen. I don’t think he has talked to Miss St. Roch yet.”
But Bel’s innocent shrewdness—the innocent shrewdness of her class, her times, and her creed—would have none of this. “David, how can you be so simple? If he hasn’t talked to her, she will have talked to him! We can be sure of that! Hasn’t she heard that Robin belongs to Sir Henry and Lady Hayburn? To rich people? Do you think she would have—well, gone so far, if she didn’t mean to hold him? Of course! A woman like that is providing for her old age. A fortune-hunter! An adventuress!” She turned once more to the fire, leaving David time to see reason.
David got up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and paced Bel’s parlour. He supposed she must be right. And yet he had not thought of this before. Lucy and Stephen didn’t think there was any fortune-hunting in it. He said: “Their fear is for Robin, when she leaves him. They feel his health may suffer dangerously.”
