by Guy McCrone
Again she looked up. When she spoke, her voice was sharp. “And who are Stephen Hayburn and Lucy Rennie, to have opinions, David? Nothing very much themselves, by all accounts.”
He did not like this. Stephen was an old friend. And Lucy had once meant something to him. Why should Bel use these tones of contempt? But David still possessed the remains of an intuition. He now saw that Bel should not, perhaps, in these days of her own trouble, be asked for level judgments. “I think I’ll try to see Phœbe,” he said. “Have they flitted to Whins of Endrick yet?”
“No. They’re still at Partickhill. They go tomorrow.”
V
Phœbe sat on a packing-case in her empty drawing-room. Her brother David’s footsteps resounded on the bare floor. Down below she could see the remover’s men taking chairs and tables to the van. Straws and papers were everywhere: inside and outside, on the garden path, on the grass, tangled in the shrubs. Harsh spring light streamed through naked windows.
Henry and she would only sleep for one night more here in this house. Instinctive in most things, she hated leaving the place that had been her home for so many years; where Robin had grown up; from which Henry had gone each morning, striding down the hill. Tomorrow they would sleep at Whins of Endrick, where things would feel strange.
Now, as she looked at David, her mind, torn from leave-taking, was filled with what he had just told her.
“Bel is certain the girl has done this deliberately, so that Robin will be forced to marry her,” David said.
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes, I daresay it’s very likely.”
“Why, David?”
“Sir Henry Hayburn’s adopted son. A rich boy to be exploited. If not marriage, then she may hope to be bought off.”
Phœbe got up, went over to the window, looked down upon the men as they went to and fro, then turned once more to look at her brother. “What does this woman look like, David? Does she seem that kind of woman?”
“Well, she’s beautiful in a queer sort of way. But, no. Not like that.”
“I thought so.”
“Why, Phœbe?”
“I don’t know.” It was her turn to walk about the room now. She had lived in Vienna once; seen other ways. It was a strange assumption in this rigid Moorhouse world of theirs that such things could only take place for gain. Moorhouses measured life in terms of hard cash. No. Such things happened for all kinds of reasons. The idea of marriage was more likely to have its roots in Robin’s ignorance. She turned to David, who now sat on the packing-case. “But she must be very much older than Rob, David?”
“About ten years.”
“Marriage! Bel’s a fool!” She swung on her heel and continued walking about. “I wish I knew what to do!” she said desperately.
“About what, exactly?”
“Robin, of course. Robin’s health. Everything!”
“What about his behaviour?”
She shrugged. Her instinct had become crudely maternal. She could only wonder how to save him from a great unhappiness, unhappiness that might so darken his days as to bring disaster to him.
David waited.
“I don’t think I’m going to tell Henry about Robin,” she said presently.
“Why?”
“Well, not at once, anyway. He’s terribly busy with the Exhibition, for one thing. But it’s not that. I must try to save him. This would—oh, I don’t know—!”
David wondered why she should speak thus. Why should Henry be spared the duty of calling Robin to heel? From what must he be saved? But David could not read his sister’s heart. He could not see that she was seeking blindly for a way to stand between these two who were her all, to hold back each from wounding the other with a wound which might cut too deep for healing.
“Listen, David,” she went on. “Say nothing about this to anyone, please. Bel won’t talk. I may write to Stephen. He knows his way about better than Henry does. Henry has always been—I can’t exactly explain—so innocent in some ways.”
“What will you ask Stephen to do?”
Again she shrugged. “I must think. But I’ll let you know.”
As her brother held out a hand to say goodbye, a bell rang harshly through the half-empty house. The telephone was downstairs in the hall. Descending after her, David signed to the workmen to go more quietly, here, where everything reverberated.
“Hullo? Bel? Yes, Phœbe. I can hardly hear you. What? Tom? A wire just now? Oh, Bel, I’m glad! Oh, I see. But he’s alive and coming home. That’s all that matters. Yes. David’s here. I’ll give him the news. Yes, the house is full of people, but I’ll come across at once.” She turned to tell her brother. “Tom is on his way home. He’s had a foot off. But he’s all right in other ways. Poor Bel! She could hardly tell me!”
Phœbe stood on her doorstep watching David until he had gone. Starlings chattered on roof-tops. A blackbird kept on repeating its call from a tree misted with young green. Now the van was loaded up, and the driver was cracking his whip and shouting to the two great Clydesdale horses.
Phœbe sighed. Life was—but it didn’t matter what life was. She must hurry across to Bel.
Chapter Eighteen
IT was mid-morning.
Denise St. Roch appeared on her balcony ready to go out. “Are you going to stay here, Robin? I’m going to the shops.”
Robin, whose custom it now was to come up each morning just after breakfast and work beside her, raised his head. “I’m staying. I want to get on with this. Better take him with you, though.” He indicated the dog, Paul Morphy, panting in the sunshine. “He always begins to get restless. He won’t give me any peace.”
Followed by the great wolfhound, Denise took herself downstairs and into the Rue Longue.
It was a brilliant April day. At this hour the mounting sun struck down into the old, narrow street, making its springtime warmth felt.
The foreign young woman with her boyish head, her strange clothes, and her sandalled feet, was now a familiar sight among the friendly Mentonese. Philomene had, of course, told her friends about her. These had repeated what she told them, and thus, the human hive of the old town knew everything, approving what they knew. There she was now, erect and easy in her long, rope-girdled robe, smiling good-humouredly at the little children sitting in doorways, telling them not to mind her dog, and exchanging greetings with their mothers in a French that was purer than their own.
Here and there a knot of women, having stopped their morning gossip to return her salutation, turned to gaze when she had passed them by. This American girl was unlike all other Americans they had seen. She might lead her life in a way that was not their way, but was she not a writer, an artist? And were not all such gifted people queer? Queer, but certainly beautiful. It was no wonder that slender young man with the tumbling hair and the large eyes was forever to be seen going up to visit her. Philomene said—here heads drew close together. But why not? Besides, as the eager heads were never done agreeing, it was no affair of theirs, and who were they that they should inquire?
And for the time being, indeed, Denise had found her own kind of contentment. All tension with Robin, on her side at all events, had been relaxed. She was working well, was fond of the gentle, gifted young man who had become her lover, and was glad to leave things thus for the moment. Why look to the future? When the thread was running smooth, why seek to knot it?
Now she was doing everything to help Robin with his work. The old sting of jealousy had gone. That he had been adjudged a better artist than herself no longer troubled her. She was proud of him and anxious that his short, finely-wrought pieces—she felt their fineness, now the “old man” had said they were fine—should receive due recognition. She had, indeed, sent some of his work where she thought it might be used; and they were even now awaiting a decision.
Where the Rue Longue comes down into the lower town, Denise suddenly found herself face to face with Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hayburn.
She calle
d to them: “Oh, hello! I didn’t know you were back in Mentone. Robin never told me. Congratulations! You look just wonderful! My! My! Are we really blushing?”
All feathers and frills, the new Mrs. Hayburn held out her hand in a charmingly suitable confusion. “Don’t talk nonsense, Denise! What’s different about us? Two decrepit old creatures, determined to support and comfort each other in their decrepitude. Isn’t that it, Steve?”
But Stephen, more debonair than ever, would not allow this. Modishly dangling his eye-glass by its ribbon, he turned to his wife. “Decrepit rubbish, m’dear! Do we look decrepit, Miss St. Roch?”
Denise’s white teeth flashed in her glowing face. “Why, no! Haven’t I been telling you? You both look wonderful!”
They walked along together towards the shops, telling their news. After their marriage in Nice, they had thought of going to Paris, as they had found—the bridegroom in particular had found—that there was shopping to do. “A married man wants this and that, don’t you know.” Stephen, forced as he was to walk behind the ladies in the narrow, noisy street, shouted over their shoulders. But feeling they were not yet done with Mentone, they had compromised, and, as neither of them had seen Marseilles, they had gone to spend a day or two there. “Honeymoon in Marseilles! Something not quite respectable about the sound of it, wouldn’t you say, Miss St. Roch?” Stephen shouted again.
Lucy smiled back at him. “At our ages, I’m afraid there is nothing left to do but be respectable, my dear. “ As she turned back to Denise, she was surprised to find her preparing to leave them. “What? Already?”
“Yes. I can get through to where I’m going this way.”
As she made her way through a narrow side alley, Denise smiled a little. Marriage at over fifty made folks self-conscious and silly, she supposed. But these two would soon get over that.
II
When Denise had gone, Robin sat sucking the end of his pencil and looking from the high balcony. Since it was before midday, the sunlight was still streaming down upon the eastern side of the town. Here on this sheltered coast, early summer, it seemed, was almost come. In the near distance he could see a cascade of wistaria falling from the wall of a cliffside garden. A puff of warm spring wind brought him the scent of roses.
He swung back on his wicker chair, put his feet against the bars of the balcony, thrust his hands into his pockets and gave himself up to the pleasures of self-examination, a habit that had lost none of its attractions in these last days.
Was this what he had wanted? He supposed so. Happiness? He supposed that, too. An impossible hope seemed now to be coming true. He was to be a writer. Dreadful to think now how another, colder world had nearly claimed him! But yet, in spite of all, his artist’s blood had forced its way. Which all went to show—he could not quite think what it showed. But one thing was certain. The world to which he belonged was the world of passion and imagination. Robin tossed the eternal strand from his brow, and smoothed it back with one hand, determining in future to let his hair grow rather longer.
Passion and imagination. Passion. Denise. A great experience had come to him. Now, with the probing curiosity of a writer, Robin sought about within himself, examining facets of his feelings, examining his experience. He was, beyond disputing, deeply in love with her. With the turn of her head, with her warm southern voice, with her gaiety, with the slim perfection of her. This, his first love, obsessed and overwhelmed his twenty years. It walked with him when he walked. It met his waking moments. It wrapped him, in their times of exaltation, in a mist of quivering bliss. He had read somewhere that the first love of a very young man was bounded only by infinity. He could understand that. Such adoration and possession could be known only to a very few. It must be made to last forever.
Robin stood up and began to pace the balcony. Halting for a moment, his eyes followed the movement of a fishing-boat as, its red-triangled sail already hoisted, the men strove to row it from the harbour into the breeze that fanned the waters in the open bay.
He had sat at the end of the sea wall down there with his Uncle Stephen discussing what he must do. His uncle had begged time for reflection. But now that Robin came to think of it, what was there to reflect over? He loved Denise and she loved him. They would be married. What else? Already they belonged to each other.
Still, when it came to marriage—as soon, of course, it must—he might be glad of his uncle’s help. Marriage. Boyishly, Robin shrank from the thought of this grave step. And boyishly, too, though he had not spoken of marriage to Denise, it had never once struck him that she might have different notions.
Now he leant on the rail of the balcony, staring down and pondering. Carriages with linen sun-awnings ran round the bay. The distant jetty was alive with shouting fishermen. He could just see the heads of two swimmers out in the harbour, daring the April waters.
Yes. It might be better to talk to Uncle Stephen. For Uncle Stephen could help with his father.
Remembering Sir Henry, a cold breath of doubt blew through Robin’s mind. Uneasily he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and his thin, handsome face looked glum. Would it not indeed be better to discuss all this with Denise before he went much farther? Was not that the first thing he must do? But somehow he did not want to do it. Not yet awhile. He did not quite know why. She puzzled him. She could allow him to be so much to her, could give herself so wonderfully. Still, now that he thought of it, did not those little gay coolnesses of hers, those occasional moods of enchanting solemnity, keep their relationship on her terms, force it to take the pattern she had chosen to impose upon it? The dark mop fell forward as Robin gave his head a knowing, manly nod. Of course there must be much about Denise he did not understand. How could it be otherwise, when she had been his only for so short a time? Yet very soon he must speak to her of their future.
She found him thus, still mooning on her balcony, when she returned an hour later. “Well? Got a lot of work done?”
“Not much.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Thinking things out.” Then, as he turned to look at her: “Hello! You seem very pleased about something.”
“Yes, I am. And so will you be!” She held out an opened letter. “Look. They’re publishing your story. And paying twenty pounds. That’s a lot for a start, believe me! Delighted with it, and want more. Now, doesn’t that make you feel good?” He snatched the letter from her, ran his eye through it, then took her into his arms in a frenzy of exaltation. Here was confirmation. Here was the answer to his problem. Here was independence. “Denise, darling! I can’t believe it! Why all this—and you as well? Denise, we’re going to be rich, you and I! How will you feel, with your husband a prosperous writer like yourself?”
He had said it. He had said the word ‘husband’. He realised this as she kissed him then drew herself away gently and stood looking at him, a question in her face. But almost at once she came to him again and put her arms round his neck. “Robin, everything is going to be fine! But we needn’t talk about what’s going to be, just right away, need we, sweetheart? Sufficient unto—wouldn’t you say? And of course we’ll go on being very, very happy. And fix everything when the time comes.”
III
In the afternoon of this same day, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hayburn sat drinking tea in their pleasant sitting-room. A page-boy had brought up letters.
“Here’s one from Scotland,” Stephen said. “It’s handwriting I know, but I’m not quite sure whose.” He broke the envelope open, unfolded it, and turned to the signature. “Oh, Phœbe.”
“About Robin, Stephen?”
“Probably.”
“Then it’s sure to be full of difficulties. Put it down, dear, until you’ve finished tea.”
Letting the glass fall from his eye, Stephen did as he was told. With one hand he held out his cup to be refilled and twisted his moustache with the other. “Quite right, m’dear. Sure to be full of ’em. Why sup sorrow?” He smiled approval at his wife’s good se
nse.
But when, indeed, was Stephen Hayburn not smiling these days? And were not his reasons for smiling of the best? An amazingly short time ago he had been—well, actually the mere dependant of his friend David Moorhouse. Oh, David had always been very generous and good about it, and it had gone on for so long—over twenty years, was it?—that he, Stephen, could not really say he had much to grumble about; no iron entering his soul or that sort of thing. Still, how was he ever to get over the miracle of this? In the twinkling of an eye, or certainly in the twinkling of a mere two weeks or so, the charming, sympathetic, and highly intelligent little woman who sat there elegantly pouring out his second cup of tea had found the courage and good sense to wave a hand in his direction; and having waved it, to offer it to him, along with her heart; and what was more, a very reasonable and unhumiliating share in her excellently secured income. The balm to his pride! The relief! The dignity gained! The final arrangements must wait, of course, until, in a few weeks time, they found themselves in London; when Lucy’s man of business would make everything perfectly straight and legally precise.
But what was legal precision between two love-birds? As he had so often said to this dear, newly-acquired wife of his. Let them linger here at their pleasure in this lovely place of their first meeting, until, indeed, they felt induced to move, or the increasing heat of summer drove them from it.
“Thanks, m’dear.” Stephen took his cup back from Lucy. “It’s pleasant here,” he said.
“Yes.” Lucy looked about her. The windows, half-shuttered against the sunshine and hung with loops of net, threw light and shadow among the gilt and marble of the hotel furniture. She had filled the room with roses. She was glad he found it pleasant; glad this stranger was her husband; glad her courage had not failed her. So far it was easier than she had expected. Easier for herself, and easier, too, she guessed, for Stephen, both of them no longer young, to readjust one to the other. But she had judged Stephen Hayburn aright. In their close relationship he lacked neither fastidiousness nor courtesy. In such things he was like herself. Now, as she saw it, their future might be very happy. Beneath the inevitable play-acting, they knew exactly where they stood. She had made a good investment against the loneliness of old age. Perhaps—who knew?—they might still fall in love with each other a little.
