The Wax Fruit Trilogy Read online

No. This was a nice young man Stephen had got to know. About the nicest he had brought home so far. She thought of several others and liked David the better.

  The music of the quadrille ended. There was the sound of laughter and talk.

  The door of the study burst open and Stephen Hayburn put his head in. “Hello, Moorhouse. We haven’t seen much of you. What are you doing?”

  “Mr. Moorhouse has been talking to me for a long time, Stephen. Which is very nice of him. I only hope you bother to be as polite to your friends’ mothers.”

  “Well, come on now.”

  V

  As no one else seemed to be coming into her sanctum, Mrs. Hayburn put her arm through David’s and led him into the drawing-room. She was doing this entirely to please herself, but the effect she created for David, little as he realised it, was excellent. The dancers, most of them, had not noticed David when first he had looked in. Now they turned to look at this distinguished young man, basking in the sunlight of that old dragon Mrs. Hayburn’s favour. People, especially the women, asked who he was. They learnt he was a young Ayrshireman, come to live for reasons of his own in Glasgow.

  These sons and daughters of industrial prosperity were very ready to be impressed. Was this someone really of the county?

  David, in a strange, unreal sort of way, was now enjoying himself. His feelings were those of a highly nervous actor, stepping in to improvise with little rehearsal, and finding to his surprise that he is doing well—that the part suits him.

  There were one or two middle-aged women sitting round the walls, mothers of girls who were also there, personal friends of the hostess.

  Mrs. Hayburn introduced him to these. David had the natural breeding to give them attention. There was a feminine streak in his make-up, and it gave him little trouble to talk easily with women, whatever their age. In turn, they too were pleased with him. They were not averse therefore to see him stand up with their daughters and go through the movements of the lancers, quadrilles and the country dances. Everything he danced seemed to be danced with good taste and decorum. He was so unpossessive seeming, so unfamiliar. His bearing was one of remote, distinguished shyness. Even when he danced the polka, his almost sad, indulgent smile to his partner seemed to say, “What is this nonsense to either you or me?” And in the waltz, about which more than one mother had strong views, he appeared to dance with nothing more than a carefulness for the swinging steps, and with none of that abandon that maternal hearts deplored. For had not their husbands—as men of the world—assured them, as stays were laced and beards combed out in the privacy of conjugal bedrooms, that this waltzing was the kind of thing that would do neither young men nor young women any good?

  David would have been surprised had he known what was in the minds of all these people. And he would have had sense of fun enough to laugh, and say, that, well, anyway a man couldn’t help his face. Yet on the whole he was deliberately, if unconsciously, building up this social picture of himself. He didn’t know, really, whether to like these people or not, and yet this playing of a part, or rather this instinctive selection of the right facets of his personality, amused him. He had a feeling that up to now he had been missing something. That somehow he was filling an essential want.

  It was with the young women that, naturally, he had most to do. He found that they all said much the same thing. The Italian Opera was now in Glasgow. What did he think of Titiens and Trebelli-Bettini? The Tuesday concert in the City Hall. Didn’t he think it was a pity that they were playing so much of this German Wagner’s music? “The New Music! My father says it’s the New Noise. And they say London’s mad about him now! We’ll be having his operas up here next!” Wasn’t it exciting that Herr von Bülow would be in Glasgow shortly? David made a mental note to put his deficiencies in this kind of knowledge right.

  There was another type of conversation that was more difficult to deal with. Women were not so prone to it. But when, now and then, he found himself standing against the wall with a man, it was never long before it started up. You had only to establish a show of geniality, then it began. It was what he quickly came to call (when talking these functions over with Bel) “the do-you-know? game”.

  “Do you know So-and-So?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Don’t you really? But you see him about everywhere.”

  What did the fellow expect you to say? “Oh, but then I’m not exalted enough to go everywhere …”? But again you replied meekly in the negative.

  “I can’t think how you’ve missed him. You know, he’s just become a member of the Western Club. Very young to get in, isn’t it? His uncle’s Sir So-and-So, the shipbuilder. His mother was a sister of Lord Here-and-There.”

  “I can’t say I’ve come across him.”

  Coldly, “Oh, haven’t you really? Well, you must know …” and so the game began again.

  David could not understand what was the use of this kind of conversation. It was senseless and hollow, and certainly not conducive to friendliness. Was it to prove to you that the speaker had impeccable connections? Was it to prove to you that you were nobody at all? Or was it merely vapid talk? He decided it was that.

  VI

  But the evening on the whole continued successfully. Towards its end David felt quite normally jolly. It was, in other words, a dance that had “gone”. As people became less punctilious he felt more at home. At its end, like the others, he was reluctant to go. Two of the mothers, quite determined not to let a new and useful young man slip through their fingers, mentioned little dances their daughters were insisting upon giving, and wondered if they wouldn’t be too tedious for Mr. Moorhouse. They received his card. A note to his rooms would get him any time. In the course of the evening, David’s lodgings or digs had turned into rooms.

  At last it was time to go. Even up in the gentlemen’s bedroom the atmosphere had lost its chill. David got into conversation with a middle-aged man who came from Edinburgh. He was staying in the George Hotel in George’s Square. David offered him a lift back into town in his—or rather Bel’s—cab.

  They had bidden Mrs. Hayburn goodnight in the drawing-room. The others were saying goodbye at the garden gate. For though the month was November, the prevailing west wind was blowing up the river. Even if it was damp, it was warm. As they stood about waiting for the succession of cabs to take their place, David was conscious of the rustle of the breeze through branches overhead, and the smell of wet country earth. Although it was dark, he was reminded that he was on the extreme edge of the town. But for a terrace or two on the Great Western Road there was nothing further west, only green fields. An incoming ship sounded strangely close. It must be passing near the village of Partick. He thought of Bel and her ambition to live out at this end of the town. He agreed with her. It was not only the right end, it was fresh and pleasant.

  The cab arrived. He said goodbye to his friends Stephen and Henry. This last, running up like a great undeveloped colt, assured him it was awfully good of him to come. David felt that the boy really believed what he said. That he regarded things like dances as unpleasant visitations from on high, inflicted through the agency of a restless, self-important mother.

  His fellow-passenger mounted too, and they drove off.

  “Have you known these boys for long?” he asked him.

  “Only Stephen.”

  The man did not speak for a little. He sat looking out of the window, as the cab unwound itself down out of the maze which is Dowanhill. When it was safely on Byres Road he went on as though talk had been continuous.

  “The young one’s the better of the two.”

  David could think of nothing better to say than “I liked him.”

  “You would. Anybody with sense would. He’s like what his father was. Did you know his father?”

  “No.”

  “One of the men that made your Glasgow for you. And made a pile of money too. As clever as you make them. A man that wore himself out with his own enthusiasms. A ‘driver’
, with a streak of genius.”

  David remembered that there had been a good many drivers with streaks of genius in Glasgow in the last hundred years or so. The more money these amassed, the more they were admired and held in awe. He had actually read in a Glasgow weekly paper recently that “money was the one pass-key that invariably opens the door to success and distinction.” He had wondered. It didn’t seem right, somehow, although that certainly was the creed of this wealthy city. No. Glasgow’s great inventors, saviours of life, leaders of thought, had not built up their city merely by the money they had earned. It was the spirit that burned within them, surely, that had done that. Besides, he was much too easy-going to like drivers, either with streaks of genius or plain.

  “And is Henry Hayburn very clever too?” David asked. Somehow he could not think of that great loose-jointed creature as a genius.

  “They say so. They say he’s sweeping everything before him. He’s at the Anderson College. You’ll see. He’ll do something.” David’s companion said nothing more for a little, then he added as though to himself: “It would have been better for a boy like that if there hadn’t been all that money for him to play with.”

  Somehow David gathered that this man did not think much of his friend Stephen nor yet of Mrs. Hayburn.

  “I don’t think Stephen bothers to work much,” he said.

  “I dare say not. Their mother doesn’t want either of them to work. She wants them to be gentlemen.” He tapped David’s sleeve. “Between you and me she’s a bit of a fool. But if Henry didn’t work that brain of his would burst. I dare say your friend Stephen’s doing everything his mother wants him to do. He’s got looks, manners, swell friends and all the rest of it.”

  David began to wonder in what category this man was placing himself. But now suddenly he felt very sleepy. Reaction from strain had come, and it was late. For the rest of the way he answered the man in monosyllables.

  University Avenue, Woodlands Road, past Mary’s house in Albany Place, along a deserted Sauchiehall Street, then finally down the hill and into George’s Square. Mid-Victorian Glasgow was asleep. Their own wheels and the horses’ hoofs seemed to make the only sounds in the city.

  “Here’s the hotel. And thank you.”

  “Goodnight, sir.”

  “Goodnight, Moorhouse.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE last Saturday in the same month.

  It began cheerfully enough. Phœbe, as was her custom, had gone into the nursery several times in the course of dressing. Her nephew and niece had shown due appreciation of her visits. Sarah, who had been with Bel since ever she had set up house in Ure Place, was now promoted from being merely housemaid to nurse-housemaid, receiving some slight addition to her income and occasional help below stairs. Sarah was bleak this morning. With that determined and defeating bleakness that only servants who are beginning to consider themselves indispensable seem able to assume. It was not, however, a manifestation that troubled Phœbe. She was a child who was very little affected by other people’s moods. If people showed joy or sorrow, cheerfulness or moodiness before her, as likely as not she would find herself considering them with curiosity, wondering detachedly how they had come to be thus, and how they were likely to behave next.

  She took an academic interest, therefore, in Sarah’s crossness. But as Sarah was determined to be untalkative, she could not for the moment discover reasons.

  Bel, coming down a moment before Arthur, found his little sister sitting on a stool in front of the dining-room fire.

  “Good morning, Phœbe dear,” Bel bent down and kissed her with business-like brightness. Bel’s attitude seemed rather to imply, “I am firmly determined that my house is going to be a pleasant house, and to keep it up to scratch I myself shall be the brightest thing in it.”

  “Take your porridge while it’s hot, dear. There’s nothing like porridge for making you a big, strong girl.”

  Phœbe felt big and strong enough. Besides she loathed porridge, as most Scots children do. But she had learnt long since that resistance was useless. And as the fragrance of ham and eggs, rising from the dish set on the brass stand before the fire, was doing all it could to tempt her to reach the other side of her ordeal, she bravely poured milk over her porridge and began.

  Bel watched Phœbe. She was growing up a sensible sort of girl on the whole. She didn’t give much trouble. If she saw the point of what you told her to do, she did it. And as she was very intelligent, it was easy to make her see the point. But, although Bel was ready to defend her strange independence to Mary and Sophia, she deplored it rather in secret. She believed now that the girl liked her well enough—she had never known her disloyal or thankless—yet she would have been grateful for a show of warmth. For Bel was by nature a warm, pleasant person herself.

  Bel sighed a little and poured herself out a cup of tea. She would take her own ham and egg when Arthur came. No. A queer child. But with any luck she would be a beauty in four or five years’ time. And the small amount of money Phœbe had from her dead father, that was educating her now, would go to buying a nice dress or two and getting her off. Bel hoped that Phœbe would not be difficult about her help when the time came. Getting her off would put her into good practice for getting her own daughter off. She smiled to herself at the thought of the little year-old Isabel. Goodness knew where they would all be by the time Isabel was looking for a husband. Times were good and looked like getting better. Life was secure. Still—you never knew.

  Bel sipped her tea reflectively, forgetting Phœbe’s presence now. The idea of getting a sister-in-law and a daughter off had started a train of thought. Ure Place would not be a good centre for the campaign. Why wouldn’t Arthur come to realise this? Why wouldn’t he go further out? They were putting down tram-lines all over the city now. They said it would make it much easier for the horses and that the new trams would be much faster than the old buses. The family could live perfectly well in one of the new terraces in Hillhead. Arthur could come down to his work in half an hour. And it would be so much more healthy for them all. Now that they had children, she loathed the thought of being so near the slum quarter. Only last night she had turned away a wretched, evil-looking fellow begging at he door. She was certain Arthur could afford to move. Of course, he never told her what he had, husbands didn’t, but he was free and open-handed—and grudged her nothing within reason. The business must be doing well.

  And now the new friendships that David was making. He had come, of course, and told her all about the dance at the Hayburns’. He had put it all very amusingly. He had made her laugh like anything over this and that. Still, the fact remained that David was making his way. He had already accepted two other invitations of the same kind. She was glad she had helped the boy. And already so far as she dared she had put into practice several little household customs which, she had gathered, the better people always followed.

  No. High time they were out of here. They were—all of them—worthy of a better background. She must brace herself once more and have it out with Arthur.

  Phœbe stood up to put her empty plate away. Bel’s thoughts came back to actuality.

  “Finished, Phœbe? I hear Arthur. Put the ham and eggs on the table, dear.”

  Phœbe did so, then went over to the window. Bel thanked her and set about her task.

  “I hope it’s not raining,” she said as she divided out. “It’s dull enough.” She turned to look on her own account, then turned away again. “You’ve got to go to your music and your dancing, and little Arthur’s going out.”

  Phœbe’s interest heightened at once. Her nephew’s name was enough to do this at any time. “Where are you taking Arthur?”

  “Sarah’s taking him to see his granny. He’s to stay for his dinner. She’s in bed. I promised to send him to cheer her up.”

  Old Mrs. Barrowfield, sixty-nine now, was suffering from rheumatism. On Friday Bel had called and found her in poor spirits. As a very special treat she had promised the
old lady she should have her grandson all to herself next day at her midday meal, on condition that she did not ruin his sturdy little stomach by giving him this, that and the other. The old lady having given her promise, fully intended to break it. For what did a young girl like Bel know about feeding children? Still, better to humour her. Or the child would not be sent.

  It was now that Phœbe understood Sarah’s gloom. Sarah hated the old lady’s officiousness. But she hated more the treatment that was accorded her by the ageing, bad-tempered maids in the Monteith Row kitchen. Bel’s young maids and her mother’s old ones were in a state of perpetual warfare. Phœbe, now familiar with both camps—for old Mrs. Barrowfield continued to like her, and she went there often—heard the point of view of each with interest, and was filled with a detached contempt for all.

  II

  Arthur seemed preoccupied. He had a sip of his tea, and took up his letters. He looked quite his four years older. His face was, perhaps, a little more set, but his hand, quick and sure as it slit open his letters, showed assurance and vigour.

  “Here’s a letter from Mungo,” he said presently. “What’s he writing in pencil for?” And then again after a moment. “He’s in his bed. He’s wrenched his leg.”

  “Mungo? Good gracious. How, Arthur?” Bel exclaimed.

  Arthur read aloud: “I was in the loft of the cartshed looking at some old iron that was up there. I knew there was an old plough and some old chains, and one thing and another. Phœbe will know where I mean. I don’t know when they were put there. A scrap-iron man said they might be worth a shilling or two if he could see them the next time he came. Anyway the whole floor was rotten and gave way, with me and the plough and everything else. The old plough half fell on the top of me. I was badly cut and scraped. And a leg was twisted. The boys got me out, and went for the doctor. He got me all cleaned up, and he brought the new assistant and they did what they could between them. That was on Wednesday. But it is just today that I feel like writing. I am all right but if you could manage to run down I would not be sorry. You could arrange some things for me.” Arthur folded the letter.