Mrs. Day rose to go, Boult came forward with his hand extended.
"Anything that has to do with the people's food or drinkpays," he said encouragingly. "If I had my time over again I would take up with the groshery line instead of the drapery. People must have food, ma'am. They must have it, even before frocks and furbelows."
"About Bernard?" Mrs. Day asked, waiving, not without dignity, the other subject.
"I have thought of sending Bernard to Ingleby. I have opened a branch there. It is not a big concern at present, of course, but the boy can learn the business there, and if he has anything in him—I shall keep my eye on him—he can come to us later."
Then he grasped the hand she unwillingly extended.
"You see I promised poor William," he told her, by way of explaining his kind interest in her affairs. "And however thankless the task may be, I shall keep my word."
She could not answer him, but when he released her hand she bowed her head and went away.
Before Mrs. Day betook herself home she turned her feet in the direction of Bridge Street. It was situated in a busy part of the town, but was only a short and not by any means prosperous thoroughfare connecting two of the principal streets. Standing on the opposite pavement Mrs. Day contemplated the grocer's shop from which Mr. Jonas Carr was retiring. His name in small white letters was painted on the black lintel of the door: "Jonas Carr, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." A dingy-looking little shop; not such a shop as any of those on which the wife of William Day had bestowed her custom, and she had never been within its door.
The three windows above the shop looked dirty, and closely over them were stretched dirty lace curtains. The windows on the higher floor were dirtier still, and in place of the lace curtains were crooked-hanging blinds.
Poor Mrs. Day set her lips tightly as she looked. Then she crossed the street and entered the shop. Mr. Carr, behind the counter, a toothless, unpleasant-looking old man, was exhibiting in an apathetic manner a piece of fat bacon to a customer.
"You can have the streaky if you prefer it," he said.
The customer did prefer the streaky, and took it, half wrapped, under her shawl, and went.
"And what for you, pray?"
Mrs. Day asked for a quarter of a pound of tea, and while he served her looked about at the dark little dirty shop with its mingled odours.
When she left the establishment of Jonas Carr her spirits had risen. The whole thing was ludicrous. Imagine the name of Lydia Day, "licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," painted over the door! Imagine her—her!—behind the counter of that squalid little shop! Imagine Bessie, and her exquisite young Deleah passing their lives in that upper room behind the net curtains! It was ridiculous, grotesque, impossible, and could not be.
But she was to find with astonishingly small waste of time that it could be.
And it was.
Exiles From Life's Revels
For the first year that Mrs. Day waited behind the counter of the Bridge Street shop more trade was done there than in the most prosperous period of old Jonas Carr's tenancy. Quite half the ladies of Brockenham left their particular grocers to bestow their custom on the widow. From kindness of heart, from curiosity, from the impulse to do as others were doing, people flocked to purchase their tea and sugar of Lydia Day, licensed also to supply them, if desired, with tobacco and snuff. George Boult's prognostications of the success of the venture seemed to be more than fulfilled.
Bessie stoutly refusing to go into the shop—it took more than George Boult to manage Bessie!—he was constrained to sanction the engaging of a youth to assist behind the counter. Mr. Pretty, therefore—he was called "Mr." for business purposes, his tender years hardly entitling him to the designation—and a boy to go errands, composed the staff.
From eight in the morning till eight at night the shop was open; and even when it was supposed to be closed, Mrs. Day could not enjoy an undisturbed rest with her daughters and Franky in their upstairs sitting-room. For the neighbouring tradesmen, all of whom had stretched out friendly hands to the poor lady so unwillingly becoming one of them, had the bad habit of forgetting to make their purchases till after shop hours, when they would send their maids-of-all-work to the private door for the supper cheese, or the breakfast coffee they had too late discovered they were "out of."
Bessie and Deleah fought against the humouring of these out-of-season customers. Often they attempted to hold their tired mother forcibly in her chair when she would arise to go to them. "Let people get their goods at regulation hours, or refuse to serve them," said the Manchester man, now an inmate of the Day household. But when the grievance was put before George Boult he was of a different opinion.
"Refuse to serve them over-night, and they go somewhere else in the morning," he asserted. "The maxim I have held by all my life is, 'Business is Never Done.' And you may take my word for it, ma'am,successfulbusiness never is done. Write that out on a card, Miss Bessie, and hang it over your mantelpiece."
"No, thank you," from a scornful Bessie with an averted head. "As it happens I don't at all agree with you, Mr. Boult."
So poor Mrs. Day, who did not grumble, but who nevertheless knew herself to be a martyr, would rise from her delicious rest in her chair over the fire, accompanied by Deleah to hold the candle, would descend to the cellar to cut the cheese—both the women were terrified of the cellar, the unilluminated caves and corners, the beetles, the rats. In the shop again, they would take down one of the monster green canisters, purchased of the retiring Jonas Carr for the purpose of striking awe into the bosoms of customers, but a few of which did, of a truth, hold tea, and select the special mixture to the taste of the laggard customer. It was an aggravation of the hardship when, in place of the maid, the mistress would run in. In that case Mrs. Day must stand for a half hour to listen to talk of the neighbour's children's colds, the neighbour's servant's delinquencies, the neighbour's husband's shortcomings.
Bessie was always cross with her mother when she returned. "It makes everything so uncomfortable and spoils the evening," she complained. "The only time we have for comfort, mama. You might remember!"
As the Christmas season approached Mr. Boult was inspired with an idea which was productive of good commercial results, but was the cause of added extreme discomfort to them all. Mrs. Day, he ordained, was not only to advertise home-made mincemeat, but to make the mincemeat at home, and of a quality not procurable in shops. The housewives of Brockenham made their own mincemeat because the article on the market was not palatable, the tyrant of the family declared. Every one of them would be glad to be saved trouble. Then, let Mrs. Day, for whom he had procured an excellent receipt, make it for them. The sale would be enormous.
So they advertised the precious stuff from the beginning of December; and from a fortnight before this time to the end of the second week in January, the little family worked at stoning raisins (there were no machines to make the task easy then), chopping almonds and suet and apples and orange peel, late into the night, and sometimes on into the early hours of the morning.
For the sale, as predicted, was great. It taxed the powers of the women to their utmost to keep up the supply. Orders poured in, orders were repeated; customers called to assure Mrs. Day that while she lived to do it for them they would never be bothered to make the stuff again. Others came with the intention to wheedle the receipt from the shop-woman. Such was the unbusiness-like disposition of the poor creature, she would at once have surrendered it, had the prescription been hers to give. But George Boult, knowing with whom he had to deal, had laid an embargo on the property.
It was during the stress of that first Christmas in Bridge Street that the relations between the Days and their boarder, the Manchester man, hitherto somewhat strained and distant, became easy and familiar.
Beside the comfortable chair in the chimney corner which had been apportioned him, a small table was drawn up which held, always ready to his use, his tobacco jar, his pipe, his book, his papers. To this, the evening meal which he shared with the family over, he would retire, preferring silence and, generally pretended, absorption in his book to the obtrusion of his conversation on the widow and her daughters. But in the harassment of the time of mincemeat the lodger's shyness evaporated or his reserve broke down. He could not see women, dropping with sleep and weariness, working themselves half to death over their hated tasks while he sat at ease with his pipe and his newspaper.
"Why should you ladies spend your evenings in the kitchen?" he asked. "It is comfortabler in here. Chop your plums and grate your nutmegs and things here. You won't disturb me."
Bessie at once demurred. "We will keep our sitting-room, at least, free of the shop, thank you," she said.
"If Mr. Gibbon doesn't like being in here alone, mayn't he bring his pipe and see us chop in the kitchen," Franky suggested.
The lodger had become possessed of a pistol, bought second-hand, with a view to practise on the stray cats who made a happy meeting-place of the Days' back yard. But, one of the girls proving tender-hearted on the subject of cats, bottles were substituted, Franky being admitted to the perfect joy of seeing Mr. Gibbon try to hit them from his bedroom window. An honour and privilege highly appreciated by the child.
Mr. Gibbon would not bring his pipe, but presently he appeared among them, and drew up a chair to the table between Bessie and Deleah, and proceeded quite cleverly to cut up the orange and lemon peel, a task allotted him by Deleah.
"It is quite the nicest and least messy of all the things," she told him.
Deleah was careful at all times to show little special politeness to their boarder. She had it on her mind that he lived among them, lonely and apart, and often anxiously she pondered in her own mind the question did poor Mr. Gibbon get his money's worth?
"Deleah always chops the candied peel herself," Bessie explained. "She eats it, and feeds Franky on it. Mama, I should think Deda will soon take all the profit off your mincemeat if she eats the citron peel."
"Don't eat the citron peel, my dear," mama dutifully admonished the pretty younger daughter.
"Only the tiniest little bit, mama. Kind of hard bits that you can't cut up. Bessie can take my place, and I can grate the nutmegs if she likes."
"But last night, Miss Deleah grated her thumb as well. We can't have any of your thumbs, Miss Deleah, in the mincemeat."
It was Emily who made that observation. Emily who had gone into the family nineteen years ago as nurse to the eldest child. She had stuck by them in their reverse of fortune—indeed it had never entered either her mind or theirs, so completely had the long service made her one of them, that she could do anything else—and she now occupied the position of "general" in the upstairs kitchen of Bridge Street. She was chopping suet at the present moment, standing apart, at a side table, because Bessie had declared that to see the suet cut made her feel ill.
"Miss Bessie's more nice than wise," Emily commented; but she removed her material from the young lady's vicinity.
"I'm glad to know that I'm nice, at any rate," Bessie said, with her head on one side. "So long as I'm nice, Emily—?"
"Oh there's more than me in the world that think you that, I suppose, MissBessie."
"I don't know, I'm sure," Miss Bessie languidly murmured. "I only know I'm very tired."
"Give up for to-night then, dear, and go to bed."
"Nonsense, mama. As if I could leave you all! Why should not I work as well as poor Mr. Gibbon, for instance?"
"Some are made for work and some aren't, I suppose," that gentleman said, with a side glance at Bessie's white hands. "I'm one of the workers. I don't mind tackling your nutmegs after I've finished my lemons, if you'll say the word, Miss Bessie."
"Mama, I wonder what Mr. Boult would say if he came in now and found me working like a slave at ten o'clock at night?"
"Nothing complimentary, dear, I fear."
"Horrid, rude man! Yesterday afternoon he found me sitting over the fire reading. I was in your comfortable chair, Mr. Gibbon—I hope you don't mind?"
"I hope you'll always do it the honour of sitting in it, Miss Bessie; and you, Miss Deleah—"
"I was gloriously comfortable; and Mr. Boult took upon him to lecture me."
"Well, he doesn't stop at much! but how he ever screws up his courage to lectureyou, Miss Bessie, passes everything," said the polite Manchester man.
"I thought you'd be surprised," and Miss Day smiled obliquely at the nutmegs. "He called me names, too."
"Names, Bessie! Surely not! What can you mean by 'names'?"
"He called me a drone, mama. A drone in a busy hive."
"And how did you answer him, Bessie?"
"I just went on, toasting my toes at the fire, and reading my book."
"And what then, Miss Bessie?"
"Oh, then he sat down opposite to me and preached me a sermon. A sermon of five minutes, by the clock. He said—"
"We don't want to hear any sermons, thank you," from a petulant, tired Franky. In the stress of their work the poor child's hour for retiring was often overlooked.
"Go to bed, Franky. Go off, this minute. Mama, send Franky to bed."
"Oh, go at once to bed, my darling boy."
Franky, crying that he wanted to sit by Deleah and see her cut the citron peel, was removed: "I hate Bessie," he announced at the door.
"Go! spoilt little wretch!" cried Bessie, threatening him with the nutmeg grater. "Mama, Franky is becoming as rude as a horrid little street boy."
"Never mind, my dear. Tell me what Mr. Boult said in the sermon."
"He said my happiness as well as my duty was to work. He said my 'peevishness,' and my 'nervy fits'—wasn't it rude of him!—came from idleness. He did, Mr. Gibbon, he said it in so many words."
"I hope you gave him one for hisself, Miss Bessie?"
"Oh, I hope not!" from an alarmed mother.
"It is what he wants, ma'am; and it is what he never gets. It is bully, bully, bully, all the day, with the governor. And unless Miss Bessie stands up to him—"
"You may trust me not to be afraid. All the rest are afraid. Not I! I just raised my eyes to him, and said 'I wonder you dare to use such words to me, Mr. Boult!' You should have seen him look! 'It's because I take an interest in you,' he said; quite quiet, like any other man. It does him good to snub him, mama."
"It was kind of him to say he takes an interest," Deleah put in.
"Now if he was only a handsome young gentleman, and Miss Bessie could take an interest in him, there'd be more sense," Emily remarked from her side table.
"Don't be such a ridiculous old thing, Emily!"
"Well, he've got his kerridge!"
"And a pretty sight he looks driving in it! podgy, fat, vulgar man!"
"Miss Bessie would never look twice in that direction, I'm sure," Mr.Gibbon declared, and Mrs. Day gave one of her now seldom heard laughs.
"How can you all talk such nonsense?" she said.
"Oh, do let us do it!" Deleah pleaded. "It so helps with the citron peel, mama."
Deleah said very little in those days. The shock, the grief for the cruel end of a father, for all his faults most dearly loved, told more on her than on any of his other children. She had not felt the sense of injury against him which had helped Bessie to support the tragedy of his death, nor had she Bessie's engrossing preoccupations with herself, her looks, her fancies, her love affairs. Bernard at George Boult's little branch shop in the country town of Ingleby, chained body and soul to the heavy drudgery of uncongenial occupation, thought of his father only with rage and resentment. Franky, childlike, had apparently forgotten.
Deleah could not forget. Night by night her pillow was wet with tears shed for him on whose neck she had sobbed for those never-to-be-forgotten minutes of his last night on earth. She tortured herself with a secret, unearned remorse. Forgetting her habitual love and dutifulness, her mind would dwell on some remembered occasion when she told herself she had failed him. When she had pretended not to notice a hand held out for hers, or had shirked some little service she might have done him.
Of none such small sins against him had the father been aware, but she was tormented by the belief that she had wounded him. He seemed ever to be looking at her with reproachful eyes. She forgot his ill temper, his unlovableness, his want of consideration for any one but himself, during the last wretched weeks of his sojourn among them, and saw him only as he had been upon that last night before his trial, heard always the great sob which had seemed to rend his chest as she had leant upon it.
Her seventeenth birthday was past now, and it seemed to her mother that her young daughter had grown of a still more exceeding prettiness. Poor Mrs. Day often longed for a sympathetic ear into which to breathe her maternal admiration. With Bessie the subject of Deleah's beauty was like a red rag to a bull. Emily, the general and confidential friend of the family, was not an altogether satisfactory confidante on that matter, because in her eyes, blinded by affection, the whole family was equally beautiful.
"You've got handsome children, ma'am. I've knowed it since folk used to crowd round my pram to have a look at them when I wheeled 'em out, times gone by, as babies. Ofttimes the pavement got blocked, as you've heard me mention before. There's no two opinions about their looks, and we know which side they got them from."
There were no two opinions about that, at any rate. Not even the most charitable critic could have credited poor William Day with good looks; and the tired pathetic face of his widow was a handsome face still.
The Attractive Bessie
Having been permitted to take his place among them, and to chop material for mincemeat at their kitchen table, it was felt by them all that their boarder could never be a stranger to the widow and her children again. Through pride and through shyness they had held him at arm's length, but now that they had joked together about George Boult's peculiarities, and he had ventured with playful force to take the nutmeg grater from Bessie's weary fingers, valiantly completing her task himself, it would have been impossible, even if desirable, to return to their earlier relations.
Bessie, who had treated him with a carefully masked hauteur in the beginning, was among the first to place him on terms of easy familiarity. She had strongly resented the inclusion of a stranger in their family circle, and presently was welcoming his presence there as supplying the one item of interest in theménage.
"A year ago, mama, we should not have admitted Mr. Boult's Manchester man to the same table with us. And now, here we are keeping his plates hot, if he comes in late, and telling him all our secrets."
"Mama and I don't tell Mr. Gibbon any secrets," Deleah said.
"I dare say Mr. Gibbon does not want to hear them. As for me I find, when you live in the same house with a man, it's impossible to keep him at arm's length."
"Who wants to keep him at arm's length? I only mentioned I did not feel called upon to tell him any secrets."
"And I only said he wouldn't care to hear your secrets—if you have any."
"I haven't," Deleah admitted, laughing.
"I have, then. And I shall tell them to who I like, spite of Deda's pertness, mama."
"Say to 'whom you like,' Bessie."
"Mama, will you speak to Deleah? She is being impertinent to me again."
How impossible it would have been to entertain Reggie Forcus and Mr. Gibbon at the same board, Bessie often felt. But the days when Reggie had dropped in to meals with the prosperous Days in Queen Anne Street were over for ever. Half a loaf was better than no bread. To know that a male creature, who could not be indifferent to her, was an inmate of the house was as she often said to herself—something.
She took no interest in him, of course. A young man out of a draper's shop! But it was more amusing to subjugate even such an one as he than to have no one at her feet.
So, at the hour when Boult's great shutters went up over the front of the six shops in Market Street, and the Manchester man was free to go to his evening meal, Bessie took an extreme care to be ready to receive him. She had allowed herself to become a little slovenly over her appearance in the day-time—who was there to look at her, or care what she wore in the sitting-room over the shop? But by supper-time she would have changed into her most becoming frock, would have arranged her hair to the greatest advantage, would have rubbed with a rough towel, or beaten with a hair-brush the plump, fair cheeks she considered too pale.
There was always an irregularity about the meals in the Day family. The shopkeeper was often kept below for an hour after the time she should have been seated at the board above, and when she was detained in such a way, Deleah would always stay too, to help her mother. But Bessie had ordained that the meal should go on without them. It was not right that a man, at work all day, should be kept waiting for his food at night. And so it often happened that he and she would sit,tête-à-tête, over the cold meat and pickles, of which, with the addition of bottled beer for the boarder, the meal consisted.
Many intimate items of her own heart history did Bessie confide to the politely attentive ear of Mr. Charles Gibbon. She did not receive confidences in return, or ask for them. What could the young shopman have to relate to compare with the interest attending Bessie's revelations?
He was no prince in disguise as it would have been so pleasant to discover him to be—this short, thickly-made, middle-aged man, with the prominent, bright, dark eyes, the large dark head, the knobbly red forehead, whose parents had kept a small draper's shop in a small market-town in the county.
What could a man so born and nurtured have to give Bessie in return for the stories of the high life to which she had been accustomed? But he must consider himself flattered by Bessie's condescension, he must see how attractive she looked seated beneath the three-branched bronze gas-burner to preside at his supper.
Emily, bringing in the hot sweet pudding to replace the cold meat, would wag a facetiously warning head at the young lady behind the back of the unconscious Mr. Gibbon. "Don't you go leading that nice young chap on to make a fool of hisself over you, Miss Bessie," she would caution the girl, the next day.
"He can take care of himself. Make your mind quite easy," Bessie would answer, well pleased. She loved to discuss such topics with her devoted admirer, Emily, and liked to be accused of breaking hearts.
"We shall be late for supper again," Mrs. Day, busy with daybook and ledger in the shop, would say to the young daughter beside her.
"Never mind, mama. Perhaps it is charity not to hurry," Deleah on one occasion responded.
"Oh, nonsense, dear!" said Mrs. Day, looking up with alarm in her tired eyes.
"Well, if Mr. Gibbon is in love with Bessie?"
"'If,' indeed!"
"That will be the end of it. You'll see."
"The end indeed, Deleah!"
"You think Bessie would not take him?"
"Bessie will, at least, wait till he asks her."
"But should you object, mama? He is not a gentleman, I suppose; Bessie says he's not. But I think we've got to accept things and people and our place, as we are; not always to be looking back to what used to be. I often wish Bessie would see it like that, mama."
"We should be all happier if we could, I have no doubt," poor Mrs. Day sighed. The poor lady could not always keep before her mind the fate of Lot's wife, and often cast longing eyes towards the pleasant, easeful land that had been home.
"And I am not always inclined to take Bessie's opinion as to what is a lady or what is a gentleman."
"Bessie does not think so much as you do, Deleah."
"I don't know that I think: I feel," Deleah explained.
While she waited for her mother to finish her books she was weighing out and making up into half-ounce packets the tobacco Lydia Day was licensed to sell. She dropped her voice to a more confidential tone, although she and her mother were alone in the shop, where they were doing their evening's work by the aid of the one melancholy gas-burner, to which they restricted themselves after business hours. It gave insufficient light for the low-ceilinged, narrow length of the place.
"Do you think, mama, Bessie ought to be always saying horrid things about Mr. Boult? Making fun of him, mimicking him, complaining of everything he does; not only to you and me, but to Mr. Gibbon? to Emily—to any one who will listen? Do you think a lady—what you and I think a lady, not what Bessie thinks—would do that?"
"Bessie is sensitive—and very proud. We must not forget that—poorBessie! And Mr. Boult's methods are not always pleasant, Deleah."
"No. But he has been our friend. He has stuck to us. Who else has, of all the people with whom we were friendly? And we were never nice to him, in the old days—not asking him to our parties, you remember, and never being friendly to him on Sunday afternoons. Oh, how I wish we had been, mama!"
Mrs. Day acquiesced, but not with enthusiasm. She did not like George Boult well enough to regret having kept him at arm's length while she could.
"I am sure we ought to be grateful to him," Mrs. Day admitted. She was very tired; the scent of the tobacco Deleah was pulling about, staining the tips of her small white fingers, was in her nostrils; she did not feel especially grateful.
"Then, when Bessie is laying down the law about what a lady should do I wish you would remind her, mama, that a lady must show gratitude for kindness."
"And why, my dear, are you suddenly fighting the battles of poor Mr.Boult?"
"That is a secret," Deleah said. "But one day, if you are good, I will tell you."
The sitting-room, with supper nicely laid, with Bessie nicely dressed, fair and plump and attractive in the gas light, happily chatting to Mr. Gibbon, looked a Paradise of Rest in the eyes of poor wearied Mrs. Day. The room was in fact a very pleasant one; long, low, with broad seats before each of the three windows looking into the street; with a tall and narrow oak mantelpiece opposite the three windows; with panelled oak walls, heavy oak rafters, supporting the low ceiling, old brass finger plates high up on the oaken door—all as in the days when old Jonas Carr's grandfather first kept shop in Bridge Street. It was made sweet with flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom, were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as small as possible a space in order not to incommode the primulas, a brass birdcage holding a canary was hung.
Bessie was carrying on an animated but evidently confidential conversation with the boarder, as mother and daughter came into the room.
"He was riding past again to-day," she was saying. "I took care that he should not have the pleasure of thinking I was looking out for him; but peeping behind the curtains I could see him gazing up at the window. What consolation the poor thing finds in just looking at a window I'm sure I don't know."
"He sees you there, Miss Bessie. Or hopes to see you."
"You can't see me from the street."
"From the opposite pavement you can. I know, because I have seen MissDeleah sitting there; with her book, and the bird, and the flowers."
Bessie's attention was caught by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah appeared with her mother.
"Mama! When Deda sits on the window-seat in the corner she can be seen from the street!"
"Well, my dear?"
"Well, mama! You don't wish Deda to make herself conspicuous, I suppose?"
"Who says I make myself conspicuous?" an ireful Deleah demands. "Who has been saying anything about me?"
"I," the Manchester man hurriedly admits. "I did not say you were conspicuous, Miss Deleah. I only said I had seen you sitting there with your book—among the flowers."
"She is not to sit there again, mama. Will you please say so? Deda, you are not to sit in the window again. We can't help living above a grocer's shop, but we need not make a display of ourselves."
"If it offends Mr. Gibbon he does not need to look at the window. I shall certainly sit there if I wish."
"Come, come, my dears. There is enough about it. Pray let us have supper in peace."
"You've had a tiring day, ma'am," says Mr. Gibbon. "Let me persuade you to have a glass of ale with your beef, to-night. Just to revive you. Forcus's Family Ale is the finest pick-me-up."
"Reggie Forcus has ridden past three times this afternoon, mama," Bessie informed her parent. Then turned sharply on her sister, "You were at school, miss."
"I met him as I came away," said Deleah, seating herself at the table. "I wish the pleasure had been yours instead of mine, Bessie."
"Did he stop to speak?"
"Of course he stopped. He always stops."
"Well?"
"He asked for you."
"He always does, I suppose?"
"Always."
"There!" said Bessie on the note of triumph, looking round.
"There!" echoed Deleah as she helped herself to the mustard Mr. Gibbon was offering her.
"Mama, do you hear Deda? She is not to mock me."
"Bread, Miss Deleah? Pickles, Mrs. Day?" hastily interposes an obsequious Mr. Gibbon. He was assiduous in his attentions on the ladies, ever anxiously polite and kind. That he found his happiness among them and was eager to gain and to retain their favour he plainly showed. If he sometimes jarred on their fastidiousness he did not know it.
"Any interesting incident in the day's trade, ma'am?" he asked, as he busied himself in supplying their wants.
Nothing much. The Quaker lady had been again for sugar. Again Mrs. Day had unconditionally pledged herself that the canes from which it had been derived had not been grown by slaves.
"And have they?" Deleah asked.
"I'm sure, my dear, I don't know if they have or they haven't," a harassed grocer-woman acknowledged. Her conscience was becoming blunted in the stress and strain of business life. "She took a pound of it as usual, and that's all I can say about it."
"But, mama! For the sake of the profit on a pound of sugar!"
"There's no profit on it at all, Bessie. If she had taken a quarter of a pound of tea with it there would have been three-ha'pence into our pockets. But she did not. So you see I perjured myself for nothing."
"Don't let the thought trouble you for an instant, ma'am," Mr. Gibbon advised. "None of us can afford to be too nice in trade. We've got to live, Miss Bessie. Customers don't think so—they'd skin us if they could—but we have. I'm of Mr. Boult's mind on that subject, although there isn't much I uphold him in. 'Let us do our best for the public while it pays reasonable prices,' he says, 'and when it won't, let usdothe public.'"
"All that is so low, Mr. Gibbon."
"But it's business, Miss Bessie. Business is low."
"Oh, don't let us talk about it now," Deleah pleads.
"Deleah has a secret. She's dying to tell us all," Deleah's mother said.
"It's something Deleah's been up to!"
"No, Bess. Calm yourself. Calm all yourselves."
"But how can we? Out with it, darling."
"It's nothing, mama."
"Nothing?"
"Only an idea of mine."
"Something you've been and made up, Deda!"
"Something I'm as sure of, Bessie, as I am that you're always dying to find fault with me. Thank you, Mr. Gibbon, I've gotthreepieces of bread already, look!"
"You've handed Deleah bread three times in as many minutes, Mr. Gibbon."
"Hand the breadonlyto Bessie, Mr. Gibbon. (Mama, Imustanswersometimes.")
"We're waiting for the secret, dear."
"It's about our mysterious presents, mama. Mr. Gibbon, you have heard us talk about our unknown benefactor who loads us with delightful things, and yet is so ungenerous he won't give us the pleasure of saying 'thank you.'"
Yes. Mr. Gibbon had heard that there was some one who sometimes sent MissDeleah flowers.
"They're always sent to Deleah—but I suppose they're meant for all of us," Bessie said.
"And because they came in my name only, gave me the first clue," Deleah said. "Let me see, we began with violets, didn't we? And in January, when they were scarce and expensive. Lovely bunches of violets 'for Miss Deleah.' Miss Deleah's name done in printing characters, so that no one should discover by the handwriting. Then we went on to a basket of sweets—sweets of my very most particular kind, such as none of us can afford any longer to look at. Oh, my mouth waters to think of them even now! No, I didn't ask for any more water in my glass, thank you, Mr. Gibbon."
"We all know what you had, Deleah; we thought we were going to hear who sent them."
"Patience! Patience, good people all! Let me see, what came next? Oh, the bird in the cage. And there he is still in his cage for you all to see," and Deleah leant back in her chair, and threw her pretty head over her shoulder to look at the canary hanging above the left-hand window where was her favourite seat. "Then the azalea. The lovely rose-pink azalea; and after that—oh, I forget. But always something coming—something that we cannot afford to buy, but which has made our sitting-room delightful; and horrid Bridge Street a bearable place to live in. Now you have all been dying to find out who it is that has given us these delightful things; but I have always known; and at last I am going to tell you."
"Then, if you knew you should have told us. Deda ought not to have been so sly about it, mama, if she knew."
"We shall each have one guess; and Bessie, as a reward for her good-nature, shall have the first. Now, Bessie?"
"I've known all along, too, miss. And what's more, I've known that although they were sent to you, they were meant for me. Reggie Forcus."
"Wrong. Here is Emily with the pudding. Emily, you shall have a guess; who is it who sends the flowers, and the books and the birds in the cages—?"
"One of the masters at the school that has fell in love with you, Miss Deleah." Emily gave her opinion without hesitation, going on with her business of changing the plates.
"Wrong again, Mr. Gibbon? Now, I give you a tip. Think of the least likely person in all the world."
"The Quaker lady who objects to slave-grown sugar."
Deleah laughed as she shook her head. "That is most ingenious. And would be delightful; but it is wrong. Now, mama. The least likely person in all the world, remember."
"Mr. George Boult."
"Mama has it. It is Mr. Boult."
"Oh, my dear child, I hope not!"
"Scrooge?" cried Bessie. "Never!" Bessie herself had bestowed the name of Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate.
"It is Scrooge;—a converted Scrooge; and I, I suppose, am Tiny Tim. And he has heaped benefits on me, mama; meaning thereby to benefit the family."
"Oh, my dear, it can't be! I am sure you are wrong, Deleah. Mr. Gibbon, do say she is wrong. It can't possibly be Mr. Boult."
Mr. Gibbon only threw back his head and loudly laughed.
Deleah was a little hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule. She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to her mother.
"Why do you think it impossible, mama? Because Mr. Boult can'tsayagreeable things is no reason he cannot do them. Don't you know that there are poor shut-up souls who want to be nice, who long to be loved—who have to speak in the dumb language because they can't articulate?"
"Miss Deleah is right. That is so. That is so!" Mr. Gibbon eagerly affirmed.
"Well, then, Mr. Boult isn't blessed with a tongue to say smooth things; but the bird in the cage, the basket of sweets, the rose-pink azalea—they are his kind and polite speeches."
"My dear, what nonsense!" cried Mrs. Day, who did not wish to believe inMr. Boult as the author of such agreeable attentions.
But the Manchester man assented with enthusiasm: "Miss Deleah is right, ma'am," he said. "A man who could not get at Miss Deleah to say things to her might try to say them so."
"And you think Mr. Boult wants to say things to Deleah?" a scornful Bessie demanded.
"No, I don't, since you ask me. No, Miss Bessie."
"I should think not! And why, pray, should he have pitched on Deda?"
"Oh, why should any one pitch on me?" Deleah asks, lays down knife and fork, spreads hands abroad, as if inviting with exaggerated humility an inspection of her poor claims to favouritism.
"But—if it were Mr. Boult I think I can understand why it might be Deleah," Mrs. Day said slowly, looking down. She was remembering how her poor husband had made no secret of the fact that the younger girl was his pet; and she recalled also that for her father's sake it was Deleah who treated the arrogant, tyrannical man with unfailing respect and courtesy.
"Yes. And I can understand it too, mama," Deleah softly said.
"Well, them that live'll see," Emily remarked sententiously as she removed the remains of the sago pudding.
The Attractive Deleah
An engagement had been secured for Deleah Day as assistant English governess at a ladies' school. At Miss Chaplin's seminary she was employed in hearing lessons learnt by heart from Brewers'Guide to Knowledge, Mangnall's Questions, Mrs. Markham'sHistory of England; in reading aloud while her pupils tatted or crocheted mats and antimacassars; in struggling with them through the intricacies, never mastered by herself, of Rule of Three and Vulgar Fractions, from nine every morning till five every afternoon; with the exception of the Wednesday, when there was a half-holiday, and the Saturday, when there was no school at all.
The slightness of Deleah's figure and the fragility of her small face, with its innocent, unconscious allurement, were increased by the black garments she still wore. To cast off her mourning for her unhappy father would be, she felt, a slight to him.
"It is as if Bessie had forgotten," she said to herself, seeing her sister in the blues and pinks in which she began as summer came on again to array herself, for supper and the Manchester man. "I do not forget."
Black was not a fashionable wear in that age, only being used for mourning. A woman wearing black did it to proclaim she sorrowed for the dead. The sentiment attached to her sable garments heightened the interest awakened by Deleah's slight form and her winsome face;—made her clear skin paler; made her eyes shine more jewel-like beneath the fine line of her black brows.
Among the members of her own sex were, at the period of her eighteenth birthday, all the captives to her charms of which Deleah was aware. There is no such ardent lover as a schoolgirl when she conceives a passion for another girl at school; and half a dozen of the little pupils at Miss Chaplin's were head over ears in love with Deleah Day. They sighed at her, their adoring eyes clung to her face, they suffered agonies of jealousy through her. They were cast down by a word, elated by a smile.
One of the girls then acquiring a polite education at Miss Chaplin's seminary remembers to this day how she slept, night after night, with a glove—such a worn and shabby glove—of the young English teacher beneath her pillow. She possesses still an album called "The Deleah Book," wherein is pasted an atrocious photograph—all photographs (cartes-de-visite they were called)—were libellous and atrocious in those days—of a girl in a black frock, the skirt a little distended at the feet by the small hoop of the day, a short black jacket, with black hair parted in the middle over a smudge of a face and gathered into a net at the back of the neck. Beneath it is written Deleah's name and the date.
In "The Deleah Book," too, are treasured, scrawled there in the schoolgirl writing, the words of wit and wisdom gathered from the idol's lips, together with such precious items of information and memorabilia as the following:
"Tennyson is the favourite poet of D. D."
"Of all flowers the rose is the Queen, and is the best loved of D. D."
"To remember to keep back unkind words. D. D."
"If we knew all we should find there are excuses for all. D. D."
"(Note). Burnt almonds are the favourite sweet of D. D. and 'Abide withMe' is D. D.'s favourite hymn."
Their ways lying in the same direction, it was this young devotee who was privileged to walk home with the passionately admired D. D. On a certain afternoon as they made their way through the quiet streets of the old town their talk was of a long-advertised concert to take place that evening, at which a great singer was to appear.
"How much you will enjoy it, Kitty," Deleah was saying with a little girlish longing. "Not only the concert, but everything. Let me picture it. You will run home when you leave me—me in horrid Bridge Street!—and in your bedroom there will be a fire lit, and on the bed your pretty evening frock will be spread, and your lace petticoat, and your silk stockings—"
"Oh, how do you know all that, Miss Day? You know everything! But I shan't enjoy the concert a bit. I shall not. Do you know why? Because you will not be there."
"Oh, nonsense, Kitty! Nonsense! Nonsense!"
"I shall be thinking of you all the time, and wishing—oh wishing! Miss Day, do you believe it is true that if we keep on wishing with all our strength—not a selfish pig of a wish, you know, but something nice for another person—the wish ever,evercomes true?"
"Every wish is as a prayer with God," quoted Deleah, unquestioning in her child's heart the literal truth of the words.
"Then, Miss Day, this is not Kitty Miller walking with you any longer, but one big solid Wish—Oh, there he is again, Miss Day! There is young Mr. Forcus—look!"
"I see him. I am not going to stop. Let us walk on quicker, Kitty."
"Isn't it strange that he should always be riding here, just when we come out of school, Miss Day?"
"Never mind. No; you are not to look round, Kitty."
"Howbeautifullyhe pulls off his hat! He had a most dreadfully disappointed look when you would not stop, Miss Day. I think you are very cruel."
"Never mind. No, Kitty! Don't, dear. No lady looks back when a gentleman passes her."
(A new entry appeared in "The Deleah Book" that night: "No lady looks round when a gentleman passes her. D. D.")
"Miss Day!"—with a soft, irrepressible giggle—"He has turned his horse and is riding after us."
"Never mind. Let us hurry on."
But when the mare was pulled up beside her, her hoofs clattering on the cobble-stones of the street, Miss Day, in spite of herself, must stop.
"How do, Deleah?" Kitty Miller had again the privilege of seeing how beautifully the hat came off, exposing for quite an appreciable time the young man's fair, smooth head. "Whoa, Nance!" to the satin-skinned, black mare, who objected to being pulled into the gutter running by the side of the pavement. "I say—there was something I particularly wanted to say to you, Deleah. Whoa! Steady, old girl! I say—how's Bessie?"
"Bessie is very well, thank you, Mr. Forcus."
"'Mr. Forcus?' Come, I say, Deleah! you aren't going to put me at arm's length, that fashion! I was going to ask you—How is Bessie?"
"Very well, thank you."
"I haven't seen Bessie for ages."
"Is it so long?"
"I was wondering if I might look in sometimes on Mrs. Day—"
"Mama is always busy, thank you."
"At your place, then?—Just to see—Bessie?"
"I'm sure I don't know. You'd better ask Bessie herself."
"I'll ask her when I call. Whoa! Steady, you fool! Steady! What time couldI come when I shouldn't be in the way?"
"We're always busy. Always. I think perhaps you'd better not come at all."
"Thank you! Why?"
"You used to come, if you remember; and you gave up coming," Deleah said. The small face turned to him was unsmiling and proud. The clear eyes of pale hazel looked past the fine young man on the beautiful fidgeting horse.
"I'm more my own master now," he said. "I should like to look in upon you all again, Deleah."
"You had better not. Good-bye."
"Wait! Wait! One minute! I say, are you going to this concert to-night?"
"Of course. All of us. Even Franky. Half-guinea places. Why need you ask?"
"But if I get you some tickets? You and Bessie and Mrs. Day? I will, you know. I will, Deleah, if you'll say you'll go—"
"The tickets were all sold a fortnight ago. You're too late," she said; and then she smiled her winning smile, in spite of herself, upon him and moved on.
Kitty was waiting for the older girl a few paces farther on. "There!" she said, her eyes wide with awe. "There, Miss Day! My wish nearly came true! Oh, if he could have got you tickets and you would have gone, how heavenly, heavenly everything would have been to-night!"
Tea was ready in the sitting-room above the shop when Deleah reached home.Tea with thick bread-and-butter, dry toast, water-cress, little dishes ofsliced ham, and pastry-tarts made in Emily's best fashion; and Bessie andFranky were already seated at the table.
By Deleah's plate a letter was lying. A letter at which she looked dubiously, shrinking a little from opening it; for it was addressed, in a fashion which had become embarrassingly familiar to her, in carefully printed characters.
"It's money, this time, we think," Franky cried, jumping in his chair."Make haste, Deda."
"We're simply dying to know what he's sent you. How slow you are!" Bessie scolded.
Reluctantly Deleah broke the envelope and drew forth two tickets for the evening's concert.
"The ten-shilling places!" Bessie cried. "We'll go, Deleah. We'll go!"
Deleah looked with a little distrust at the tickets lying beside her plate. "It's all very well, but I should so much prefer presents without all this mystery about them. Months ago I would have thanked Mr. Boult if you and mama would have allowed me. I am sure it would have been better. I am sure we ought to thank him."
"That doesn't matter now. We've got to think about the concert. I'm going to it, and I can't go without you."
"I don't know if we ought to go, Bessie—"
"Why not, pray?"
Deleah was silent.
"Because of papa? He's been dead nearly two years. Are we never to show our noses among other people again? You do carry things to extremes, Deda!"
Deleah accepted the reproach meekly, having nothing to say—nothing, that is, which Bessie would understand.
Then the boarder came in, for it was early closing afternoon, and took his place by the side of Franky.
"Some more mysterious presents," Bessie said, smiling upon him. "Very useful ones, this time, and just what I should have wished for."
"Tickets for the concert," Deleah explained, pushing them across to him. "Ten-shilling ones. Poor Mr. Boult hates music. I heard him say once that he believed every one hated it, and that when they pretended to like it it was only affectation and humbug. What pleasure can he possibly get in giving us these tickets for which we may not even thank him?"
"He'll have the pleasure of knowing that you are happy, and that he has made you so, Miss Deleah. And you too, of course, Miss Bessie."
"But Mr. Boult no more sent those tickets, than he sent the bird in the cage, or the—!"
"Oh, you're thinking of Reggie Forcus again," Deleah interrupted impatiently. "Such nonsense, Bessie!"
"She thinks a lot more of him than he does of her," Franky announced, munching his bread-and-butter.
Bessie got up from her place at the tea-tray and with purpose in her eyes walked round the table. "You take that for impertinence, sir!" she said, and administered a stinging slap to Franky's cheek. His intention of immediate retaliation was frustrated by Mr. Gibbon's seizing the tea-spoon he was about to hurl at his assailant.
"I hate Bessie," Franky said; but he was used to having his face slapped by his elder sister, and went on munching his bread-and-butter and water-cress, not much the worse.
"We can't go to the concert, Bessie," Deleah was presently saying. "We've got no evening frocks."
"Oh, but we have!" Bessie quickly reminded her. "The frocks which were new for our party and never worn again."
"Wecan'twear them!" Deleah pleaded. She felt that she could never endure even to look at those garments again.
"But we can, and we will," Bessie declared. She was a very practical person in matters connected with millinery and dressmaking, and in a minute had planned the slight alterations and additional furbishings required for their party frocks. Black ribbons instead of blue run in the lace of the bodices. Deleah's skirt would be short, but who would see that if Deleah were sitting down?
Deleah drooped as she listened, leaving the tea in her cup and the bread-and-butter untouched on her plate.
"Elbows off the table, Deda," Franky reminded her, who was frequently commanded to remove his own.
Deleah took no heed. She sat with brow leaning upon the hand which screened her face, looking back upon that evening before the shadow of misfortune and disgrace had touched them all; when she had worn her new white silk frock, and papa had played the tambourine.
Bessie had gone, leaving her tea also, untasted; hurrying away to Emily, who would help her to pull off the forget-me-nots from her frock, and to substitute the black ribbon which would be more decorous. Bessie's pale, full cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes shone.
"Black will look better than blue, even—although thatwasyour colour—against your white skin," Emily encouraged her.
Mr. Gibbon had made himself a neat sandwich of water-cress and thin bread-and-butter. He paused in the act of daintily sprinkling it with salt pinched in finger and thumb, and looked at Deleah across the table, her hand hiding her face. So long he looked at her, so long she remained unconscious of him, that Franky ventured in their preoccupation to help himself to a third piece of cake, his allowance being two.
"Miss Deleah, if you don't want to go to this concert to-night, why go?" at length the boarder ventured to ask. Deleah dropped the shielding hand; she had for the moment forgotten the presence of Mr. Charles Gibbon.
"Bessie wants to go. Of course, I must go with her," she said.
"But why 'of course,' if you don't wish? Whoever sent those tickets—"
"Mr. Boult sent them."
"Well, then, Mr. Boult sent them to make you happy; not unhappier."
"I know. I am really quite grateful, Mr. Gibbon. It was only those dresses. We wore them at a dance at our house—the evening before—everything. I can't think how Bessie can! But she does not feel things as I do. She never did feel like—dying—of pity—and sorrow—as I did." She lifted her cup to her lips to hide the fact that tears were rolling down her face.
Mr. Gibbon sighed heavily. He pushed his own cup away from him as a signal perhaps that for him also the tea was spoilt. "But why need you go in that particular frock, Miss Deleah?"
"I haven't another."
"The one you have on."
"This one? Oh!"
She laughed with the tears in her eyes, and looked down at her school frock—a black skirt and a white muslin "garibaldi" (the garment so called at that time being extremely like the shirt blouse, or waist, as the Americans have it, of to-day). "Oh, how funny men are!" she said. "To think I could go in the half-guinea places in such a dress!"
"It's a beautiful dress, isn't it! It seems so to me. And I don't think it matters at all what you wear, Miss Deleah."
He spoke in a hushed voice, as if conscious of saying something of tremendous import. Deleah accepted the remark as a simple statement of a fact.
"It doesn't matter, perhaps, really. But Bessie thinks differently. Most people do. I shall have to wear what Bessie wishes."
"I notice you are always the one to give way, Miss Deleah."
"No—not always, Mr. Gibbon."
"Can I do anything? I would doanything—" He spoke in the same hushed voice; with his arms extended on each side of his plate, he was gripping the edge of the table tightly, "Anything!"
"I know. I know you are a true friend. I know she talks to you. She talks about Mr. Reggie Forcus. Bessie can't see that things are different with us—at least she sees, of course, but she does not realise that they must be different; not only now, but for ever. She never sees us with other people's eyes. It never comes home to her that the friends we had we can never have again. What have people like the Forcuses to do with us!"
"I think that Mr. Reggie Forcus, mighty as he thinks hisself, or the Prince of Wales, come to that, might feel hisself honoured to be taken notice of by you, Miss Deleah—or by Miss Bessie."
Deleah laughed in spite of herself. "You are too kind, Mr. Gibbon."
She got up from her chair and picked up the concert tickets and twisted them about in her fingers with a little distaste of them. "All this is very kind of Mr. Boult, of course," she said: "and one likes to be sure there is a generous heart beneath that—well, that atrocious manner of his. But we're under mountains of obligation to people already, and we can do without concert tickets. We can do without—" She was going to say without flowers, but she leant across the table and stooped her face above the pot of heliotrope that graced the centre of the humble board, then lifted it, shaking her head. "No; we could not do without the flowers," she said. "I do thank the good man for his flowers; and I shall tell him so the first time I see him. I have made up my mind."
"I would not if I were you, Miss Deleah."
"But why not? Do tell me why not?"
"Mr. Boult is a good business man. He's my chief, and I'm not going to speak against him; but I don't quite see him buying you flowers."
"You know he loved my poor father, don't you?" she asked him in a lowered voice. She had never mentioned the dead man's name to him before; her cheek paled, he saw, as she did so now. "And I was my father's pet. You will not think me vain for saying that, will you? Mama will tell you it is not my selfish fancy alone. Mama will tell you it is true."
"Indeed, Miss Deleah, I can quite believe it."
"He was a good father to us all, and fond of us all, but of me he would talk always if he could get any to listen. He liked me to sit on his knee—I was younger then—to walk with him, and wait on him—" Her voice broke; she waited a minute before she went on. "And so I suppose Mr. Boult sends these things to me for papa's sake. I could not explain before; but you understand, do you not?"
He quite understood her point of view, Mr. Gibbon said, looking at the tablecloth.
"I knew you would, when I could explain. I think poor Mr. Boult likes me to take what he sends, for papa's sake—as if it really came from papa. You see what I mean? And I can't help thinking there is something beautiful in that thought of his."
Mr. Gibbon reflectively agreed. It was a beautiful thought, come to think of it, he said.
"Well, then—?" said Deleah.
"Well then, Miss Deleah, don't you think by mentioning the matter to him, you'll spoil all that? His intention, his beautiful thought, and the rest of it."
"Perhaps!" Deleah acquiesced seriously. "I must think about what you say."
"You've done me a great honour to mention it, Miss Deleah. You won't thinkI'm taking upon myself in any way to give you my opinion?"
"Oh, Mr. Gibbon! How could I ever think such a thing!" Deleah said, but began at once to be a little ashamed of the confidence she had made. With a man who could ask if he was "taking upon himself" she ought to have been more reserved, she thought.