"If you wish it," Deleah said.
Miss Forcus, who under no circumstance could have been cold or inhospitable, received the intimation that Deleah was to stay until Reginald came home with less than accustomed warmth.
"Of course, my dear! You know I hated the thought of your going; but why is it to be for Reggie especially? Were you and Reggie such friends?"
Deleah admitted without enthusiasm that they were certainly friends.
"Then, no doubt he will be glad to see you," Miss Forcus said, and thought to herself that now she was going to have the daughter of a felon for her sister-in-law.
By way of solace to her family pride she turned from the impending, disastrous marriage of the step-brother to that satisfying alliance her own brother had made. The daughter of a baronet had been his wife—the sister-in-law of a peer. The baronet was a banker, and rich. If the little son had lived he would have inherited his grandfather's fortune which now had gone to the son of Lord Brace. Lord Brace, who was an Irish peer, wanted the money more than Francis, certainly, who had a sufficient fortune of his own, even without that considerable one his wife had received from her mother, and had left to him.
All such facts, which Ada Forcus generally accepted as a matter of course, she now produced for the benefit of Deleah, meekly counting the stitches of the Madonna lily, which when worked in beads, grounded in amber silk and framed in gold, would be converted into a screen, to hang on the marble mantelpiece in the Cashelthorpe drawing-room.
About the wife whom Sir Francis had loved and lost, who had lived for two years in this beautiful home, sitting to read, and eat, and sew, in her husband's company, walking the gardens by his side, cared for and tended and watched over by him, Deleah had dreamed many dreams. Beautiful as an angel she had pictured her, and with an angel's nature, to be so loved, so inexpressibly mourned by him. She had dreamed dreams, but had asked no questions. She asked them now.
"Was she so very beautiful—Lady Forcus?"
Not to say strictly beautiful; which had surprised them all, Francis having ever been a beauty lover. She had what was called adearface. And such manners! Such a dignity! Such an air of high-breeding! "I used to say to myself, 'Small wonder that Francis is your slave.'"
"And was he?"
"He was, indeed. Bound to her, hand and foot; with no thought but to please her, no wish but what was hers."
Deleah sighed for very fullness of heart.
"But only because of his love for her, understand. Not because she had him in the very least under her thumb."
Deleah shook a sympathetic head. "I am sure he could not be that."
"He has never been the same since her death. Never! And never will be again."
"One would not wish him to be. It would spoil it," Deleah sighed.
Miss Forcus echoed the sigh. "Well, I do not know," she admitted. "People die, but the world has to go on, Deleah. If the child had lived it would have been different; but it seems to me a pity there should be no one to come after Francis, to bear his name, and inherit his fortune. Of course there is Reggie; but—"
She stopped there, remembering that in all probability the son of Reggie would be the grandson of William and Lydia Day—felon, and bankrupt grocer. The thought choked her. Had Francis remembered it? "Whoever marries Reggie will marry a rotten reed," she said impetuously. "I pity the girl who does it, from my heart."
"So do I," said Deleah quietly, and knitted her brow, chasing a tiny fugitive bead with the point of her needle.
Miss Forcus heard with surprise and satisfaction, yet was afraid to believe. What penniless girl, whose hand was her own to bestow, would refuse the wealthy young Forcus? Longing for further assurance, and greatly daring, she risked the question: "You knew Reggie so well, then, yet did not fall in love with him?"
"I? Oh, no!" Deleah said. She lifted her head from the frame over which she was stooping and looked calmly in the other woman's face; and Miss Forcus was struck with the perception of what a gentle dignity the girl had. A dignity less arresting, perhaps, than that she had admired so much in Francis's wife, but as effective.
"Ah, well!" she smiled, immensely relieved, and overjoyed to find she might again take her protégée to her heart. "We shall see who there is that will be good and great enough for you, Deleah. He will have to be both to deserve you."
"He will have to be both before I love him," Deleah said calmly, but with the colour in her cheeks. She put her head on one side to contemplate the lily growing so slowly under her fingers. "'I needs must love the highest when I see it,'" she said, half to herself.
For while she had been talking and listening she had been thinking of that sacrifice which she had but now thought was demanded of her; and she had made up her mind not to make it.
When Sir Francis came in, that evening, he found lying on his writing-table a little note with the signature "Deleah Day." "I hope you will excuse me that I have altered my mind and decided to go home at once," it ran. "I think I am wanted there. I hope you will not think I do not feel all your kindness. I do feel it with all my heart."
Carrying this scanty missive open in his hand, Sir Francis sought his sister.
"Yes, she has gone," that lady said. "She evidently wished it, and I drove her back to-day."
"Then how about Reggie?"
"You were quite deceived about Reggie, Francis. You are, indeed. Deleah will never marry Reggie. She as good as told me so. I never was more thankful. It would have been so terribly unsuitable. She told me she was writing to you. What does she say?"
Sir Francis did not choose to see the hand held out for Deleah's little note. He folded it, and walked to the window, looking out thoughtfully upon the garden, his hands behind his back, the letter, held by its corner in one of them, waggling up and down.
"She told me she had written," Miss Forcus said again, by way of reminder.
"She simply says she has gone."
"I shall miss her dreadfully. She is the dearest girl. Never have I seen one so lovely and so little vain."
"She is too lovely to be vain," Sir Francis said.
And at the tone rather than the words Miss Forcus lifted a startled head, and gazed and gazed upon her brother's stately back, upon the hands clasped behind it, holding the letter, waggling up and down, he would not let out of his keeping.
Over another letter which Sir Francis received the next morning, he laughed as he read. He tossed it across the table to his sister. "What a fellow!" he said.
"From Reggie? I wish you had not written to him to come home, Francis."
"He's not coming. Don't alarm yourself. He says the Worradykes have turned up at Nice—"
"They followed him! They've no doubt taken Daisy. I would stake my existence they've taken Daisy!"
"You are quite right. Daisy is there. Reggie has promised to go on with them to Rome."
"Nowshe'll catch him!" prophesied the lady. "Good gracious! Supposing things were as you thought and Deleah had waited to welcome him home! What a quandary we should have been in then, Francis!"
Deleah Grows Up
It was Thursday afternoon: the day on which the shops of Brockenham closed at two. George Boult, who had taken to visiting Bridge Street on the Thursday half-holiday as well as the Sunday, must be expected this afternoon. One way or other Mrs. Day would have to answer that proposition of his which had filled her with such a misery of doubt.
Very little on his part had been said at the time of the offer. He would be the happier for a lady at the head of his table, he had said; she and her daughters wanted a home. Both were perhaps too old for sentiment, both were old enough to take what chance of happiness and comfort life still offered them. "Think it over, ma'am," he had said. "I'll look in on Thursday. I don't anticipate you'll have thought of a better plan."
She had not, unless to drown herself was a better plan.
She had no impulse to suicide, but was a woman of unlimited selflessness, who, believing that her death would make life easier to her children, would have gone to it without any fuss.
Sometimes, with little Franky, on a Sunday afternoon, she had walked by the side of the river where it ran away from the ugly black wharves upon its shores to the meadows where Franky loved to see the toads slip down through the weeds to the clear water, loved to get his boots wet in trying to catch the darting minnows in his hands, loved to gather the forget-me-nots, and river-mint, and ragged robin, to carry home to Deleah. She knew exactly the spot, where if she was only sure it would be best for Bessie, for Deleah, for poor, poor Bernard, she would slip down the shelving bank and go wading, wading in, till out of her depth and weighed down by her clothes she would sink out of sight, out of trouble, out of life. She had no illusions about the enfolding in the "cool and comforting arms of death." She knew quite well the horror of it, the choke, with the rank, foul-tasting river in her mouth, its weeds and offal winding her limbs. But that would pass, and she would be out of it. Far rather would she be dead at the bottom of the river than married to her benefactor, Mr. George Boult. If only she was sure it might be best for the children.
"I wonder what's to become of me while you're having your interesting interview with Scrooge?" Bessie said at dinner-time. "It's raining, so I can't go out for a walk."
"I am going for one," Mrs. Day said, having decided on that course at the instant of announcing the intention.
"But I thought Scrooge was coming?"
"I know. I can't see him. I really can't. You see him for me, Bessie."
"Really, mama, how absurd! Is the old man wanting to marry me? Are you to have the billing and cooing by proxy?"
There was no mistake about it, adversity had not improved Bessie; her mother had to admit to herself that she was even sometimes vulgar. "You might have spared me that, I think, Bessie," poor Mrs. Day said. She was deeply offended and hurt. She would not wait to finish her dinner, but went down into the shop and busied herself there till Mr. Pretty had put the shutters up. Then she dressed herself in the widow's bonnet she still wore, the shabby silk mantle with its deep border of crape, the black gloves so much the worse for wear, and saying no further word to Bessie went out.
"Of course I know where she's gone," said Bessie to Emily, her unfailing confidante. "To Franky's grave. It isn't the place to make her a lively companion when she comes back again; and it isn't very cheerful for me to have to sit at home and think of her there."
"'Tis mother-like, Miss Bessie." Franky's grave held attraction for Emily also, who visited it every Sunday of her life.
"Yes, but, Emily, oughtn't mama to think of me as well as of Franky? And I've no patience with her. I think she ought to make up her mind, and have done with it. Quite young girls, with all their lives before them, make marriages for money, why should she make such a fuss?"
"The young ones don't know what they're a-doing, perhaps; and your ma does," the sage Emily hazarded.
"And if the old man comes to-day what do you suppose I'm to say to him?"
"There never was a time yet when you didn't know what to say, MissBessie."
"It's all very well. Why should I be mixed up in it? I shall just say nothing."
"Then he can sit and look at you, and that's what he likes."
Bessie's eyes glinted: "But if he likes it—and he has always acted as if he did—then why? why? why—?" She spread out the palms of her plump, white little hands, making the dramatic inquiry of Emily, who, with a black rag dipped in whitening, was polishing the "brights," as she called her tin and pewter ware.
"Ah," Emily said; "he's one of your cautious ones, Boult is. Them that are young and fascinatin' aren't the best of housekeepers, per'aps."
Bessie stood silent for a minute, watching the vigorous rubbing of a dish-cover. "You go and change your frock," Emily said, glancing up at her. "Put on that black-and-white muslin you look your nicest in—"
"I ought to wear all black for a year, Emily."
"You put on your black and white," coaxed Emily.
Mrs. Day went to Franky's grave as had been foretold, but went a long way round to it, going first for that walk by the river, which the child and she had been wont to take together. Finding that particular spot on the riverbank which had been so much in her thoughts since Mr. Boult had made his offer, she sat down there with the deliberate intention of deciding which course to take, out of the three open to her. To be turned, with her children, homeless and penniless upon the world; to become Boult's wife; to drown in the river.
An effort she made to keep her mind on these issues, but could only think, instead, of Franky. Not of Franky as he had played by the river, happily painted his pictures, rushed off noisily with the cutler's son to school, but of Franky sitting to eat his bread-and-butter and radishes, one spring afternoon, his plate on his knees, removed to a distance from the tea-table, because Bessie had declared that he smelt of putty.
It was an absurd little incident, forgotten until now, when it awoke in her memory to wring the mother's heart without almost intolerable pain. Banished! Not good enough to sit at the table with Bessie—her Franky, her baby, her angel boy! In her heart she knew the boy had not cared, that, a few tears shed, his meal was as welcome to him in one part of the room as the other. Yet that picture of him, sitting lonely, munching in his corner, beset her with pain too deep for tears; the little uncomplaining figure bitterly accused her, she was reproached by the reproachless eyes.
So she sat by the river and cried there, unable to turn her mind to the living children; to Bessie, so hard at times, but only because she was unawakened, did not understand; to pretty, pretty Deleah with her innocent allurements, her winning ways; to Bernard, who had written in his last miserable letter from India that he loved her best in the world. Of these she thought not at all; but only of the child eating his radishes in the corner, looking solemnly at her out of his big dark eyes.
He called her from his grave, and presently she got up and went there.
Deleah, dropped by the Forcus carriage at the private door in BridgeStreet, went running up the stairs, and into the sitting-room. Bessie andMr. Boult, sitting side by side on the sofa in that apartment, flew ratherviolently apart at the interruption of her entrance.
"Well, Deleah! What a way to dash into the room!" Bessie said; a flurried Bessie with red cheeks, bursting into a scolding tone, to cover evident embarrassment.
"Where is mama?" Deleah, gasping with astonishment, got out; and Bessie, in the flurry and perturbation of the moment, flung at her the sisterly advice to find out.
Deleah, pale of face, eyes staring, gazed speechless from Bessie on the sofa, in the black-and-white muslin recommended by Emily, to Mr. Boult, now engaged in peering with sudden interest into the street. Then, shutting the door hastily upon the pair, she went to Emily, in the kitchen.
"How long has Mr. Boult been here?"
Emily had not looked at the clock.
"Is he going to stay to tea?"
Emily would set an extra cup, on the chance of it. "You'd best go and find your ma, Miss Deleah; she's gone to the cemetery, and have no right to be there alone."
"I am going; and, Emily, I won't come into the house any more while that man is there; and mama shall not."
"Nowyou'regoing to make a heap of fuss!" the worried Emily said. "I never see sech goin's on as we get nowadays. No peace anywhere."
"I'm not making any fuss. Only, you must tell Bessie to get rid of Mr.Boult before we come home."
He did not go till Bessie, plump and attractive, a pink rose in her bosom, had poured out tea for him, but he had been gone half an hour when the mother and daughter returned. Mrs. Day, fagged with her long walk, was comforted by the holding of Deleah's warm young arm, strengthened by Deleah's brave talk. There would be another hard fight, but Deleah would not go away any more, they would fight together.
"We can live on almost nothing, mama—you and I."
There would be Bessie, her mother reminded her; but Deleah seemed indisposed to take Bessie into her calculations. She unfolded her scheme of the little house and the little school of quite little children such as she could teach.
"We shall be far happier than we have ever been in the shop. Some eggs and milk for you and me, and now and then a little butcher's meat for Emily. What will it cost! Surely we can manage that, mama."
"You are forgetting that there is Mr. Boult to settle with. That horrible proposition of his must be somehow answered, Deleah."
"We will answer it to-night. I will help you to write the letter," Deleah promised.
They wrote it between them, after Bessie had gone to bed, whither she quickly repaired upon their return. The composition was mostly Deleah's, and when finished it ran—
"I did not feel equal to an interview with you, and I am sure you will excuse my having failed to keep the appointment. On thinking the matter over I have decided that the arrangement you proposed to me the other day is a quite unsuitable one, and I therefore write to decline. Having had time for reflection, I have no doubt that you agree in the wisdom of this decision."
"That is all, mama."
"My dear, no! It is so very cold."
"Well, we feel cold—you and I."
"But we must not forget what he did for us. We must always be grateful."
"I know. Mama, I am so tired of being grateful." Mrs. Day sighed; she was tired of it too, truth to tell. "He is always throwing what he has done in our faces, rubbing it into our skins. It is our gratitude which has made him so detestable."
"It was kind of him to give that fifty pounds, and—"
"We will pay him back. We will pay him back to the last farthing, mama. Sir Francis Forcus ismyfriend; he said he would be; I will go to him, and ask his advice. Only I hate—I hate to bother him."
"Then, let us try to muddle on alone."
"No. I am sure he would wish me." She waited, head on hand as she sat at the table, looking down at, but not seeing the letter she had written for her mother to copy. "He is such a sad man, mama," she said presently. "He still grieves, and grieves, and grieves, for his wife."
"But he was kind to you, Deleah?"
"Yes. When he remembered. When he knew I was there. He loved her so much. Miss Forcus has been telling me how he loved her. She was so beautiful, so grand in manner and appearance, with such a fine character, so great and good. There is a lovely monument to her in Cashelthrope churchyard. I went to look at it this morning, after Miss Forcus had been speaking of her. A white marble angel with aheavenlyface stands above the grave looking upwards, a lily in her hand. Do you know what I felt, mama. I felt I would die if I could give her back to him."
"Deleah!"
"I would," Deleah said, quite pale, and with a lip that trembled; "I would die gladly if that could bring her back to him, and make him happy again."
Mrs. Day looked at her daughter with a rather startled attention, andDeleah, glancing up, and catching her mother's eye, smiled brightly."Come, now let us send off this letter," she said.
When it was ready she ran down with it, herself, to the red pillar-box, opposite the shop-door. "That matter is done with," she said as the letter disappeared within the box, and she turned to re-enter. The light from the street lamp fell on her mother's name, black letters on a white ground, above the shop door. "Lydia Day, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." "And all that is nearly done with," she added, "and whatever happens I am not sorry."
She felt curiously strong and capable; competent to work her way, afraid of no difficulties. "It is more than time I should grow up, and at last, I have done so," she said to herself. She went through the badly-lit little passage, and up the steep narrow stairs, with shoulders braced and head up. It was the having made, that day, a decision every worldly-wise person would have condemned, but that she felt in every fibre of her being to be a right one, which had given her that feeling of confidence in herself she had hitherto lacked. She had chosen between comfort, luxury, the approval and adulation of the world, with Reggie Forcus, and the hard up-hill fight for bare existence, with liberty and her own self-respect; and choosing, as she knew, well, she had felt herself to have grown in mental and spiritual stature.
"What has happened to me?" she asked of herself. "I feel like going out to fight battles, to-night."
"Mama," she said, going back into the sitting-room where her mother awaited her, "behold I am not a child any longer. I am grown up."
Bessie's Hour
For the best part of the week, Mrs. Day, attending in the vague and preoccupied manner which had been hers since Franky's death to her few customers, marvelled greatly and with supreme uneasiness of mind about Mr. Boult. He took no notice of her letter, he did not come to the house. "He is too much offended," she said to herself, wondering what form the vengeance she anticipated would take.
At length, unable to keep silence any longer on the subject, she questioned Bessie.
"I hope Mr. Boult was not very much annoyed at my leaving him on Thursday,Bessie?"
"He didn't say he was," said Bessie, pertly.
"But was he? You could judge from his manner, surely?"
"If you ask me, then, I don't think he cared a ha'penny."
"I wrote to him, you know, Bessie."
"That finished it, I suppose?"
"Well, I must say I expected an answer."
"Mr. Boult has been in London lately. Perhaps it slipped his memory."
"London? That explains it. But how do you know, my dear?"
"I happen to know," Bessie said, and escaped from further questioning.
On the morning of the day when Deleah and her mother were to look over the house which Deleah had chosen for the scene of their new start in life, the girl went down into the shop to help her mother take stock of her stores of teas and sugars and soaps. The enterprising Coman, having done his best to ruin the widow's trade, had intimated his willingness to take the business over as it stood, and at once; leaving the family at liberty to continue in the house until Christmas.
Having her younger daughter with her behind the counter, made her morning in the shop a different thing to Mrs. Day. She lost the weary air of hopelessness she had worn since Franky's death, talked cheerfully to her customers, was brisk and alert over the business she and Deleah had to do.
"It is surprising that Mr. Boult, who has always insisted on having a finger in everything, should leave all this to us," she once said. "Our letter must have mortally offended him, Deleah."
"Never mind, mama; we will manage without him," Deleah promised. She felt such happy confidence in herself. "We will work," she said. "There never were two people who worked as you and I will work."
"And I am sure, in her way, Bessie will help," Mrs. Day loyally added; butDeleah was not quick to admit Bessie to her scheme.
"Twenty-five lemons," said Mrs. Day, having counted the stock of that commodity. "Two of them going bad. Say twenty-three, dear."
"Twenty-three lemons," repeated Deleah, entering that number in the stocktaking book.
"Three whole, and one half tin of ginger-nuts, at eight-pence the pound."
"Three and a half tins—Oh, wait a minute, mama." She held her pen suspended to look through the shop-window. She looked carelessly at first, and then with intentness. A closed carriage was passing down the narrow street, the wheel grating against the pavement had caused her to look up. "There is some one, all in white, in that carriage," she said.
"All in white? Have you got the ginger-nuts down, dear? Three and a half tins—"
"It was some one so like Bessie. I believe itwasBessie, mama."
"Bessie isn't likely to be sitting in a carriage, all in white. Say 'right' when you've got the items down, Deleah. Window sponges at sixpence. Put down nineteen sponges at sixpence, Deleah."
"Wait a minute. I'd just like to run up to see what Bessie is doing. I only caught a glimpse, but—I'll be back in one minute, mama."
Within that time she was back, a scared look on her face: "Bessie is not in the house, mama." Mrs. Day looked up in mild surprise. "And Emily is gone too."
"Emily? Gone?"
"The street door is locked, the key taken, and they are both gone."
"Emily has no right to go off like that in the middle of the morning.Bessie should not allow it. I must speak to them both when they come home.We got as far as the sponges—"
"Mama, itwasBessie in white in that carriage—her face was turned away, but I felt nearly sure. Some one was with her on the side farther away; that was Emily." Deleah looked at her mother, as if questioning in her own mind how much of the truth she could bear, before she went on. "Don't be upset, mama. I was going to tell you something. I feel sure Bessie is gone to be married to-day; and Emily has gone with her."
"Deleah!"
"Sit down for a minute. They have been so mysterious, all the week—haven't you noticed?—and so busy; no one knew about what—"
"Married! Married! How can she be married? There is no one for her to be married to."
"Do sit down. There is nothing to look so white about. Haven't you guessed? I have guessed all along. It is Mr. Boult."
"Boult! Mr. George Boult?"
"Yes."
"Mr. George Boult!"
"Yes. Mr. George Boult. I keep telling you, mama. That day we wrote the letter, I ran upstairs unexpectedly, and they were sitting on the sofa, and that old man had got his arm round Bessie's waist."
"George Boult's arm? Bessie?OurBessie?"
"Yes. Now, don't faint, or begin to cry. I am certain they have gone to be married."
"Bessie never would! She never would! It isawfulof her! It can't be!It can't be!"
"Itis. I am sure of it as if I were in the church, seeing it done. Oh, mama,don'tgive way.Don't!I have told you, so that when they come back, here as they will—they will! in half an hour, you may be quite brave, and not give way before them."
Deleah called Mr. Pretty from the cellar to the shop, and taking her mother's arm led her to the sitting-room. "Now if you feel youmustcollapse or cry, mama," she adjured her parent with a touch of the scorn the younger generation felt for elders accustomed, in that day, to meet all crises with tears and faints, or at the least wild gesticulation—"if youmust, do it now, and here; so that when they come you can be calm and dignified."
"OurBessie!" Mrs. Day kept saying, wringing her hands and looking up with appealing eyes swimming in tears. "Our Bessie! Our pretty, attractive Bessie! And that man! Thatoldman!"
"It won't do to go on like that when they come, mama," Deleah warned her. "You can't tell him he is old. You must not even tell Bessie so, now. Bessie isn't like you and me, remember, who would have been wretched and ashamed. She thinks of his money and his carriage. She does not think she has played an underhand game. She thinks she has been cleverer than the rest of us. She is pleased with herself, and proud, and Emily is proud of her. Well, if you must cry—cry, mama. Cry all you can now, so, on no account, you shed one tear beforethem."
By the time Bessie appeared—she came without her bridegroom, who had thought a meeting with the mother of his bride would be, under the circumstances, awkward—Deleah's exhortations had had their effect.
Bessie—partial to "scenes" and making them, of her own, on any occasion—expecting one now was disappointed. She came in, in her white dress and bonnet, her fair plump face flushed, her eyes twinkling in anticipation of the sensation she was about to create, and found mother and sister gravely awaiting her.
"Here I am! I am married, mama," she announced.
Instead of the outburst she had expected: "Yes, my dear, so I have been hearing," Mrs. Day said. "I don't know why you need have kept it secret from me, but now it is done, all I can do is to wish you every possible happiness, Bessie."
It was disappointing: very flat and tame. Mrs. Day got up and kissed her daughter, and Deleah followed suit.
"It would have been nicer for you to have mama and me with you at your wedding, I should have thought," Deleah said. "Isn't Mr. Boult coming to speak to us?"
"No," said a slightly crestfallen Bessie. "He thought there would be a fuss."
"It is too late to make a fuss, Bessie."
"Well, we thought so; and that there was no good in his being bothered; so he's gone straight on to the station to wait for me. We go up to town by the 1.20. I join him in half an hour. The carriage will wait."
"That's all right, dear. You'd better have something to eat before you go."
Emily was summoned to bring refreshments. The tray was already, having been prepared before they left for church, and on it was a small wedding-cake bought with Emily's savings, and a bottle of port purchased from the same meagre fund.
The white sugared cake was to be a surprise to Bessie:
"A little present from me," Emily said as she set it on the table.
"Oh, you dear old thing! You must stop to eat some. Cut the cake, Deleah."
Deleah would not usurp the bride's privilege, and Bessie, attempting the operation without removing her glove, split it down the palm! "There, I've spoilt my glove!" she cried, and turned upon her sister. "That's your fault, Deleah. You should have cut the cake when I asked you." Then she began to cry. "I get married," she sobbed; "mama and Deda care no more than if I had gone out for a walk. No one cares. They sit there and stare, and won't say anything; no one cares."
"Oh, Bessie, my poor girl, God knows I care!" the mother said. "But what can I say? It is done; what can I say?"
"Say s-s-omething! Don't sit there!" Bessie sobbed. "Deda might sew up my glove, instead of s-s-sitting there."
Deleah had already found needle and cotton. "Take your glove off, Bessie."
Bessie tried to tear it from her hand. Her tears fell on the white kid. "It is tight. I shall never get it on again. Oh, what shall I do, mama? I have to be there in half an hour. What's the time now? No. I can't eat the cake, Emily. You can eat it, and Deleah, when I'm g-g-gone. Little Franky would have liked some. Poor little Franky. I—I always loved Franky, mama. I'm—I'm crying now because of Franky."
They all cried then, and hushed and petted her, and made her drink a glass of poor Emily's wine, which still further flushed her cheeks, and made her laugh across her tears. Then they had to be stern with her, and scold her, lest she should be in hysterics. And through it all she kept looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Only five minutes more, mama! Deda, Emily, only five minutes more!"
"Dear, you're going to see the London sights," Emily comforted her, the tears raining down her own leather-coloured cheeks. "And your own kerridge, and all! And your man in livery a-waiting at the door! And your gentleman that fond of you, he could eat you a'most!"
But, in spite of these considerations, Bessie spent the last five minutes in the room she had so grumbled at having to live in on the sofa, her head buried in the pillow, her feet kicking, in the old ungoverned fashion, upon the horsehair cover.
Deleah fetched her own hat and the cloak which was to cover Bessie's white muslin for travelling, and eau-de-cologne wherewith to dab the tear-stained cheeks. "I'm coming with you, Bessie, to the station," she promised. "Emily must come too."
"I'm a-comin'," Emily, still in her bonnet and shawl, assured her. "Don't you never think I'm a-goin' to leave you, my dear, till I'm forced to it. And I may as well tell you, ma'am," she went on, turning to Mrs. Day, "that when my young lady and her husban' returns from their honeymooning, I'm a-goin' to live along of 'em. Sorry I am to part from you and Miss Deleah, but Bessie have always come first with me, and always will do."
Then the five minutes were up: "Good-bye, mama dear."
"Good-bye, my own precious Bessie."
"I've got three new frocks, besides this; and I'm to have some more afterwards. The luggage was such a trouble to pack, without you and Deleah knowing! I hope I've got everything."
"You'll write, Bessie?"
"And you'll come and stay with me, mama? There'll be the carriage to drive out in. It will make a nice change."
"It will indeed, dear."
"Is my bonnet straight? I had the forget-me-not wreath put in because you always said blue was my colour."
"Go now, darling. There is not another minute."
"Oh, Mama! Mama! Mama!"
"Go instantly, Bessie. Deleah, take her downstairs—"
The bridegroom, dressed for the character in blue frock-coat, lavender trousers, with gloves and tie to match, and a flower in his buttonhole, was in waiting to help his bride to alight. He, who had never struck her as looking so before, suddenly appeared quite old to Deleah, in spite of his careful array, and the whiskers which had been oiled and curled. Bessie with the forget-me-nots surrounding her plump, fair-skinned face, looked almost a child in comparison.
"Late!" he said, smiling upon the ladies. "But better late than never, eh,Sister Deleah?"
"That depends on how you look at these things," said Deleah, for the first time in her life feeling the desire to be unpleasant.
"We sprang a surprise on you, eh?"
"We were not at all surprised, Mr. Boult."
"It will have to be 'George' now, won't it? We can't have Sister Deleah'Mr. Boult-ing' me. Eh, Bess?"
"You may call him 'George,' Deda," said a magnanimous Bessie.
"Thank you," said Deleah, in the tone of one who is not at all grateful. She followed the happy pair to the platform. Both were too smartly dressed for ordinary travellers, and people, guessing them to be bride and bridegroom, looked at them with interest.
"How they all stare! I hope they find us worth looking at."
"I always have thought you were, my dear," Mr. Boult said gallantly.
Quite a little crowd collected to see Bessie handed into the first-class carriage, on which the word 'engaged' had been pasted: "We shall be alone. I have seen to that," the bridegroom said, proud of his man-of-the-world ways.
Deleah climbed into the carriage with her sister. "You wish you were coming with us?" Mr. Boult inquired facetiously.
"Not at all!"
"Your turn will come. How about Mr. Gibbon? Now that Bessie is out of the way you can have your chance."
"Good-bye, Bessie. I do so hope you may be happy."
"You're a lucky young lady, tha's what you are!" Emily said, putting her head into the carriage. "You couldn't marry all of 'em what was in love with you, Bessie; but you've made a wise ch'ice—"
The guard cut her eloquence short by slamming the door. Mr. Boult, oblivious of the fact that Bessie might also have liked to show herself, filled up the window. Emily, determined that no item of the ritual proper to such ceremonies should be omitted, promptly threw a handful of rice in his face. It stung, half blinded him, but had the effect of driving him from his position, so that Bessie for one minute could appear. The poor face in the white tulle and forget-me-nots looked anxious, frightened, appealing; and as the train, rushing on, carried it from them the women left on the platform looked at each other through eyes blinded with tears.
"Poor Bessie! She is such a child always," Deleah said.
"She is that, Miss Deleah. I tell you how 'tis with me and Bessie—spite of her having such a way with her with the gentlemen, and such a will of her own—I have always felt I haven't never lost the little girl I had to wait on when first I come to service with your ma."
The Man With The Mad Eyes
The other women being employed in the daytime, the sitting-room had been more especially Bessie's domain. How strange and chilling was the thought it would be empty of Bessie for evermore. Her untidy work-basket peeped out from under the sofa where she always pushed it on the appearance of a visitor; the penny weekly paper in which she read of the fashions, and the romantic love-matches of which she had dreamed while making an absolutely sordid marriage herself, was tucked behind the cushion of her chair. Deleah stood within the doorway for a minute, without entering, feeling strangely bereaved and forlorn. Not much sympathy had been between the pair, but the ties of blood are stronger than is realised till "marriage or death or division" snaps the cord.
With a lagging step Deleah went forward into the so pathetically empty room. On the table some flowers were lying. Two deep purple blooms of clematis. The creeper so carefully trained to climb beside a certain hall door came into her mind. She had noticed on an occasion she would fain have forgotten, without knowing she had done so, that it bore two buds. Deleah looked at the blossoms with an odd feeling of repulsion. She walked round the table to the side that was farthest from them. Then lifting her eyes, she saw that Charles Gibbon was standing by the opposite wall. The open door had screened him from her on entering.
"Mr. Gibbon!" she said, and her voice faltered with dismay; only apprehension was in her eyes.
He looked at her without speaking. It was curiously disturbing to see him standing there, his back to the wall, saying nothing; the broad, short figure, at one time so familiar in that room, now so alien and strange, the commonplace, plain-featured face, tragic with its new grey hue, the eyes—Deleah remembered with a shudder some words recently spoken about the eyes! They were fixed upon her face.
"Won't you come and sit down, Mr. Gibbon?"
He advanced a few steps, and stood at the table opposite her.
She looked at the flowers. "You brought these?"
"For you," he said, speaking thickly. "They are the only two the clematis had. If it had ten thousand they would have been for you."
Deleah kept her eyes upon the flowers. She felt that she could not touch them. "You are very kind," she said.
"You would say as much as that to any stranger in the street who had kicked a stone out of your path, and I—I—." He was stammering curiously in his thickened voice. It seemed that the words he wanted to speak would not come. "And I—after all that I suffer—only kind?" he got out at last.
With something of the expression of a trapped creature in her eyes, Deleah looked past him to the door. He turned instantly, and shut it, and came back to his place opposite her at the table.
"Your sister is married to Mr. Boult, to-day," he said. "At one time you could not marry me because of your sister. That impediment's gone. Another time, you had some other excuse. Again another. Come, what excuse have you to-day?" He leant across the table to bring his face closer to hers. "You don't intend to marry me, do you?"
She gazed at him with fear in her eyes, but did not speak. "You let me live beside you, set my heart on you, till there was nothing else on earth or heaven for me but you. You let me slave to serve a man I hated as a means of getting you. You let me get ready my house—every brick in it, every pound of paint laid on it, for you. You—"
"Mr. Gibbon, do wait! I think you are saying too much. I never deceived you. I never said I would marry you. I tried to make you understand."
"Listen! Have you always hated me? When you took my flowers and fruit—all the presents I lavished on you—tell me, did you hate me then?"
"Certainly I did not. I thought you very kind and generous."
"Do you hate me now?" When she told him 'no' he stretched out a shaking hand to her across the table. "Then—?"
Deleah stepped back from the hand and shook her head.
"Why?"
No answer.
"Why?"
"Oh, where would be the use of my telling you!"
"But you shall tell me."
"No."
"Then I will tell you. You think you are going to marry some one else."
Deleah lifted her head and looked at him with proud offence. "You are not to say that, Mr. Gibbon. It is not true."
"You think so," he persisted. "But you are not. Do you know why? Because I will stop you. I know! know! know!" He mercilessly slapped one of his shaking hands upon the table. "And I will stop you."
He turned away, walked to the door, stood staring at it for a moment, his back to her, then suddenly faced her again: "Sir Francis Forcus," he said. He walked to the table his eyes fixed on hers. "Sir Francis Forcus," he repeated. And once again, leaning across the table to bring his face close to hers, "Sir Francis Forcus."
Then he laughed in the girl's frightened face, and went out of the room.
Emily put an inquiring head in at the door.
"He haven't gone? Mr. Gibbon haven't gone, Miss Deleah? Well, now, when the mistress told me he was up along of you, I hoped 'twas another weddin' comin' off. You shouldn't have let him go so quick, my dear."
Deleah had a dazed look about the eyes. "He was horrible! I believe he is mad," she said.
Emily clapped her hands together. "Bessie's marriage have done that! I always told Bessie she'd send some of 'em to the lunatic asylum, or their graves."
"I believe he is mad. Which way did he go, Emily?" She ran down into the shop where Mrs. Day, if daughters were married or daughters were threatened, must never forget that she was licensed to sell tobacco and snuff, was still toiling away at her stocktaking. "Mama, did you see Mr. Gibbon go away?"
"No. Is he gone, my dear?"
Deleah dashed to the door, still open, although the windows were shuttered, and looked up and down the street.
"Do you want to call him back?" her mother asked of her, in mild surprise.
"I believe he is mad." Deleah was breathless, shaking with excitement or fear. "He was in the sitting-room—hiding behind the door—waiting for me."
"Mr. Gibbon! My dear, he couldn't have been. Why should he do that?"
"He was doing it. How did he get there?"
"He came in just as usual—there is really nothing the matter with him, Deleah—to ask me if I knew where his pistol was that he and Franky used to shoot at bottles with when he first came, out of his bedroom window. You remember? I told him it was in his bedroom still, for all I knew; I told him to run up and get it?"
"Did he get it? Had he a pistol in his pocket while he talked to me?"
Emily had followed Deleah into the shop. "He'd no pistol," she put in confidently. "He'd never find it. I'd never liked the nasty dang'rous thing, with Franky into every mischief, and I hid it up on the top of the wardrobe. He'd never find it!"
"Run and see," Mrs. Day said. She began to be impressed by the look of fear on Deleah's face; the girl was trembling violently, now, her teeth chattering as if with extreme cold.
In less than a minute Emily was back. "He've got it," they heard her calling as she came. "The pistol's gone. He've got it. Sure as we're living, he's goin' to shoot hisself, on account of Bessie!"
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Day cried sharply. "Deleah, there is really nothing to be frightened about, my dear. The pistol was Mr. Gibbon's own. He naturally wanted it."
Deleah stood in the middle of the shop, lit by the half-open door and the jet of gas above Mrs. Day's desk. She was squeezing her hands together, her arms strained against her breast as if trying desperately to stop her trembling. "Could I get there?" she said to her mother. "Could I get there first?" Her body was bent forward as if with the impulse to run, but she waited, squeezing herself in her arms, her brow knit, trying to steady her thought. "If I can get there first—!" she said.
"Where, dear? Get where? What is it you want to do, Deleah?"
She seemed not to hear: "If I can get there first!" she said to herself; then, going stumblingly, reached the door, and was gone.
The two women left, stared at each other's blank face in the mingled lights of the shop. "She isn't running after Mr. Gibbon, surely!" Mrs. Day said, helplessly perplexed.
"There's no good in her a-doing that. Gibbon's heart's set on Bessie,"Emily declared.
"Do go after her, and bring her back, Emily."
The great yard of the Hope Brewery was nearly empty. A young clerk, his pen stuck in the bushy hair above his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets, was whistling as he walked across it, stepping lightly from the shadows cast by the huge buildings to the sunshine of the open spaces. An enormous drayman was backing a pair of powerful horses, in order to bring his wagon under that portion of the wall over which a barrel hung suspended; two other men also of gigantic proportions, with red-shining faces and aprons tied over their ample bodies, stood to watch the manoeuvres. A groom in charge of a saddle-horse by the entrance to the main building patted his horse's neck as he also looked on.
Deleah, flinging herself from the door of the four-wheeler which had brought her, dashed through the yard, consciously seeing none of these things, which yet photographed themselves on her brain and remained indelibly printed there till her dying day. She knew her way to the private room of Sir Francis, and made towards it, without pausing to heed the one or two men who endeavoured to stop and question her. In the ante-room to the inner sanctum, a confidential clerk who always sat there flew up from his desk.
"Excuse me, miss. A moment, please. You can't go in there. Sir Francis is particularly engaged."
When she took no notice, he tried to reach the door before her; but Deleah, too quick for him, dashing forward, opened, and shut it in his face.
Sir Francis was standing in his favourite position with his back to the mantelpiece, in riding dress, his gloves and whip in his hand. Deleah, bolting into the room, and falling back upon the door, the more effectually to close it upon the confidential clerk, had an instant's vision of him in his calm unassailableness, in that unruffled perfection of appearance, which, while it had always awakened her girlish admiration, had ever seemed to remove him to an immeasurable distance. The sight of him, even in what was to her a supreme moment, had its habitual effect of pouring cold waters of discouragement upon her mood, of making her doubtful of herself and any claim she could possibly make upon his attention. She had been presumptuous in pushing herself into his presence. Of course he was safe. Of course nothing could hurt him. The poor Honourable Charles, the erstwhile draper's assistant, with his common, thick-set figure, his hoarse voice, his unrefined accent—it was an offence even to think of him in the same breath with this elegant gentleman. How could this one on his high eminence of aloofness and security be endangered by such an one as that?
To see and feel all this was the work of a moment. The moment in which she slammed the door on the protesting clerk, the moment in which also she felt the shock of awaking from her frenzied zeal that would have beaten down all obstacles to save this man's life, to the perception that her zeal would in his eyes seem an absurdity; that her presence there was superfluous if not impertinent; that she had made a fool of herself for nothing.
Sir Francis suffered this inexplicable noisy invasion of his privacy with a look of annoyance and surprise breaking up the composure of his face. Then, seeing who it was who had thus burst upon him, who leant upon the door she had slammed, panting as if pursued, turning frightened, appealing eyes to him, the expression of his face changed, the whole man seemed to change. With a look such as Deleah had never dreamed it possible he could wear he went forward to her; in a tone she had not known his voice to take, he spoke her name.
"Deleah!" he said.
She looked at him; but in rapturous wonder at the light in his eyes, listening spellbound to the delight of her name so spoken, forgetting who she was, where she was, in the whirl of bliss where her senses momentarily swam. Then he held out his hands and took hers, and held them locked in his against his breast.
"My dear child, I was coming to you," he said. "You have come to me instead, my little Deleah!"
The Moment Of Triumph
"While you were in my house I reckoned up the years, many times." He smiled a little sadly, and shook his head, looking down at her. "They never grew any less, Deleah. There are twenty-five between you and me. It is too much! Too much!"
"No!" breathed Deleah, with upturned, adoring eyes.
"And, dear, they are not the only things between us—dividing me from you. A love I felt—a great love I thought never to feel again—in the past—" He looked away from her, over her head into the years that were gone. Then his eyes came back to the eyes that were lifted to him, and he grasped her hands tighter against his breast.
"There was Reggie, too," he said. "Poor Reggie! But I made what reparationI could. I gave him his chance. Did he ever have a chance, Deleah?"
She shook her head. "Never!"
"What will he say to us?"
There came a rap upon the door, and Sir Francis dropped the hands he held, and started back. "I am particularly engaged, Rogers," he said.
The door was discreetly opened to admit not Rogers, but Rogers's voice: "I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a matter of some importance; if you could come for a few minutes."
"I have told you I am engaged," the voice of authority protested. With a kind of discreet reluctance the door closed again, and Sir Francis, with the impatience of a lover whose ardour has received a momentary check, took the girl into his arms. With a hand pushed against his chest she held herself away from him.
"Why?" he asked her. "You are not afraid of me, Deleah?"
"Yes. Very much afraid."
"Tell me why, my dearest child?"
"Oh, you know," said Deleah, turning away her head.
"No! It is I who should be afraid of you; you, with your youth and beauty, and sweet and gentle goodness. I confess it—all those months you lived in my house, I was afraid."
"You said there were things between us—dividing us. You did not say what really is there. What papa did—"
As she faltered over the words there came a louder knocking upon the door, which opened almost at the same minute. Mr. Rogers's deprecating face appeared there, and behind it the face of a policeman.
"A minute, sir. I won't detain you a minute," the clerk said; and Sir Francis walked to the door with an impatient step and closed it behind him.
Deleah, left to herself—was it for an hour? was it for a minute?—looked with eyes dazed with happiness upon the hands that had been crushed in his.
"I used to think that to be loved by him would be heaven," she said. "And now—now I feel nothing. I am numb."
He came back very grave, his face unusually pale. "Your cab is waiting. I will take you home, my dear child," he said.
She crossed the big yard again at his side. The drayman was still at his horses' heads, the groom was taking the riding-horse round to the stables. On the opposite side of the yard beneath one of the arches of a heavy colonnade, a couple of policemen stood. One of them was making notes in a book. A group of workpeople stood near by; and Deleah remembered afterwards that there was about them and the rest an air of suspending something they were saying or doing while their chief and the girl at his side walked to the great entrance gates.
"A cab was waiting, by good luck," Sir Francis said as he put her in it, and Deleah awoke, it seemed to her, for the first time since he had called her name as she leant against his door, to full consciousness.
"It was mine," she said. "I took it to get to you quickly—before you started for home. I was afraid you might be hurt. A man—the man who used to lodge with us—came to me this afternoon, and he threatened you. I was so foolish—I believed he meant it. I was afraid. I thought, as you rode past his house to Cashelthorpe, he would wait there, behind the hedge, and shoot you. I seemed to see him doing it. So foolish of me! Of course he was simply frightening me; he would not dare—" She lifted the adoring eyes to his face as he sat beside her. Who would dare indeed to harm that Excellence! "I was afraid he had gone mad," she said, excusing the folly of her thought.
"Poor fellow, I think he had," Sir Francis said. He held her face turned to him, its pure oval in his hand. "Was it love of you that made him mad, Deleah?"
She was too shy of him yet, and too modest to answer the question by word of mouth; but he knew the answer.
"He won't trouble you any more, Deleah," he said very gently. "He won't hurt me. He is dead."
She would not believe it. It was impossible. "He can't be! He was with me half an hour ago. He was well as I am, and very strong. He can't be dead!"
"He seems to have come to the Brewery-yard—why we shall never know. Perhaps with some mad intention towards me. Perhaps—. But it is all conjecture. All we know is that he is there now. Dead."
"Was he there before me? Did he see me running through the yard—to you?"
"No one knows. No one noticed him till they found him lying behind one of the pillars of the colonnade, shot through the head. I am going back there now. They want me."
He lifted her from the cab and stood beside her till Emily opened the door: "I will be with you again as soon as I can, my darling child," he promised; and got into the cab again and drove away.
Deleah, creeping up the stairs, shut the door of the sitting-room upon Emily, voluble of questions but getting no satisfactory answers. Shaken with emotion, weak and shivering, she stood looking round the empty room, peopling it with its familiar circle. There was Bessie's place, and there Franky's especial chair. There, by the little table on one side of the fire the boarder had sat every evening, book in hand, but eyes wandering ever in Deleah's direction. She spoke, or laughed, or sighed, and the change in his face showed that he listened. Bessie had to call his name sharply twice before his attention was gained. Franky would ask some question about the mixing of his paints. The man would answer with a kind of anxious politeness, getting up to look over the child's shoulder. Passing Deleah, he would stoop for the book he had purposely dropped by her chair. "I love you!" she would hear his fierce low whisper in her ear.
She had been too depreciative of herself, too innocent of the workings of passion, to have felt anything but irritation and annoyance at the signs in him of a suffering she could not believe in or understand. Was it possible, after all, that she, Deleah, whose heart was so tender, whose ways so pitiful, who saved the drowning flies and would not willingly have afflicted the meanest of God's creatures, by means of a pale and pretty face only, had wrought that havoc?
With a sob in her throat she came forward into the room. Upon the table were lying the two purple clematis flowers, backed by a spray of their own foliage and tied with the tendrils of the plant. Deleah recalled the repulsion with which she had seen them lying there. She put out her hand towards them, but drew it back. She could not touch them even now.
To each of us, however mean our lives and obscure our history, living or dead, the moment of triumph comes. To Charles Gibbon his came, when Deleah, forgetful of her new-found bliss, and the Heaven of Happiness opening before her, laid her head upon the table beside the poor blooms of the clematis flower, and as if her heart were broken, cried for the fate of the Honourable Charles.