CHAPTER II
Rilchester, Bridget’s home, was a fair-sized, bustling market-town.
At the corner of the High Street stoodThe Golden Plume, Mr. Ruan’s property, a large, prosperous-looking public house, with an adjoining private dwelling.
On the day Bridget left school, Mrs. Ruan sat in the drawing-room, with her sister, Mrs. Wainright, a plump, middle-aged woman, who had married a small farmer and lived at Sidford, a town some twenty miles distant from Rilchester.
The room in which the two women were seated was of the uncompromising square description, with two flat sash-windows overlooking the High Street. It was furnished in the style that was fashionable when Mrs. Ruan was married; but in its accessories, leanings towards æstheticism, as understood in Rilchester, were observable. These took the form of Liberty antimacassars tied over the backs of the gilt chairs, flights of Japanese fans (partly concealing the somewhat florid wall paper, with its designof yellow roses and butterflies), and sundry painted tambourines, tied with bunches of colored ribbons, depending from the walls or perched jauntily on screens.
The room was incongruous enough, but it did not lack in detail certain deft, dainty touches, which indicated that its possessor gave the rein to her artistic sense as far as, and on the lines on which it had been developed.
This was best exemplified in the appearance of Mrs. Ruan herself and her immediate surroundings. She was a slightly faded but young-looking woman, with blond hair curling a little stiffly above a pretty, somewhat lined and care-worn face. She dressed well. There was no hint of vulgarity or display, but a considerable amount of grace in the simple silk dress she wore, and the soft folds of the gauze fichu knotted at the breast.
The little tea-table drawn up to the fire was dainty too. It was covered by a simple linen cloth trimmed with lace, and the doily that lay in the cake-basket was fine in texture and white as snow.
“You go in forafternoontea, I see,” said her sister, with the faintest touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Quite fashionable.” She put her cup to her lips, and drank off its contents at one gulp, as she spoke, as a sort of protest.
“Yes, I like it. I think it’s a pretty fashion. Why shouldn’t I have it, if I want to? Of course ’Enry says it’s a ‘lot of tomfoolery,’ but that don’t matter to me.”
Mrs. Ruan occasionally dropped anh, but her voice was clear and musical like her daughter’s.
“Besides, with Bridget coming home and all, I want to have things nice for her. She’ll look for it.”
“When do you expect ’er?”
“In about an hour,” Mrs. Ruan said, glancing at the clock, her face brightening. “There! I’avebeen looking forward to her coming home. I’ve missed ’er dreadfully,—that I ’ave; but of course Ihadto think of her education. ’Enry wasalwaysagainst this school, you know,—grumbled at the expense an’ all; but I wasdeterminedshe should go and have good schooling.”
Mrs. Wainright grunted a little.
“I don’t know that ’Enry wasn’t right,” she said. “I always thought it was a mistake myself.”
“Amistake,” her sister echoed indignantly. Her face flushed. “But there, Jinny, you neverdidhave a spark of ambition for your children. Now, Ihave, and it’s harder for me than for you, p’rhaps,” she added wistfully. “Of course I wouldn’t own it to any one else, but a sister’sdifferent. There’s no doubt about it, a public houseislooked down on. It’s a fine paying thing, of course, an’ I can’t say a word against it; that’s where all the bread and butter has come from. But people don’t like it. And if I hadn’t always ’eld my head up, we should never have known the people we do. We should have had to be content with the Browns—you know—that greengrocer lot, and the Witleys—the tobacconists, and that kind. But I neverwouldknow them, and now wedogo to the Jenkinses sometimes, and the Wilbys, and the Walkers. Not that, between you and me, I think the Jenkinses are any superior to us. Old Jenkins isn’t a bit refined, to my taste, but they’ve got a nice genteel business, and they’re well thought of in the town, and of course that makes a difference.”
“Well, you know your own affairs, I s’pose,” returned her sister; “butmyopinion ain’t altered. The girl will come ’ome with ’er ’ed choke full of ’igh and mighty ideas, an’ you won’t find she’s goin’ to be satisfied with the Jenkinses—northe Wilbys, for that matter, neither. Unfitting a girl for ’er station in life, I call all this education. My Bessie and Janey shall never ’ave it—I’ll see to that.”
“Ah!” broke in Mrs. Ruan eagerly, ignoring the latter part of the speech; “but I look higherfor Bid than the Wilbys or Jenkinses even. She’ll meettheirfriends of course, and befitto meet them now after being at school all these years. Why, young Spiller, that young fellow in Bailey’s Bank, and Downs, he’s a clerk in Hobson’s office, and Danby, they all visit the Jenkinses. I daresay they laugh at them behind their back,” she continued, as though stating an obvious possibility, “but theygo. Bid will marry one of them, I expect, and then she’ll be out of trade altogether.”
“Much better if she stopped in,” Mrs. Wainright said with a sniff. “She’d get a chance of a comfortable ’ome with a nice young publican. Don’t talk to me about yer tuppenny-’apenny clerks.”
Mrs. Ruan drew herself up. “That was always like you, Jinny, always looking out for the main chance. As for me, I’d sooner ’ave my girl married to a man with a nice genteel occupation than have so much money. Besides, all these young fellers have expectations,” she added inconsequently.
“Well, mark my words, you’ll ’ave a time with ’er,” replied Mrs. Wainright. “The child’s been away from you all these years, except fer the ’olidays; andthenyou’ve generally sent ’er into the country because of ’er ’ealth, or something. Why, you hardly know ’er. You don’t know what she’s like to live with.”
“Bid’s all right,” her mother said confidently. “A more affectionate child you wouldn’t meet with in a day’s march. I own she’s a bit queer sometimes,” she went on slowly, after a moment’s pause, “and she’s got a temper—that’s not to be denied. She’s got mother’s temper, as well as her looks,” she added, “and ’er sharp tongue too.”
“’Ave you got that old picture of mother as a girl?” asked Mrs. Wainright presently. “I ’aven’t seen it for years.”
“Yes, here.” Mrs. Ruan rose and went to a desk under the gilt-legged table at the other end of the room. She unlocked it, and, searching among the papers, presently took out something with which she returned to the fire. “I’ll light the gas,” she said; “it’s quite dusk—you can’t see.”
The gas-jet flared up, and Mrs. Wainright turned the sketch to the light.
It was the head of a fisher girl. A gray kerchief was tied over her curling hair, and a coarse gray peasant’s frock, open carelessly at the neck, was just indicated. The girl’s face was beautiful; there was a touch of dignity about it that was even more arresting than its beauty. On the back of the sketch was scribbled, “Bridget O’Hea,” and a few almost illegible words in French.
“What does that mean?” she asked her sister.
“I don’t know. Father saw it in one of those artist-men’s sketch-books, and wanted to buy it, I’ve heard mother say; but ’e gave it to him—said he had plenty more of her.”
“Bridget’s the very image of her, isn’t she?”
“Yes—might be ’er daughter. She don’t favor either you or ’Enry a bit,” Mrs. Wainright declared.
“Do you remember when we were little, running about barefoot on the shore at Dara’s Bay?” asked her sister presently in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder to see that the door was shut; “and mother telling us stories over the peat fire in the evenings—an’ singing. What queer outlandish things she told us, do you remember?—and the things she sung. Sometimes I ’ave the air running in my head for days now, and I can see her great big eyes when she told the stories to us children—just like Bid’s. Do you remember the painter-folk that hung about the cottage? Mother used to wear a scarlet shawl, and sit on that bit of old wall by the sea—didn’t she?—and knit. Can’t you see her now? And the artists that used to come and talk to her? She always made them laugh, I mind me.”
“Yes. Who’d think, to see us sittin’ in ourdrawing-rooms now, we’d come out of that little wood shanty?” Mrs. Wainright replied. “But I don’t know that we weren’t ’appy enough.”
“Bridget came across this picture one day, when she was a little thing,” Mrs. Ruan resumed after a pause, locking the sketch away in the desk again, “and she asked who it was, and I told ’er it was her grandmother, but she was never to tell a word about ’er being only a fisher girl. And what do you think she said?—that’s what I mean by Bridget beingqueer. She said she’d much rather be a fisher girl and live in a hut by the sea than keep a public house. I smacked her for it—silly little thing.—She ought to be here by this time.
“Oh, here’s father!” Mr. Ruan was a thick-set, rather powerfully built man, with a somewhat florid complexion, and a taciturn manner.
“Room’s very ’ot,” he remarked, shaking hands with his sister-in-law. “Bridget not come yet?”
“No, she’ll be here in a few minutes. I didn’t go to meet her because Jinny came in. There! that’s the cab, isn’t it?”
She ran to the top of the stairs, but Bridget was already half way up.
“Well, mother!” she cried gayly, flingingherself into her arms. “Here I am!—the train was awfully late. How are you, father? oh! and Aunt Jinny.”
She entered the room with her arm round her mother’s waist, kissing her between the words, over and over again. The maid came in with fresh tea, and she sank into a low chair by the fire, pulling off her gloves, and chattering.
Mrs. Ruan glanced triumphantly at her sister, and then back again at Bridget.
“Child! how you’ve grown!” she exclaimed, with a glance at the girl’s slight, erect figure and bright eyes.
“So I ought,” Bridget cried. “I’m eighteen.Eighteen!Aunt Jinny, what do you think of that? Lovely tea, mother—oh! and hot cakes!—delicious!”
Presently Mrs. Wainright rose to go. Mr. Ruan accompanied her to the front door, and his wife left the room to give an order to the maid about the luggage.
Bridget was left alone for a few minutes.
She glanced round the room, and the light went out of her eyes. She heard her father’s gruff voice in the passage downstairs. “Tell that idiot of a maid of yours to take these boxes out of the way!” he shouted irritably.
The color flamed in the girl’s cheeks. She rose from her seat, and went slowly to the fire,and knelt before it. She saw the red glow of the coals through a blinding haze of tears.
In a flash, as it seemed, the full significance of her home-coming was revealed to her.
“Oh!” she whispered, “what a wicked girl I am! I’m glad to see mother, but—I—don’t want to come home. I didn’t know it would be as bad as this.— What shall I do? WhatshallI do?”
“An invitation for the Jenkinses—for the 14th,” Mrs. Ruan said, triumphantly, coming into the dining-room one morning.
Bridget sat at the table writing. She had been home about three months. Mr. Ruan, who had not yet gone to business, lay back in his arm-chair before the fire, with the paper. His coat hung over the back of the chair; he usually preferred to sit in his shirt-sleeves when he was off duty.
Bridget looked up. She frowned a little, began to speak, and was silent, biting the end of her pen.
“Well, what is it?” Mrs. Ruan’s voice changed at once into an irritable, complaining key. “You don’t want to go, I suppose?”
“Don’t want to go?—why not?” exclaimed Mr. Ruan, looking up from his paper. “Aren’t the Jenkinses good enough for her? You don’tseem to ’ave made so many friends at school, my girl; so if you’re not invited away to stay with swells, you must put up with the people ’ere, or go without.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to go,” Bridget replied, turning away her head.
“Didn’tsay. Of course not; it’s yourmanner,” retorted her mother. “I thought you’d come back more fit to ornament society,thatI did,” she said bitterly. “Instead of which you seem to care for no gayeties like other girls—nothing but those everlasting books. I’m sure—”
“That ’ull do, mother,” her husband broke in, raising his voice. “She’ll go—that’s all about it—and take some music, can’t you?” he added angrily, turning to Bridget, “and let them see you can play. Hang it all! I expect old Joe Jenkins is laughing in his sleeve, to think of all the money I’ve spent on you. A ’undred and twenty a year! and what’s the good of it?”
Bridget sprang to her feet, and with reckless haste began sweeping all her papers together.
“Dolet’s talk about something else!” she cried, with sudden passion.
“Why haven’t any of your school-fellows asked you to their homes?” inquired her mother, querulously. “I daresay you were stupid enough to tell them who we are, andthat’swhy.”
“That is just the reason!” Bridget exclaimed, closing her lips tightly.
“Well!—of all—”
But Bridget had reached the open door. She ran upstairs to her room, and shut herself in.
Mrs. Ruan waited till she heard the bedroom door shut, and then broke into helpless tears.