CHAPTER XIII
LEBANON HOUSE
Of all the great stations in the world Euston alone preserves in its Tartarian architecture the spirit in which the first railway travellers must have set out. So long as Euston endures, whatever improvements humanity may achieve in rapidity of travel and transport, we shall understand the apprehension and awe with which the original adventure must have filled the imagination of mankind. Mrs. Browning took to her bed in order to recover from the effects of a first view of Paddington Station; but Paddington is merely an overgrown conservatory set beside Euston, impressive in its way but entirely lacking in that capacity for permanently and intensely expressing the soul of an epoch, which makes Euston worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as St. Peter’s, or the Pyramids of Gizeh, or even the sublime Parthenon itself. Not only does Euston express the plunge of humanity into a Plutonian era, a plunge more lamentable and swift than Persephone’s from Enna in the dark chariot of Hades; but it peculiarly expresses within the lapse of a whole period the descent of the individual Londoner to the industrial Hell.
On an iron-bound day in early March the grimy portico of Euston might oppress the lightest heart with foreboding as, passing through to the eternal twilight of those cavernous and funereal entries, the fearful traveller embarks for the unimaginable North. The high platforms give the trains a weasel shape. The departure bell strikes upon the ear like a cracked Dies Iræ. The porters, in spite of their English kindliness, manage somehow to assumethe guise of infernal guardians, so that we tip them as we might propitiate old Charon with an obol or to Cerberus fling the drugged sop. St. Pancras and its High Anglican embellishments impress the observer as simply a Ruskinian attempt to make the best of both worlds. King’s Cross is a mere result of that ugliness and utility of which Euston is the enshrinement. Paddington is an annexe of the Crystal palace. Victoria and Charing Cross are already infected with the fussiness and insignificance of Boulogne. Waterloo is a restless improvisation, Liverpool Street a hideous ant-heap. To get a picture of the spirits of damned Londoners passing for ever from their beloved city, one should wait on a frozen foggy midnight outside the portals of Euston.
Nancy may not have read Virgil, but her heart was heavy enough with foreboding when with Letizia, a tiny Red Riding Hood, she entered the train for Brigham on that iron-bound morning early in March. She wished now that she had waited for an answer to the letter announcing her visit. Visions of a severe man-servant shutting the door in her face haunted her. She tried to recall what Bram had told her about the details of his family life, but looking back now she could not recall that he had told her anything except his hatred of it all. And anyway, what could he have known of the present state of his family, apart from the sardonic commentary upon it in his grandmother’s infrequent letters? It was twelve years since he had escaped from Lebanon House. His brother had been a boy of fourteen; his father was still alive then; his grandfather too; and that strange old grandmother, the prospect of meeting whom had kept Nancy from wavering in her resolution, was not bedridden in those days.
“Muvver,” said Letizia, who had been looking out of the window at the Buckinghamshire fields, “I can count to fifteen. I counted fifteen moo-cows, and then I counted fifteen moo-cows again.”
“You are getting on, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Letizia echoed, whereupon she burst into a chant of triumph, which caused an old gentleman in the opposite corner of the compartment to look up in some alarm over the top of his newspaper.
“Hush, darling, don’t sing like that. You’ll disturb the ladies and gentlemen who want to read.”
“Why do they want to read?”
“To pass the time away.”
“I would like to read, muvver.”
Nancy produced her book.
“A cat sat on a mat. A fat rat sat on a mat,” she proclaimed aloud.
“No, darling, if you’re going to read you must read to yourself. The gentleman opposite isn’t reading his paper aloud.”
“Why isn’t he?”
“Because it might worry other people and wouldn’t be good manners.”
“Is that gentleman good manners?”
“Of course, he has. Hush, darling, don’t go on asking silly questions.”
“When I make a rude noise with my mouf I put my hand up and say ‘Pardon.’”
“Of course.”
“Well, that gentleman maided lots and lots of very rude noises, and he didn’t put his hand up to his mouf and say ‘pardon.’ Why didn’t he, muvver?”
“Darling, please don’t go on making remarks about people. It’s not kind.”
Letizia was dejected by this insinuation, and sat silent for a space. Then she cheered up:
“Muvver, if that gentleman makes a rude noise again, would it be kind for me to put up my hand to my mouf and say ‘pardon’?”
Nancy thought that her daughter’s present humour of critical observations augured ill for her success at Lebanon House, and she began to wish that she had left her behind in London.
“Listen, darling. I don’t want you to be a horrid little girl and go on chattering when mother asks you to keep quiet. If you behave like this, your Uncle Caleb won’t like you.”
“If he doesn’t like me, I won’t like him,” said Letizia confidently.
Nancy shook a reproachful head.
“Well, I shan’t talk to you any more. In fact, I’ve a very good mind to leave you behind in the train when we get to Brigham.”
“Where would I go?” Letizia asked, perfectly undismayed by this threat.
“I’m sure I don’t know where you would go.”
“I would ask a porter,” Letizia suggested. “I would say, ‘Please, Mr. Porter, where shall I go to?’ and then he’d tell me, and I’d say, ‘Oh, that’s where I shall go, is it?’”
Suddenly a cloud passed across the mother’s mind. It might be that to-morrow she would be travelling back through these same fields without her little girl. Ah, nothing that Letizia said could justify her in making mock threats of abandoning her in the train when in her heart was the intention of abandoning her in the house of that unknown brother-in-law. In swift contrition she picked Letizia up and kissed her.
“My sweetheart,” she whispered.
Rugby was left behind, Lichfield in its frosty vale, the smoky skies of Crewe and Stafford. The country outraged by man’s lust for gold writhed in monstrous contortions. About the refuse heaps of factories bands of children roamed as pariahs might, and along the squalid streets women in shawls wandered like drab and melancholy ghosts.
“Brigham, Brigham,” cried the porters.
On the cold and dreary platform Letizia in her scarlet hood made the people turn round to stare at her as if she were a tropical bloom or some strange bird from the sweet South.
“Lebanon House?” the driver of the fly repeated in surprise. “Mr. Fuller’s, do you mean, ma’am?”
And every time he whipped up the smoking horse his perplexity seemed to be writing on the grey air a note of interrogation.
Letizia drew a face on the mildewed window strap and another larger face on the window itself.
“Aren’t you making your gloves rather messy, darling?” her mother enquired anxiously.
“I was droring,” her daughter explained. “This teeny little face is Tizia.” She pointed to the inscribed strap. “And this anormous big face is you.” She indicated the window.
The horse must have been startled by the sound of Letizia’s laughter which followed this statement, for it broke into a bony canter at the unwonted sound. A corpse chuckling inside a coffin would not have sounded so strange as the ripple of a child’s laughter in this fly musty with the odour of old nose-bags and dank harness.
Looking out at the landscape, Nancy perceived a wilderness covered with sheds, some painted grey, some scarlet. A hoarding was inscribed in huge letters FULLER’S FIREWORKS. That must be the factory. Presently the fly began to climb a gradual slope between fields dotted with swings, giant-strides, and various gymnastic frames. Another hoarding proclaimed THE FULLER RECREATION PARK. Nancy did not think much of it. She did not know that Joshua Fuller might perhaps have swung himself into Parliament from one of those swings, had he only lived a little longer.
At the top of the slope the fly passed through a varnished gate, swept round a crackling semicircle of gravel between two clumps of frost-bitten shrubs, and pulled up before the heavy door of Lebanon House. Nancy looked in dismay at the grim stucco walls stained with their aqueous arabesques and green pagodas of damp. That the bright little form beside her could be left within those walls was beyond reason. Better far to flee thisspot, and, whatever happened in London, rejoice that her baby was still with her. Yet perhaps Bram had really fretted over his separation from his family, perhaps in dying he had wished that Letizia might take his place in this house. Before she could be tempted to tell the driver to turn round, Nancy jumped out of the fly and rang the front-door bell. It was answered, not by that severe man-servant of her anxious prefigurations, but by an elderly parlourmaid, who must have been warned of her arrival, for she immediately invited her to step in. Nancy hesitated a moment, for now that she was here it seemed too much like taking everything for granted to send the fly away and ask the maid to accept the custody of her dressing-case. She had not liked to presume an inhospitable reception by arriving without any luggage at all, and yet, now that she saw her dressing-case standing on the hall chair, she wished she had not brought it. However, it would really be too absurdly self-conscious to keep the fly waiting while she was being approved. So, she paid the fare and tried not to resemble an invader, a thief, or a beggar.
“What is this house, muvver?” Letizia asked as they were following the elderly maid along the gloomy hall. “Is it a house where bad people go?”
“No, it’s where your Uncle Caleb lives, and your two aunts——” Nancy broke off in a panic, for she simply could not remember either of their names. Were they Rachel and Sarah? This was serious.
“How is Mrs. Fuller?” she asked, in the hope that the elderly maid would feel inclined to be chatty about the health of the whole family and so mention the names of the two aunts in passing.
“Mrs. Fuller is the same as usual,” said the maid.
“And Miss Fuller?” Nancy ventured.
“Miss Achsah and Miss Thyrza are both quite well.”
Whatwas the name of the first one? The stupid woman had said it so quickly. However, she had got thename of one. Thyrza—Thyrza. She must not forget it again.
The elderly maid left Nancy and Letizia in a sombre square room overcrowded with ponderous furniture and papered with dull red flock. On the overmantel was a black marble clock with an inscription setting forth that it was presented to Caleb Fuller, Esquire, by his devoted employees on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. But did she not remember that Caleb had sacked all his employees on that auspicious occasion? Perhaps he had not liked the gift, she thought with a smile. Above the clock hung a large steel engraving of what Nancy at first imagined was intended to represent the Day of Judgment; but on examining the title she found that it was a picture of the firework-display by Messrs. Fuller and Son in Hyde Park on the occasion of the National Thanksgiving for the recovery of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales.
“Why does this room smell like blot-paper, muvver?” Letizia inquired.
“Now, darling, I beg of you not to ask any more questions at all. Will you be kind to mother and do that?”
Letizia wriggled one fat leg against the other for a moment.
“Yes,” she whispered at last resignedly.
“There’s a pet,” said Nancy, lifting her on a mahogany chair, the seat of which was covered with horsehair.
“Ouch!” Letizia exclaimed, rubbing her leg. “It’s all fistles, and where my drawses have gone away and left a piece of my leg the fistles have bitten it. Your drawses don’t go away and leave a piece of your leg. So the fistles don’t bite you.”
At this moment the heavy door opened quietly to admit Caleb Fuller, a plump-faced young man with brown curly hair and a smile of such cordial and beaming welcome that Nancy’s heart sank, for of course he would be delighted to accept the responsibility of Letizia’s upbringing.
“How do you do? How kind of you to come and seeus,” said Caleb. “So very kind. I can’t say how much we appreciate it. You’ll stay and have tea with us, won’t you?”
“Thank you very much,” said Nancy, wondering how on earth she was going to suggest what she had come all the way from London to suggest.
“You’ll excuse our lack of ceremony? We’re such simple people. I suppose you drove up from the station? And this is poor Bram’s little girl, I suppose?”
Caleb’s beaming expression had changed in a flash to one of extreme wide-eyed mournfulness.
“Will you give your Uncle Caleb a kiss, my dear?” he asked in smugly sentimental accents.
“No, fank you,” Letizia replied, evidently supposing that she was behaving extra well in refusing so politely.
Nancy could not bring herself to reprove her daughter’s disinclination. She felt that, if she had been a little girl of Letizia’s age, she should not have cared to kiss this very old young man.
Caleb turned on his smile to dispose of the rebuff.
“Let me see, how old is she?”
“Five next July.”
“Can she talk much?”
“I’m afraid she can talk a great deal too much,” Nancy laughed. “Being with grown-up people all the time has made her a very precocious little girl, I’m afraid.”
She was wondering how she could manage to keep the conversation trained on Letizia until she could muster up the courage to ask her brother-in-law the favour she desired.
“I think it’s such a pity to let children grow up too soon,” Caleb sighed in a remote and dreamy tone that trembled like the vox humana stop with the tears of things. “I like all little things so much; but I think people and animals deteriorate when they grow big. I had a dear little cream-coloured kitten, and now that lovely little kitten has grown into an enormous hulking cat and spends all its time in the kitchen, eating. I noticedwhen I was going through the household books that we were getting extra fish, so I went into the matter most carefully, and do you know....” The horror of the story he was telling overcame Caleb for a moment, and he had to gulp down his emotion before he could proceed. “Do you know I found that they were actually buying special fish for this great cat?” His voice had sunk to an awe-struck whisper. “It came as a terrible shock to me that such a pretty little tiny kitten which only seemed to lap up a small saucer of milk every now and then should actually have become an item in the household expenditure nowadays.... Of course,” he added hastily, “I told the cook she had no business to give it anything except scraps that couldn’t be used for anything else. But still....” Caleb allowed his narrative to evaporate in a profound sigh.
“Bram spoke of you just before he died,” Nancy began abruptly.
“How very kind of him,” Caleb observed, reassuming quickly that expression of devout and wide-eyed sentimentality, though in the tone of his voice there was an implication of the immense gulf between Bram’s death and his own life.
“He seemed to regret the breach between himself and his family,” she continued.
“It was always a great grief to us,” Caleb observed. He was still apparently as gently sympathetic; yet somehow Nancy had a feeling that behind the wide-eyed solemnity there was a twinkle of cunning in the grey shallow eyes, a lambent twinkle that was playing round the rocky question of what she was leading up to, and of how he should deal with any awkward request she might end by making.
“He was anxious that I should bring Letizia to see you all,” Nancy pressed.
There was a reproach in her brother-in-law’s gaze that made her feel as if she were being utterly remorseless inher persistency. Nevertheless, Caleb turned on quite easily that cordial welcoming smile.
“I’m so glad,” he murmured from the other side of the universe. “I don’t think tea will be long now.”
“Oh, please don’t bother about tea,” she begged.
Caleb beamed more intensely.
“Oh, please,” he protested on his side. “My aunts and I would be very much upset indeed if you didn’t have tea. And to-day’s Thursday!”
Nancy looked puzzled.
“I see I shall have to let you into a little family secret. We always have a new cake on Thursday,” he proclaimed, smiling now with a beautifully innocent archness. Turning to Letizia he added playfully, “I expect you like cakes, don’t you?”
“I like the cakes what Mrs. Porridge makes for me,” Letizia replied.
“Oatmeal cakes?” Caleb asked in bewilderment.
“Letizia,” her mother interrupted quickly, “please don’t answer your uncle in that horrid rude way. Mrs. Pottage was our landlady at Greenwich,” she explained.
Caleb looked coldly grave. He disapproved of landladies with their exorbitant bills.
“You must find it very unpleasant always being robbed by landladies,” he said.
“Bram and I were very lucky usually. We met far more pleasant landladies than unpleasant ones.”
Nancy paused. She was wondering if she should be able to explain her mission more easily if the subject of it were not present.
“I wonder if Letizia’s aunts would like to see her?”
“Oh, I’m sure they would,” Caleb answered. “We’ll all go into the drawing-room. I’m sure you must be wanting your tea.”
“If we could leave Letizia with her aunts, I would like very much to talk to you for a minute or two alone.”
Caleb squirmed.
“Don’t be anxious,” Nancy laughed. “I’m not going to ask you to lend me any money.”
“Oh, of course not,” he said with a shudder. “I never thought you were going to do that. I knew Bram would have explained to you that I really couldn’t afford it. We have had the most dreadful expenses lately in connection with the factory. I have had to lock up several thousand pounds.”
He made this announcement with as much judicial severity as if he had actually condemned the greater part of his fortune to penal servitude for life.
“Yes, it must be horrible to have a lot of money that can’t behave itself,” Nancy agreed.
Her brother-in-law regarded her disapprovingly. He resented few things more than jokes, for he objected to wasting those ready smiles of his almost as much as he hated wasting his ready money.
“Well, shall we go into the drawing-room?” he asked, trying to make his guest feel that merely to lead her from one room to another in Lebanon House was giving her much more than he would give many people for nothing.
“Are those aunts?” Letizia exclaimed in disgusted astonishment when she was presented to the two drab middle-aged women with muddy faces and lace caps who, each wearing a grey woollen shawl, sat on either side of a black fire from which one exiguous wisp of smoke went curling up the chimney.
“Yes, those are your aunts, darling,” said Nancy, hoping that Letizia’s generic question had not been understood quite in the way that it was intended. “Run and give them a kiss.”
There must have been a note of appeal in her mother’s voice, for Letizia obeyed with surprising docility, even if she did give an impression by the slowness of her advance that she was going to stroke two unpleasant-looking animals at the invitation of a keeper. Then it was Nancy’s turn to embrace the aunts, much to the amazement of her daughter, who exclaimed:
“You kissed them too! Was you told to kiss them?”
“May I leave Letizia with you while I finish my talk with Caleb?” Nancy asked her aunts.
Caleb looked positively sullen over his sister-in-law’s pertinacity, and he was leading the way back to what was apparently known as the library, when the elderly maid appeared with the tea. He beamed again.
“Youmusthave tea first. I’m sure youmustbe wanting your tea. I was telling—er—Nancy about our Thursday cake, Aunt Achsah.”
Caleb’s face was richly dimpled by the smile for which the family joke was responsible, and at which Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza tittered indulgently. Nancy was saying over in her head the name of the elder aunt so that she should be able to remember it in future. Then she gazed round in depression of spirit at the curtains and upholstery and wall-paper, all in sombre shades of brown, and at the bunches of pampas-grass, dyed yellow, blue, and red, which in hideous convoluted vases on bamboo stands blotched the corners of the room with plumes of crude colour. Could she leave Letizia in this house? Would Bram really wish it?
Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza had by now wound themselves up to express the sorrow that they felt convention owed to Nancy.
“He was a wild boy and a great anxiety to us,” Aunt Thyrza sighed. “But we were very fond of him.”
“It nearly killed his poor father when he took to the stage,” Aunt Achsah moaned. “He had such a beautifully religious bringing-up that it seemed particularly dreadful in his case. Of course, we do not believe that there may not be some good men and women on the stage, but all the same it was terrible—really terrible for us when Bram became an actor.”
“But didn’t you have a sister who went on the stage?” Nancy asked.
The two drab women stared at her in consternation. How did this creature know the story of the lost Caterina?Why, their mother must have told Bram. The shameful secret was a secret no more.
Caleb knitted his brows, and his granite-grey eyes gleamed. So, this was the woman’s game. Blackmail! This was why she wanted to talk to him alone. He would soon show her that he was not the kind of man to be frightened by blackmail. As a matter of fact, Caleb himself, who had only heard when he came of age about the shameful past of his Aunt Caterina, had been much less impressed by the awfulness of the family secret than his aunts had expected.
“Yes, we did have a sister who went on the stage,” Aunt Thyrza tremulously admitted. “But that was many, many years ago, and she has long been dead.”
Nancy was merciful to the aunts and forbore from pressing the point about the existence of good people on the stage. She was not merciful, however, to Caleb when tea came to an end and he showed no sign of adjourning with her to the library.
“Are you sure you won’t have another piece of cake? Do have another piece of cake,” he begged, turning on the smile almost to its full extent. That he could not quite manage the full extent was due to the irritation this obtrusive young woman’s pertinacity was causing him.
“No, indeed, I really couldn’t,” said Nancy, donning a bright little smile herself as a cyclist hopes his oil-lamp will avail to protect him against the dazzling onrushing motor-car. “Letizia, darling,” she added firmly. “I’m going to leave you here with Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza for a little while. You will be good, won’t you?”
“But I’d like to stroke the puss-cat.”
“The cat?” Aunt Achsah exclaimed. “What cat?”
“The puss-cat what that man was talking about to muvver,” Letizia explained.
“The cat isn’t allowed in the drawing-room,” Aunt Thyrza said primly.
“Why isn’t he? Does he make messes?”
The two aunts shuddered. It was only too sadly evidentthat the stage had already corrupted even this four-year-old child.
“Cats live in kitchens,” Aunt Achsah laid down dogmatically.
“Well, can I go to the kitchen, muvver?” Letizia asked. “Because I would like to see the puss-cat. I fink puss-cats are much,muchnicer than aunts.”
“No, darling, I want you to stay here,” and with this Nancy hurried out of the room, followed reluctantly by her brother-in-law.
When they were back in the library, which, now that she had a clue to its status, Nancy perceived did contain half-a-dozen bound volumes of theIllustrated London News, three or four books of religious reading, and a decrepit Bradshaw, she came straight to the point.
“Caleb, times are rather bad for theatrical business, and....”
“Business is bad everywhere,” Caleb interrupted. “Of course, you know that I am engaged in manufacturing fireworks? My brother no doubt has told you that. Trade has never been so bad as it is this year, and only recently an Order in Council has made it illegal to use chlorate of potash with sulphur compounds. That is a very serious matter indeed for firework manufacture. Indeed, if it had not been for our discovery that aluminium can be successfully used for brightening our colour effects, I don’t know whatwouldhave happened to the business. Luckily I was one of the first, if notthefirst manufacturer to realise the advantages of aluminium, and so I had already ceased to use chlorate of potash with sulphur for quite a long time, in fact, ever since as a boy of twenty I found myself practically in sole charge of our factory. My brother’s desertion of his father twelve years ago ruined all my chances. I was getting on so splendidly at school. I was winning prizes for Latin and Scripture and all kinds of subjects, and my masters were so enthusiastic about my education. But when I was only fifteen, my father said to me: ‘Caleb, you can either go on with yourschool work or you can give up school and enter the business at once on a small salary.’ It was a hard choice, but I didn’t hesitate. I gave up all my schoolwork, because after my brother’s desertion I felt it was my duty to enter the business. And I did. You don’t know how hard I’ve worked while my brother was amusing himself on the stage. But I don’t bear his memory any grudge. Please don’t think that I’m criticising him, because of course I wouldn’t like to say anything about one who is no longer with us. I only want you to understand that my position is by no means easy. In fact, it’s terribly difficult. So, though I would be happy to lend you lots of money, if I had any to spare, I’m sure you’ll understand that, with all the expenses I’ve been put to over this Order in Council and changing my factory and one thing and another, it simply isn’t possible.”
“I’m not asking you to lend me any money,” Nancy said, as soon as her brother-in-law paused for a moment to take breath. “But Bram when he was dying....”
“Oh, please don’t think that I don’t sympathise with you over my brother’s death. It was a shock to us all. I read about it in the local paper. I’d had a little trouble with the proprietor over our advertisements, so he printed all about Bram being a clown in great headlines. But in spite of the shocking way he died like that on the stage, I showed everybody in Brigham how much upset we all were by asking for the Recreation Ground to be closed for two whole days. So please don’t think we weren’t very much shocked and upset.”
“Bram, when he was dying in my arms,” she went on, “told me if I was ever in difficulties to go to you, because he was sure that you would want to help me.”
“Yes, that’s just the kind of thing my brother would say,” said Caleb indignantly. “He never cared a straw about the business. He hated the factory. He always had an idea that money was only made to be spent.”
“I don’t think that Bram expected me to borrow any money from you,” said Nancy. “But he thought thatyou might care to assume the responsibility of bringing up Letizia. He thought that she might be a link between him and his family.”
“Bring up Letizia?” Caleb gasped. “Do you mean, pay for her clothes and her keep and her education?”
“I suppose that is what Bram fancied you might care to do. I would not have come here to-day, if I had not believed that I owed it to his child to give her opportunities that her mother cannot give her. Please don’t think that I want to lose Letizia. It has cost me a great deal ...” her voice wavered.
“But you could have told me what you wanted in the letter, and that would have saved you your railway fare,” said Caleb reproachfully.
“I didn’t mean the money it cost. I meant the struggle with my own feelings.”
“I think it would be wrong of me to try and persuade you to give up your child,” said Caleb solemnly. “I wouldn’t do it, even if I could. But I can’t. You must remember that I still have my old grandmother to keep. Of course, she’s bedridden now, and she can’t waste money as she used to waste it, for she was shockingly extravagant whenever she had an opportunity. But even as it is she costs a great deal. I have to pay a nurse-companion; and the doctorwillcome once a week. You know how ready doctors always are to take advantage of anybody in a house being ill. They just profit by it,” he said bitterly. “That’s what they do, they just profit by illness. And besides my grandmother, I have to pay annuities to my two aunts. I’m not complaining. I’m only too glad to do it. But I’m just telling you what a load of domestic responsibilities I have on my shoulders already, so that you can appreciate how utterly impossible it would be for me to do anything for my brother’s little girl. Well, you heard what I told you about that cat, and if I can’t afford the extra amount on the household books for a cat, how can I possibly afford what a child would cost? I’m only so distressed you should have gone to theexpense of coming all this way to find out something that I could have told you so well in a letter. I can’t imagine why you didn’t write to me about this child. You do see my point of view, don’t you? And I’m sure that you would rather not have your little girl brought up here. The air of Brigham is very smoky. I’m sure it wouldn’t be good for children.”
“Well, that’s that,” said Nancy. “I’ve done what Bram asked me to do, but I’m just dazed. I just simply can’t understand how you and Bram came out of the same womb.”
Caleb winced.
“Of course, I know that you do talk very freely on the stage,” he said deprecatingly. “But I wish you wouldn’t use such words in this house. We’re simply provincial people, and we think that kind of expression rather unpleasant. I daresay we may appear old-fashioned, but we’d rather be old-fashioned than hear a lady use words like that. I’m afraid, by what you just said, that you haven’t really understood my point of view at all. So, I’m going to take you into my confidence, because I do want you to understand it and not bear me any ill-will. My motives are so often misjudged by people,” he sighed. “I suppose it’s because I’m so frank and don’t pretend I can do things when I can’t. So I’m going to give you a little confidence, Nancy.” Here Caleb beamed generously. “It’s still a secret, but I’m hoping to get married in June, and of course that means a great deal of extra expense, especially as the lady I am going to marry has no money of her own.”
“I hope you’ll be happy,” Nancy said.
“Thank you,” said Caleb in a tone that seemed to express his personal gratitude for anything, even anything so intangible as good wishes, that might contribute a little, a very little toward the relief of the tremendous weight of responsibility that he was trying so humbly and so patiently to support. “Thank you very much.”
Nancy was wishing now with all her heart that shehad not been so foolish as to bring that dressing-case with her. She only longed now to be out of this house without a moment’s delay. She wished too that she had not dismissed the fly, for it would be impossible to carry the dressing-case and Letizia all the way to the railway station. Here she would have to remain until another fly could be fetched.
“There’s a good train at half-past seven,” said Caleb, who was observing Nancy’s contemplation of her dressing-case on the hall-chair. “If you like, I’ll telephone to the hotel for a fly to be sent up. But I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me from waiting any longer. I have rather a lot of work to do this evening. I’m trying to save expense wherever I possibly can,” he added with a martyr’s ecstatic gaze toward a lovelier world beyond this vale of tears.
“Oh, please don’t trouble to wait an instant. I’ll go back to the drawing-room.”
“Yes, there’s a fire in there,” Caleb observed, it seemed a little resentfully.
At this moment a neat young woman with bright intelligent eyes came down the stairs.
“Excuse me, Mr. Fuller, but Mrs. Fuller would like Mrs. Bram Fuller and her little girl to go up and see her.”
Caleb’s face darkened.
“But surely it’s too late for Mrs. Fuller to see visitors? Besides, Mrs. Bram Fuller wants to catch the seven-thirty train.”
“It’s only half-past five now,” said Nancy eagerly. “And I should not care to leave Brigham without seeing Letizia’s great-grandmother.”
In her disgust at Caleb she had forgotten that there was still a member of this family who might compensate for the others.
“Mrs. Fuller will be very annoyed, Mr. Fuller, if she doesn’t see Mrs. Bram Fuller and her little girl,” the young woman insisted.
“Very well, nurse, if you think it’s wise,” Caleb said.“But I hope this won’t mean an extra visit from the doctor this week.”
The bright-eyed young woman was regarding Caleb as a thrush regards a worm before gobbling it up.
“It would be extremely unwise to disappoint Mrs. Fuller. She has been counting on this visit ever since she heard yesterday that Mrs. Bram Fuller was coming to Brigham.”
“My poor old grandmother works herself up into a great state over every domestic trifle,” Caleb said angrily. “It’s a great pity an old lady like her can’t give up fussing over what happens in the house.”
Nancy went into the drawing-room to rescue Letizia from her aunts.
“Good-bye—er—Nancy,” said Aunt Achsah. “I hope you won’t think that I am intruding on your private affairs if I say to you how grieved both your Aunt Thyrza and myself are to find that our poor little grand-niece apparently knows nothing whatever about our Heavenly Father. We do hope that you will try to teach her something about Him. Of course, we know that Roman Catholics do not regard God with the same reverence and awe as we do, but still a forward little girl like Letizia should not be allowed to remain in a state of complete ignorance about Him. It’s very shocking.”
“Oh, I do so agree with my sister,” Aunt Thyrza sighed earnestly.
“Good-bye, Aunt Achsah. Good-bye, Aunt Thyrza,” said Nancy. “Come along, Letizia.”
And the way her little daughter danced out of the room beside her mother exactly expressed what she wanted to do herself.