Deb sat amid the ruins of her home. She occupied the lid of a deal packing-case that enclosed a few hundreds of books, and one that was half filled stood before her, with a scatter of odd volumes on the floor around. The floor, which was that of the once cosy morning-room, was carpetless; its usual furniture stood about higgledy-piggledy, all in the wrong places, naked and forlorn. Mr Thornycroft leaned against the flowerless mantel-shelf, and surveyed the scene, or rather, the central figure, black-gowned, holland-aproned, with sleeves turned back from her strong wrists, and a grey smudge on her beautiful nose.
"That cottage that you talk about," said he, "will not hold all those."
"Oh, books don't take any space," she replied brusquely. "They are no more than tapestry or frescoes. I shall have cases made to fit flat to the walls."
"That will cost money."
"One must have the bare necessaries of life. I presume I shall be able to afford that much. Pine boards will do. I can Aspinall them." "Aspinall is very nice, but sometimes it gets on the edges of your books and spoils them."
"No, it doesn't. I have an Aspinalled book-case in my room now, and not a mark ever came off it."
"Did you paint it?"
"I did."
"Are you going to leave it there?"
"I must. It is a fixture."
"That's all right. I am glad you are going to leave something." "Something? I leave all."
"Except a library of books, and a collection of forty odd pictures, that you will have to hang over the books—"
"You would not have us part with family portraits?"
"And a grand piano, extra sized, calculated to fill a suburban villa drawing-room all by itself—"
"Pianos make nothing second-hand, and the girls must practise. Better keep a good instrument than sell it for fifty pounds and spend the money on a bad one."
"Certainly, if you can stow it. But with seven easy-chairs, and the biggest Chesterfield sofa extant, and a large writing-table—"
"I can have that in my room."
"Along with a six-foot dressing-table, and a nine-foot wardrobe, and I don't know how many chests of drawers—"
"The wardrobe will stand in a passage somewhere. We must have places to put our clothes."
"A house with passages of that capacity—"
"Well, never you mind. If I can't find room for my things, I can sell them in Melbourne as well as here."
"Having squandered a small fortune on the carriage down. Better leave them with me, Debbie, and let me send you what you want afterwards."
"Thank you. You would not have them to send afterwards."
"Oh, I think I would."
"No. I shall settle everything before I leave, and the sale will be held immediately. The furniture first, and then the place." Her mouth closed upon the words like a steel snap.
"Just as you please about that," he said quietly. "Any time will suit me."
"By public auction," she added, with a sharp glance at him—"to the highest bidder."
"Yes," was his laconic comment. "Me."
"Not necessarily," said she, roused by the small word that held such large meanings. "There are a few other rich persons in the western district, to whom Redford may appear desirable."
"There are," he agreed easily. "I know several. But I shall outbid them."
She was strongly agitated. "Oh, I hope they won't let you!"
"Why?" he asked.
At first she fenced with the question.
"Because you don't want it. You have more land already than one man ought to have." "I don't know about what I ought to have, but I know that if you persist in throwing Redford away, I shall take it." He smiled at her angry perturbation. "If I find I haven't enough money to outbid everybody—but I think I have—I can sell Bundaboo. If you won't have Redford, I will—yes, and every stick and stone that belongs to it."
"And have people talking and saying that you did it for something else, and not business reasons."
"People would be right, for once."
"But I won't have it!" cried Deb. "I won't stand being an object of your benevolence. You want to pay a lot more than the place is worth, so as to augment our income. You as good as own it—"
"I want to keep your home for you against you change your mind." "The last thing I shall do, I assure you—particularly after your saying that." Her nose, in spite of the smut on it, testified to her indignant dignity, up in the air, with its fine nostrils quivering. "Now, look here, godpapa—I will not have Redford put up to auction. I'll sell privately—and to somebody else."
"You cannot."
"Oh, indeed! Not when I am executor?"
"Certainly not—except with the permission of your fellow-executor."
She fell to pleading.
"Oh, let me—do let me! You know what I want—to square up all the debts and have done with them. I can't sleep for thinking of what we owe you already. Do you know how much it is? Nearly forty thou—"
He checked her with an impatient wave of the hand.
"All the debts will be provided for, of course. The lawyers will adjust those matters."
"I don't trust you," she urged, looking at him less angrily, but still as puzzled and distressed. "I know you have designs to benefit me somehow—unfairly, and because it's me—and if you only knew how I HATED to be benefited—"
"I do—nobody better. That is why I am letting you do a lot of things that won't benefit you, but just the opposite—things you will repent of horribly by-and-by. Knowing your independent spirit, I do not offer my advice—"
"Oh!"
"Not effectively. I do not force it upon you. I do not bring my undoubted powers to bear upon you for your good—"
"Ah!"
"Because I know, of course, that you would rather suffer anything than be guided by me."
She softened instantly. "I am not such a fool, I hope. But—but you WILL bring friendship into business. You did things for my father that you know you would never have dreamt of doing for strangers—that you never ought to have done at all; and now you want to be twice as idiotically generous to us, because we are girls, and out of pity for us—to do us a kindness, as it is called—when, if you only knew—"
She had risen and drifted to him where he stood, and now laid a hand on his arm. He put a hand over it, and looked into her pleading eyes. He seemed not to have heard her last remark, to be far away in mind from the point of discussion, and his fixed and strange gaze perplexed and then embarrassed her. "How he feels our going!" she thought to herself, and turned her face from his, and tried to turn his apparently sad thoughts.
"If you would only let me sell Redford to somebody else, and have the lump money to pay all the debts in a plain way that I could understand, and take the remainder for ourselves, and know that we were straight and free, I would do anything you liked to ask me in return!"
He still kept silence, and that tight grasp upon her hand. So she looked at him again; and his far-away stare was bewildering.
"I wonder," said he slowly—"I wonder, if I were to take you at your word, whether you would stick to it?"
"Try me," said she.
"I will. Deborah Pennycuick, if I let you sell Redford, and pay all debts with your own hands, will you—I am your godfather, and something over fifty, and it is quite preposterous, of course, but still you said anything—will you be my wife?"
"Oh!" This was the unexpected happening, with a vengeance. Never had she imagined such a notion on the part of this staid and venerable person. She flushed hotly, and wrenched her imprisoned hand free. "I don't like stupid jokes," she muttered, overcome with confusion. "Do I give you the impression that I am joking?" he asked.
"If you are serious, that is worse," said she. "Then I know you are only trying another way of providing for me."
"You believe I have only just thought of it?"
"Haven't you?"
"I have thought of it since you were fifteen, my dear. But never mind. We will call it a joke, if you think that the least of two evils. I see you do. The incident is closed. The bargain is off. And I can buy Redford when it is put up for sale. Goodbye, goddaughter. No, I can't stay to lunch today; I have some business to attend to. But of course I shall see you again before you go."
And when he did see her again, he gave not the smallest sign of what had happened, so that she almost grew to feel that she must have dreamt it.
That same afternoon, Jim Urquhart, who was always doing so, rode over to Redford to see if he could help her pack. He wondered at her abstracted manner, and her sudden change of mind concerning the piano and wardrobe and other things. Having laboriously packed books and pictures, she now proposed to unpack half of them. She wanted to see what room she would have in her cottage first. In fact, it seemed to him that she did not know what she wanted. She was evidently tired and overwrought. "Oh, Jim," she moaned, from amongst the dust and litter, "it is a wrench!"
"What do you suppose it is for us?" he returned gloomily. "Without you at Redford! I'm trying not to think of it."
"So am I. But it's no use—it has got to come."
"I suppose there is no way out?"
"None. That is all settled. I have told Mr Thornycroft, and he won't tease me any more."
"Do you think you will be happy down there, cooped up in streets?"
"I know I shall not. But the streets down there will be better than the streets of a bush township."
"Why streets at all? Why not stay about here somewhere, where you have us all near you?"
"Exiled from Redford? No, thank you. Besides, where could we stay? Detached cottages don't grow in these parts."
Then he blurted it out.
"I have never said anything, Deb. I knew I wasn't fit for you, and. I am not now. I've got to look after my dear old mother and the children, who haven't got anybody else, and I couldn't give you a home worthy of you—perhaps never, no matter how I worked and tried; but if love is any good, and the things that after all make homes—not money and fine furniture—" "Dear old boy, don't!" she pleaded, with twitching lips.
"I may as well, now I have begun," said he. "I don't suppose it is any use, but I'd just like you to know once—as far as my life is my own, it is yours any day you like. It has been since I was a boy, and it will be for a good while yet—I won't say for ever, because you can't tell what's going to happen; but I'm ready to bet my soul that it will be for ever. Now, do just what you feel inclined to, Debbie. I'm not going to press you—I know my place too well; but if you should think it a better plan to live with me, and have me work for you and take care of you the best I can, why, any heaven that's coming to us by-and-by simply won't be in it—not for me." He looked at her across the packing-case between them, and dropped his voice to add: "But you wouldn't, of course."
"I would, dear Jim!" she cried, with warm impulsiveness; "that is, I might. A good man like you is worth a worldful of money and furniture. I don't live for those things, as you seem to think; but—but you know how it is—I can't change about from one to another—"
He dropped the saddest "No" into the pregnant pause.
"No, Deb—no; I expected that. Staunch through everything—that's you all over. Well"—with a movement as if to pull himself together—"I'm staunch too. We're equals in that, anyhow, and don't you forget it. I'll not bother you any more—I never have bothered you, have I?—but I'm here when you want me, body and soul, at any hour of the day or night. You'll remember that?" stretching his horny hand across to her, and being in the same instant electrified by the touch of her lips upon it.
"Oh, I will! I will!"
The evening post brought a ship letter. Guthrie Carey was in port. He had been there long enough to hear the news that Deborah Pennycuick was penniless, and that Claud Dalzell had deserted her. So he had written to her at length—the longest letter of his life—ten pages.
She took it to her bedroom and sat down to read it, while at the same time she rested a little before dinner. She had frowned over the envelope; now she smiled over the first pages; she sighed over the middle ones; she even wept a little over the last. Then she wrote out an answer and sent it by a groom to the nearest telegraph office:
"Please do not come. Am writing."
Thus she cast aside in one day three good men and true, heart-bound to one who was not worthy to be ranked with any of them. But that is the way of love.
There was an attic at the top of a dark flight of stairs in the suburban villa that was now the sisters' home. It contained a fireplace and a long dormer window—three square casements in a row, of which the outer pair opened like doors—facing the morning sun and a country landscape. The previous tenants had used it for a box and lumber room, and left it cobwebbed, filthy and asphyxiating. Deb ordered a charwoman to clean it, and a man to distemper the grubby plaster and stain the floor, and then laid down rugs, and assembled tables and books, and basket-chairs, and girls' odds and ends; whereby it was transformed into a cosy boudoir and their favourite room. Hither came Mary when she could escape from that treadmill of which she never spoke, bringing her black-eyed boy to astonish his aunts with his cleverness, and astonishing them herself with the heretical notions which an intimate association with orthodoxy seemed to have implanted in her. But Bennet was not admitted, nor any other outsider.
The little bricked hearth, when reminiscent wood fires burned on it, was a pleasant gathering-place in cold weather; but it was the window in the projecting gable towards which the sisters most commonly converged. It was about eight feet long by two feet high, and close up under it, nearly flush with its sill, stood a substantial six-foot-by-four table, the chairs at either end comfortably filling the rest of the alcove. They could sit here to write or sew, or drink afternoon tea, and look out upon as pleasant a rural landscape—the Malvern Hills—as any suburban villa could command. It was that view, indeed, which had decided Deb to take the house.
There was, of course, a towny foreground to it; and this it was, rather than the distant blue ranges, that held the gaze of Rose Pennycuick when she looked forth—the back-yard of the villa next to their own. It was a well-washed-and-swept enclosure, spacious and well-appointed, and amongst its appointments displayed a semi-circular platform of brickwork, slightly raised above the asphalted ground, and supporting the biggest and best dog-kennel that she had ever seen.
"Those are nice people," she remarked, "for they have given their dog as good a house as they have given themselves. Isn't it a beauty? I wish to goodness everybody was as considerate for the poor things. I wonder what sort of a dear beast it is?"
She watched so long for its appearance that she thought the kennel untenanted, but presently saw a maid come out from the kitchen with a tin dish. This she dumped upon the brick platform, turning her back instantly; and a fine, ruffed, feather-tailed collie stepped over the kennel threshold to get his dinner.
"Chained!" cried Rose. "And she never spoke to him!"
Deb looked over her shoulder, sympathetically concerned. "Is he really? What a shame! I expect they are too awfully clean and tidy to stand a dog's paws on anything; but no doubt they let him out for a run."
Rose waited for days, and never saw this happen. The master of the house and a dapper young man, his son, went to town every morning at a certain hour, evidently for the day's business; a stout, smart lady, with smart daughters, was seen going forth in the afternoons; the maids took their little outings; but no one took the dog. He lived alone on his patch of brick, either hidden in the kennel or lying in the sun with his nose between his paws. He had his food regularly, for it was a regular household; but beyond that, no notice seemed taken of him. Rose, worked up from day to day, declared at last that she could not stand it. "Why, what can you do?" said Deb. "He is their dog, not yours." "Oh, I don't know; but I must do something."
One moonlight night she heard him—always silent and supine, except when suspicious persons came into the yard—baying softly to himself, plainly (to her) voicing the weariness of his unhappy life. She sat up in bed and listened to him, and to his master shouting to him at intervals to "be quiet"; and she wept with sympathetic grief.
It was a Saturday night. On Sunday morning she excused herself from going to church. She saw Deb and Francie go, and she saw the family of the next house go—heard their front door bang, and caught gleams of smart dresses through the foliage of their front garden. Then she put on her hat and stole forth to intercede for the collie with the cook of his establishment, a kindly-looking person, who had once been observed to pat his head.
The gleaming imitation-mahogany door at which she rang with a determined hand but a fluttering heart, was, to her dismay, opened to her by a young man—the son of the house, whom she had seen going to business every week-day morning, tailored beautifully, and wearing a silk hat that dazzled one. He was now in a very old suit, flannel-shirted and collarless, so that at first she did not recognise him.
The desire of each was to turn and fly, but the necessity upon them was to face their joint mishap and see it through. Crimson, the young man mumbled apologies for his state of unreadiness to receive ladies; equally crimson, Rose begged him not to mention it, and apologised for her own untimely call.
"Miss Pennycuick, I believe?" stammered he, with an awkward bow.
"Miss Rose Pennycuick—yes," said she, struggling through her overwhelming embarrassment. "I called—I wanted—I—I—MIGHT I speak to you for just one minute, Mr Breen?"
She had lived beside him long enough to know his name, also his occupation. The Breens were drapers. Their shop in the city was not to be compared with Buckley & Nunn's or Robertson & Moffat's, but it was a good shop in its way, as this good home of the proprietors testified.
"Certainly," said young Mr Breen, whose name was Peter. "With pleasure. By all means. Walk in, Miss Pennycuick."
She walked into a gorgeous drawing-room, where all was of the best, and wore that shining air of furniture too valuable for daily use. Mr Peter drew up a cream linen blind that was one mass of lace insertion, and apologised anew for his unseemly costume.
"The fact is, Miss Pennycuick—I hope you won't be shocked at my doing such things on Sunday—I was cleaning my gun. There is a holiday this week, and I am going shooting with a friend. It was he I expected to see when I went to the door in this state." "Oh," said Rose, more at her ease, "I often do things on Sundays; I don't see why not. In fact, I am doing something now—"
She cast about for words wherein to explain her errand, while he shot a stealthy glance at her. Though not beautiful, like Deb and Francie, she was a wholesome, healthy, bonnie creature, and he was as well aware of her position in life as she was of his.
"I came, Mr Breen—I thought there were only servants in the house—I am sure you must wonder how I can take such a liberty, such an utter stranger, but I wanted to speak about that poor dog of yours—"
"Bruce—ah!" Enlightenment seemed to come to the young man. "You have called to complain of the row he made last night. We were only saying at breakfast—"
"No, no, indeed!" Rose spread out protesting hands, and ceased to feel embarrassed. "Not to complain of him, poor dear, but—but—if you will forgive such impertinence, to ask somebody—I thought I should see your cook, who looks kind—to do something to make his life a little less miserable."
"Miserable!" Mr Breen broke in, and sat up, stiffening, as if half inclined to be offended, even with this very nice young lady.
"There isn't a dog in the country better off. We had his place in the yard built on purpose for him; had his kennel made to a special design—"
"A lovely kennel! I never saw a better."
"Clean straw every few days; all his food cooked—"
"But CHAINED, Mr Breen. And a collie, too!"
"Well, we couldn't have him messing all over the place; at any rate, my people wouldn't. Oh, I assure you, Miss Pennycuick, Bruce is in clover. He was only baying the moon. Dogs often do that. It's only their fun—though it isn't fun to us."
"Fun!" sighed Rose helplessly. And she fixed her eyes upon her companion, as they sat VIS-A-VIS on the edges of their brocaded chairs, with no sense that he was a strange young man—a gaze that troubled and disconcerted him. "I am sure," she answered earnestly, "that you have a kind heart. One has only to look at you to know it."
"The idea never occurred to me before," he mumbled, flattered by her discernment, and no more offended with her.
"I am sure no one could mean better by a dog than you, giving him all those nice things," she continued. "But—but you don't THINK. You don't try to imagine yourself chained up in one spot night and day, week in and week out, with nothing to do—no interests, no amusements, unable to get to your work, to go shooting with your friends, to do anything that you were born to do—and consider how you would like it."
Mr Peter submitted to her humbly the fact that he was not a dog.
"And you think you are not both made of the same stuff? That's just where people make the mistake, even the kindest of them. Mr Breen, I once had a long talk with the curator of a zoological garden, and he told me that animals in confinement suffer mentally, just as we should do in their place. Unless they have occupation and companionship they go out of their minds. They get sullen and savage, and people say they are vicious, and punish them, when it is only misery. He said no happy dog ever got hydrophobia unless it was bitten; and that it was to save themselves from going mad that squirrels kept whirling their wheel and tigers running round and round their cages. They want notice, and change, and work, or they cannot bear it. The stagnation kills them—or I wish it did kill them quicker than it does. Look at your Bruce, born to work sheep, to scamper over miles of country, free as air, to be mates with some man who would know the value of such a friend, and be worthy of him. Oh, it is too cruel!"
Never had Rose displayed such eloquence, and a sudden glisten in her candid eyes put the piercing climax to it. Mr Peter's kind heart, which had been growing softer and softer with every word she spoke, was in melting state.
"Upon my soul," he declared, "you put quite a new light on it; you do indeed, Miss Pennycuick. I see your point of view exactly. But—"
With the utmost willingness to meet her views, he was unable to see how to do it. It was easy to say "Let him off the chain," but the mater, who was very particular, would never stand a dog muddying the verandahs and digging holes for his bones in the flower-beds. He, Mr Peter, was an only son, and she would do most things for him, but he was afraid she would draw the line at that.
"Well, you might at least take him for walks," Rose pleaded. "Nobody could object to that." "Yes, I might take him for walks," the young man conceded thoughtfully. "Of course, I don't get home from business till tea-time, and I have to leave directly after breakfast—"
"Our Pepper, when we go to town, takes us to the station and sees us off; and you are not at business on Saturday afternoons." "I usually play tennis or something on Saturday afternoons—"
"Well, take him and let him see you play tennis. He'd love it."
"I question whether my club would. But see here, Miss Pennycuick, I WAS going to meet some lady friends this afternoon, but now I won't; I will take him for a walk instead. And I'll get up in the mornings, and give him a run before breakfast. There!"
"Oh, how kind, how good you are!" she exclaimed delightedly.
"Not at all," he returned, glowing. "It is you who are good, taking all this trouble about us. I am only ashamed that you should have had to do it, and that you should have caught me in this state"—another blushing reference to his distressing toilet.
"Never mind your state," she consoled him sweetly, rising from her chair. "I like you better in this state than I do when you are smart. I thought you were too smart to—to condescend to trouble yourself about a poor dog."
"I am sorry you had such a bad opinion of me. It was simply—the thing didn't occur to me until you mentioned it."
"I know. But it is all right now. Well, I must go. You will never get your gun cleaned at this rate."
"Bother the gun! This is better than—I mean—won't you take a glass of wine?"
She declined emphatically and with haste, and hurried into the hall. He opened the front door for her, and they stood together for a moment on the dustless door-mat, mathematically laid upon verandah boards as white as new-peeled almonds.
"What a lovely garden!" remarked Rose, as she stepped down to it. Those were her words, but what she really said in her mind was: "Who would think he was a draper?"
Francie was aroused from her Sunday afternoon snooze on the drawing-room sofa.
"What IS the matter with that dog?" she complained pettishly. "Surely, after howling like a starved dingo all night—be quiet, Pepper! One of you is enough." Rose's terrier was up and fidgeting, with pricked ears.
"They must be killing him!" cried Deb, lifting her handsome head from her book.
"Oh, no," said Rose; "that sort of bark means joy, not pain."
"Poor, dear beast! What's making him joyful, I wonder?"
"I must go up and see," said Rose, who had carefully refrained from mentioning her forenoon proceedings.
The drowsy pair sank back upon their cushions; only Pepper accompanied her to the attic room. He jumped upon the window seat, wriggling and yapping, and they looked forth together from the open casement upon the spectacle of Bruce and Mr Peter apparently engaged in mortal combat. The collie had realised that he was off the chain and about to take a walk, and was expressing himself not merely in frenzied yells, but in acrobatic feats that threatened to overwhelm his master. The latter, tall-hatted, frock-coated, lavender-trousered, with a cane in his hand and a flower in his button-hole, jumped and dodged wildly to escape the leaping mass, his face puckered with anxiety for the results of his experiment. Pepper's delighted comments drew his eyes upwards, and he made shift to raise his hat, with a smile that was instantly and generously repaid. Rose nodded and waved her hand, and Peter went off, making gestures and casting backward glances at her, until he was a mere dot upon the distant road, with another dot circling around him.
"Dear fellow!" she mused, when he was out of sight.
Bruce went unchained, within limits, and had a run nearly every day. Workmen came to put a railing and gate to the back verandah of his establishment, and Mrs Breen kept a fidgety watch upon his movements; but evidently the only son's will ruled, and he was more than faithful to his compact with Rose. She was able to see this from her commanding window, and to hear it from Bruce's mouth; and day by day her heart warmed towards Bruce's master. Many were the friendly smiles and salutes that passed between the attic window and the Breen back-yard, all unknown to Rose's sisters.
They were walking with her one Saturday afternoon, when they met Mr Peter and the collie. Pepper ran forward to greet Bruce, and they sniffed at each other's noses and wagged their respective tails in a friendly way. Deb was remarking to Rose that their pity for the Breens' dog had been quite misplaced, when a bow from her sister and a lift of the hat by the young man caused her to stop short and raise her fine brows inquiringly.
"Rose!"
"I—I spoke to him one day," explained Rose, pink as her pinkest namesake. "About Bruce."
"Who's Bruce?"
"That's Bruce—his dog."
Frances came running up. "Rose," said she indignantly, "did you bow to that man?"
"He is our neighbour next door," mumbled Rose.
"I know that. So is the wood-carter. But is that a reason why you should bow to him? Do you know who those people are?"
"They are perfectly respectable people, I believe," said Rose, growing restive.
"DRAPERS," said Frances witheringly.
"I shouldn't care if they were chimney-sweeps. They have a beautiful dog, and young Mr Breen is very kind to him, and I—I thanked him for it." "Oh, Deb!"
"Was that necessary, my dear?"
"Perhaps not. But I did."
"Well, be careful, Rosie. We are not at Redford now, you know. Girls living alone and going about in public places—"
"And that sort of person," Frances broke in crossly, "always takes advantage of a little notice. Why, he looked at you as if you were friends and equals, Rose!"
Rose turned to retort again, but feeling the weight of opinion against her, forbore. And she was glad she had never mentioned the circumstances under which she had made poor Peter Breen's acquaintance.
On a later afternoon she was in the attic room, sewing at a frock for Robbie Goldsworthy—Robert Pennycuick, after the grandfather who had been expected to leave much money—while Deb and Frances entertained visitors downstairs. Old Keziah had brought her tea and cakes, and she had had a pleasant time with her work and her thoughts, and her view of Bruce and his premises, when suddenly Frances flounced in.
"Now, madam!" exclaimed the irate young lady, "we have to thank you for this. What did I say? Give these people an inch and they will take an ell—a mile indeed, if they can get it."
"What people?" inquired Rose faintly.
"Those Breen people—those DRAPERS. They have had the cheek to come and call on us—to call and leave their cards, 'First and third Wednesday', as if they expected us to call back again!"
"Who came?"
"Mrs and Miss—with half the shop upon their backs. Debbie"—Deb was coming in behind her—"you are NOT going to return the call of those people, I TRUST?"
"Oh, I don't know," smiled Deb easily. "It would please them, and it wouldn't hurt us. There would be no need, of course, to return a second one."
"I should think it would NOT hurt us," Rose spoke up, "to behave like decent people. I never heard that it was considered high breeding and fine manners to snub your inferiors—if they are your inferiors." "You have to snub them," said Frances, "if they don't know manners themselves."
"A very GENTLE snub," said Deb. "We are not going to be rude to the poor things. We will call once—that is, I will—in a few months' time. After all, it was hardly their fault."
"No; it is Rose's fault. Please, Rose, in future be so good as to consider your family a little, as well as your neighbours' dogs."
Rose's only reply was to start the sewing-machine and drive it vehemently. But her heart burned within her. Evidently Peter's mother and sister had been insulted in her house, after he had been so good to her.
He did not appear in the yard that evening, and next day when he did, his face was turned from her all the time. The day after that, she rattled the window and encouraged Pepper to bark to draw the young man's attention, having ready for him a smile that should counteract Francie's frowns, if smiles could do it; but again he took no notice. Then she was sure that his feelings had been hurt. Mrs and Miss Breen had returned to report a cool reception of the overtures that had been made almost certainly at his instigation—had probably reproached him for exposing them to the insolence of stuck-up snobs. Oh, it was horrid! And doubtless he thought her as bad as the rest. She had not gone downstairs to see his mother and sister, and how was he to know she had been ignorant that they were there? And still he took Bruce out for walks, before breakfast and after business in the afternoons, when he might have been playing tennis and enjoying himself.
She bore with this state of things for some time, then suddenly determined to end it. "Where there's a will there's a way." One of Deb's petticoats showed signs of fraying, and, Deb-like, she must have fresh lace for it immediately. Rose offered to go to town to fetch it, taking with her the money for her purchase.
Never before had she been to "Breen's." Second-rate, if not third or fourth, was its class amongst Melbourne shops, and the Pennycuicks had always been accustomed to the best. But when she turned in at the somewhat narrow and encumbered doorway, she was pleasantly surprised to note how far the shop ran back, and how well-stocked and busy and solidly prosperous it seemed.
He was there—not, to her great relief, behind the counter, but in a sort of raised office place at the farther end—attending to the books apparently, while keeping an eye upon other matters. Hardly had she set foot upon the carpeted aisle when his head popped up from behind his desk, and she saw herself recognised. As it was her object to be recognised, and to speak to him, she passed the lace department, the ribbons, the silks, the dress stuffs, until she reached the Manchester department, where they sold towels and table-cloths, and beautiful satin eider-downs in all the colours of the rainbow. Here she halted and asked sweetly for torchon lace.
All the way had Peter watched her, but with his head down, as if wishing to hide from her. "He fancies I shall be ashamed of him because he keeps a shop," thought she; and that was exactly what he did fancy, knowing the world and its funny little inconsistent social ways. So, when informed that she had left the lace counter far behind her, and while turning to retrace her steps, she frankly sought his eye, and catching it, bowed and smiled with all the friendliness that could be expressed in such fashion.
That smile drew Peter out. But still he came with a bashful and hesitating air, as if uncertain of his reception; so that she had to meet him half-way, with bold hand extended.
"How do you do, Mr Breen? How is Bruce? But I see how well he is, and happy—thanks to you. I am so sorry I did not have the pleasure of seeing your mother and sister when they were so kind as to call the other day; but I did not know they were in the house till they were gone."
He glowed with joy. He clasped her hand with a vigour that made it tingle for a minute afterwards.
"I was sorry too," he said. "My old mater is a good soul. I think you and she—I wanted her to see you. Another time, perhaps—"
"Oh, I hope so! We are such near neighbours." She was ready to say anything that would make him feel he was not being treated as a shopman. "And did you have your day's shooting? Were you successful?" "Well," with modest pride, "I came upon snipe unexpectedly, and brought home a couple of brace. If I had thought you would condescend to accept them, Miss Pennycuick—if I had dared—"
"Oh, thank you very much, but I could not have let you rob your mother—"
Conscious of heightened colour, and several pairs of watching eyes, Rose hastily put out her hand. Peter took it respectfully, slightly abashed.
"Can I—is there anything—anything I can do for you?"
"Yes, please," she said, struggling to remember what it was. "Some—er—lace—torchon—for my sister; that is what I came for."
"This way," said Peter gently; and they walked down the long, narrow shop together, closely scrutinised by the young women behind the counters. Two or three of these, with ingratiating smirks, converged upon the spot where their young chief halted and called aloud for torchon lace. The favoured one brought forth the stock, unexpectedly large and valuable, and the girl was soon able to make her choice. She wanted one dozen yards, and there was a piece of fourteen that Peter styled a "remnant" for her benefit. If he could have presented it to her free of cost, he would have loved to do so; as it was, she made an excellent bargain.
"I only hope they won't ask me where I got it," she said to herself on the way home. Happily, they did not. The usual Buckley was taken for granted, and Deb slashed up the lace without noticing that she had fourteen yards for twelve.
But Rose was a poor schemer, and it was inevitable that she should soon be found out.
The sisters were gathered about their window table in the attic room on the following afternoon. Keziah had brought their tea, and amid the litter of their needlework they drank it leisurely, enjoying a spell of rest. Both casements stood wide. Deb, at one end, gazed wistfully at the Malvern Hills; Frances, at the other, looked down on objects nearer home. Rose had purposely drawn her chair back farther into the room. A joyous bark arose.
"There's your young man, Rose," said Frances flippantly. "Really, the dandy has surpassed himself. Knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, if you please! Why, actually a horse! He is going out to ride. This it is to be a counter-jumper in these levelling times!"
"He is not a counter-jumper," said reckless Rose.
"How do you know?" returned Frances swiftly.
"Proprietors don't wait behind the counter."
"That is where he has had to learn his business, of course," said Deb. "But there is nothing disgraceful in counters. Don't be snobbish, Francie. Every trade—profession too, for that matter—has to have a counter of some sort."
"Of course it has," said Rose, heartened.
"Oh, but to see a man—a miserable apology for a man—measuring out calicoes and ribbons, and tapes and buttons, and stays and garters, and all sorts of things that a man has no right to touch—pugh!"
"Only women sell the stays and garters," corrected Rose vehemently. "And at least young Mr Breen is not a miserable apology for a man. He is as much a real man as anybody else—goes out shooting—plays tennis—"
Again Francie's cat's-paw pounced on her. "How do you know?"
"Why—why—you can see he is one of that sort," squirmed poor Rose.
"Oh!" said Frances significantly, with a firm stare at her sister's scarlet face. "Deb, there is more in this than meets the eye—even than meets the eye."
"I don't care what you say," struck Rose blindly.
"Don't tease her," Deb interposed. "And don't be putting preposterous ideas into the child's head."
"Please, Deb, I am not a child."
"No, my dear, you are not; and therefore you know, as well as we do, that young Mr Breen is nothing to us."
"Did I say he was anything? It is Francie that makes horrid, vulgar insinuations."
"But how do you know that he shoots and plays tennis?" persisted Frances, with a darkling smile.
"Because he told me so—there!"
In five minutes the inquisitor had drawn forth the whole innocent tale. She fell back in her chair, while Deb seemed to congeal slowly.
"Oh," moaned Frances, "no wonder they thought they could come and call and make friends with us! And no wonder," she added, more viciously, "that there he stands leering up at this window, when his horse has been ready this half hour."
"Is he doing that?" asked Deb quickly.
"Look at him!"
Deb rose and looked; then, with a firm hand, closed the two little windows and drew down the blinds. With a sob of rage, Rose jumped from her basket-chair, almost flung her cup and saucer upon the tea-tray, and rushed out of the room.
Thereupon the little family resolved itself into a strong government and one rebel.
"When I DO want to marry a shopkeeper," said weeping Rose to her sisters, "then it will be time enough to make yourselves ridiculous."
But they thought not. "No use," said they, "to shut the stable door after the steed is stolen." Danger, or the beginning of danger, had distinctly declared itself, and it was their part to guard the threatened point. So they took steps to guard it. The name of Breen was not mentioned, but its flavour lurked in every mouthful of conversation, like the taste of garlic that has been rubbed round the salad bowl in the salad that has not touched it; it filled the domestic atmosphere with a subtle acrimoniousness unknown to it before. And Rose was watched—not openly, but systematically enough for her to know it—never allowed to go out alone, or to sit in the attic after a certain hour; driven into brooding loneliness and disaffection—in other words, towards her fellow-victim instead of from him.