Deb was at Redford once more.
In her own room too, surrounded by familiar objects—the six-foot dressing-table and the nine-foot wardrobe, and the Aspinalled book-case that was a fixture, amongst other things. She had not taken them to her suburban villa, nor sent for them afterwards. Meanwhile, Mr Thornycroft had bought them with the place, and taken care of them, as of everything that she had left behind. They had been in his possession now for several years.
The strange thing in the room was Mr Thornycroft himself—Mr Thornycroft on the little white bed that Deb used to sleep on, his hair white, his once stalwart frame reduced to a pale wreck of skin and bone.
"You will forgive me for coming here," he apologised. "I have not been using the things. But they had me moved for coolness—the south-east aspect, and being able to get a current through—"
"I am thankful they did. It is the best place for you this weather. But there's one thing I shall never forgive you—that you didn't let me know before."
She was sitting at his bedside, holding his hand—she, too, much changed, thinner, sadder, shabbier, or rather, less splendidly turned out than had been her wont in earlier days; beautiful as ever, notwithstanding—infinitely more so, in the sick man's eyes.
"Why should I bother you? I haven't been very bad—just the old asthma off and on. It is only lately that I have felt it upsetting my heart. And you know I am used to being alone."
He spoke with the asthma pant, and a throb of the lean throat that she could not bear to see. His head was propped high, so that they squarely faced each other. His eyes were full of tenderness and content—hers of tears.
"You have been pretty lonely yourself, by all accounts," said he, stroking her hand. "It's odd to think of you in that case, Debbie."
"I've felt it odd myself," she smiled, with a whisk of her handkerchief. "But, like you, I am getting used to it."
"Where's Dalzell all this time?" "Don't know. Don't care. Please don't talk of him."
"Nobody else—?"
"Oh, dear, no! Never will be. I am going to take up nursing or something."
"YOU!" he mocked.
"Do you suppose I can't? Wait till I have got you over this attack, and then tell me if I can't. I am going to stay with you, godpapa, until you are better. I have spoken to your housekeeper, and she is quite agreeable—if you are."
He did not think it necessary to reply to that hint, but just smiled and closed his eyes. She took up a palm-leaf fan and fanned him, watching him anxiously. It was a roasting February day, and he was breathing very badly.
"Have you given up your house?" he asked, when he could speak.
"Long ago. No use my staying there alone. Besides, I could not afford it."
"Francie not much good to you, I suppose?"
"Oh, I don't want her to be good to me."
"Keziah Moon hasn't deserted you, of course?"
"Oh, Keziah—she was moped to death, poor old woman—I found her a nuisance. And then those babies of Rose's were so irresistible. I thought she'd better go. As Rose's head-nurse, I believe she is in her element."
"Is Rose happy with her draper?"
"I don't know—I suppose so."
"You don't see much of her?"
"Not much."
"And Mary?"
"I haven't seen her for months. Her husband and I don't hit it off, somehow."
"Deb, how much have you to live on?"
"That's my business, sir."
"Not the business of a doting godfather—in the absence of nearer male relatives?"
"No. His business is only to see that I learn the catechism and present myself to be confirmed; and I've done both."
"That all?"
"Except to let his doting godchild take care of him when he is ill. Now—don't talk any more."
He was too exhausted to do so. And while he lay feebly fighting for breath, the trained nurse came in and took command.
In the evening that functionary gave a professional opinion.
"He is worried about something," she said to Deb, "and it is very bad for him. Do you know what it is?"
"Not in the least," said Deb promptly. "I have not been seeing him for years, I am sorry to say, and have not the slightest knowledge of his affairs."
But next day she seemed to get an inkling of what the worry was. Mr Thornycroft, when they were alone together, begged her to tell him if she had any money difficulties—debts, she supposed—and to be frank with him for old times' and her father's sake.
"What! are you bothering your mind about that?" she gently scolded him. "I assure you I am all right. I haven't any difficulties—or hardly any—not now. I have no rent, you see."
"They don't charge you anything where you board?" "No. Redford never has charged folks for board. Seriously," she hastened to add, in earnest tones, "I have all I want. And if I try presently to earn more, it will be because I think everybody ought to earn his living or hers. You earned yours. I despise people who just batten on the earnings of others, and never do a hand's turn for themselves."
"Batten!" he murmured ironically, with a troubled smile. "You look as if you had been battening, don't you? Debbie, I'm a business man, and I know you can't get behindhand in money matters and pull up again just when you want to; you can't get straight merely by anticipating income, when there's nothing extra coming in. Tell me, if you don't mind, how you managed?" She flushed, and her eyes dropped; then she faced him honestly.
"I will tell you," she declared. "I've wanted to confess it, though I'm horribly ashamed to—and I'm afraid you'll think I did not value it. I did indeed—I hated to part with it; but I was so hard up, and I didn't know which way to turn, or what else to do—"
"And never came to me!"
"Well, I did—in a way. I—I sold your pearls."
"That's right, Debbie. That's a load off my mind. It is the best thing you could have done with them."
"No, indeed! I have regretted it ever since."
"How much did they give you?" "A tremendous lot—three hundred and fifty guineas."
"The swindlers! They were worth two thousand."
"What!" She was thunderstruck. "You gave me a necklace worth two thousand guineas?"
"I only wish you'd let me give you a score or two at the same price, on condition that you sold them for three-fifty whenever you needed a little cash."
She was quite upset by this remark, and what had given rise to it. Impulsively—too impulsively, considering how weak he was—she kissed his damp forehead, and rushed weeping from his sight.
In the hot evening, while the trained nurse had her tea at grateful leisure in the housekeeper's room, Deb again took that nurse's place. She sat by the pillow of the patient, leaning against it, holding his hand in hers. Only the sound of the cruel north wind and his more cruel breathing disturbed the stillness that enveloped them. She hoped he was sleeping, until he spoke suddenly in a way that showed him only too wide awake.
"Debbie," he said, "if I was quite sure I would not get well this time, I should put that question to you again."
"What question, dear?" she queried softly.
"The question I asked you just before you left Redford."
"I don't remember—Oh!"
"Yes—that one. But if you consented, I might recover—it would be enough to make me; then you would repent."
She was silent, agitated in every fibre of her, but thinking hard.
"What put that idea into your head?" she whispered, still holding his hand.
"It was never put in; it was there always—since you were a kiddie."
"It seems so strange! I thought I was always a kiddie to you." "That does seem the natural relationship, doesn't it?" There fell another long silence, and, listening to his dragging breath, her heart smote her. She squeezed his bony hand.
"I will stay with you, anyway," she comforted him.
He turned his head on the pillow. "Kiss me," he sighed, with eyes closed.
She did, again and again.
The night was suffocating. She could not sleep for the heat and her thoughts, and when, towards morning, she heard the nurse stirring, she got up to inquire how he was.
"Pretty bad," the nurse said. "It's this awful weather. I can't cool the room, though I've got all the doors and windows open, and the wet sheets hanging up. It's air he wants, and there isn't any. If it don't change soon, I'm afraid his strength won't hold out."
It did not change, and consequently grew worse to bear, the parching and scorching of each day being carried over into the next. What the newspapers call a heat-wave was drawing to its culmination, which generally reaches the verge of the unbearable, even to the well and strong, just before the "change"—that lightning change to coolness, and even coldness, which comes while one draws a breath. How many a life has hung upon the chance of the blessed moment coming in time!
The nurse looked at the thermometer in despair. Darkness had not taken 10 degrees from yesterday's temperature of 102 degrees when another blazing sun arose. The fierce wind had raved and calmed, and raved and calmed, but it had not shifted. She wetted and she fanned, turn and turn about with Deb, the livelong day, without freshening the dead air that soaked the house and seemed to soak the world. The fagged and perspiring doctor (a great friend of the patient's), who came twice daily, came again, too tired to care very much even for this special case. He looked at it, and shook his head, and begged for a cool drink for the Lord's sake; and then, having muddled the wits he had tried to stimulate with quarts of whisky-and-soda, went away, saying: "I can do nothing. Send for me at once if you see a change."
At sunset the sick man was very low, his weak heart and his distressed lungs labouring heavily, while the sweat of agony glistened on his forehead and plastered his white hair to his backward-tossed head. Deb was frantic with fear and grief. She summoned the doctor again, sending commands to him to summon more doctors—the best in Melbourne, and any number of them—in defiance of Mr Thornycroft's known wishes to the contrary. At the same time she sent for the clergyman.
"Dear," she crooned in the patient's ear, when he seemed a little easier, "Mr Bentley will be here presently."
Mr Thornycroft's brows seemed to gather a momentary frown over his closed eyes.
"I'd rather not, Deb—"
"Oh, not for THAT! But—the wind will change soon, and then you will feel better; and then—you said it would help you to get well—I will—if you like—"
He opened his eyes and gazed at her. It took him a few seconds to understand.
"Ah—darling!" he breathed, between his pants, and with an effort drew her hand to his lips. Then—they were his last words, whispered very low—"Never mind now, Debbie—so long as you are here."
He seemed to drowse into a kind of half-sleep, in spite of his too obvious and audible suffering. She sat beside him, sponging and fanning him, listening to his shallow, jerky, wheezy respiration, watching for the subtle something in the stifling room that should announce a change of wind, thinking of Mr Bentley's coming, and many other things. The weary nurse came back from her brief rest and cup of tea, and sat down at the foot of the bed. She studied the patient's face intently for some time, and felt his feet; then she took the fan from Deborah's hand.
"You go and lie down, Miss Pennycuick. Mrs Dobson will come and sit with me for a while."
"No, no," said Deb. "He wants me to be here. I cannot leave him."
After a few more minutes of silence, the nurse said again: "You had better go, Miss Pennycuick." When Deb repeated her refusal, the nurse went out to fetch the housekeeper to persuade her.
A minute afterwards, Deb lifted her head with a jerk, and sniffed eagerly. At the same instant she heard a distant door bang.
"Thank God!" she ejaculated, and flew to the windows that all day had had to be shut tight against the furnace blast outside, and flung them wide, one after the other. The trees in the old garden were bending and rustling; the sweet, cool air came pouring in.
"The wind has changed," she whispered, almost hysterically, to the nurse and the housekeeper, as they stealthily crept in. "And"—as they all gathered round the bed—"he is better already. His breathing is easier."
The nurse bent over the long figure on the bed. "He is not breathing at all," said she.
Jim Urquhart had been fighting bush fires for several days when the wind changed and carried them back over the burnt ground that extinguished them. When he rode home, dead beat, from helping a neighbour who had helped him, it was to meet the news that Mr Thornycroft was dead, and Mrs Urquhart gone to Redford to support Deborah Pennycuick.
Mr Thornycroft had been ailing with his asthma so long, and making so little fuss about it, that his friends had come to regard him as practically ailing nothing. The death that had slowly stalked him for years came upon them with the shock of the unexpected; so the newspapers said. Jim's heart smote him for that he had been so taken up with the fire epidemic as to have neglected for over a week to inquire after the old man; it smote him more when he heard that Deb had been at Redford through the ordeal, without "anyone" near her. He had known too well—had made it his business to know—that she had had a struggling life, heart-breaking to think of, for a long time, but under various pretexts she had kept "everybody" at arm's-length and further, refusing aid or pity; now there had come a chance to do something for her, and he had been out of the way. And duty still detained him, to arrange about destroyed fences and foodless stock—duty that had to be considered first, even before her. When at last he was free to put himself at her disposal, a dozen men had jumped his claim.
The manager of Redford met him when a few miles from the place. "You are behind the fair, Mr Urquhart," cried he, as they drew rein alongside; and his tone and his face were strangely cheerful, considering that his good employer of twenty years had been buried only yesterday—as usual, within a few hours of his death. "But I suppose you have heard the news. What—you haven't? Then I am the first to congratulate you," extending a cordial hand. "The will was read this morning, and you've got the biggest legacy—a cool five thousand, sir."
Five thousand! Jim, never on particularly intimate terms with the testator, had not thought of the will, and the idea that he might have an interest in it never crossed his mind. Five thousand! It is said of drowning people that they see the whole panorama of their lives in the last seconds of consciousness; in the instant's pause that followed the manager's announcement, Jim saw Five Creeks renovated and prosperous, and Deb's children running about the old rooms and paddocks, and calling him father—a home not quite unworthy of his goddess now, and one that loneliness and poverty would have taught her to appreciate. He stared at the burly manager like a man in a dream.
"I get a nice little windfall myself, which I never expected," the latter continued his tale. "The servants are well provided for, and there are odd sums for a lot of English relatives—I suppose they are—and a good bit for charities. But yours is the biggest individual legacy; and I'm glad of it, and I'm not surprised, because I've heard him many a time speak well of you for the way you worked to keep up your place and look after the family."
"But," said Jim, coming down from his clouds of glory, "I thought—I thought there'd be more than that." "Than what? You surely didn't expect—oh, I see!" The manager threw up his head and roared. "My good fellow, the estate altogether is worth a quarter of a million."
"Then who—?"
"Gets it? Miss Pennycuick. She's here now. And couldn't believe it when they told her—though, when you come to think of it, it was a natural thing for him to do, having been such friends with the old man, and she his god-daughter. A lucky young woman—my word!" Jim's swelled heart collapsed and sank like a burst balloon. His dream-house vanished in thin air, to be built no more.
"That settles it," he said to himself. According to his code of manly honour and self-respect, a man could not possibly, even with five thousand pounds in hand, ask a girl with a quarter of a million to marry him.
A little more conversation, if it can be called such, when one talked and the other did not even listen, and he parted with the garrulous manager and rode on to the house. Deb, wet-eyed, met him with a welcome that severely tried his Spartan fortitude, without in the least weakening his resolve. Although she did not know it, being still filled with grief for her lifelong friend, it was the power and command that he had endowed her with which gave that charming air of fearless and open affection to her manner.
"Oh, my dear, dear boy!" she addressed him, and all but kissed him before his mother's eyes. "I am so glad to have you here. Jim dear, Mrs Urquhart thinks you can be spared—will you stay here for a bit and help me to settle things? There is so much to do, and it is my duty to attend to everything myself. There are the lawyers and people, of course—everybody is so kind—but I want a man of my own beside me."
"Certainly, Deb," he replied, without wincing; "for as long as you want me—if I can run home every other day or so for a look round."
He stayed, in company with his mother, for a month; then, when he went to live at home again, he spent at least half his days at Redford, acting as Deb's 'own man' indoors and out—her real legal adviser, her real station manager, her confidential major-domo, the doer of all the 'dirty work' connected with the administration of her estate; and never—although she exposed him to almost every sort of temptation—never once stepped off the line that he had marked for himself.
Another person was not so scrupulous, though, to be sure, he was not so poor.
Claud Dalzell, drifting from one resort of the wealthy to another—deer-stalking in Scotland, salmon-fishing in Norway, shooting in the Rockies, hunting in the Shires, yachting everywhere, and everywhere adored of a crowd of women as idle as himself—was loafing at Monte Carlo when he heard of Mr Thornycroft's death and Deb's accession to his throne. Ennui and satiety possessed the popular young man at the moment—for he was made for better things, and his dissatisfied soul tormented him; and a vision of old-time Redford and the beautiful girl who was like wine and fire, a blend of passion and purity that now impressed him as unique, rose before his mental eyes with the effect of water-springs in a dry land. His thoughts went back to the days when they rode and made love together—the sunny days, before the clouds gathered. It was that past which glorified her all at once, not the present—not Mr Thornycroft's money—not the halo of elegance and consequence that again adorned her; he never suspected otherwise for a moment. And that was why he did not hesitate to book a passage to Australia that very day.
Deb was at Redford when he arrived. That she would never part with the place again, she had declared on the day that it came into her possession, and she was now establishing herself there, she said, for life. She had gone through the whole great rambling house, sorting and rearranging the furniture that was in it, adding the cream of the contents of the best shops in town. She made a clean sweep of the now 'awful' fittings of the big drawing-room, replacing them with parquet rugs and divans, and things of the softest, finest and most costly kind; she arranged the morning-room for herself afresh; also the glazed corridor, which became a beautiful art gallery and lounging-place; also the remainder of the long unused rooms. She called to her all the favourite old servants—except Keziah Moon, who was happy where she was—and old Miss Keene to play chaperon once more, with nothing to do but arrange flowers and doze at peace in the lap of luxury. Deb wanted Jim for her manager, at a ridiculous salary, but he would not take the post; he did, however, procure her an excellent substitute. She commissioned him to buy her riding-horses—he "knew what she liked"—regardless of expense; an English groom was given charge of them when they arrived. So easily did the magnificent woman slide back into her magnificent ways, for all her good taste and unpretentiousness.
When Claud Dalzell was driven in his hired buggy from the township to her door, his critical eye took in the many changes that the old homestead had undergone with high approval. Used as he was to far finer houses and the best of everything, he felt that here was as fair a camping-place as even he could desire. Redford, with a quarter of a million behind it, with this setting of sunshine and spaciousness (missed so much more than he had known till now), inclined—what a haven of rest and pleasure, after the crowded and fatiguing experiences of his later years!
He was shown upstairs to the big drawing-room. He hardly knew where he was, with the grass-green carpet and festooned window-draperies and gilding and plate-glass vanished, and these soft-coloured stuffs and subtle harmonies around him. He could recognise nothing but a few pictures and the old piano, the latter spread with a gem of Chinese embroidery, on which stood a gem of a Satsuma bowl filled with fine chrysanthemums. It was late in autumn now.
And while he wandered about, examining this and that with the pleasure of a satisfied connoisseur, Deb stood in the sitting-room downstairs, with clenched hands and teeth, staring at his card on a table before her.
"He has the cheek," she thought, afire with indignation—never so hot and bitter as when directed against one we love who has offended us—"he has the unspeakable effrontery to come and see me NOW, when he never came near me all those hard years—never cared how I muddled and struggled, nor whether I was alive or dead!"
But she must see him, of course. And she must maintain her proper dignity. No descending to vulgar reproaches—still less to weak condonation. She took a moment to calm herself, and walked forth to the interview. Many things upheld her, but the dead hand of Mr Thornycroft was her stoutest support.
She needed it when she reached the top of the stairs. Facing the drawing-room door, awaiting her, stood the figure that really seemed the one thing wanting to complete the beauty of the beautiful house. He had never in his younger days been so distinguished-looking as he was now. In any company, in any part of the world, he must have attracted notice, as a gentleman, in person and manners, of the very finest type. And how she did love that sort! How her lonely and hungry heart longed for him when she saw him—the only man she had ever deemed her natural mate—and at the same time how she hated him for the disappointment and the humiliation that he had brought her! Outraged self-respect, her robust will-power, and her quarter of a million sufficed to save her from a temptation she would not have fallen into for the world.
She swept forward to shake hands with him, with the grave affability of a great lady to a guest—any guest—and it was plain from the expression of his sensitive face that he was as keenly appreciative of her enhanced beauty and 'finish' as she of his. Black was not her colour—she was too dark—and she had discarded it for pale greys and whites, with touches of black about them; today a creamy woollen, thick and soft, and hanging about her like the drapery of a Greek statue, was an inspiration in becoming gowns. The maid who had dressed her hair was a mistress of the art. And Miss Pennycuick's step and poise—well, she WAS a great lady, and carried herself accordingly.
Her old lover was charmed. He held her hand—and would have held it thrice as long—and looked into her eyes, too overcome, it appeared, to speak.
"How do you do?" she said, evading his intense gaze. "What a man you are for dropping on one in this unexpected, sensational way! Why didn't you write and tell me you were around?"
She made a movement to withdraw her hand. He held it fast.
"Debbie," said he, in quite a tremulous voice—remarkable in one constitutionally so self-confident and self-possessed—"Debbie, you turned me out of your house when I came to see you last. I hope you have a different welcome for me this time?"
"To the best of my belief," she laughed, "you insisted upon going. I am sure you were asked to stay—to lunch, or whatever it was. By the way, have you lunched now?" She showed concern for her obligations as his hostess.
"Yes, thank you—at least, it doesn't matter."
He had to relinquish her hand, and when she immediately made towards the bell-button, he followed and arrested her.
"Let us have our talk first," he pleaded. "I don't want anything to eat until I know—until I feel that you don't grudge it."
"Oh, I don't grudge it," she took him literally. "Not one square meal, at any rate. The only thing I am obliged to grudge is house-room—for any length of time—to single gentlemen. But that is not a question of hospitality, as you know. Sit down, and tell me all the news."
He sat down; she also—about two yards off. Across the gulf of Persian rug he looked at her steadily.
"You are angry with me," he observed. "Why, Debbie? Is it still the old quarrel—after all these years?"
Then her face changed like a filled lamp when you put a match to it. She said, in a deep, breathless way:
"Do you know how many years it is?"
More in sorrow and surprise than in anger, he guessed her meaning after a moment's thought.
"Is that my fault? The number of years has been of your choosing," he pointed out forbearingly. "You sent me away, when I never wanted to go. You broke it off, altogether against my wish. You never relented—never made a sign. Even now I come back uninvited."
It was a clear case, and all he asked for was bare justice.
"Why didn't you come before—uninvited? Why didn't you come back to me when I was poor and lonely? Claud, I have been in every sort of trouble—my father is dead, I have lost all my sisters in one way and another, I have been living in cheap lodgings, doing without what I always thought were the necessaries of life, to keep Francie going and to get debts paid off—I have been ill, I have been unhappy, I have sometimes been penniless, and you have carefully passed by on the other side, like that man in the Bible, and left me to my fate."
He was genuinely shocked. He knew that she had been horribly down in the world, but not that she had suffered to this extent. Seeing her sitting there in her beautiful gown, in her beautiful room, without one trace of those sordid years about her, his heart ached to think of them.
"My darling, I never knew—" "Why not?" she said swiftly. "Because you never tried to know—never cared to know. But now that I can be a credit to you again—the moment you hear that I have had a great fortune left to me—now you come back."
"Do you mean to say," he demanded sternly, "that you think—you honestly think I have come back to you on account of your money?"
She returned his cold, searching gaze in kind.
"Honestly," she said, "I do think so. There is no way out of it."
He rose deliberately, bowed to her, and picked up his hat. He was not really mercenary—or, if he was, he did not know it—and he was as intensely proud as she was. He felt that he had received the deadliest insult ever dealt him in his life, and one that he could never forget or forgive.
Without another word, he turned to the door and walked out. She stood still and watched him go, a calm smile curving her lips, a very cyclone of passion tearing through her heart; and she scorned to recall him.
Deb yearned to have her Australian sisters—Frances was European—with her at Redford, as in the old days; she hated to be luxuriating there without them. But for a time the husbands stood in the way. She could not bring herself to ask them too. The draper she hardly knew at all—in her correspondence with Rose his name was rarely mentioned by either, except in comprehensive messages at the end of letters; and Bennet Goldsworthy's company, Deb said, simply made her ill.
It had made her ill since, after her father's death, the clergyman had permitted himself, in her hearing, to vent his personal disappointment at the unexpected smallness of his wife's inheritance. The man had presumed to take the air of one reasonably aggrieved; he had even dropped angry words about "deception" in the first heat of his chagrin. "As if," said haughty Deb, "it was not enough for him to have married one of us!" When he was understood to say that he had "arranged his life" in accordance with the expectations he had been given the right to entertain, Deb's withering comment was: "As if HIS life matters!"
But she was intolerant in her dislikes.
Poor Mr Goldsworthy, incurable cadger that he was, was bound to feel the family reverses acutely. When he had married Miss Pennycuick for her good, in that risky manner, he had naturally expected to be rewarded for the deed. If ever it be safe to trust to appearances, it had seemed safe then, so far as the solidity of the Pennycuicks' position was concerned. They had imposed upon him with their careless splendour; they had misled him by their condonation of the marriage, which restored Mary to her privileges as a daughter of the house; most thoroughly had they taken him in by that voluntary wedding gift of five hundred pounds. With his habit—which he took to be the general habit—of getting all he could and giving nothing that he was not obliged to give, he could not understand the airy flinging away of all that money, when there was no "call" for it, only as a proof that Mr Pennycuick had more than he needed for all the legitimate claims on him. And the old man had said, again and again, that his daughters would share and share alike in whatever he had to leave.
When Mr Bentley, the new parson, came—young, sincere, self-sacrificing, devoted, a poor preacher and a hard worker, who refused to batten on Redford bounty—all the old furniture of the parsonage was made over to him (on time payment), and the Goldsworthys began life in Melbourne on the basis of a rich wife. It was surprising how the legend grew amongst his set that Mr Goldsworthy had a rich wife. That she might dress the part on all occasions, so that there would be no mistake about it, the family-provided trousseau was added to; it was also subtracted from, for the simplicity that was her taste and distinction was hateful in his sight. When she looked "common" in a cotton gown, she lowered his dignity in the world and amongst his professional fellows—supposed to be so envious of it, in spite of her red face. Deb had had to suffer the shock of seeing her sister in silk of a morning more than once, and it had been reported to her—though she did not believe it—that Mary wore a jewelled necklace to church on Sundays. Deb did not go to Bennet's church, which was, fortunately, a long way from her suburban-villa home.
And she had been to his Melbourne house but twice. On her first visit she had penetrated to Mary's room, and been horrified to find the husband's clothes hung up in it from her door-pegs, and his razors and brushes mixed up with her things on her dressing-table. The arrangement in the country parsonage was to be accounted for; to find it here, made deliberately and of MALICE PREPENSE, was to see what gulfs now yawned between Mary's old life and the new one. Deb reached forth for a comb, and drew back her hand as if she had inadvertently touched a snake. Mary's red face went purple as she explained that there was not space in that house for a dressing-room. There was space enough going to waste in the drawing-room, where Deb had her feelings hurt on her second visit. It was a very large room, sharing the front of the house with a large study; and behind them all the other rooms huddled as of no account, none of them bigger than Keziah's Redford storeroom. The study was sacred to the master of the house; the drawing-room to "company". One look showed Deb that Mary never sat there, and that it was not she who had chosen and arranged the furniture. The foundation of the scheme was a costly "suite", upholstered in palish silk brocade, the separate pieces standing at fixed intervals apart on a gorgeous Axminster carpet. When Deb entered the room, Mr Goldsworthy was bending over the central sofa, excited and talking loudly. Miss Goldsworthy and Mary stood by, mute and drooping; Ruby looked on irresponsibly, with joy in her eye.
"What's the matter?" inquired Deb, advancing.
As she was not a great lady then, but quite the contrary, Mr Goldsworthy explained what was the matter, with scarcely any modification of his minatory air. A caller had called yesterday, bringing with her a little boy. Mary had thoughtlessly fed the little boy with soft cake, and the little boy had first made his hands sticky with it, and then pawed the sofa, which had cost him (B.G.) nearly twenty pounds (part of Mary's 500 pounds). Greasy marks had been left on that lovely brocade, for which he (not she) had given thirty-five shillings a yard, and which he had forbidden children to be allowed to sit on. As if that were not bad enough, "they"—i.e., those two poor women—had, without telling him, tried to take the marks out with some wretched chemist's stuff, which had not taken them out, but only spread them more. Now the sofa was completely spoiled, and what to do he did not know, unless he could match the brocade, which was scarcely likely. And ill could he afford to be buying brocade—and so on. Finally he went out to consult with a furniture repairer of his acquaintance, banging doors behind him. Deb cast a scornful glance upon the smudged brocade.
"What a fuss about nothing!" she brushed the subject by.
"My brother is very particular about this room," Miss Goldsworthy apologised for him.
"So I see."
"And he is very fond of this brocade, which he chose himself. It certainly is very pretty—don't you think so? But too delicate to wear well. I am always frightened to see children go near it, or even grown-up people when it has been raining, or if they have been gathering dust—it does show every spot so! And it was the mother's fault. I signed to Mary to give him a biscuit, but his mother picked out that cake, which had jam in it. It is very unfortunate. I don't wonder at his being vexed."
"Why don't you have chintz covers, Moll?"
"Oh, he wouldn't like it to be covered up," Miss Goldsworthy struck in, and seemed shocked herself at the suggested waste. Mary lifted dull eyes to her sister's face.
"Come and have some tea," she said. "Come, auntie; it is no use your worrying yourself."
And they went into the poky living room, which smelt of meals, and had tea, and the sort of barren talk that the presence of the third person necessitated. Mary seemed purposely to avoid a TETE-A-TETE. When Miss Goldsworthy went to fetch the baby, Ruby was kept at her step-mother's side. Only when the black-eyed boy appeared did Mary brighten into a likeness to her old self. She was a born mother, and her child consoled her. Then, in the midst of the baby worship, back came the still agitated husband and father, the furniture man with him; and the house was filled anew with the affair of the soiled sofa, so that Deb's presence, as also her departure, attracted little attention. As her brother-in-law pushed out a valedictory hand, she noticed a shirt-cuff that had the grime of days upon it.
"He economises in the wash," she soliloquised, with wrinkling nostril and curling lip. "And in those filthy cheap coals that choke the grate with dust, and in tea that is undrinkable. Oh, what a house!"
And she had not been there since. But now—
Her benevolence embraced the world, and the world included Bennet Goldsworthy. It was no longer in his power to make her feel ill. The sun of her prosperity, shining on him at her sister's side—poor, struggling, well-meaning little man!—gave him a pathetic and appealing interest. In fact, it was to him that her maternal dispositions towards her family drew her first.
"Thank God," she said to herself, "I can now make things a bit easier for that poor child. She won't let me, I daresay, but he will."
She took the humble tram to their suburb, and rang at their parsonage door. Having considerately sent word that she was coming, due preparations had been made to receive her. She was shown into the drawing-room, which had not a displaced chair, and where the many-coloured Axminster and the cherished brocade still looked as good as new. Almost her first act was to search for the grease marks on the sofa—the spot was indicated by a bleached patch—and she sat down on it, alone for a few minutes. On this occasion the old aunt had been ordered to keep in the background; Ruby also, after due consideration of her claims, had been denied the share she clamoured for of the impending excitement, and sent out of the house; Mary had had her directions, and remained invisible for a time. She was employed in getting Robert ready for inspection—brushing his best jacket, tying his best neck-tie, etc., while he jerked about under her hands, and freely criticised her labours on his behalf. For Robert took after his father as a knowing person. He was, in fact, a bright and clever lad, who knew some things better than his mother did. She was ever proud to admit it; but his own open acceptance of superiority, and readiness to keep it before her eyes at all times, was one of the secret crosses of her life, weighed down with so many. However, if you marry the wrong man, you cannot expect to have the right children, and it was something that this boy had the genuineness of his intellectual gifts to give her an excuse to adore him.
"There, that will do. It is very bad form, you know, to be so fussy about people coming, and so anxious about what they may think about you," the young authority upon etiquette instructed the fine-fibred gentlewoman, who had done him the honour to be his mother. And Mary took the rebuke humbly.
Bennet Goldsworthy, alone, came softly into the drawing-room to receive the distinguished guest. He had grown fat and tubby, and a phrase of Claud Dalzell's flashed into Deb's memory as she marked the manner of his approach—"that crawling ass, that would lick your boots for sixpence". The noonday sun does not affect polished metal more obviously than Deb's wealth affected him.
"This is good of you," he murmured brokenly, pressing her gloved hand. "This is indeed good of you!" "I ought to have been before," she returned graciously—it was so easy to be gracious to him now—"I have been wanting to come; but you cannot imagine how many hindrances I have had."
"Oh, but I can indeed!" with earnest emphasis—"I can indeed! And have grieved that I was not able to be of some service to you in your—your very difficult position. I did not like to seem to force myself upon you, but I hoped—I confidently hoped that you would send for me, if it was in my power to be of the slightest assistance to you."
"Oh, yes—thank you so much—if I had needed anybody. But there were only too many kind friends."
"Aha! Yes, I expect so." His eye lighted and his lip curled craftily. "I have no doubt whatever of THAT. 'Where the carcase is—' You know the rest?"
"I am not a carcase," she rallied him playfully—for quite the first time in her life.
"No, indeed; I should have said 'prey'. Ah, my dear De—Miss Pennycuick, you will find plenty and to spare of so-called friends, professing anxiety to serve you, when their only object is to serve themselves."
"I expect so," she assented, smiling.
"So young a girl"—subtle flattery this, now that Deb was in her late thirties—"to be suddenly called to a position of such immense danger and responsibility! But"—cheeringly—"I said when I heard of it that Mr Thornycroft had justified my high opinion of his judgment and character. It is not often that great wealth comes into hands so worthy of it."
"I am afraid they are not very worthy," sighed Deb. Mr Goldsworthy knew better. He knew HER better—not only from personal intercourse, the observation and intuition of a man trained to read character, but from the loving representations of his dear wife.
"Where is she?" Miss Pennycuick asked abruptly. "Not out, I hope?"
"Out—hardly! She will be here in a moment. I am afraid, when you see her, you will think her looking delicate. The state of her health is a matter of the most anxious concern to me."
"What is the matter with her health? She was always well at home. We used to think her the strongest of the family—until—"
"Until she fell into the clutches of that dreadful man," Mr Goldsworthy concluded for her.
"Oh!"—Deb coloured and frowned—"that is not what I was going to say." (What she had really been going to say was—"until her marriage.") "And why do you rake up that old story? I thought it had all been forgotten long ago."
"It has been unpleasantly revived," said Mr Goldsworthy solemnly. "And it is my duty to tell you about it, if you have not heard."
Deb looked equally annoyed and alarmed. "What has been revived?" she asked.
He dropped his voice apologetically.
"I have been hearing of his going on in exactly the same way with another."
"Oh," sighed Deb, relieved that it was not Mary who had been the reviver; "then it's no business of ours, thank goodness."
"Pardon me—it is very much our business," he urged weightily. "I grieve to tell you that it is your sister, Mrs Ewing, who is implicated in the affair. Do you mean to say that you know nothing about it?"
Deb knew something, and so she put the question by.
"I don't encourage scandalmongers. Mrs Ewing is young and thoughtless—and pretty—which naturally lays her open to ill—natured gossip." "My informant is one of the least ill-natured of women; she is a person of the highest principle."
"Ah, those high-principled women—I know them!"
Mr Goldsworthy was nonplussed for the moment. He could not accept the suggestion that Deb was not high-principled. But he gave up his informant.
"There is ample evidence that the man is Mrs Ewing's lover," he grieved. "He has been seen with her in the most equivocal situations. I don't wish to go into details—to mention things unfit for a young girl's ears—"
"I hope not," put in Deb, her patience giving out. "I am not fond of that kind of talk. I should not believe, either, in any nasty tales connected with my sister, or with Captain Carey. And you ought not to listen to them, for Mary's sake. You should not pander to your high-principled ladies. You should tell them to be more charitable, and to mind their own business."
A year ago the parson would have taken umbrage at this rebuke; he now hastened to deprecate displeasure on the part of the one whom, of all the world, he most desired to please.
"Far be it from me to speak ill of anyone belonging to you," he declared solemnly; but still he could not help it.
The most good-natured person, if he be greedy, will seek to ingratiate himself with Power by disparagement of rival suitors. He was following an impulse that might be described as an instinct, in trying to weaken Deb's favour towards the rest of her relatives in order to concentrate as much as possible upon himself—to push back, as it were, the hands that he imagined eagerly outstretched to her (palm upwards), that the more might be dropped into his own. He asked her if she had seen Mrs Breen, and sighed over that plebeian connection.
"I may be poor," said he, "but I do come of a good family. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but we cannot help our prejudices." "It is a ridiculous prejudice," said Deb, "especially in a country like this."
"Oh, it is—it is. I own it; but—well, you know—"
She brusquely brought him back to the question of Mary's health.
"It is Mary that I want to hear about. Tell me—before she comes in—what is the matter with her?"
He was willingly confidential.
"She has worries," said he—"worries that you, my dear young lady, in YOUR position, know nothing of—would not understand if I were to tell you."
"I have been in positions to understand most kinds of worries," said Deb. "What are they? Money worries?"
"Well, I have a delicacy in—"
"Oh, you need not have! I know, of course, that you cannot have been too well off, and I am here on purpose to do something for you, if you will allow me.' There was no need to beat about the bush, she knew, since Mary was out of hearing. 'Tell me exactly, if you don't mind—in strict confidence, of course. No need to trouble her—and I shall not say anything."
He told her, with fullness and fervour, when he had expressed his too fulsome gratitude.
"I have done my best, Miss Pennycuick. You bade me be good to her; I gave you my solemn promise—and I can conscientiously say that I have kept my word." Well, so he had; according to his lights he had been an exemplary husband. "But circumstances have been against me. In the first place, I was in error somewhat, as you know, in regard to my wife's expectations from her father. I did not marry her for her money, as you also know, but appearances were such that I naturally concluded she would have a considerable income of her own. I did not care for myself one way or the other, but I was glad to believe that there would be the means to continue to her the mode of life that she had been used to. I acted upon this supposition, false, as it turned out, and anticipated, most imprudently, I confess, the little fortune that I imagined to be secure. When we came here, where living is so much more expensive than in the country"—with no Redford to draw upon—"I surrounded my wife with the comforts that were her due, and which I fully believed she had every right to." He waved his hand over the still blooming Axminster carpet and the brocaded suite the family was not allowed to sit on. "I spent—we spent the little capital represented by your father's wedding present—I had an erroneous idea that it was to be an annual allowance pending the eventual division of the estate; and then—well, then you know what happened."
Deb nodded.
"Did you," she inquired feelingly, "borrow of those professional money-lenders?"
She was prepared to be very sympathetic in that case; but Mr Goldsworthy repelled the suggestion with scorn.
"Certainly not. I never borrowed money in my life. I struggled and scraped and saved, as best I could; I endeavoured in vain to augment my small income by little speculations—harmless little dabblings in mining shares; I—but I won't bore you with these disagreeables"—pulling himself up with an air of forced cheerfulness.
"But I want to know," said Deb. "You spoke of worries—Mary's worries—worries now; are you still—"
He spread his hands and wagged his head.
"I'd rather not talk about our troubles," he sighed. "I don't want to dim the sunshine of your—"
And suddenly his eye flashed and his brow contracted with annoyance. Mary—somewhat hesitatingly, to be sure—walked in.
Robert had insisted that the pater was all wrong in his idea that it was proper for him alone to receive the visitor, and for the mistress of the house to linger inhospitably after it was known that she must know of the visitor's arrival. Robert had coerced his mother into doing the correct thing. Politely he opened the drawing-room door for her—that, of course, was absolutely the correct thing—and escorted her forward with the aplomb of a man of the world, nicely blended with the respectfulness appropriate to a nephew and a school-boy.
"Ah, HERE she is!" Mr Goldsworthy exclaimed heartily.
The sisters were at once in each other's arms. Deb, pierced to the heart by Mary's aged and faded looks, was the most demonstrative of the two; Mary struck her after a moment as being a little reserved and chilly—as if on the watch to repel benevolence as soon as it should take tangible form. Deb understood, and was warned to be circumspect.
"And this is our boy—grown out of knowledge, eh?"
Mary stepped swiftly aside to let Robert come forward, and there was no mistaking the sentiments held in common by the parents with regard to their son. Their two faces were mirrors for each other, suffused with the same tender pride.
"Perhaps the child has reconciled her to the rest of it," Deb hazarded a hope. "She may be happy."
For Mary smiled and moved alertly about the room. She accepted her husband's ostentatious hand and chair, and when he resumed the conversation, or rather restarted it, on the subject of Robert's achievements at school, she followed where he led, so long as he did not seem leading towards Deb's pocket, backing him up in the most wifely manner. "Can it be possible?" Deb kept asking herself, glad at heart to see such signs, which yet lessened her pity for and interest in her sister. But Mary, with all the pride of the Pennycuicks in her, was not, one to "let on". Her skeleton was locked tight in the cupboard it belonged to when visitors were about—especially such a visitor as this—and also when they were not about, so far as she could have it so.
So that a sort of air of entertaining "company" pervaded the room. Deb felt a constraint with her sister, and that she was making no way with her mission. But Robert stepped into the breach. With Mary's son the impulsive lady of Redford was unexpectedly pleased. There was not a trace of Pennycuick to be discerned in him; nevertheless, he was a good-looking, intelligent and interesting boy. He sat by her on the sacred brocaded sofa while she brightly questioned him, brightly answering her with aptness and good sense; his parents beaming on the pair, even the father content to play second fiddle to give the son his chance. Here, at any rate, thought Deb, was material to hand for the work she had come to do.
"I love boys," she remarked—and so she did, as some people love dogs—"and Robert and I are going to be great friends; aren't we, Robert?"
"It is very good of you to say so, aunt," Robert replied, with characteristic propriety.
"But, do you know, I don't think I shall call you Robert," she went on. "It has a prim sound"—but it was the primness of himself that she wanted to break down—"and it doesn't suit a boy of your tender years. I think I'll call you Bob, if you don't mind."
"I wish you would," he adroitly answered her.
"What is your bent towards, in the way of a career, Bob?"
He said he thought the law—to be a judge some day.
"You don't care for station life?"
"Oh, he does," his father eagerly interposed. "He loves it. But he has had so few chances—"
"Which is your school, Bob?"
A seminary of no repute was named, and the father again intervened to regret that it was not one of the public schools. "But they, unfortunately, have been beyond our means—"
Here Mary broke in with praises of the seminary. It had such an excellent headmaster, was so conveniently situated—really better in many ways than one of the great schools—
And then Robert broke in.
"My dear mother!" he ejaculated, in a compassionate and forbearing way.
"Ah, Bob knows it is not better," laughed Deb. "And it isn't, Mary; you are no authority, my dear. Which of the public schools do you fancy, Bob?"
He mentioned his choice, and the University scholarships that were to be had there.
"Debbie!" implored Mrs Goldsworthy, under her breath.
"Hush-sh!" hissed her husband.
"You be quiet, Molly," Deb playfully adjured her. "This has nothing to do with you, or with anybody except Bob and me. You come and spend your next vacation with me at Redford, Bob, and then we can talk it all over together."
She nodded to him meaningly. He smiled with perfect comprehension.
"How can we thank you," Mr Goldsworthy murmured emotionally, for he also understood. "It is too, too—"
"It's all right, pater," the remarkable boy silenced him. "Aunt Deborah knows how we feel about it."
Mary sat in stolid silence, for once indifferent to her husband's dumb command; then tears welled into her tired eyes. She pocketed her pride for her child's sake. It had been her hopeless longing for years to give her darling's splendid abilities full scope.
"He will repay you, Debbie," she said.
"Ah, don't be so grudging—so ungenerous!" cried Deb.
Tea and cakes were brought in, and Bob, as he was thenceforth to be styled, waited upon his aunt in the correctest manner. He had by this time taken on an air that seemed to say: "You and I understand the ropes; you must excuse these poor parents of mine, who were not born with our perceptions." And Deb, no more proof against this sort of thing than meaner mortals, had a feeling of special proprietorship in him which she found pleasant, although he was not exactly the heir-on-probation that she could have wished; which, of course, it would have been preposterous to expect in a son of Bennet Goldsworthy's. Bennet Goldsworthy accompanied her to the gate when she went away, forbidding Mary to expose herself, hatless, to the wind. And there the benevolent aunt's "intentions" were more distinctly formulated.
"I wish to take entire charge of his education, if you will allow me. He is a very promising boy, and should have all his chances. Let me send him to the Melbourne Grammar after Christmas, and as a boarder, if you don't mind. There are such advantages, both in position and for study, in living at the school."
"I leave everything—everything, in your hands," murmured the grateful father.
"By the way"—as an after-thought—"what about your little girl?"
She was not a little girl now, and had finished with school; but, oh, the boon that a few good lessons in music and languages would be to her!
That matter was settled.
"Well, now," said Deb, "we must think about Mary. She is frightfully thin. I can see that she has had too many worries, as you say. She must be taken out of them. I want to have her at Redford with me—as soon as she can get ready—and give her a good long rest, and feed her up, and make her fat and strong."
"I only wish you could prevail on her," he sighed. "But I am afraid you will not get her to go anywhere without me. I have a devoted wife, Miss Pennycuick"—even if she had not tacitly forbidden "Deborah" in her poor days, he would not have ventured upon the liberty now that she was rich—"too devoted, if that can be. She insists upon sharing all my burdens, though I fain would spare her. I know well that, say what I will, she will never consent to leaving me to struggle with them alone."
"You have not told me what they are," said Deb, who saw that he was in dread of her going before he could do so.
"Oh, debts—debts—debts!" he answered, with a reckless air. "The millstone that we hung about our necks when we anticipated that she would have money, and lived accordingly, and were then left stranded. The eternal trying to make a shilling go as far as a pound—to make bricks without straw, like the captive Israelites of old. But why do you ask me? I hate to talk about it." He made a gesture of putting the miserable subject aside.
"It was very hard on you," Deb said gently—contradicting the Deb of an earlier time and different state of things—"to have those expectations, which were certainly justified, and to be disappointed as you were. I feel that we Pennycuicks were to blame in that—"
"Oh, dear, no!" he earnestly assured her.
"And that an obligation rests on me, now that I have the means, to make some compensation to you—to Mary, rather."
"It is like you to think of that. But really—"
"And I put a blank cheque in my pocket, and a stylographic pen—and will you let me"—she drew forth the articles mentioned, and made a desk of the top rail of the gate—"will you do me the favour to accept from me—what shall I say?—five hundred pounds? Would that relieve you—and Mary—of the immediate worries?"
He said it would, with the mental reservation that it did not amount to what he had been defrauded of by Mr Pennycuick (she had made a mistake in the designation of her gift); but the slight coolness of his acknowledgement quickly gave place to grateful fervour as he realised what the immediate five hundred pounds would do for him, and read in her words an implication that the sum was but an instalment of what she felt to be his due. He was incoherent in his thanks and benedictions as he slipped the cheque into his pocket.
"And you will let me have Mary at Redford?"
"Oh, yes! She will not want to go, but I shall make her."
"And do not tell her more than you can help about this little private transaction. She might feel—"
"I will tell her nothing that is likely to vex her."
"Do not—PRAY do not. Only take these sordid worries off her shoulders, and give her what she needs, and don't let her toil and moil. Remember, it is for her I do it." There was a little sting in that last remark, but he was too happy to feel it.