The shooting men were up first, to their early breakfast. It seemed to Deb a matter of course that Claud would be of this virile company; it was his saving grace as a man, when he was young, that he was a keen and accomplished sportsman. After an indifferent night, she rose lazily and late; found, as she expected, only a few more women in the breakfast-room, and ate her own meal alone at one of the little tables. The hostess drifted in amongst the last, and stopped a moment to shake hands and exchange a word.
"It seems a beautiful day," she said, "and we shall be making up a party by-and-by to go out and lunch with the guns. You will join us, of course?"
But Deb thought of Claud amongst the guns, and of the horrible risk of appearing to run after him; and she replied sweetly that, although she would have loved the outing, she was afraid she must stay at home, owing to important letters that had to be written for the afternoon post.
"All right," said the hostess, "I'll stay too—there are plenty without me—and we'll have a drive later on."
She passed to her breakfast-table, and Deb rose and went upstairs, to see what she could find to attend to in the way of pressing correspondence.
She had the status of a married lady in this great house, as everywhere; that is to say, a sitting-room of her own—a very cosy place between tea and the dressing-bell. Just now, however, Rosalie was busy in it. The maid offered to retire to the adjoining bed-chamber, but Deb said, "Oh, never mind; go on," and gathering her blotting-book and papers, went downstairs again to make herself comfortable in the library. She loved a good library to sit in, and generally found privacy therein at this time of day.
The library here was magnificent in stately comfort—books in thousands, busts, old masters, muffling Turkey carpets, a great, bright, still fire, and armchairs so big and soft that it was strange they could stand empty. She drew up one of them and sat awhile, toasting her feet and turning precious leaves—it was the interval covered by Claud's breakfast—and then set herself to the business she was supposed to be engaged in.
"Dear Francie,—I tried at half-a-dozen shops to match your Chinese satin, but nowhere could I get the exact shade. If you like I will try again when I go back to town, but if I were you I would not attempt to make it go with any modern stuff, which could not help looking crude beside it; I would have quite another material and colour. What do you stay to—"
She paused reflectively, the tip of her pen-handle between her teeth, her eyes fixed absently upon the green park beyond the open window, composing a gorgeous costume in her mind. Before she could even decide whether to advise a ball-dress with CREPE DE CHINE, or a tea-gown with Oriental cashmere, one of the noiseless library doors swung back, and a man came in. Without noticing her still figure, he strolled over to a certain shelf, opened a book that he wanted, and stood, with his back to her, turning over the leaves.
So he had not gone with the men. How horrid! And what a nuisance that he should find her here! Well, she was not going to put herself out for him. She lowered her pen softly, and began to scratch the paper, over which she bent absorbedly. He turned round. "Oh, I beg your pardon—"
"Oh, it's you, Claud! Good morning! Why, I thought you would be out with the guns this fine day."
"Fine day, do you call it? There's a wind like a knife. And you sit here with the window wide open—"
He marched towards it, and shut it with violence. It was a great glass door between stone mullions. Above it and two fellow-sheets of glittering transparency, three coats of many quarterings enriched the colour-scheme of the stately room. She watched him with the beginning of a smile upon her lips. The humour of the situation appealed to her.
"I like an open window," she remarked mildly. "If you remember, I always did."
He came towards her, looking at her gloomily, looking himself thin and grey and shivery—but always like a prince.
"You have more flesh to keep you warm than I have," said he, quite roughly.
"Thank you!" She bridled and flushed. Her massive figure, for a woman of her years, was perfect; but of course she was as sensitive as the well-proportioned female always is to the suspicion that she was too fat. "You have not lost the art of paying graceful compliments."
"I meant it for one," said he, replying to her scoffing tone. "You put me to shame, Deb, with your vigour and youthfulness. I know how old you are, and you don't look it by ten years. And you are a beauty still, let me tell you. It may not be a graceful compliment, but at least it is sincere. Even these girls here—"
"Nonsense about beauty—at my time of life," she broke in; but she smiled behind her frown, and forgave him his remark about her flesh. "You and I are too old to talk that sort of stuff now."
"Do you think I am so very old?" he asked her, standing before her writing-table, as if inviting a serious judgment.
She glanced quickly over him. His moustache was white, his ivory-tinted face scratched with fine lines about the eyes; he stooped at the shoulders, and his chest had hollowed in. Yet she could have returned his compliment and called him a beauty still. He was so to her. Every line and movement of his body had a distinction all his own, and "What a shame it is," she thought, "for that profile to crumble away before it has been carved in marble."
"We are in the same boat," she answered him. "There are not five years between us."
"Five years put us out of the same boat," he rejoined, "especially when they are virtually fifteen. Deb, I know you think me an old man—don't you?"
"What I think is that you are a sick man," she said kindly. "Are you, Claud? You used to be so strong, for all your slenderness. What is the matter with you?"
"Everything—nothing—only that I feel old—and that I haven't been used to feeling old—and that it's so—so loathsome—"
"I'm sure it is," she laughed, rallying him. "I can understand your being sick, if you have come to that. But why do you let yourself? Why do you think about it? Why do you own to it—in that abject way? I never do. I'm determined not to be an old woman—until I am obliged. And I don't paint, either," she added, "and my hair is my own."
He seemed to study her cheek and her hair. She coloured up, dipped her pen, and looked at her unfinished letter. He wandered off a step or two, and returned.
"Do you know this thing of Hamerton's?" he inquired, in a casual way, extending the volume he held.
She took it, laying down her pen. A considerable literary discussion ensued, during which he fetched more books from the shelves to show her. It began to appear that he meant to spend the whole morning with her, possibly taking it for granted that it was her desire to have him. That idea, if he entertained it, must be corrected at once. She resumed her pen with a business-like air.
"Deb," said he then, "do you mind if I read here for a little while? I won't disturb you. It's so nice and quiet—away from those chattering women—"
"Oh, certainly!" she politely acquiesced. "But don't you think they'll want you, with all the other men away? Now's your opportunity to be made much of."
"I don't care to be made much of just because I am the only man."
"Oh, but you would always be more than that, of course."
"I'm not more than an old fogey when the young fellows are around. They will take no notice of me at tea-time. Well, I'm getting used to it. I'm getting to know my place." "If that was your place, you would soon vacate it."
"How can I vacate it?"
"When people begin to take me for an old fogey, they'll not have the honour of my company in their houses."
"That's very well for you—wait till the time comes. And I suppose you like it, anyhow. You seem to enjoy all this"—waving a hand around—"as if you were a girl who had never seen anything. I'm sick and tired of the whole show."
"Then don't have any more to do with it. Go home."
"Home! What home have I?"
"A lovely flat in town, they tell me, where you give the best dinners, and ladies' theatre parties and things—" "Pshaw! I am hardly ever there. I hate the racket of London in the season—I'm not up to it nowadays—and you wouldn't have me stranded in Piccadilly at this time of year, I presume? I'm obliged to spend the winter down south—and by the same token I must soon be getting off, or these east winds and damp mists will play the deuce with my bronchitis—"
"Oh, it's bronchitis, is it? I knew it was something. I suppose you've been coddling yourself with hot rooms and all sorts of flannel things; that's the way people make themselves tender, and get chills and chest complaints, and get old before their time."
"The doctors insist on flannel—the natural wool—all of them."
"The greatest mistake in the world. I used to wear it because I thought the doctors ought to know, and I was always getting colds. Now I never let a bit of wool touch my skin—haven't for years and years—and never know what it means to have a cold."
"That is contrary to all the traditions," he remarked seriously, addressing her handsome back; for she was still supposed to be writing her letter. "I can't believe that it is due to not wearing flannel, Debbie. It's your splendid vitality—your being so different from other people—"
"Nothing of the sort! You try it. Not just now, of course, with winter beginning, but when warm weather comes again—"
And so on. The hostess broke in upon their TETE-A-TETE while they were still engrossed in this interesting topic. She was drawn into it, and made a disciple of by Deb, who attributed all her own blooming health and practical youthfulness to linen underclothing, combined with plenty of fresh air. And after all, since letter-writing was hopeless, she did go out to lunch with the guns. Claud remained alone and disconsolate by the library fire. She was due to leave the house next day, and left, although conscious of a strange hankering to stay; and during the interval gave Mr Dalzell no further opportunity to talk about his bronchitis—and other things. He was not aware that she was to go so soon until she was gone; and then he found himself with livelier feelings than had stirred his languid being for many a day. He was not only annoyed and disappointed at being deprived of the refreshment of her stimulating society; he was incensed with her mode of departure, which seemed to imply an intention to evade him.
"Does she still think that I am after her money?" he asked himself, with scorn of her mean suspiciousness. "Just because I was magnanimous enough to ignore the past!"
He went down south, to play a little at Monte Carlo and cruise a little in the Mediterranean—to kill time through the detestable winter, which made itself felt wherever he was; and she went to London to see about Francie's gown, and up north to bracing Scotland, and down to Wellwood for Christmas, and back to the racket of London in the spring; and neither of them had spent a lonelier time in all their lives. Quite a fresh and peculiar sense of homelessness and uncomforted old age took possession of them both.
All through the kaleidoscopic transformation-scenes of the "season", through which she moved magnificently, old-maidhood notwithstanding, she was unconsciously seeking him. It was her impression, from all she had heard of his tastes and ways, that he could not keep away from that common rendezvous of his class and kind. She did not find him, but all the same he was there. He returned from his winter haunts sooner than his wont, while still the April winds were full of menace for him, exposed himself to those winds seeking her, caught a chill, neglected it—a most unusual thing—and fell into an illness that confined him to his bed for many weeks.
It was not until June that Deb heard of it. He was truly so much of an old fogey now in the society of which he had once been such a distinguished ornament that his disappearance was long unnoticed. And when at last someone noticed it, in Deb's hearing, the light and callous way in which his trouble was referred to went to her heart—knowing all she knew. One of her generous impulses came to her on the spot, and an hour later she was at the door of his chambers, inquiring after him.
His man—a very jewel of a man—received her at the door, gravely, cautiously, keeping it half shut. He reported his master mending, but still weak, and not able to see anyone. Females of all kinds were sternly discouraged by this prudent person, from force of old habit.
"Oh, of course not," said Deb off-handedly. "Just give him my card, please, and say I'm very glad to hear he is not as ill as I feared."
On pain of dismissal from the best service he had ever known—and he had known it now for a long time—Manton had to find the lady's address. As soon as it was supplied to him, Claud sent for her to come and see him.
"Are we not old enough now to dispense with chaperons?" he wrote; and the sight of his hand-writing after all these long years moved her strangely. "If you think not, bring the deafest old post of your acquaintance. Only DO come. I haven't had anybody to speak to for a week."
"Of course we are old enough," commented Deb, as she read the words. "The idea of fussing about chaperons and that nonsense at our time of life!" And she proceeded to array herself in her most youthful summer dress, which was also the choicest of her stock, taking the utmost pains to match toque and gloves, while full of indignation against his friends for so shamefully neglecting him.
Boldly she ascended to his sitting-room in the wake of tight-lipped Manton, who presently brought tea, and at intervals tended the fire, apparently without once casting an eye upon her. Claud was up and dressed in her honour, while fit only for his bed. In the midst of the refined luxury that he had gathered about him, he looked but the ghost of a man, worn with his illness and the fatigue of preparing for her. It was one of those English summers that never answered to its name, and he sat in a sable-lined overcoat—considered more respectful than a dressing-gown—in a heat that almost choked her.
But with swelling heart she hurried to his side, and, after greetings, drew a chair close up to his, took the hand he silently extended, and held it in a long, warm, maternal clasp. Manton retired and shut the door. The invalid lay back on his cushions, and closed his eyes. The visitor, watching him, detected an oozing tear—the first she had ever seen there.
"How did it happen?" she crooned, and followed the question with many more of the same sort; to which he replied as to a mother or a nurse.
"It's this beastly climate," he complained. "It upsets me every time—though this is the worst bout I've had yet. I really can't stand it, Debbie. Even in June, when you'd think you were safe—just look at it!"
It was raining slightly as he spoke.
"Well, why do you try to stand it?" said she. "Why not come back to your own country? You'd be safe there, if anywhere." "I've been thinking of it," said he. "It has been in my mind all winter—the thought of that good, soaking sunshine that we used to have and think nothing of. The Riviera isn't a patch on it. Aye, I'd get warm there. But what a life—now. I am not like you—I've got nothing and nobody to go back to—I should be giving up everything—the little that I have left. And God knows life is empty enough as it is—"
"Well, I'm going," she broke in. "And am I nobody?"
He sprang up in his chair. "You—YOU going?"
"Time I did," she laughed. "I haven't set eyes on my property and my two sisters since goodness knows when." He held out his shaking hands. His face was working pitifully.
"Debbie, Debbie," he wailed, like a lost child, "will you take me? Will you have me?"
She caught him in her strong arms.
"Dearest, we will go together," she murmured. And he fell, sobbing, on her breast.
It was not in the least what she had meant to say or to do; but the appeal was irresistible. It was too terrible to see him—HIM, her young prince of such towering pride and beauty—brought down to this.
But she soon had him out of his slough of despond, and climbing the hills of hope again with something of his old gallant air. The rapidity of his convalescence was astonishing. By the end of July he was well enough to be married.
The first letter signed "Deborah Dalzell" was addressed, strange to say, to Guthrie Carey—not to the commander of the SS APHRODITE, via his shipping office, but to Guthrie Carey, Esq., Wellwood Hall, Norfolk.
For a great change had taken place in the circumstances of her old friend.
One day, a few years earlier, he had been called from the sea—somewhere off the coast of South America—to take his place as a land-owner and land-dweller amongst the great squires of England; quite the very last thing he could have anticipated in his wildest dreams. Three sons of the reigning Carey had been capsized in a gale while out yachting. The reigning Carey, on hearing of the catastrophe, had been seized with a fit that proved fatal in a few hours. His eldest son's wife, as an effect of the same shock, had given birth to a still-born male infant—the sole grandson. One brother had died childless; another leaving daughters only; the third, Guthrie's father, was also dead. Thus the unexpected happened, as it has a way of doing in this world, and the t'penny-ha'penny mate of old Redford days had become the head of a county family.
His experiences had trained him for the change. He took it soberly, without losing his head. A bristling array of blood-enemies were gradually transformed into a circle of respectful friends; some of them assisted him to settle himself in his unfamiliar seat, to teach him the duties of his high station. He was teachable, but independent, not shutting his eyes and opening his mouth to swallow all the old-world creeds they chose to put into it, but studying every branch of the science of landlordism in the light of his own intelligence and beliefs. When he had fairly mastered the situation, he married one of his cousins.
He was in his robust middle-age, which comes so much later to men than to women, she was well on in her thirties—a comely, sensible, well-bred young lady, and a most excellent coadjutor to a squire new to the business. An eminently wise selection, said his brother squires, when the engagement was announced. The wedding was a great family function and county event. It meant that the Careys, instead of being split up and scattered to the winds, remained together, united in amity; it meant that the dignity of the old house was to be kept up. When, a year later, Wellwood rang bells and lit bonfires in honour of a son and heir, nothing seemed wanting to confirm the general impression that our Guthrie was not only a wise but a singularly fortunate man.
It was an impression that Guthrie shared. From the point of view that he had now reached in life, he believed himself favoured beyond the common lot. He loved Wellwood, full of the memorials of his ancient race; he enjoyed his settled and comfortable place therein, after the homeless roving of so many years—the feel of solid land under his feet and under his life, for which every sailor pines, despite whatever spell the sea may lay on him. He was proud of his perfect-mannered wife, who was also his good friend and confidante; he was egregiously proud of his handsome boy. And the day of the young romance—of the great passion—of those sordid "little fires" which beckon to men whose nature craves for warmth and whose "yule is cold"—that day was past. "Love is one thing and marriage another," he had once said, without really meaning it; but he had spoken truer than he knew. Moreover, the shocking statement was not nearly so awful as it seemed. The very conditions of married life are fatal to love, as love is understood by the yet unmarried lovers—insanely sanguine, of human necessity—asking the impossible, and no blame to them, because they are made so; but no matter. That thing which comes afterwards, to the right-minded and well-intentioned, and which they don't think worth calling love—that sober, faithful, forbearing friendship, that mutual need which endures all the time, and is ever more deeply satisfied and satisfying instead of less—is no bad substitute.
Yet how the world of imagination dominates the world of fact! How much fairer the unseen than the seen! How much more precious the good we have not than the good we have! In his private desk in his private study, Guthrie kept—just as old Mr Pennycuick had kept his valentine—a faded, spotted, ochre-tinted photograph of poor little Lily in the saucer bonnet with lace "brides" to it that she was married in; and when Wellwood was humming with shooting parties and the like, and its lady doing the honours of the house with all the forethought and devotion that she could bring to the task, the stout squire would be sitting in his sanctum under lock and key, gazing at that sweet girl-face which had the luck to be dead and gone. Lily in the retrospect was the faultless woman—the ideal wife and love's young dream in one. "I have had my day," was the thought of his heart, as he looked across the gulf of strenuous, chequered, disappointing years to that idyll of the far past which her pictured form brought back to him. "Whatever is lacking now, I HAVE known the fullness of love and bliss—that there is such a thing as a perfect union between man and woman, rare as it may be." It will be remembered that he was married to her, actually, for a period not exceeding five weeks in all.
And Deborah Pennycuick, who would have made such a magnificent lady of Wellwood—who was, in fact, asked to take the post before it was offered to the cousin—she came to spend Christmas under his roof while still a spinster, on the tacit understanding that neither was a subject for "nonsense" any more. Deb and Mrs Carey were close friends. Deb was the godmother of the heir. The homelikeness of Wellwood was intensified by her intercourse, while there, with English Redford and the descendants of that brother with whom old Mr Pennycuick had been unable to hit it off—humdrum persons, whose attraction for her lay in their name and blood, and the fact that they could show her the arms and portraits of her ancestors and the wainscotted room in which her father was born. It was to Wellwood that she went to be married. From the old home of the Careys she was driven to the old church of the Pennycuicks, full of mouldering monuments to a nearly vanished race; it was buried in its rural solitude, far from railways and gossip-mongers and newspaper reporters, and the wedding was as quiet as quiet could be. Guthrie was acting brother, and gave her away. He never, of course, disclosed the secret that was his and Francie's, honest brother as he longed to be; but perhaps, even had she known it, and her own austere chastity notwithstanding, she might have been broad-minded enough to judge him kindlier than is the wont of the sex which does not know all, and have still held him worthy to be to her the friend he was. As she knew him, she loved him sister-like, and turned to him naturally when she needed a brother's services. And so it was to him that she wrote first, at the end of the short wedding-day journey—just to tell him that she and her bridegroom had arrived safely, and that Claud was standing the fatigue much better than they could have hoped.
She did not write to Frances until she had her husband on the high seas. She did not write at all to Mary or Rose, not wishing them to know of her marriage until she could personally 'break it' to them. It was not difficult to ensure this, since for many a year they had all been so separated by their respective circumstances that they were no longer sisters in the old Redford sense. The business of each was her own, and not supposed to interest the rest. Only such domestic events as were of serious moment were formally reported amongst them, and were never deemed serious enough to use the cable for.
The pair came home very quietly. Sydney was the port of arrival, and here Deb divined on the part of her husband a desire to be left in peace—to recruit after laborious travelling in the care of his devoted and accomplished man—while she went forward to "get the fuss over". Those sisters were the shadows upon his now sunny path, although he did not say so; he wanted to get to Redford without having to kiss them and talk to their offensive men-folk on the way. So Deb proposed to do what she felt he wished, and paid no heed to the dutiful objections which he could not make to sound genuine in her ears. She telegraphed instructions to Bob Goldsworthy to engage rooms for her and to meet her, signing the message "Aunt Deborah"—her only herald.
Bob was duly at Spencer Street—elegant in curled moustaches and a frock-coat—become a swell young barrister since she had seen him last. He was sure of the impression he would create upon his discriminating aunt, and had no notion that her first flashing glance at him was accompanied by a flashing thought of how her adopted son would too surely be ranked by her more discriminating husband with the "bounders" of his implacable disdain. On the platform—while explaining that he knew it was not the proper thing to do in a public place—he embraced the majestic figure in the splendid sable cloak. Deb said, "Bother the proper thing!" and kissed him readily—charily, however, because conscious of teeth that were not Pennycuick teeth, and perversely objecting to the faultless costume. But, looking at the frock-coat, she perceived mourning-band upon the sleeve. Another encircled his glittering tall hat.
"Not—oh, Bob!—not your mother?" she gasped.
He shook his head, and asked a question about her luggage.
"Aunt Rose—your uncle—?"
"Oh, Aunt Deb—don't! She is my aunt, I know, but he—" Bob spread deprecating hands. "They are both well, I believe. I think I heard that the fiftieth baby arrived last week. Is that your maid in the brown—"
"Oh, but, Bob—tell me—they haven't lost any of those nice children, I do trust!"
"I should hardly have been in mourning on their account. No—fat and tough as little pigs, by the look of them. It is my father, Aunt Deb. I thought you knew." "What!" She stopped on their way towards Rosalie and the luggage van. "You don't say—"
"Yes—a couple of months ago. The mater wrote to you."
"I have been wandering from place to place—the letter never reached me."
"Pneumonia, supervening upon influenza—that is what the doctors called it; but it was really a complication of disorders, some of them of long standing. Between you and me, Aunt Deb, he took a great deal more than was good for him latterly, and that told upon him. His blood was bad. You know he was always a self-indulgent man."
Deb nodded, forgetting that it was a son who spoke. She was saying to herself, "Bennet Goldsworthy, whom we made sure would live for ever! Bennet Goldsworthy, of all people! What a relief that will be to Claud!" And then she thought of her widowed sister, with a rush of pity and compunction. He was her husband, after all.
Bob's light attention to the subject was already gone. He was staring at one of the great trunks covered with foreign labels. Rosalie was telling him how many more Mrs Dalzell had.
"Oh, yes," said Deb, confused and crimson, "I forgot to mention—I suppose you don't know—that I am married. To an old friend of our family—your mother will know him well. By the way, Bob, I must go and see her at once. We'll have some lunch first; I must wash and change my clothes. Then will you stay at the hotel and settle Rosalie, and see to things? No, I would rather go alone. Stay in town and dine with me—and don't look so shocked, my good boy, as if I'd cut you off with a shilling. My marriage will make no difference to you." "Aunt Deb!"—with dignified reproach. "As if I thought of that."
But somehow she felt sure he did think of it.
They had luncheon together at the hotel, and sat awhile to digest it and to talk things over. While they sipped coffee, he told her how he had furnished his bachelor rooms—the artistic woodwork, the curios, the colours, how he had hunted for the right shade of red, what he had given for a particular rug which alone would blend and harmonise. She was brightly interested in these things, and promised to go and see them. She was to go to lunch next day—he thought he could safely undertake not to poison her with bad cooking or unsound wine. He lived in chambers in Parliament Place. This engagement booked, she asked him for his mother's address.
Mary lived in a small street in Richmond.
"Such a slum!" said Bob disgustedly. "But she would do it, in spite of all that I could say. And rushed there, too, when he had hardly been dead a week. It was not decent, as I told her, to be advertising the sale two days after the funeral. But she is a peculiar woman."
"She is a Pennycuick," said Mrs Dalzell reprovingly. "She would not care to go on living in a house that she had ceased to have the right to live in. I should not myself."
"But she might have gone to another place."
"You must insist on her going to another."
"I am afraid my influence is not enough to persuade her."
"My dear boy, I am convinced that if you asked her to walk into a burning fiery furnace, she would do it to please you, without a moment's hesitation."
"She is that way in some things, poor dear; but in others—I may talk till I have no voice left, and she won't listen. And she was set on this scheme. She has a mania for—for that sort of thing. One would never believe that she was your sister. She would hate to live like other people. She simply loves to be a nobody. I can't understand it. You try your influence with her, will you?"
"Well, order a carriage for me, and I will put on my things."
He pressed her to allow him to escort her, which was obviously the proper thing. When she refused again, and went off, like any nobody, alone, he returned to his chambers, leaving Rosalie to the unimportant persons whose business it was to look after her.
Mrs Breen's house was in East Melbourne, and Deb directed the coachman to drive there first. She remembered the fiftieth baby that was but a few days old.
"I must see how the poor child is doing," Deb said—not alluding to the baby.
And soon she saw again the exquisitely-kept garden—large for that locality—and the spacious white house almost glittering in the sun. She had sniffed at the bourgeois villa—she thought it bourgeois still—but who could help admiring those windowpanes like diamonds, and that grass like velvet, and that air of perfect well-being which pervaded every inch of the place? As the carriage entered the fine, wrought-iron gates, a flock of little Breens, attached to a perambulator, two nurses and five dogs, were coming out of it; and she stopped to accost and kiss them. Each child was as fresh as a daisy, its hair like floss silk with careful brushing, its petticoats as dainty as its frock, its socks and boots immaculate. There was Nannie, her godchild, shot up slim and tall from the dumpling baby that her aunt remembered, showing plainly the milky-fair, sunny-faced, wholesome woman that she was presently to become. Deb gazed at her with aches of regret—she had thought them for ever stifled in Claud's all-sufficing companionship—for her own lost motherhood, and of lesser but still poignant regret that she had not been allowed to adopt Nannie in Bob Goldsworthy's place. The joy of dressing and taking out a daughter of that stamp—of having her at home with one, to make the tea, and to chat with, and to lean on! Old Keziah came to the door—Keziah sleek and placid, like the family she served—delighted to welcome the distinguished traveller, but still more delighted to brag about the last Breen baby.
"A lovely boy, without spot or blemish," said Keziah, three times over. "And that makes eleven, and not one too many. And Miss Rose doing fine, thank you. I'll go and prepare her for the surprise, so it don't upset her."
Constance, quite a grown young lady, met her aunt on the stairs; Kathleen and Lucy rose from the piano in the drawing-room, where they had been entertaining their mother at a safe distance with their latest-learned "pieces"; they too had to be greeted and kissed—and sweeter flesh to kiss no lips could ask for. "My husband may be a draper," Rose had often said, "but I'll trouble you to show me a duke with a handsomer family."
Mentally, Deb compared the cool, flower-petal cheeks of her Breen nieces with her Goldsworthy nephew's mouth, covering those unpleasant teeth. It would have been fairer to compare him with her Breen nephews, but there the contrast would have been nearly as great. John, at business with his father, and Pennycuick, learning station management with the Simpsons at Bundaboo, had the fresh and cleanly appearance of all Rose's children; in physical matters they were as clean as they looked. Bob did not look unclean, but with all his excessive smartness, he looked unfresh. That look, and the thing it meant, were his father's legacy to him.
At last Deb reached her sister's room. It was another addition to the ever-growing house, and marked, like each former one, the ever-growing prosperity of the shop supporting it. The fastidious travelled eye appraised the rich rugs and hangings, the massive "suite", the delicately-furnished bed, and took in the general air of warm luxury and unstinted comfort, even before it fell upon Rose herself—Rose, fat and fair, and the picture of content, sitting in the softest of arm-chairs, and the smartest of gowns and slippers, by the brightest of wood fires, with a tableful of new novels and magazines on one side of her, and a frilly cradle on the other.
"My husband may be a draper," she had remarked at various times, "but he does give me a good home."
Deb, so long homeless amid her wealth, conceded at this moment, without a grudge, that Rose's humble little arrow of ambition had fairly hit the mark.
They embraced with all the warmth of the old Redford days. A few hasty questions and answers were exchanged, and their heads met over the cradle.
"You poor child!" Deb exclaimed, as a matter of form. "Haven't you done with this kind of thing yet?"
"Oh," said Rose, "I should feel lost without one now. And we wanted another boy—we have only three, you know. Isn't he a darling?"
Number eleven, fast asleep, was fished from his downy bed and laid in his aunt's arms, eagerly extended for him. His clothes might have been woven by fairies, and he smelt like a violet bed in spring.
Strange thrills—sharper than those that Nannie had set going—shook Deb's big heart as she cuddled and kissed him.
"The older I get," she confessed, "the greater fool I am about a baby. And you do have such nice babies, Rose."
"Yes," simpered Rose. "They ARE nicer than most, certainly—I'm sure I don't know why." Her eyes gloated on the white bundle; she fidgeted to get it back. "Ah, Debbie, I wish—I wish you knew—"
"I know you do, my dear," laughed Deb, a little queerly, and she returned the baby in order to hunt for her handkerchief. "And if you must know the truth, so do I. It's tantalising to see you with more than your share, while I have none—and never shall have, worse luck! Well"—blowing her nose cheerfully—"it's no use crying over spilt milk, is it? And I tipped the can over myself, so I can't complain. How's Peter?"
Rose told her how Peter was—"so dear, so good"—and then had so much to say about the children, one by one, through all the eleven of them, that it was quite in a hurry at last that Deb disclosed her secret. And Rose not only sustained no shock—which would have been bad for her—but could see nothing in the marriage worth fussing about, except the fact that it came too late for a family. Such a sordidly domestic person was she! She mourned and condoled over this spilt milk—so sure that poor Deb was but hungrily lapping up drops with the dust of the floor—that Deb grew almost angry. She took back her own words, and said she was glad there were no children to come between her and her husband, who needed only each other. She implied that this union had a higher significance than could be grasped by a mere suckler of fools (nice fools, no doubt) and chronicler of small beer (however good the brew). She believed it, too. Love—great, solemn, immortal Love, passionate and suffering—was a thing unknown to comfortable, commonplace Rose, as doubtless to Peter also. They were dear, good people, and fortunate in their ignorance and in what it spared them; but it was annoying when ignorance assumed superior knowledge, and wanted to teach its grandmother to suck eggs. Was it come to this—that marriage and a family were synonymous terms? No, indeed, nor ever would, while intelligent men and women walked the earth. Deb reserved the more sacred confidences for Mary's ear. Mary had loved—strangely indeed, but tragically, with pain and loss, the dignified concomitants of the divine state. Mary would understand.
Mary's house was a chill and meagre contrast to that of Rose, but there was nothing cold in Mary's welcome. To Deb's 'Darling! darling!' and smothering embrace of furs, the slim woman responded with a grip and pressure that represented all her strength. Deb, although not the eldest, was the mother of the family, as well as the second mother of Bob.
"Where is he?" were Mary's first words—and Deb smiled inwardly to see her as absurd in her mother's vanity and preoccupation as Rose herself. But this was a case of a widow's only son, and the visitor was thankful for such a beginning to the interview. "Where is he?" cried the anxious voice. "He was to have met you. And he never fails—this is not like him—"
"Oh," Deb struck in easily, "he was there all right, looking after his old aunt like a good boy. He wanted to bring me, but I told him he could be more useful looking after Rosalie and my things. I thought we'd rather be by ourselves, Molly—poor old girl! You know I never heard a word until he told me just now. Your letter did not reach me."
They kissed again, in the passage of the little house.
"You will send away the carriage, Debbie?" Mary urged, without visible emotion. "There are stables in the next street. You will take off your hat and stay with me a little?"
"Indeed I will, dearest, if you will have me. Are you alone?"
"Quite alone."
"Where's the old lady?"
"Oh, dead—dead long ago."
"And Ruby?"
Mary looked confused.
"Ruby? Ruby is—don't you know?—an actress in London. Doing very well, they tell me—"Miss Pearla Gold" in the profession."
"Gracious! Why, I've seen her! Burlesque. Tights. The minx! Well, she must be coining money, anyhow. I hope she doesn't forget to make some return for all the trouble she has been to you."
"She forgets everything," said the step-mother, "and we are thankful for it. Bob hates the thought; it is hard on him, who is so different. Don't allude to it before him, please; he feels it too keenly. Debbie, what did you think of my boy?" "Oh, splendid!" was the cordial response. "I could hardly believe my eyes."
"Is he not?" the fond mother urged. "And it is not only his appearance, Debbie—they say he is the cleverest lawyer in Melbourne. He is so learned, so acute! He has a practice already that many a barrister, well known and of twice his age, might envy."
The pale woman—for her bricky colour had faded out—thrilled and glowed.
"Yes, he told me," said Deb; "and it was good hearing indeed. But I always knew what he had in him.' To herself she said: 'Why, if he is so well off, does he let her live like this?"
Poverty—though decent poverty—proclaimed itself in every detail of the mean terrace-house, which stood in the most depressing street imaginable. It made the wealthy sister's heart ache.
"And how are you yourself, Debbie?" Mary remembered to ask, as she shut the door upon the departing carriage. "You look well. How is Francie? We want you to tell us all about her grand doings. Bob is greatly interested in his Italian aunt; he thinks he would like to take a vacation trip to see her some day. By the way, did he tell you that Rose has another? Isn't she a perfect little rabbit? And quite delighted, Keziah says."
As she talked in this detachment from her personal affairs, she led the way up bare stairs to her small bedroom. The resplendent woman behind her took note of the widow's excessive thinness, the greyness of her straight, tight hair, the rigid lines of a black stuff gown that had not a scrap of trimming on it—not even the lawn sleeve-bands widows use—and thought of Bennet Goldsworthy's old-time annoyance when his wife was proved to have fallen behind the mode. And as she expatiated upon the charms of Rose's eleventh baby, Deb's bright dark eyes roved about Mary's room, in which she recognised a few of the plainer furnishings of the nuptial chamber of the past.
But not a trace of the person who had been so much amongst them once. His boots on the floor, his clothes on the door-pegs, his razors and brushes on the toilet-table were gone; so were a basin and ewer from the double wash-stand; so was the wide bed. In place of the latter a small one—originally Bob's—had been set up, at the head of which lay one large pillow fairly glistening with the shine of its fresh, although darned, linen sheath. Carpet and curtains, essential to the departed housefather, had disappeared; the bare windows stood open to what fresh air there was; the floor, polished, and with one rug at the bedside, exhaled the sweet perfume of beeswax and turpentine. It was all so pathetic to the visitor, so eloquent of loss and change, that she exclaimed, catching her sister in her arms:
"Oh, you poor thing! You poor, poor thing!"
Mrs Goldsworthy returned the embrace tenderly, but not the emotional impulse.
"You are so dear and kind," she said, in a gentle, but quite steady voice. "I am so glad you came—so thankful to have you; but we won't talk about that, if you don't mind. I think it is best not to dwell on troubles, if you can help it. Tell me about yourself. I suppose you have had lunch? Well, then, we will have a nice cup of tea. Take off that heavy cloak—what lovely fur! And your hat too—what a smart affair! You always have such taste. No, I am not wearing crape; it is such rough, uncomfortable stuff, and so perishable; and the rule is not hard and fast nowadays, as it used to be. It would be stupid to make it so in a climate like this. Do you want a comb, dear? How brown your hair keeps still! Then let us go downstairs to the fire."
The fire was in a little bare parlour, as austerely appointed as the bedroom. A tea-table was drawn up to the hearth, the kettle placed on the coals. There seemed no servant on the premises, but the neatness upstairs was repeated below; everything was speckless, polished, smelling of its own purity. Well, it was a good thing poor Molly could interest herself in these matters, and her resolve not to brood over her troubles—if it was genuine, and not only a heroic pose—both noble and wise. So Deb reflected; and such was the calmness of the emotional atmosphere, the cheering effect of tea and rest and sisterly companionship, the discursiveness of the talk, that she soon found herself telling Mary the secret that she was so sure the widow would hear with special sympathy and understanding.
"It is awfully selfish," she began, "to bother you with my affairs at such a time as this, but you've got to know it some time. The fact is—some folks would say there's no fool like an old fool, and perhaps you'll agree with them; but no, I don't think you will—not you, for you know...the fact is—don't laugh—but I'm sure nobody can help it—I have been and gone and got married, Molly. There!"
And, after all, it seemed that she had not come to the right place for sympathy and understanding. Mary did not laugh, but she stared in a wooden manner that was even more hurtful to the feelings of the new wife.
"Well?" she cried brusquely, after a painful pause. "Is there any just cause or impediment that you know of? You look as if you thought I had no business to be happy like other people."
"Oh, if you are happy! But I am so surprised. Who is it?"
"Guess," said Deb.
"I could not. I haven't an idea. Some Englishman, of course."
Deb shook her head.
"European, then? Some prince or count, as big as Francie's, or bigger?"
Deb wrinkled a disdainful nose.
"It is no use, Moll; you would not come near it in fifty tries. I'll tell you—Claud Dalzell."
"What—the deadly enemy!" This time Mrs Goldsworthy did laugh. Deb joined in.
"Funny, isn't it? I feel"—sarcastically—"like going into fits myself when I think of it, it is so screamingly absurd. And how it happened I can't tell you, unless it is that we are fallen into our dotage. I suppose it must be that."
"You in your dotage!" Mary mocked, with an affectionate sincerity that was grateful to her sister's ear. "You are the youngest of us all, and always will be. Do you ever look at yourself in the glass? Upright as a dart, and your pretty wavy hair—so thick, and scarcely a grey thread in it! Of course, I don't know how it may be with him; I have not seen him for such ages—"
"Oh, he is a perfect badger for greyness—not that I ever saw a badger, by the way. And he walks with a stick, and has dreadful chronic things the matter with him, from eating and drinking too much all his life, and never taking enough exercise. Quite the old man, I should have called him a few months ago. But he is better now."
Mrs Goldsworthy gave a little shudder, and her unsympathetic gravity returned.
"I see," she sighed. "Your benevolent heart has run away with you, as usual. His infirmities appealed to your pity. You married him so that you might nurse and take care of him—"
"Not at all!" Deb broke in warmly. "And don't you talk about his infirmities in that free-and-easy way; he is no more infirm than you are. Did I say he was? That was my joke. He always was the handsomest man that I ever set eyes on, and he is the same still. No, my dear, I have not married him to take care of him, but so that he may take care of me. I'm lonely. I want somebody. I've come to the time of life when I am of no account to the young folks—not even to Bob, who would not give me a second thought if I was a poor woman. No, Molly dear, it is no use your pretending; you know it as well as I do. And quite natural too. It is the same with all of them. Nothing but money gives me importance in their eyes. And what's money? It won't keep you warm in the winter of your days—nothing will, except a companion that is in the same boat. That is what I want—it may be silly, but I do—somebody to go down into the valley of the shadow with me; and he feels the same.' Something in Mary's face as she stared into the fire, something in the atmosphere of the conversation, drove her into this line of self-defence. 'Oh, there is no love-making and young nonsense in our case—we are not quite such idiots as that comes to; it is just that we begin to feel the cold, as it were, and are going to camp together to keep each other warm. That's all."
Mary remained silent.
"Well, I must go," said Deb, jumping up, as if washing her hands of a disappointing job. "The carriage must be there, and Bob will be starving for his dinner. No use asking you to join us, I know. But you must come to Redford soon, Molly—or somewhere out of this—when you feel better and able. You shall have rooms entirely to yourself, and needn't see anybody. I will come tomorrow, and you must let me talk to you about it."
Mrs Goldsworthy was stooping to sweep a sprinkle of ashes out of the fender—she was like an old maid in her faddy tidiness—and when she turned, her face was working as if to repress tears. Deb caught her up, a moan bursting from her lips.
"Oh, what a brute I am! when you—poor, poor old girl!—have to finish it alone. But, darling, after all, you have had the good years—a child of your own—a home; we shall get only the dregs at the bottom of the cup. So it is not so very unfair, is it?" Then Mary's pent emotion issued in a laugh. With her face on her sister's shoulder, she tried herself to silence it.
"I can't help it," she apologised. "I would if I could. Debbie, don't go! Oh, my dear, don't think I envy you! Don't go yet! I want to tell you something. I may never have another chance." "Of course I won't go—I want to stay," said Deb at once.
And she stayed. The coachman was dismissed to get his meal, and instructed to telephone to Bob to do the same. The sisters had a little picnic dinner by themselves, washing up their plates and dishes in the neat kitchen, Deb insisting upon taking part in the performance, and sat long by the fireside afterwards. Fortunately, although the season was late spring, it was a cold day; for the clear red fire was the one bit of brightness to charm a visitor to that poor house. It crackled cosily, toasting their toes outstretched upon the fender-bar, melting their mood to such glowing confidences as they had not exchanged since Mary was in her teens. No lamps were lighted. The widow was frugal with gas when eyes were idle; her extravagant sister loved firelight to talk in.
But for a while it seemed that Mary had nothing particular to communicate. Deb did not like to put direct questions, but again and again led the conversation in the likely direction, to find Mary avoiding it like a shying horse. She would not talk of her husband, but interested herself for an hour in the subject of Guthrie Carey, Guthrie's wife, his child, his home, discussing the matter with a calmness that made Deb forget how delicate a one it was. Then Mary had a hundred questions to ask (probably on Bob's account) about the Countess, of whom she had known nothing of late years, while Deb had learned something from time to time, and could give an approximately true tale. Quite another hour was taken up with Francie's wrongs and wrong-doings, as to which Deb was more frank with this sister than she would have been with Rose.
"It is no use blinking the fact," she said straight out, "that Francie is no better than she should be. I can't understand it; no Pennycuick that ever I heard of took that line before. She has a dog's life with that ruffian, no doubt; and of course the poor child never had a chance to enjoy the right thing in the right way—though that was her own fault—"
"I don't think," Mary broke in, "that ANYTHING is ANYBODY'S fault."
"That's a most dangerous heathen doctrine, my dear, but I'll admit there's something in it. Poor Francie! she was born at a disadvantage, with that fascinating face of hers set on the foundation of so light a character. She was too pretty, to start with. The pretty people get so spoiled, so filled with their own conceit, that they grow up expecting a world made on purpose for them. They grab right and left, if the plums don't fall into their mouths directly they open them, because it gets to be a sort of matter of course that they should have everything, and do exactly as they like."
"And the plain ones—they are born at a worse disadvantage still."
"No, they are not. Look at Rose. Francie, with her gilded wretchedness, thinks Rosie's lot quite despicable; but I can tell you, Molly, she is the most utterly comfortable and contented little soul on the face of this earth. She would not change places with a queen." "But Rose is not plain. Rose is the happy medium. And THEY are the lucky ones—the inconspicuous people—the every-day sort—"
"What's luck?" Deb vaguely moralised. "I suppose we make our luck. It doesn't depend on our faces, but on ourselves."
"Ah, no!" Mrs Goldsworthy received the well-worn platitude with a laugh. "We don't make anything—we are made. It is just a dance of marionettes, Debbie. Poor puppets of flesh and blood, treated as if they were just wood and nails and glue! Who set us up to make a game of us like this? Who DOES pull the strings, Debbie? It is a mystery to me."
Then Deb waited for what was coming next.
"Possibly it will be cleared up some day," she murmured, putting out her strong, beautiful hand to touch her sister's knee. "Whether it is a fairy tale or not, one must cherish the hope—"
"Not I," Mary cut in swiftly—that same Mary who was once conspicuous in her family for pious orthodoxy. "No more experiments in human existence for me! A few years of peace and cleanness, as I am—as I now am—I hope for that, and for nothing more; I don't want anything more—I'd rather not. To be let alone for the rest of the time, and then to be done with it—that sums up all the hope I have, or need."
"Ah, my dear—"
"No, Debbie, don't look at me with those eyes—don't pity me in that tone of voice. I am only a heathen against my will—not so broken-hearted as not to care what happens to me, which I believe is what you think. I am not even sorry—I wish I was, but I can't be; in fact, I am so happy, really, that I am going about in a sort of dream, trying to realise it."
"HAPPY!"
"Perhaps 'happy' is not the word. I should say unmiserable. I am more unmiserable than I have ever been, I think, since I was born."
Deb's swift intelligence grasped the truth. "Ah, then she was not so insensate as we thought!"—but made allowance for what she diagnosed as a morbid condition of mental health.
"Are you happier than you were at Redford—young, and loved, and with everything nice about you—?"
"Yes. Because then, although, of course, I did have everything, I had no idea of the value of what I had. You can't be really happy unless you know that you are happy. I did not know it then, but now I do."
Deb's glance flashed round the poor room, and out of the window into the squalid street; she thought of Bob, who almost openly despised the mother who adored him; she calculated the loneliness, the poverty, the—to her—ugliness of the existence which Mary's "as I am" was intended to describe; and she groaned aloud.
"Oh, my dear, was it really so awful as that—that the mere relief from it can mean so much to you?"
"I am not going to complain," said Mary. "It was not awful by anybody's fault—certainly not by his. He did his best; he was really good to me. It could not have happened at all, except through his being good to me—doing what he did that night. I am not in the least bitter against him; he was as he was made just as I am. It had to be, I suppose. The maker of the puppets didn't care whether we belonged or not; the hand that pulled the strings, and tangled them, jerked us into the mire together anyhow—" "Oh, don't!" pleaded Deb. "Don't blaspheme like that! What is religion for if not to keep us from making blunders, and to help us to bear it when they are made—and to trust—to trust where we cannot see—"
Deb was unused to preaching, and broke down; but her eyes were sermons more impressive than any of the thousands that Mary had heard.
"Some day," said Mary, "when I get into a place where I cannot hear religion spoken of, nor see it practised, I may learn the value of it. I hope so. I have a chance of it now—the way is clear. I am through the wood at last."
Deb drew her filmy handkerchief across her eyes.
"Yes, I know." Mary smiled at her sister's grief. "But it is only for this once, Debbie dear. I did want to let you know—to have the delight of not being a liar and a shuffler for once. I shall not say such things again. I am not going to shock anybody else, for Bob's sake. Bob, of course, must be considered; after all, it was his father. None of us, even the freest, can be a free agent altogether; I understand that. I shall hold my tongue. The blessed thing is that that will be sufficient—a negative attitude, with the mouth shut; one is not driven any longer to positive deceit, without even being able to say that you can't help it. Oh, Debbie, you have been a free woman—why, why didn't you keep so?—but with all your freedom, and all your money, you don't know the meaning of such luxury as I live in now."
Deb gazed at her sister's rapt face, glowing in the firelight, and wondered if the brain behind it could be altogether sane.
"To call that HAPPINESS!" she ejaculated, with sad irony and scorn.
"If you must fix a name to it—yes," the widow considered thoughtfully.
"After all, 'unmiserable' does not go far enough. I AM happy. For, Debbie"—turning to look into the dark, troubled eyes—"I'm clean now—I never thought to be again—to know anything so exquisitely sweet, either in earth or heaven—I'm clean, body and soul, day and night, inside and outside, at last."
"Oh, POOR girl!" Deb moaned, with tears, when she realised what this meant.
"Rich," corrected Mary—"rich, dear, with just a roof and a crust of bread."
"Well," said Deb presently, "what about that roof and crust of bread? Since we are telling each other everything, tell me what your resources are. Don't say it is not my business; I know it isn't, but I shall be wretched if you don't let me make it mine a little. How much have you?"
"I don't know. I don't care. I haven't given money a thought. It doesn't matter."
"But it does matter. You can't even keep clean without a bathtub and a bit of soap. But what am I thinking of?—of course, you will settle all that with Bob."
The little word of three letters brought Mrs Goldsworthy down from her clouds at once.
"Oh, no!" she cried quickly, almost fearfully. "On no account would I interfere with his arrangements, his career. He would do everything that was right and dutiful, I am sure, but I would sooner starve than take charity from my own child. But there's no need to take it from anybody. I have all I want."
"How much?"
"I couldn't tell you to a pound or two, but enough for my small wants."
"They do seem small, indeed. Where are you going to live? Won't you come to me, Molly? Redford is big enough, and it's morally yours as much as mine. You should have your own rooms—all the privacy you like—"
"No, darling—thank you all the same. I have made my plans. I am going to have a little cottage somewhere in the country, where there is no dust, or smoke, or people—where I can walk on clean earth and grass, and smell only trees and rain and the growing things. Alone? Oh, yes! Of course, I shall see you sometimes—and my boy; but for a home—all the home I can want or wish for now—that is my dream."
"I don't think," said Deb, "that I ever heard human ambition—and happiness—expressed in such terms before." It was the final result of Mary's experiment in the business of a woman's life.
Deb drove back to her hotel, thoughtful and sad and tired. When Rosalie had left her for the night, she wrote to Claud by way of comforting herself. She told him what she had been doing—described her interviews with Rose and Mary respectively, and the impressions they had left on her.
"Of all the four of us," she concluded her letter, "I am the only one who has been fortunate in love. I found my mate in the beginning, before there was time to make mistakes—the right man, whom I could love in the right way—and we have been kept for each other through all these years, although for a long time we did not know it. And now we are together—or shall be in a few days—never to part again. It is the only love-story in the family—I don't except Rose's, because I don't call that a love-story—which has had a happy ending."