Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 16

"I dare say Mr. Gibbon does not want to hear them. As for me I find, when you live in the same house with a man, it's impossible to keep him at arm's length."

"Who wants to keep him at arm's length? I only mentioned I did not feel called upon to tell him any secrets."

"And I only said he wouldn't care to hear your secrets--if you have any."

"I haven't," Deleah admitted, laughing.

"I have, then. And I shall tell them to who I like, spite of Deda's pertness, mama."

"Say to 'whom you like,' Bessie."

"Mama, will you speak to Deleah? She is being impertinent to me again."

How impossible it would have been to entertain Reggie Forcus and Mr.

Gibbon at the same board, Bessie often felt. But the days when Reggie had dropped in to meals with the prosperous Days in Queen Anne Street were over for ever. Half a loaf was better than no bread. To know that a male creature, who could not be indifferent to her, was an inmate of the house was as she often said to herself--something.

She took no interest in him, of course. A young man out of a draper's shop! But it was more amusing to subjugate even such an one as he than to have no one at her feet.

So, at the hour when Boult's great shutters went up over the front of the six shops in Market Street, and the Manchester man was free to go to his evening meal, Bessie took an extreme care to be ready to receive him. She had allowed herself to become a little slovenly over her appearance in the day-time--who was there to look at her, or care what she wore in the sitting-room over the shop? But by supper-time she would have changed into her most becoming frock, would have arranged her hair to the greatest advantage, would have rubbed with a rough towel, or beaten with a hair-brush the plump, fair cheeks she considered too pale.

There was always an irregularity about the meals in the Day family. The shopkeeper was often kept below for an hour after the time she should have been seated at the board above, and when she was detained in such a way, Deleah would always stay too, to help her mother. But Bessie had ordained that the meal should go on without them. It was not right that a man, at work all day, should be kept waiting for his food at night. And so it often happened that he and she would sit, _tete-a-tete_, over the cold meat and pickles, of which, with the addition of bottled beer for the boarder, the meal consisted.

Many intimate items of her own heart history did Bessie confide to the politely attentive ear of Mr. Charles Gibbon. She did not receive confidences in return, or ask for them. What could the young shopman have to relate to compare with the interest attending Bessie's revelations?

He was no prince in disguise as it would have been so pleasant to discover him to be--this short, thickly-made, middle-aged man, with the prominent, bright, dark eyes, the large dark head, the k.n.o.bbly red forehead, whose parents had kept a small draper's shop in a small market-town in the county.

What could a man so born and nurtured have to give Bessie in return for the stories of the high life to which she had been accustomed? But he must consider himself flattered by Bessie's condescension, he must see how attractive she looked seated beneath the three-branched bronze gas-burner to preside at his supper.

Emily, bringing in the hot sweet pudding to replace the cold meat, would wag a facetiously warning head at the young lady behind the back of the unconscious Mr. Gibbon. "Don't you go leading that nice young chap on to make a fool of hisself over you, Miss Bessie," she would caution the girl, the next day.

"He can take care of himself. Make your mind quite easy," Bessie would answer, well pleased. She loved to discuss such topics with her devoted admirer, Emily, and liked to be accused of breaking hearts.

"We shall be late for supper again," Mrs. Day, busy with daybook and ledger in the shop, would say to the young daughter beside her.

"Never mind, mama. Perhaps it is charity not to hurry," Deleah on one occasion responded.

"Oh, nonsense, dear!" said Mrs. Day, looking up with alarm in her tired eyes.

"Well, if Mr. Gibbon is in love with Bessie?"

"'If,' indeed!"

"That will be the end of it. You'll see."

"The end indeed, Deleah!"

"You think Bessie would not take him?"

"Bessie will, at least, wait till he asks her."

"But should you object, mama? He is not a gentleman, I suppose; Bessie says he's not. But I think we've got to accept things and people and our place, as we are; not always to be looking back to what used to be. I often wish Bessie would see it like that, mama."

"We should be all happier if we could, I have no doubt," poor Mrs. Day sighed. The poor lady could not always keep before her mind the fate of Lot's wife, and often cast longing eyes towards the pleasant, easeful land that had been home.

"And I am not always inclined to take Bessie's opinion as to what is a lady or what is a gentleman."

"Bessie does not think so much as you do, Deleah."

"I don't know that I think: I feel," Deleah explained.

While she waited for her mother to finish her books she was weighing out and making up into half-ounce packets the tobacco Lydia Day was licensed to sell. She dropped her voice to a more confidential tone, although she and her mother were alone in the shop, where they were doing their evening's work by the aid of the one melancholy gas-burner, to which they restricted themselves after business hours. It gave insufficient light for the low-ceilinged, narrow length of the place.

"Do you think, mama, Bessie ought to be always saying horrid things about Mr. Boult? Making fun of him, mimicking him, complaining of everything he does; not only to you and me, but to Mr. Gibbon? to Emily--to any one who will listen? Do you think a lady--what you and I think a lady, not what Bessie thinks--would do that?"

"Bessie is sensitive--and very proud. We must not forget that--poor Bessie! And Mr. Boult's methods are not always pleasant, Deleah."

"No. But he has been our friend. He has stuck to us. Who else has, of all the people with whom we were friendly? And we were never nice to him, in the old days--not asking him to our parties, you remember, and never being friendly to him on Sunday afternoons. Oh, how I wish we had been, mama!"

Mrs. Day acquiesced, but not with enthusiasm. She did not like George Boult well enough to regret having kept him at arm's length while she could.

"I am sure we ought to be grateful to him," Mrs. Day admitted. She was very tired; the scent of the tobacco Deleah was pulling about, staining the tips of her small white fingers, was in her nostrils; she did not feel especially grateful.

"Then, when Bessie is laying down the law about what a lady should do I wish you would remind her, mama, that a lady must show grat.i.tude for kindness."

"And why, my dear, are you suddenly fighting the battles of poor Mr.

Boult?"

"That is a secret," Deleah said. "But one day, if you are good, I will tell you."

The sitting-room, with supper nicely laid, with Bessie nicely dressed, fair and plump and attractive in the gas light, happily chatting to Mr.

Gibbon, looked a Paradise of Rest in the eyes of poor wearied Mrs. Day.

The room was in fact a very pleasant one; long, low, with broad seats before each of the three windows looking into the street; with a tall and narrow oak mantelpiece opposite the three windows; with panelled oak walls, heavy oak rafters, supporting the low ceiling, old bra.s.s finger plates high up on the oaken door--all as in the days when old Jonas Carr's grandfather first kept shop in Bridge Street. It was made sweet with flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom, were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as small as possible a s.p.a.ce in order not to incommode the primulas, a bra.s.s birdcage holding a canary was hung.

Bessie was carrying on an animated but evidently confidential conversation with the boarder, as mother and daughter came into the room.

"He was riding past again to-day," she was saying. "I took care that he should not have the pleasure of thinking I was looking out for him; but peeping behind the curtains I could see him gazing up at the window. What consolation the poor thing finds in just looking at a window I'm sure I don't know."

"He sees you there, Miss Bessie. Or hopes to see you."

"You can't see me from the street."

"From the opposite pavement you can. I know, because I have seen Miss Deleah sitting there; with her book, and the bird, and the flowers."

Bessie's attention was caught by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah appeared with her mother.

"Mama! When Deda sits on the window-seat in the corner she can be seen from the street!"