Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 18

"We shall each have one guess; and Bessie, as a reward for her good-nature, shall have the first. Now, Bessie?"

"I've known all along, too, miss. And what's more, I've known that although they were sent to you, they were meant for me. Reggie Forcus."

"Wrong. Here is Emily with the pudding. Emily, you shall have a guess; who is it who sends the flowers, and the books and the birds in the cages--?"

"One of the masters at the school that has fell in love with you, Miss Deleah." Emily gave her opinion without hesitation, going on with her business of changing the plates.

"Wrong again, Mr. Gibbon? Now, I give you a tip. Think of the least likely person in all the world."

"The Quaker lady who objects to slave-grown sugar."

Deleah laughed as she shook her head. "That is most ingenious. And would be delightful; but it is wrong. Now, mama. The least likely person in all the world, remember."

"Mr. George Boult."

"Mama has it. It is Mr. Boult."

"Oh, my dear child, I hope not!"

"Scrooge?" cried Bessie. "Never!" Bessie herself had bestowed the name of Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate.

"It is Scrooge;--a converted Scrooge; and I, I suppose, am Tiny Tim. And he has heaped benefits on me, mama; meaning thereby to benefit the family."

"Oh, my dear, it can't be! I am sure you are wrong, Deleah. Mr. Gibbon, do say she is wrong. It can't possibly be Mr. Boult."

Mr. Gibbon only threw back his head and loudly laughed.

Deleah was a little hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule.

She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to her mother.

"Why do you think it impossible, mama? Because Mr. Boult can't _say_ agreeable things is no reason he cannot do them. Don't you know that there are poor shut-up souls who want to be nice, who long to be loved--who have to speak in the dumb language because they can't articulate?"

"Miss Deleah is right. That is so. That is so!" Mr. Gibbon eagerly affirmed.

"Well, then, Mr. Boult isn't blessed with a tongue to say smooth things; but the bird in the cage, the basket of sweets, the rose-pink azalea--they are his kind and polite speeches."

"My dear, what nonsense!" cried Mrs. Day, who did not wish to believe in Mr. Boult as the author of such agreeable attentions.

But the Manchester man a.s.sented with enthusiasm: "Miss Deleah is right, ma'am," he said. "A man who could not get at Miss Deleah to say things to her might try to say them so."

"And you think Mr. Boult wants to say things to Deleah?" a scornful Bessie demanded.

"No, I don't, since you ask me. No, Miss Bessie."

"I should think not! And why, pray, should he have pitched on Deda?"

"Oh, why should any one pitch on me?" Deleah asks, lays down knife and fork, spreads hands abroad, as if inviting with exaggerated humility an inspection of her poor claims to favouritism.

"But--if it were Mr. Boult I think I can understand why it might be Deleah," Mrs. Day said slowly, looking down. She was remembering how her poor husband had made no secret of the fact that the younger girl was his pet; and she recalled also that for her father's sake it was Deleah who treated the arrogant, tyrannical man with unfailing respect and courtesy.

"Yes. And I can understand it too, mama," Deleah softly said.

"Well, them that live'll see," Emily remarked sententiously as she removed the remains of the sago pudding.

CHAPTER XII

The Attractive Deleah

An engagement had been secured for Deleah Day as a.s.sistant English governess at a ladies' school. At Miss Chaplin's seminary she was employed in hearing lessons learnt by heart from Brewers' _Guide to Knowledge, Mangnall's Questions_, Mrs. Markham's _History of England_; in reading aloud while her pupils tatted or crocheted mats and antimaca.s.sars; in struggling with them through the intricacies, never mastered by herself, of Rule of Three and Vulgar Fractions, from nine every morning till five every afternoon; with the exception of the Wednesday, when there was a half-holiday, and the Sat.u.r.day, when there was no school at all.

The slightness of Deleah's figure and the fragility of her small face, with its innocent, unconscious allurement, were increased by the black garments she still wore. To cast off her mourning for her unhappy father would be, she felt, a slight to him.

"It is as if Bessie had forgotten," she said to herself, seeing her sister in the blues and pinks in which she began as summer came on again to array herself, for supper and the Manchester man. "I do not forget."

Black was not a fashionable wear in that age, only being used for mourning. A woman wearing black did it to proclaim she sorrowed for the dead. The sentiment attached to her sable garments heightened the interest awakened by Deleah's slight form and her winsome face;--made her clear skin paler; made her eyes shine more jewel-like beneath the fine line of her black brows.

Among the members of her own s.e.x were, at the period of her eighteenth birthday, all the captives to her charms of which Deleah was aware. There is no such ardent lover as a schoolgirl when she conceives a pa.s.sion for another girl at school; and half a dozen of the little pupils at Miss Chaplin's were head over ears in love with Deleah Day. They sighed at her, their adoring eyes clung to her face, they suffered agonies of jealousy through her. They were cast down by a word, elated by a smile.

One of the girls then acquiring a polite education at Miss Chaplin's seminary remembers to this day how she slept, night after night, with a glove--such a worn and shabby glove--of the young English teacher beneath her pillow. She possesses still an alb.u.m called "The Deleah Book," wherein is pasted an atrocious photograph--all photographs (cartes-de-visite they were called)--were libellous and atrocious in those days--of a girl in a black frock, the skirt a little distended at the feet by the small hoop of the day, a short black jacket, with black hair parted in the middle over a smudge of a face and gathered into a net at the back of the neck. Beneath it is written Deleah's name and the date.

In "The Deleah Book," too, are treasured, scrawled there in the schoolgirl writing, the words of wit and wisdom gathered from the idol's lips, together with such precious items of information and memorabilia as the following:

"Tennyson is the favourite poet of D. D."

"Of all flowers the rose is the Queen, and is the best loved of D. D."

"To remember to keep back unkind words. D. D."

"If we knew all we should find there are excuses for all. D. D."

"(Note). Burnt almonds are the favourite sweet of D. D. and 'Abide with Me' is D. D.'s favourite hymn."

Their ways lying in the same direction, it was this young devotee who was privileged to walk home with the pa.s.sionately admired D. D. On a certain afternoon as they made their way through the quiet streets of the old town their talk was of a long-advertised concert to take place that evening, at which a great singer was to appear.

"How much you will enjoy it, Kitty," Deleah was saying with a little girlish longing. "Not only the concert, but everything. Let me picture it.

You will run home when you leave me--me in horrid Bridge Street!--and in your bedroom there will be a fire lit, and on the bed your pretty evening frock will be spread, and your lace petticoat, and your silk stockings--"

"Oh, how do you know all that, Miss Day? You know everything! But I shan't enjoy the concert a bit. I shall not. Do you know why? Because you will not be there."

"Oh, nonsense, Kitty! Nonsense! Nonsense!"

"I shall be thinking of you all the time, and wishing--oh wishing! Miss Day, do you believe it is true that if we keep on wishing with all our strength--not a selfish pig of a wish, you know, but something nice for another person--the wish ever, _ever_ comes true?"

"Every wish is as a prayer with G.o.d," quoted Deleah, unquestioning in her child's heart the literal truth of the words.