Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 47

Deleah, left alone with her mother, did her best to strengthen her. "Never mind her, mama. Do not think of any of us in this; think of yourself alone. You could never do it."

"Bessie and he would fight like cat and dog," Mrs. Day said. "They are always fighting now. She says such things to him, and he to her!

Environment has told on Bessie. She says things no lady should say. My life would be unbearable."

"It is not to be thought of for a moment."

"But there are the debts I cannot pay. There is poor Bernard. I ought to do it, Deleah. I know I ought. But I have had miseries enough."

When Deleah left her, Mrs. Day still sat a huddled heap upon the sofa. "I have had miseries enough," she repeated; and upon that text she spoke to herself--going over in faithful detail the troubles she had known--vainest and most useless occupation in which a woman can indulge.

Her orphaned, dependent childhood; her marriage. It had been loveless on her part, but she had cared a little, believing that love on her husband's part would suffice. Was it love, ever at all? Is love possible where tenderness, courtesy, consideration do not exist? Time going on, daily she had suffered his incivility, the despite he did to her sense of what was due to her as his wife, the mother of his children, the mistress of his home. Habit, and love for her children, had made life tolerable. But for twenty years he and she had lived side by side in the outward union of inwardly divided minds.

Then had come his crime, its awful expiation, the terror, the disgrace, the bitterness of the fall for her children and herself, the salt, salt taste of the bread of charity, the drudgery which had been humiliating all through, with failure at the end. The grievous sorrow of Bernard's blighted career, the cruel death of her innocent comfort and consoler, her little boy.

Were not these things enough? Great G.o.d, was it possible she still had unspeakable agonies of mind and humiliation of body to go through? Her eyes, so pathetic in their subdued look of patience, wandered round the room which had been to her a haven of refuge from her sordid life in the grocer's shop. A hat Bessie had just discarded lay upon the table. Poor Bessie! poor undisciplined, unruly, never wholly grown-up Bessie! In the day of cataloguing the miseries of her life she was too sadly honest to pretend that Bessie could be a comfort to her.

A picture of Bernard painted by a local artist at a time when father and mother were for once united in the opinion that a handsomer, more promising boy did not exist, hung on the wall. Poor Bernard, who by last mail from India had written to his mother that his life in barracks was a h.e.l.l.

The tired eyes wandered from that heart-breaking record of promise never to be fulfilled to the whatnot, holding Franky's toys. Was that dust on the lid of the paint-box?

She crossed the room, mounted a chair, took down the precious box, dusted it tenderly with her handkerchief, looked within. Such broken odds and ends of his gamboge, his yellow ochre, his Indian ink of which he had prattled to his father, questioning whether carmine or vermilion should be used for the roofs of his absurd houses; if Prussian blue or ultramarine should be for his seas and skies. She saw again the huge man and the little child bending over their pictures on Sunday evenings of long ago, heard the very tones of their voices. Her tears dropped upon the shabby old box, upon the little earthen palette on which the colours Franky had rubbed still remained. All the bitterness had died out of her heart. Only sadness was left, and a sense of irreparable loss.

CHAPTER XXVIII

At Laburnum Villa

Deleah as she walked homeward that afternoon (for she had overstayed her allotted time in Bridge Street, and the carriage which was to have picked her up at a certain point had gone on without her) determined that she must leave Cashelthorpe. The words sounded in her own ears as if she were sentencing herself to leave heaven.

Her mother could not be allowed to marry George Boult; she could not remain in the shop. How were she and Bessie to live? With the vanity of youth, which always sees itself in the foreground, Deleah thought she perceived that it was she who must get a living for them all.

In her small distracted head she decided as she walked along that she would hire a little house, start a little school. Perhaps some one would pay the first quarter's rent, and she could pay it back when the pupils came.

"Some one" in days gone by would have meant Sir Francis; but now, living under the same roof with him, seeing in what deference he was held even by his own sister, feeling his reserve, his aloofness from the low concerns of such as she, she had become extraordinarily shy of that great man.

Through the daring of ignorance, trusting in that look of serenity and n.o.bility in his face, she had formerly approached him. She believed in his goodness still as she believed in the goodness of G.o.d, but the awe of him she had always felt had descended, since she had lived beneath his roof, in a double measure upon her.

Of his sister she had no fear. She would speak to kind Miss Forcus. Miss Forcus would tell her what to do.

Simultaneously with the formation of this resolve she arrived at the neatly trimmed hedge of Laburnum Villa. For the moment she had forgotten that the place held any interest for her beyond that of the other little houses in their gay gardens she had pa.s.sed. She glanced at the bright green of the trellis-work front, at the minute weeping willow in a corner of the gra.s.s-plot, at the roseplants destined to cover arches and to grow into a bower, by and by. By the front door a clematis had been planted, and the Honourable Charles was stooping over the plant, and striving to direct, in accordance with his own idea of how it should grow, the clinging of the tendrils.

Her light step was perhaps the one step in the world whose music could have withdrawn his attention from that absorbing occupation. He rose to his feet, turning sharply round; and as she wished him good-evening he went swiftly to the gate and swung it open."

"Come in," he said. "I have been waiting for this." He had at the moment such a commanding air, that Deleah had no thought but to obey him.

"I wish to show you my little place," he explained.

Deleah was late, as it was, and had yet some mile and a half to walk, but concluding from the dimensions of the place that no very long detention was threatened, did not demur. So long ago it seemed to her, who had since travelled miles along the road of Experience and Feeling, that the Bridge Street boarder had made love to her when he should have made love to Bessie. He had paid her the greatest compliment it was in his power to pay, and of late she had begun to understand something of what he might have suffered; she wished to be kind to him and to make amends.

So, sweetly appreciative of all she saw, she walked at his side, down the little paths, helped him to remember the names of the annuals, admired the view of the back-yard through a vista of trellis-work arches.

"Do you like it?" he asked her.

Deleah, with her artless desire to please, declared that she liked it very much.

He turned away with a long-drawn breath of content "Come indoors," he commanded. He walked in front to lead the way, but stopped suddenly on the little path and turned to ask her if she knew how long it was since he and she had talked together.

"Quite a long time, isn't it?" Deleah answered him. "But I have not been living at home, you know; I--"

He cut her short abruptly. "It is five months three weeks and two days,"

he said. "But the time has not been long to me. Looking back it seems that the time has almost flown."

Deleah could not have felt flattered that this was so, but she told him she was glad to know that he was so happy.

"Not happy," he said, "but looking forward to happiness; working for it."

With that he went on again, stopping at the hall-door. "I think I've remembered your taste," he said as he threw the door open. "I've carried it out everywhere as far as it was possible."

At that Deleah drew back. "I will look over your house some other time,"

she said. "It is late. I must be getting home now."

"Do you call the Forcus's place your home?"

"For the present. I am leaving there soon."

"The sooner the better. Come in."

He put a heavy and peremptory hand upon her arm and drew her over the threshold, across the tiny pa.s.sage called the hall, into one of the two bow-windowed rooms.

"This is the dining-room," he said. "Sit down."

To free her arm from his hand she obeyed him, and with an effort to appear very much at her ease looked about her.

"What a sweet little room!" she said.

"You like it? I thought you would. Look at the picture over the sideboard."

It was a large print--much too large for the room--of "The Last Sleep of Argyle," and was faced on the opposite wall by a reproduction of "The Execution of Montrose."

"They're proof prints," he told her proudly. "I remember you went to see those pictures, years ago, when they were on show in Brockenham, and liked them. I've had the chairs covered with red leather 'stead of horsehair. It costs more, but you used to say red was cheerful."

"It is so very nice, Mr. Gibbon."

"In the drawing-room there is a piano. Come and see."

She went, because of that strange new peremptoriness of manner which she felt she had not the moral courage to disobey. The drawing-room had fresh flowers in a vase upon the centre table.

"Did you put the flowers there, Mr. Gibbon?"