Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 52

"I am going for one," Mrs. Day said, having decided on that course at the instant of announcing the intention.

"But I thought Scrooge was coming?"

"I know. I can't see him. I really can't. You see him for me, Bessie."

"Really, mama, how absurd! Is the old man wanting to marry me? Are you to have the billing and cooing by proxy?"

There was no mistake about it, adversity had not improved Bessie; her mother had to admit to herself that she was even sometimes vulgar. "You might have spared me that, I think, Bessie," poor Mrs. Day said. She was deeply offended and hurt. She would not wait to finish her dinner, but went down into the shop and busied herself there till Mr. Pretty had put the shutters up. Then she dressed herself in the widow's bonnet she still wore, the shabby silk mantle with its deep border of c.r.a.pe, the black gloves so much the worse for wear, and saying no further word to Bessie went out.

"Of course I know where she's gone," said Bessie to Emily, her unfailing confidante. "To Franky's grave. It isn't the place to make her a lively companion when she comes back again; and it isn't very cheerful for me to have to sit at home and think of her there."

"'Tis mother-like, Miss Bessie." Franky's grave held attraction for Emily also, who visited it every Sunday of her life.

"Yes, but, Emily, oughtn't mama to think of me as well as of Franky? And I've no patience with her. I think she ought to make up her mind, and have done with it. Quite young girls, with all their lives before them, make marriages for money, why should she make such a fuss?"

"The young ones don't know what they're a-doing, perhaps; and your ma does," the sage Emily hazarded.

"And if the old man comes to-day what do you suppose I'm to say to him?"

"There never was a time yet when you didn't know what to say, Miss Bessie."

"It's all very well. Why should I be mixed up in it? I shall just say nothing."

"Then he can sit and look at you, and that's what he likes."

Bessie's eyes glinted: "But if he likes it--and he has always acted as if he did--then why? why? why--?" She spread out the palms of her plump, white little hands, making the dramatic inquiry of Emily, who, with a black rag dipped in whitening, was polishing the "brights," as she called her tin and pewter ware.

"Ah," Emily said; "he's one of your cautious ones, Boult is. Them that are young and fascinatin' aren't the best of housekeepers, per'aps."

Bessie stood silent for a minute, watching the vigorous rubbing of a dish-cover. "You go and change your frock," Emily said, glancing up at her. "Put on that black-and-white muslin you look your nicest in--"

"I ought to wear all black for a year, Emily."

"You put on your black and white," coaxed Emily.

Mrs. Day went to Franky's grave as had been foretold, but went a long way round to it, going first for that walk by the river, which the child and she had been wont to take together. Finding that particular spot on the riverbank which had been so much in her thoughts since Mr. Boult had made his offer, she sat down there with the deliberate intention of deciding which course to take, out of the three open to her. To be turned, with her children, homeless and penniless upon the world; to become Boult's wife; to drown in the river.

An effort she made to keep her mind on these issues, but could only think, instead, of Franky. Not of Franky as he had played by the river, happily painted his pictures, rushed off noisily with the cutler's son to school, but of Franky sitting to eat his bread-and-b.u.t.ter and radishes, one spring afternoon, his plate on his knees, removed to a distance from the tea-table, because Bessie had declared that he smelt of putty.

It was an absurd little incident, forgotten until now, when it awoke in her memory to wring the mother's heart without almost intolerable pain.

Banished! Not good enough to sit at the table with Bessie--her Franky, her baby, her angel boy! In her heart she knew the boy had not cared, that, a few tears shed, his meal was as welcome to him in one part of the room as the other. Yet that picture of him, sitting lonely, munching in his corner, beset her with pain too deep for tears; the little uncomplaining figure bitterly accused her, she was reproached by the reproachless eyes.

So she sat by the river and cried there, unable to turn her mind to the living children; to Bessie, so hard at times, but only because she was unawakened, did not understand; to pretty, pretty Deleah with her innocent allurements, her winning ways; to Bernard, who had written in his last miserable letter from India that he loved her best in the world. Of these she thought not at all; but only of the child eating his radishes in the corner, looking solemnly at her out of his big dark eyes.

He called her from his grave, and presently she got up and went there.

Deleah, dropped by the Forcus carriage at the private door in Bridge Street, went running up the stairs, and into the sitting-room. Bessie and Mr. Boult, sitting side by side on the sofa in that apartment, flew rather violently apart at the interruption of her entrance.

"Well, Deleah! What a way to dash into the room!" Bessie said; a flurried Bessie with red cheeks, bursting into a scolding tone, to cover evident embarra.s.sment.

"Where is mama?" Deleah, gasping with astonishment, got out; and Bessie, in the flurry and perturbation of the moment, flung at her the sisterly advice to find out.

Deleah, pale of face, eyes staring, gazed speechless from Bessie on the sofa, in the black-and-white muslin recommended by Emily, to Mr. Boult, now engaged in peering with sudden interest into the street. Then, shutting the door hastily upon the pair, she went to Emily, in the kitchen.

"How long has Mr. Boult been here?"

Emily had not looked at the clock.

"Is he going to stay to tea?"

Emily would set an extra cup, on the chance of it. "You'd best go and find your ma, Miss Deleah; she's gone to the cemetery, and have no right to be there alone."

"I am going; and, Emily, I won't come into the house any more while that man is there; and mama shall not."

"Now _you're_ going to make a heap of fuss!" the worried Emily said. "I never see sech goin's on as we get nowadays. No peace anywhere."

"I'm not making any fuss. Only, you must tell Bessie to get rid of Mr.

Boult before we come home."

He did not go till Bessie, plump and attractive, a pink rose in her bosom, had poured out tea for him, but he had been gone half an hour when the mother and daughter returned. Mrs. Day, f.a.gged with her long walk, was comforted by the holding of Deleah's warm young arm, strengthened by Deleah's brave talk. There would be another hard fight, but Deleah would not go away any more, they would fight together.

"We can live on almost nothing, mama--you and I."

There would be Bessie, her mother reminded her; but Deleah seemed indisposed to take Bessie into her calculations. She unfolded her scheme of the little house and the little school of quite little children such as she could teach.

"We shall be far happier than we have ever been in the shop. Some eggs and milk for you and me, and now and then a little butcher's meat for Emily.

What will it cost! Surely we can manage that, mama."

"You are forgetting that there is Mr. Boult to settle with. That horrible proposition of his must be somehow answered, Deleah."

"We will answer it to-night. I will help you to write the letter," Deleah promised.

They wrote it between them, after Bessie had gone to bed, whither she quickly repaired upon their return. The composition was mostly Deleah's, and when finished it ran--

"I did not feel equal to an interview with you, and I am sure you will excuse my having failed to keep the appointment. On thinking the matter over I have decided that the arrangement you proposed to me the other day is a quite unsuitable one, and I therefore write to decline. Having had time for reflection, I have no doubt that you agree in the wisdom of this decision."

"That is all, mama."

"My dear, no! It is so very cold."

"Well, we feel cold--you and I."

"But we must not forget what he did for us. We must always be grateful."

"I know. Mama, I am so tired of being grateful." Mrs. Day sighed; she was tired of it too, truth to tell. "He is always throwing what he has done in our faces, rubbing it into our skins. It is our grat.i.tude which has made him so detestable."

"It was kind of him to give that fifty pounds, and--"

"We will pay him back. We will pay him back to the last farthing, mama.