Sisters Part 18

"You believe I have only just thought of it?"

"Haven't you?"

"I have thought of it since you were fifteen, my dear. But never mind.

We will call it a joke, if you think that the least of two evils. I see you do. The incident is closed. The bargain is off. And I can buy Redford when it is put up for sale. Goodbye, G.o.ddaughter. No, I can't stay to lunch today; I have some business to attend to. But of course I shall see you again before you go."

And when he did see her again, he gave not the smallest sign of what had happened, so that she almost grew to feel that she must have dreamt it.

That same afternoon, Jim Urquhart, who was always doing so, rode over to Redford to see if he could help her pack. He wondered at her abstracted manner, and her sudden change of mind concerning the piano and wardrobe and other things. Having laboriously packed books and pictures, she now proposed to unpack half of them. She wanted to see what room she would have in her cottage first. In fact, it seemed to him that she did not know what she wanted. She was evidently tired and overwrought. "Oh, Jim," she moaned, from amongst the dust and litter, "it is a wrench!"

"What do you suppose it is for us?" he returned gloomily. "Without you at Redford! I'm trying not to think of it."

"So am I. But it's no use--it has got to come."

"I suppose there is no way out?"

"None. That is all settled. I have told Mr Th.o.r.n.ycroft, and he won't tease me any more."

"Do you think you will be happy down there, cooped up in streets?"

"I know I shall not. But the streets down there will be better than the streets of a bush township."

"Why streets at all? Why not stay about here somewhere, where you have us all near you?"

"Exiled from Redford? No, thank you. Besides, where could we stay?

Detached cottages don't grow in these parts."

Then he blurted it out.

"I have never said anything, Deb. I knew I wasn't fit for you, and. I am not now. I've got to look after my dear old mother and the children, who haven't got anybody else, and I couldn't give you a home worthy of you--perhaps never, no matter how I worked and tried; but if love is any good, and the things that after all make homes--not money and fine furniture--" "Dear old boy, don't!" she pleaded, with twitching lips.

"I may as well, now I have begun," said he. "I don't suppose it is any use, but I'd just like you to know once--as far as my life is my own, it is yours any day you like. It has been since I was a boy, and it will be for a good while yet--I won't say for ever, because you can't tell what's going to happen; but I'm ready to bet my soul that it will be for ever. Now, do just what you feel inclined to, Debbie. I'm not going to press you--I know my place too well; but if you should think it a better plan to live with me, and have me work for you and take care of you the best I can, why, any heaven that's coming to us by-and-by simply won't be in it--not for me." He looked at her across the packing-case between them, and dropped his voice to add: "But you wouldn't, of course."

"I would, dear Jim!" she cried, with warm impulsiveness; "that is, I might. A good man like you is worth a worldful of money and furniture.

I don't live for those things, as you seem to think; but--but you know how it is--I can't change about from one to another--"

He dropped the saddest "No" into the pregnant pause.

"No, Deb--no; I expected that. Staunch through everything--that's you all over. Well"--with a movement as if to pull himself together--"I'm staunch too. We're equals in that, anyhow, and don't you forget it.

I'll not bother you any more--I never have bothered you, have I?--but I'm here when you want me, body and soul, at any hour of the day or night. You'll remember that?" stretching his h.o.r.n.y hand across to her, and being in the same instant electrified by the touch of her lips upon it.

"Oh, I will! I will!"

The evening post brought a ship letter. Guthrie Carey was in port. He had been there long enough to hear the news that Deborah Pennycuick was penniless, and that Claud Dalzell had deserted her. So he had written to her at length--the longest letter of his life--ten pages.

She took it to her bedroom and sat down to read it, while at the same time she rested a little before dinner. She had frowned over the envelope; now she smiled over the first pages; she sighed over the middle ones; she even wept a little over the last. Then she wrote out an answer and sent it by a groom to the nearest telegraph office:

"Please do not come. Am writing."

Thus she cast aside in one day three good men and true, heart-bound to one who was not worthy to be ranked with any of them. But that is the way of love.

CHAPTER XIV.

There was an attic at the top of a dark flight of stairs in the suburban villa that was now the sisters' home. It contained a fireplace and a long dormer window--three square cas.e.m.e.nts in a row, of which the outer pair opened like doors--facing the morning sun and a country landscape. The previous tenants had used it for a box and lumber room, and left it cobwebbed, filthy and asphyxiating. Deb ordered a charwoman to clean it, and a man to distemper the grubby plaster and stain the floor, and then laid down rugs, and a.s.sembled tables and books, and basket-chairs, and girls' odds and ends; whereby it was transformed into a cosy boudoir and their favourite room. Hither came Mary when she could escape from that treadmill of which she never spoke, bringing her black-eyed boy to astonish his aunts with his cleverness, and astonishing them herself with the heretical notions which an intimate a.s.sociation with orthodoxy seemed to have implanted in her. But Bennet was not admitted, nor any other outsider.

The little bricked hearth, when reminiscent wood fires burned on it, was a pleasant gathering-place in cold weather; but it was the window in the projecting gable towards which the sisters most commonly converged. It was about eight feet long by two feet high, and close up under it, nearly flush with its sill, stood a substantial six-foot-by-four table, the chairs at either end comfortably filling the rest of the alcove. They could sit here to write or sew, or drink afternoon tea, and look out upon as pleasant a rural landscape--the Malvern Hills--as any suburban villa could command. It was that view, indeed, which had decided Deb to take the house.

There was, of course, a towny foreground to it; and this it was, rather than the distant blue ranges, that held the gaze of Rose Pennycuick when she looked forth--the back-yard of the villa next to their own. It was a well-washed-and-swept enclosure, s.p.a.cious and well-appointed, and amongst its appointments displayed a semi-circular platform of brickwork, slightly raised above the asphalted ground, and supporting the biggest and best dog-kennel that she had ever seen.

"Those are nice people," she remarked, "for they have given their dog as good a house as they have given themselves. Isn't it a beauty? I wish to goodness everybody was as considerate for the poor things. I wonder what sort of a dear beast it is?"

She watched so long for its appearance that she thought the kennel untenanted, but presently saw a maid come out from the kitchen with a tin dish. This she dumped upon the brick platform, turning her back instantly; and a fine, ruffed, feather-tailed collie stepped over the kennel threshold to get his dinner.

"Chained!" cried Rose. "And she never spoke to him!"

Deb looked over her shoulder, sympathetically concerned. "Is he really?

What a shame! I expect they are too awfully clean and tidy to stand a dog's paws on anything; but no doubt they let him out for a run."

Rose waited for days, and never saw this happen. The master of the house and a dapper young man, his son, went to town every morning at a certain hour, evidently for the day's business; a stout, smart lady, with smart daughters, was seen going forth in the afternoons; the maids took their little outings; but no one took the dog. He lived alone on his patch of brick, either hidden in the kennel or lying in the sun with his nose between his paws. He had his food regularly, for it was a regular household; but beyond that, no notice seemed taken of him.

Rose, worked up from day to day, declared at last that she could not stand it. "Why, what can you do?" said Deb. "He is their dog, not yours." "Oh, I don't know; but I must do something."

One moonlight night she heard him--always silent and supine, except when suspicious persons came into the yard--baying softly to himself, plainly (to her) voicing the weariness of his unhappy life. She sat up in bed and listened to him, and to his master shouting to him at intervals to "be quiet"; and she wept with sympathetic grief.

It was a Sat.u.r.day night. On Sunday morning she excused herself from going to church. She saw Deb and Francie go, and she saw the family of the next house go--heard their front door bang, and caught gleams of smart dresses through the foliage of their front garden. Then she put on her hat and stole forth to intercede for the collie with the cook of his establishment, a kindly-looking person, who had once been observed to pat his head.

The gleaming imitation-mahogany door at which she rang with a determined hand but a fluttering heart, was, to her dismay, opened to her by a young man--the son of the house, whom she had seen going to business every week-day morning, tailored beautifully, and wearing a silk hat that dazzled one. He was now in a very old suit, flannel-shirted and collarless, so that at first she did not recognise him.

The desire of each was to turn and fly, but the necessity upon them was to face their joint mishap and see it through. Crimson, the young man mumbled apologies for his state of unreadiness to receive ladies; equally crimson, Rose begged him not to mention it, and apologised for her own untimely call.

"Miss Pennycuick, I believe?" stammered he, with an awkward bow.

"Miss Rose Pennycuick--yes," said she, struggling through her overwhelming embarra.s.sment. "I called--I wanted--I--I--MIGHT I speak to you for just one minute, Mr Breen?"

She had lived beside him long enough to know his name, also his occupation. The Breens were drapers. Their shop in the city was not to be compared with Buckley & Nunn's or Robertson & Moffat's, but it was a good shop in its way, as this good home of the proprietors testified.

"Certainly," said young Mr Breen, whose name was Peter. "With pleasure.

By all means. Walk in, Miss Pennycuick."

She walked into a gorgeous drawing-room, where all was of the best, and wore that shining air of furniture too valuable for daily use. Mr Peter drew up a cream linen blind that was one ma.s.s of lace insertion, and apologised anew for his unseemly costume.

"The fact is, Miss Pennycuick--I hope you won't be shocked at my doing such things on Sunday--I was cleaning my gun. There is a holiday this week, and I am going shooting with a friend. It was he I expected to see when I went to the door in this state." "Oh," said Rose, more at her ease, "I often do things on Sundays; I don't see why not. In fact, I am doing something now--"

She cast about for words wherein to explain her errand, while he shot a stealthy glance at her. Though not beautiful, like Deb and Francie, she was a wholesome, healthy, bonnie creature, and he was as well aware of her position in life as she was of his.

"I came, Mr Breen--I thought there were only servants in the house--I am sure you must wonder how I can take such a liberty, such an utter stranger, but I wanted to speak about that poor dog of yours--"