Sisters Part 30

"And this is our boy--grown out of knowledge, eh?"

Mary stepped swiftly aside to let Robert come forward, and there was no mistaking the sentiments held in common by the parents with regard to their son. Their two faces were mirrors for each other, suffused with the same tender pride.

"Perhaps the child has reconciled her to the rest of it," Deb hazarded a hope. "She may be happy."

For Mary smiled and moved alertly about the room. She accepted her husband's ostentatious hand and chair, and when he resumed the conversation, or rather restarted it, on the subject of Robert's achievements at school, she followed where he led, so long as he did not seem leading towards Deb's pocket, backing him up in the most wifely manner. "Can it be possible?" Deb kept asking herself, glad at heart to see such signs, which yet lessened her pity for and interest in her sister. But Mary, with all the pride of the Pennycuicks in her, was not, one to "let on". Her skeleton was locked tight in the cupboard it belonged to when visitors were about--especially such a visitor as this--and also when they were not about, so far as she could have it so.

So that a sort of air of entertaining "company" pervaded the room. Deb felt a constraint with her sister, and that she was making no way with her mission. But Robert stepped into the breach. With Mary's son the impulsive lady of Redford was unexpectedly pleased. There was not a trace of Pennycuick to be discerned in him; nevertheless, he was a good-looking, intelligent and interesting boy. He sat by her on the sacred brocaded sofa while she brightly questioned him, brightly answering her with aptness and good sense; his parents beaming on the pair, even the father content to play second fiddle to give the son his chance. Here, at any rate, thought Deb, was material to hand for the work she had come to do.

"I love boys," she remarked--and so she did, as some people love dogs--"and Robert and I are going to be great friends; aren't we, Robert?"

"It is very good of you to say so, aunt," Robert replied, with characteristic propriety.

"But, do you know, I don't think I shall call you Robert," she went on.

"It has a prim sound"--but it was the primness of himself that she wanted to break down--"and it doesn't suit a boy of your tender years.

I think I'll call you Bob, if you don't mind."

"I wish you would," he adroitly answered her.

"What is your bent towards, in the way of a career, Bob?"

He said he thought the law--to be a judge some day.

"You don't care for station life?"

"Oh, he does," his father eagerly interposed. "He loves it. But he has had so few chances--"

"Which is your school, Bob?"

A seminary of no repute was named, and the father again intervened to regret that it was not one of the public schools. "But they, unfortunately, have been beyond our means--"

Here Mary broke in with praises of the seminary. It had such an excellent headmaster, was so conveniently situated--really better in many ways than one of the great schools--

And then Robert broke in.

"My dear mother!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, in a compa.s.sionate and forbearing way.

"Ah, Bob knows it is not better," laughed Deb. "And it isn't, Mary; you are no authority, my dear. Which of the public schools do you fancy, Bob?"

He mentioned his choice, and the University scholarships that were to be had there.

"Debbie!" implored Mrs Goldsworthy, under her breath.

"Hush-sh!" hissed her husband.

"You be quiet, Molly," Deb playfully adjured her. "This has nothing to do with you, or with anybody except Bob and me. You come and spend your next vacation with me at Redford, Bob, and then we can talk it all over together."

She nodded to him meaningly. He smiled with perfect comprehension.

"How can we thank you," Mr Goldsworthy murmured emotionally, for he also understood. "It is too, too--"

"It's all right, pater," the remarkable boy silenced him. "Aunt Deborah knows how we feel about it."

Mary sat in stolid silence, for once indifferent to her husband's dumb command; then tears welled into her tired eyes. She pocketed her pride for her child's sake. It had been her hopeless longing for years to give her darling's splendid abilities full scope.

"He will repay you, Debbie," she said.

"Ah, don't be so grudging--so ungenerous!" cried Deb.

Tea and cakes were brought in, and Bob, as he was thenceforth to be styled, waited upon his aunt in the correctest manner. He had by this time taken on an air that seemed to say: "You and I understand the ropes; you must excuse these poor parents of mine, who were not born with our perceptions." And Deb, no more proof against this sort of thing than meaner mortals, had a feeling of special proprietorship in him which she found pleasant, although he was not exactly the heir-on-probation that she could have wished; which, of course, it would have been preposterous to expect in a son of Bennet Goldsworthy's. Bennet Goldsworthy accompanied her to the gate when she went away, forbidding Mary to expose herself, hatless, to the wind. And there the benevolent aunt's "intentions" were more distinctly formulated.

"I wish to take entire charge of his education, if you will allow me.

He is a very promising boy, and should have all his chances. Let me send him to the Melbourne Grammar after Christmas, and as a boarder, if you don't mind. There are such advantages, both in position and for study, in living at the school."

"I leave everything--everything, in your hands," murmured the grateful father.

"By the way"--as an after-thought--"what about your little girl?"

She was not a little girl now, and had finished with school; but, oh, the boon that a few good lessons in music and languages would be to her!

That matter was settled.

"Well, now," said Deb, "we must think about Mary. She is frightfully thin. I can see that she has had too many worries, as you say. She must be taken out of them. I want to have her at Redford with me--as soon as she can get ready--and give her a good long rest, and feed her up, and make her fat and strong."

"I only wish you could prevail on her," he sighed. "But I am afraid you will not get her to go anywhere without me. I have a devoted wife, Miss Pennycuick"--even if she had not tacitly forbidden "Deborah" in her poor days, he would not have ventured upon the liberty now that she was rich--"too devoted, if that can be. She insists upon sharing all my burdens, though I fain would spare her. I know well that, say what I will, she will never consent to leaving me to struggle with them alone."

"You have not told me what they are," said Deb, who saw that he was in dread of her going before he could do so.

"Oh, debts--debts--debts!" he answered, with a reckless air. "The millstone that we hung about our necks when we antic.i.p.ated that she would have money, and lived accordingly, and were then left stranded.

The eternal trying to make a shilling go as far as a pound--to make bricks without straw, like the captive Israelites of old. But why do you ask me? I hate to talk about it." He made a gesture of putting the miserable subject aside.

"It was very hard on you," Deb said gently--contradicting the Deb of an earlier time and different state of things--"to have those expectations, which were certainly justified, and to be disappointed as you were. I feel that we Pennycuicks were to blame in that--"

"Oh, dear, no!" he earnestly a.s.sured her.

"And that an obligation rests on me, now that I have the means, to make some compensation to you--to Mary, rather."

"It is like you to think of that. But really--"

"And I put a blank cheque in my pocket, and a stylographic pen--and will you let me"--she drew forth the articles mentioned, and made a desk of the top rail of the gate--"will you do me the favour to accept from me--what shall I say?--five hundred pounds? Would that relieve you--and Mary--of the immediate worries?"

He said it would, with the mental reservation that it did not amount to what he had been defrauded of by Mr Pennycuick (she had made a mistake in the designation of her gift); but the slight coolness of his acknowledgement quickly gave place to grateful fervour as he realised what the immediate five hundred pounds would do for him, and read in her words an implication that the sum was but an instalment of what she felt to be his due. He was incoherent in his thanks and benedictions as he slipped the cheque into his pocket.

"And you will let me have Mary at Redford?"

"Oh, yes! She will not want to go, but I shall make her."

"And do not tell her more than you can help about this little private transaction. She might feel--"