Sisters Part 38

And soon she saw again the exquisitely-kept garden--large for that locality--and the s.p.a.cious white house almost glittering in the sun.

She had sniffed at the bourgeois villa--she thought it bourgeois still--but who could help admiring those windowpanes like diamonds, and that gra.s.s like velvet, and that air of perfect well-being which pervaded every inch of the place? As the carriage entered the fine, wrought-iron gates, a flock of little Breens, attached to a perambulator, two nurses and five dogs, were coming out of it; and she stopped to accost and kiss them. Each child was as fresh as a daisy, its hair like floss silk with careful brushing, its petticoats as dainty as its frock, its socks and boots immaculate. There was Nannie, her G.o.dchild, shot up slim and tall from the dumpling baby that her aunt remembered, showing plainly the milky-fair, sunny-faced, wholesome woman that she was presently to become. Deb gazed at her with aches of regret--she had thought them for ever stifled in Claud's all-sufficing companionship--for her own lost motherhood, and of lesser but still poignant regret that she had not been allowed to adopt Nannie in Bob Goldsworthy's place. The joy of dressing and taking out a daughter of that stamp--of having her at home with one, to make the tea, and to chat with, and to lean on! Old Keziah came to the door--Keziah sleek and placid, like the family she served--delighted to welcome the distinguished traveller, but still more delighted to brag about the last Breen baby.

"A lovely boy, without spot or blemish," said Keziah, three times over.

"And that makes eleven, and not one too many. And Miss Rose doing fine, thank you. I'll go and prepare her for the surprise, so it don't upset her."

Constance, quite a grown young lady, met her aunt on the stairs; Kathleen and Lucy rose from the piano in the drawing-room, where they had been entertaining their mother at a safe distance with their latest-learned "pieces"; they too had to be greeted and kissed--and sweeter flesh to kiss no lips could ask for. "My husband may be a draper," Rose had often said, "but I'll trouble you to show me a duke with a handsomer family."

Mentally, Deb compared the cool, flower-petal cheeks of her Breen nieces with her Goldsworthy nephew's mouth, covering those unpleasant teeth. It would have been fairer to compare him with her Breen nephews, but there the contrast would have been nearly as great. John, at business with his father, and Pennycuick, learning station management with the Simpsons at Bundaboo, had the fresh and cleanly appearance of all Rose's children; in physical matters they were as clean as they looked. Bob did not look unclean, but with all his excessive smartness, he looked unfresh. That look, and the thing it meant, were his father's legacy to him.

At last Deb reached her sister's room. It was another addition to the ever-growing house, and marked, like each former one, the ever-growing prosperity of the shop supporting it. The fastidious travelled eye appraised the rich rugs and hangings, the ma.s.sive "suite", the delicately-furnished bed, and took in the general air of warm luxury and unstinted comfort, even before it fell upon Rose herself--Rose, fat and fair, and the picture of content, sitting in the softest of arm-chairs, and the smartest of gowns and slippers, by the brightest of wood fires, with a tableful of new novels and magazines on one side of her, and a frilly cradle on the other.

"My husband may be a draper," she had remarked at various times, "but he does give me a good home."

Deb, so long homeless amid her wealth, conceded at this moment, without a grudge, that Rose's humble little arrow of ambition had fairly hit the mark.

They embraced with all the warmth of the old Redford days. A few hasty questions and answers were exchanged, and their heads met over the cradle.

"You poor child!" Deb exclaimed, as a matter of form. "Haven't you done with this kind of thing yet?"

"Oh," said Rose, "I should feel lost without one now. And we wanted another boy--we have only three, you know. Isn't he a darling?"

Number eleven, fast asleep, was fished from his downy bed and laid in his aunt's arms, eagerly extended for him. His clothes might have been woven by fairies, and he smelt like a violet bed in spring.

Strange thrills--sharper than those that Nannie had set going--shook Deb's big heart as she cuddled and kissed him.

"The older I get," she confessed, "the greater fool I am about a baby.

And you do have such nice babies, Rose."

"Yes," simpered Rose. "They ARE nicer than most, certainly--I'm sure I don't know why." Her eyes gloated on the white bundle; she fidgeted to get it back. "Ah, Debbie, I wish--I wish you knew--"

"I know you do, my dear," laughed Deb, a little queerly, and she returned the baby in order to hunt for her handkerchief. "And if you must know the truth, so do I. It's tantalising to see you with more than your share, while I have none--and never shall have, worse luck!

Well"--blowing her nose cheerfully--"it's no use crying over spilt milk, is it? And I tipped the can over myself, so I can't complain.

How's Peter?"

Rose told her how Peter was--"so dear, so good"--and then had so much to say about the children, one by one, through all the eleven of them, that it was quite in a hurry at last that Deb disclosed her secret. And Rose not only sustained no shock--which would have been bad for her--but could see nothing in the marriage worth fussing about, except the fact that it came too late for a family. Such a sordidly domestic person was she! She mourned and condoled over this spilt milk--so sure that poor Deb was but hungrily lapping up drops with the dust of the floor--that Deb grew almost angry. She took back her own words, and said she was glad there were no children to come between her and her husband, who needed only each other. She implied that this union had a higher significance than could be grasped by a mere suckler of fools (nice fools, no doubt) and chronicler of small beer (however good the brew). She believed it, too. Love--great, solemn, immortal Love, pa.s.sionate and suffering--was a thing unknown to comfortable, commonplace Rose, as doubtless to Peter also. They were dear, good people, and fortunate in their ignorance and in what it spared them; but it was annoying when ignorance a.s.sumed superior knowledge, and wanted to teach its grandmother to suck eggs. Was it come to this--that marriage and a family were synonymous terms? No, indeed, nor ever would, while intelligent men and women walked the earth. Deb reserved the more sacred confidences for Mary's ear. Mary had loved--strangely indeed, but tragically, with pain and loss, the dignified concomitants of the divine state. Mary would understand.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Mary's house was a chill and meagre contrast to that of Rose, but there was nothing cold in Mary's welcome. To Deb's 'Darling! darling!' and smothering embrace of furs, the slim woman responded with a grip and pressure that represented all her strength. Deb, although not the eldest, was the mother of the family, as well as the second mother of Bob.

"Where is he?" were Mary's first words--and Deb smiled inwardly to see her as absurd in her mother's vanity and preoccupation as Rose herself.

But this was a case of a widow's only son, and the visitor was thankful for such a beginning to the interview. "Where is he?" cried the anxious voice. "He was to have met you. And he never fails--this is not like him--"

"Oh," Deb struck in easily, "he was there all right, looking after his old aunt like a good boy. He wanted to bring me, but I told him he could be more useful looking after Rosalie and my things. I thought we'd rather be by ourselves, Molly--poor old girl! You know I never heard a word until he told me just now. Your letter did not reach me."

They kissed again, in the pa.s.sage of the little house.

"You will send away the carriage, Debbie?" Mary urged, without visible emotion. "There are stables in the next street. You will take off your hat and stay with me a little?"

"Indeed I will, dearest, if you will have me. Are you alone?"

"Quite alone."

"Where's the old lady?"

"Oh, dead--dead long ago."

"And Ruby?"

Mary looked confused.

"Ruby? Ruby is--don't you know?--an actress in London. Doing very well, they tell me--"Miss Pearla Gold" in the profession."

"Gracious! Why, I've seen her! Burlesque. Tights. The minx! Well, she must be coining money, anyhow. I hope she doesn't forget to make some return for all the trouble she has been to you."

"She forgets everything," said the step-mother, "and we are thankful for it. Bob hates the thought; it is hard on him, who is so different.

Don't allude to it before him, please; he feels it too keenly. Debbie, what did you think of my boy?" "Oh, splendid!" was the cordial response. "I could hardly believe my eyes."

"Is he not?" the fond mother urged. "And it is not only his appearance, Debbie--they say he is the cleverest lawyer in Melbourne. He is so learned, so acute! He has a practice already that many a barrister, well known and of twice his age, might envy."

The pale woman--for her bricky colour had faded out--thrilled and glowed.

"Yes, he told me," said Deb; "and it was good hearing indeed. But I always knew what he had in him.' To herself she said: 'Why, if he is so well off, does he let her live like this?"

Poverty--though decent poverty--proclaimed itself in every detail of the mean terrace-house, which stood in the most depressing street imaginable. It made the wealthy sister's heart ache.

"And how are you yourself, Debbie?" Mary remembered to ask, as she shut the door upon the departing carriage. "You look well. How is Francie?

We want you to tell us all about her grand doings. Bob is greatly interested in his Italian aunt; he thinks he would like to take a vacation trip to see her some day. By the way, did he tell you that Rose has another? Isn't she a perfect little rabbit? And quite delighted, Keziah says."

As she talked in this detachment from her personal affairs, she led the way up bare stairs to her small bedroom. The resplendent woman behind her took note of the widow's excessive thinness, the greyness of her straight, tight hair, the rigid lines of a black stuff gown that had not a sc.r.a.p of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on it--not even the lawn sleeve-bands widows use--and thought of Bennet Goldsworthy's old-time annoyance when his wife was proved to have fallen behind the mode. And as she expatiated upon the charms of Rose's eleventh baby, Deb's bright dark eyes roved about Mary's room, in which she recognised a few of the plainer furnishings of the nuptial chamber of the past.

But not a trace of the person who had been so much amongst them once.

His boots on the floor, his clothes on the door-pegs, his razors and brushes on the toilet-table were gone; so were a basin and ewer from the double wash-stand; so was the wide bed. In place of the latter a small one--originally Bob's--had been set up, at the head of which lay one large pillow fairly glistening with the shine of its fresh, although darned, linen sheath. Carpet and curtains, essential to the departed housefather, had disappeared; the bare windows stood open to what fresh air there was; the floor, polished, and with one rug at the bedside, exhaled the sweet perfume of beeswax and turpentine. It was all so pathetic to the visitor, so eloquent of loss and change, that she exclaimed, catching her sister in her arms:

"Oh, you poor thing! You poor, poor thing!"

Mrs Goldsworthy returned the embrace tenderly, but not the emotional impulse.

"You are so dear and kind," she said, in a gentle, but quite steady voice. "I am so glad you came--so thankful to have you; but we won't talk about that, if you don't mind. I think it is best not to dwell on troubles, if you can help it. Tell me about yourself. I suppose you have had lunch? Well, then, we will have a nice cup of tea. Take off that heavy cloak--what lovely fur! And your hat too--what a smart affair! You always have such taste. No, I am not wearing c.r.a.pe; it is such rough, uncomfortable stuff, and so perishable; and the rule is not hard and fast nowadays, as it used to be. It would be stupid to make it so in a climate like this. Do you want a comb, dear? How brown your hair keeps still! Then let us go downstairs to the fire."

The fire was in a little bare parlour, as austerely appointed as the bedroom. A tea-table was drawn up to the hearth, the kettle placed on the coals. There seemed no servant on the premises, but the neatness upstairs was repeated below; everything was speckless, polished, smelling of its own purity. Well, it was a good thing poor Molly could interest herself in these matters, and her resolve not to brood over her troubles--if it was genuine, and not only a heroic pose--both n.o.ble and wise. So Deb reflected; and such was the calmness of the emotional atmosphere, the cheering effect of tea and rest and sisterly companionship, the discursiveness of the talk, that she soon found herself telling Mary the secret that she was so sure the widow would hear with special sympathy and understanding.

"It is awfully selfish," she began, "to bother you with my affairs at such a time as this, but you've got to know it some time. The fact is--some folks would say there's no fool like an old fool, and perhaps you'll agree with them; but no, I don't think you will--not you, for you know...the fact is--don't laugh--but I'm sure n.o.body can help it--I have been and gone and got married, Molly. There!"