The History of David Grieve Part 103

In the midst of her tirade, however, she suddenly stopped short and looked round the room she had just entered--Lucy's low comfortable sitting-room, with David's books overflowing into every nook and corner, the tea-table spread, and the big fire which Lucy had been nervously feeding during her time of waiting for the travellers.

'Well, you've got a fire, anyway,' she said, brusquely. 'I thought you'd have a bigger house than this by now.'

'Oh, thank you, it's quite big enough!' cried Lucy, going to the tea-table and holding herself very straight. '_Quite_ big enough for anything _we_ want! Will you take your tea?'

Louie threw herself into an armchair and looked about her.

'Where's the little boy?' she inquired.

'I'm here,' said a small solemn voice from behind the sofa, 'but I'm not _your_ boy.'

And Sandy, discovered with his back to the window, replaced the thumb which he had removed to make the remark, and went on staring with portentous gravity at the new-comers. Cecile had nervously disengaged herself from David and was standing by her mother.

'Why, he's small for his age!' exclaimed Louie; 'I'm sure he's small for his age. Why, he's nearly five!'

'Come here, Sandy,' said David, 'and let your aunt and cousin look at you.'

Sandy reluctantly sidled across the room so as to keep as far as possible from his aunt and cousin, and fastened on his father's hand. He and the little girl looked at one another.

'Go and kiss her,' said David.

Sandy most unwillingly allowed himself to be put forward. Cecile with a little patronising woman-of-the-world air stooped and kissed him first on one cheek and then on the other. Louie only looked at him. Her black eyes--no less marvellous than of yore, although now the brilliancy of them owed something to art as well as nature, as Lucy at once perceived--stared him up and down, taking stock minutely.

'He's well made,' she said grudgingly, 'and his colour isn't bad.

Cecile, take your hat off.'

The child obeyed, and the mother with hasty fingers pulled her hair forward here, and put it back there. 'Look at the thickness of it,'

she said, proudly pointing it out to David. 'They'd have given me two guineas for it in the Rue de la Paix the other day. Why didn't that child have your hair, I wonder?' she added, nodding towards Sandy.

'Because he preferred his mother's, I suppose,' said David, smiling at Lucy, and wondering through his discomfort what Sandy could possibly be doing with his coat-tail. He seemed to be elaborately scrubbing his face with it.

'What are you doing with my coat, villain?' he said, lifting his son in his arms.

Sandy found his father's ear, and with infinite precaution whispered vindictively into it:

'I've wiped _them_ kisses off anyhow.'

David suppressed him, and devoted himself to the travellers and their tea.

Every now and then he took a quiet look at his sister. Louie was in some ways more beautiful than ever. She carried herself magnificently, and as she sat at the tea-table--restless always--she fell unconsciously into one fine att.i.tude after another, no doubt because of her long practice as a sculptor's model. All the girl's awkwardness had disappeared; she had the insolent ease which goes with tried and conscious power. But with the angularity and thinness of first youth had gone also that wild and startling radiance which Montjoie had caught and fixed in the Maenad statue--the one enduring work of a ruined talent, now to be found in the Luxembourg by anyone who cares to look for it. Her beauty was less original; it had taken throughout the second-rate Parisian stamp; she had the townswoman's pallor, as compared with the moorland red and white of her youth; and round the eyes and mouth in a full daylight were already to be seen the lines which grave the history of pa.s.sionate and selfish living.

But if her beauty was less original, it was infinitely more finished. Lucy beside her stumbled among the cups, and grew more and more self-conscious; she had felt much the same at Benet's Park beside Lady Venetia Danby; only here there was a strong personal animosity and disapproval fighting with the disagreeable sense of being outshone.

She left almost all the talk to her husband, and employed herself in looking after Cecile. David, who had left his work with difficulty to meet his sister, did his best to keep her going on indifferent subjects, wondering the while what it was that she had come all this way to say to him, and perfectly aware that her sharp eyes were in every place, taking a depreciatory inventory of his property, his household, and his circ.u.mstances.

Suddenly Louie said something to Cecile in violent French. It was to the effect that she was to hold herself up and not stoop like an idiot.

The child, who was shyly eating her tea, flushed all over, and drew herself up with painful alacrity. Louie went on with a loud account of the civility shown her by some gentlemen on the Paris boat and on the journey from Dover. In the middle of it she stopped short, her eye flamed, she bent forward with the rapidity of a cat that springs, and slapped Cecile smartly on the right cheek.

'I was watching you!' she cried. 'Are you never going to obey me--do you think I am going to drag a hunchback about with me?'

Both David and Lucy started forward. Cecile dropped her bread and b.u.t.ter and began to cry in a loud, shrill voice, hitting out meanwhile at her mother with her tiny hands in a frenzy of rage and fear. Sandy, frightened out of his wits, set up a loud howl also, till his mother caught him up and carried him away.

'Louie, the child is tired out!' said David, trying to quiet Cecile and dry her tears. 'What was that for?'

Louie's chest heaved.

'Because she won't do what I tell her,' she said fiercely. 'What am I to do with her when she grows up? Who'll ever look at her twice?'

She scowled at the child who had taken refuge on David's knee, then with a sudden change of expression she held out her arms, and said imperiously:

'Give her to me.'

David relinquished her, and the mother took the little trembling creature on her knee.

'Be quiet then,' she said to her roughly, always in French, 'I didn't hurt you. There! _Veux-tu du gateau_?'

She cut some with eager fingers and held it to Cecile's lips. The child turned away, silently refusing it, the tears rolling down her cheeks. The mother devoured her with eyes of remorse and adoration, while her face was still red with anger.

'_Dis-moi_, you don't feel anything?' she said, kissing her hungrily. 'Are you tired? Shall I carry you upstairs and put you on the bed to rest?'

And she did carry her up, not allowing David to touch her. When they were at last safe in their own room, David came down to his study and threw himself into his chair in the dark with a groan.

CHAPTER VI

Louie and her child entered the sitting-room together when the bell rang for supper-tea. Louie had put on a high red silk dress of a brilliant, almost scarlet, tone, which showed her arms from the elbows and was very slightly clouded here and there with black; Cecile crept beside her, a little pale shadow, in a white muslin frock, adorned, however, as Lucy's vigilant eyes immediately perceived, with some very dainty and expensive embroidery. The mother's dress reminded her of that in which she first saw Louie Grieve; so did her splendid and reckless carriage; so did the wild play of her black eyes, always on the watch for opportunities of explosion and offence. How did they get their dresses? Who paid for them? And now they had come over to beg for more! Lucy could hardly keep a civil tongue in her head at all, as her sister-in-law swept round the room making strong and, to the mistress of the house, cutting remarks on the difference between 'Manchester dirt' and the brightness and cleanliness of Paris. Why, she lorded it over them as though the place belonged to her! 'And she is just a pauper--living on what we give her!' thought Lucy to herself with exasperation.

After supper, at which Louie behaved with the same indefinable insolence--whether as regarded the food or the china, or the shaky moderator lamp, a relic from David's earliest bachelor days, which only he could coax into satisfactory burning--Lucy made the move, and said to her with cold constraint:

'Will you come into the drawing-room?--David has a pipe in the study after dinner.'

'I want to speak to David,' said Louie, pushing back her chair with noisy decision. 'I'll go with him. He can smoke as much as he likes--I'm used to it.'

'Well, then, come into my study,' said David, trying to speak cheerfully. 'Lucy will look after Cecile.'

To Louie's evident triumph Cecile made difficulties about going with her aunt, but was at last persuaded by the prospect of seeing Sandy in bed. She had already shown signs in her curious frightened way of a considerable interest in Sandy.

Then David led the way to the study. He put his sister into his armchair and stood pipe in hand beside her, looking down upon her.

In his heart there was the pa.s.sionate self-accusing sense that he could not feel pity, or affection, or remorse for the past when she was there; every look and word roused in him the old irritation, the old wish to master her, he had known so often in his youth. Yet he drew himself together, striving to do his best.

Well, now, look here,' said Louie defiantly, 'I want some money.'

'So I supposed,' he said quietly, lighting his pipe.