The History of David Grieve Part 106

'Reuben,' said Hannah with severity, 'hand me that sugar-stick.'

Reuben groped in his pockets for the barley-sugar, which, in spite of Hannah's scoffs, he had bought in Market Street the evening before, 'for t' childer.' He watched his wife in gaping astonishment as he saw her approaching Sandy, with blandishments which, rough and clumsy as they were, had nevertheless the effect of beguiling that young man on to the lap where barley-sugar was to be had.

Hannah fed him triumphantly, making loud remarks on his beauty and cleverness.

Meanwhile Louie stood on the other side of the fire, holding Cecile close against her, with a tight defiant grip--her lip twitching contemptuously. David, always sensitively alive to her presence and her moods, insisted in the midst of Sandy's feast that Cecile should have her share. Sandy held out the barley-sugar, following it with wistful eyes. Louie beat down Cecile's grasping hand. 'You shan't spoil your tea--you'll be sick with that stuff!' she said imperiously. Hannah turned, and brought a slow venomous scrutiny to bear upon her niece--on the slim tall figure in the elegant Parisian dress, the daintily curled and frizzled head, the wild angry eyes. Then she withdrew her glance, contented. Louie's evident jealousy appeased her. She had come to Manchester with one fixed determination--not to be 'talked foine to by that hizzy.'

At this juncture tea made its appearance, Lucy having some time ago given up the sit-down tea in the dining-room, which was the natural custom of her cla.s.s, as not genteel. She seated herself nervously to pour it out. Hannah had at the very beginning put her down 'as a middlin' soart o' person,' and vouchsafed her very little notice.

'Auntie Dora! auntie Dora!' cried Sandy, escaping from Hannah's knee, 'I'm coming to sit by zoo.'

And as soon as he had got comfortably into her pocket, he pulled her head down and whispered to her, his thoughts running as before in the theological groove, 'Auntie Dora, G.o.d made me--and G.o.d made Cecile--_did_ G.o.d make that one?'

And he nodded across at Hannah, huddling himself together meanwhile in a paroxysm of glee and mischief. He was excited by the flatteries he had been receiving, and Dora, thankful to see that Hannah had heard nothing, could only quiet him by copious supplies of bread and b.u.t.ter.

David wooed Cecile to sit on a stool beside him, and things went smoothly for a time, though Hannah made it clearly evident that this was not the kind of tea she had expected, and that she 'didn't howd wi' new-fangled ways o' takkin' your vittles.' Reuben did his best to cover and neutralise her remarks by gossip to David about the farm and the valley. 'Eh--it's been n.o.bbut _raggy_ weather up o' the moors this winter, Davy, an' a great lot o' sheep lost.

n.o.bbut twothrey o' mine, I thank th' Lord.' But in the midst of a most unflattering account of the later morals and development of the Wigson family, Reuben stopped dead short, with a stare at the door.

'Wal, aa niver!--theer's Mr. Ancrum hissel,--I do uphowd yo!'

And the old man rose with effusion, his queer eyes and face beaming and blinking with a light of affectionate memory, for Ancrum stood in the doorway, smiling a mute inquiry at Lucy as to whether he might come in. David sprang up to bring him into the circle. Hannah held out an ungracious hand. Never, all these years, had she forgiven the ex-minister those representations he had once made on the subject of David's 'prenticing.

Then the new-comer sat down by Reuben cheerily, parrying the farmer's concern about his altered looks, and watching Louie, who had thrown him a careless word in answer to his greeting. Dora, who had come to know him well, and to feel much of the affectionate reverence for him that David did, in spite of some bewilderment as to his religious position, went round presently to talk to him, and Sandy as it happened was left on his stool for a minute or two forgotten. He asked his mother plaintively for cake, and she did not hear him. Meanwhile Cecile had cake, and he followed her eating of it with resentful eyes.

'Come here, Cecile,' said David, 'and hold the cake while I cut it; there's a useful child.'

He handed a piece to Reuben, and then put the next into Cecile's hand.

'Ready for some more, little woman?'

Cecile in a furtive squirrel-like way seized the piece and was retiring with it, when Sandy, beside himself, jumped from his stool, rushed at his cousin and beat her wildly with his small fists.

'Yo're a geedy thing--a geedy 'gustin' thing!' he cried, sobbing partly because he wanted the cake, still more because, after his exaltation on Hannah's knee, he had been so unaccountably neglected. To see Cecile battening on a second piece while he was denied a first was more than could be borne.

'You little viper, you!' exclaimed Louie, and springing up, she swept across to Sandy, and boxed his ears smartly, just as she was accustomed to box Cecile's, whenever the fancy took her.

The child raised a piercing cry, and David caught him up.

'Give him to me, David, give him to me,' cried Lucy, who had almost upset the tea-table in her rush to her child. 'I'll see whether that sister of yours shall beat and abuse my boy in my own house! Oh, she may beat her own child as much as she pleases, she does it all day long! If she were a poor person she would be had up.'

Her face glowed with pa.s.sion. The exasperation of many days spoke in her outburst. David, himself trembling with anger, in vain tried to quiet her and Sandy.

'Ay, I reckon she maks it hot wark for them 'at ha to live wi her,'

said Hannah audibly, looking round on the scene with a certain enjoyment which contrasted with the panic and distress of the rest.

Louie, who was holding Cecile--also in tears--in her arms, swept her fierce, contemptuous gaze from Lucy to her ancient enemy.

'You must be putting in _your_ word, must you?--you old toad, you--you that robbed us of our money till your own husband was ashamed of you!'

And, totally regardless of the presence of Dora and Ancrum, and of the efforts made to silence her by Dora or by the flushed and unhappy Reuben, she descended on her foe. She flung charge after charge in Hannah's face, showing the minutest and most vindictive memory for all the sordid miseries of her childhood; and then when her pa.s.sion had spent itself on her aunt, she returned to Lucy, exulting in the sobs and the excitement she had produced. In vain did David try either to silence her or to take Lucy away. Nothing but violence could have stopped the sister's tongue; his wife, under a sort of fascination of terror and rage, would not move.

Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David--of the money she had come to ask--of her leave-taking on the morrow--to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring that no one would ever take her for anything else than what she was, the daughter of a vulgar cheese-paring old hypocrite; and, finally, she attacked Sandy as a nasty, greedy, abominable little monkey, not fit to a.s.sociate with her child, and badly in want of the stick.

Then slowly she retreated to the door out of breath, the wild lightnings of her eyes flashing on them still. David was holding the hysterical Lucy, while Dora was trying to quiet Sandy.

Otherwise a profound silence had fallen on them all, a silence which seemed but to kindle Louie's fury the more.

'Ah, you think you've got him in your power, him and his money, you little white-livered cat!' she cried, standing in the doorway, and fixing Lucy with a look beneath which her sister-in-law quailed, and hid her face on David's arm. 'You think you'll stop him giving it to them that have a right to look to him? Perhaps you'd better look out; perhaps there are people who know more about him than you. Do you think he would ever have looked at you, you little pows.e.m.e.nt, if he hadn't been taken on the rebound?'

She gave a mad laugh as she flung out the old Derbyshire word of abuse, and stood defying them, David and all. David strode forward and shut the door upon her. Then he went tenderly up to his wife, and took her and Sandy into the library.

The sound of Cecile's wails could be heard in the distance. The frightened Reuben turned and looked at his wife. She had grown paler even than before, but her eyes were all alive.

'A racklesome, natterin' creetur as ivir I seed,' she said calmly; 'I allus telt tha, Reuben Grieve, what hoo'd coom to. It's bred in her--that's yan thing to be hodden i' mind. But I'll shift her in double quick-sticks if she ever cooms meddlin' i' _my_ house, Reuben Grieve--soa yo know.'

'She oughtn't to stay here,' said Ancrum in a quick undertone to Dora; 'she might do that mother and child a mischief.'

Dora sat absorbed in her pity for David, in her pa.s.sionate sympathy for this home that was as her own.

'She is going to-morrow, thank G.o.d!' she said with a long breath; 'oh, what an awful woman!'

Ancrum looked at her with a little sad smile.

'Whom are you sorry for?' he asked. 'Those two in there?' and he nodded towards the library. 'Think again, Miss Dora. There is one face that will haunt me whenever I think of this--the face of that French child.'

All the afternoon visitors dispersed. The hours pa.s.sed. Lucy, worn out, had gone to bed with a crying which seemed to have in it some new and heavy element she would not speak of, even to David. The evening meal came, and there was no sign or sound from that room upstairs where Louie had locked herself in.

David stood by the fire in the dining-room, his lips sternly set.

He had despatched a servant to Louie's door with an offer to send up food for her and Cecile. But the girl had got no answer. Was he bound to go--bound to bring about the possible renewal of a degrading scene?

At this moment Lizzie, the little nurse, tapped at the door.

'If you please, sir--'

'Yes. Anything wrong with Master Sandy?'

David went to the door in a tremor. 'He won't go to sleep, sir. He wants you, and I'm afraid he'll disturb mistress again.'

David ran upstairs.

'Sandy, what do you want?'

Sandy was crying violently, far down under the bedclothes. When David drew him out, he was found to be grasping a piece of crumbling cake, sticky with tears.

'It's Cecile's cake,' he sobbed into his father's ear. 'I want to give it her.'

And in fact, after his onslaught upon her, Cecile had dropped the offending cake, which he had instantly picked up the moment before Louie struck him. He had held it tight gripped ever since, and repentance was busy in his small heart.

David thought a moment.

'Come with me, Sandy,' he said at last, and, wrapping up the child in an old shawl that hung near, he carried him off to Louie's door.

'Louie!' he called, after his knock, in a low voice, for he was uncomfortably aware that his household was on the watch for developments.