The History of David Grieve Part 94

'Well, the festivals don't do _you_ any good,' said Lucy, emphatically; 'they always tire you to death. When you do get to church, I don't believe you can enjoy anything. Why don't you let other people have a turn now, after all these years? There's Miss Barham, and Charlotte Corfield, and Mrs. Willan--they'd all do a great deal more if you didn't do so much. I know that.'

Lucy's cool bright eye meant, indeed, that she had heard some remarks made of late with regard to Dora's position at St. Damian's somewhat unfavourable to her cousin. It was said that she was jealous of co-operation or interference on the part of new members of the congregation in the various tasks she had been accustomed for years past to lay upon herself in connection with the church.

She was universally held to be extraordinarily good; but both in the large shop, where she was now forewoman, and at St. Damian's, people were rather afraid of her, and inclined to head oppositions to her. A certain severity had grown upon her; she was more self-confident, though it was a self-confidence grounded always on the authority of the Church; and some parts of the nature which at twenty had been still soft and plastic were now tending to rigidity.

At Lucy's words she flushed a little.

'How can they know as well as I what has to be done?' she said with energy. 'The chancel screen is _beautiful_, Lucy--all yellow fern and heather. You must go to-morrow, and take Sandy.'

As she spoke she threw off her waterproof and unloosed the strings of her black bonnet. Her dark serge dress with its white turn-down collar and armlets--worn these last for the sake of her embroidery work--gave her a dedicated conventual look. She was paler than of old; the eyes, though beautiful and luminous, were no longer young, and lines were fast deepening in the cheeks and chin, with their round childish moulding. What had been _naivete_ and tremulous sweetness at twenty, was now conscious strength and patience. The countenance had been fashioned--and fashioned n.o.bly--by life; but the tool had cut deep, and had not spared the first grace of the woman in developing the saint. The hands especially, the long thin hands defaced by the labour of years, which met yours in a grasp so full of purpose and feeling, told a story and symbolised a character.

'David won't come,' said Lucy, in answer to Dora's last remark; 'he hardly ever goes anywhere now unless he hears of some one going to preach that he thinks he'll like.'

'No--I know,' said Dora. A shade came over her face. The att.i.tude of David Grieve towards religion during the last four or five years represented to her the deep disappointment of certain eager hopes, perhaps one might almost call them ambitions, of her missionary youth. The disappointment had brought a certain bitterness with it, though for long years she had been sister and closest friend to both David and his wife. And it had made her doubly sensitive with regard to Lucy, whom she had herself brought over from the Baptist communion to the Church, and Sandy, who was her G.o.dchild.

After a pause, she hesitatingly brought a small paper book out of the handbag she carried.

'I brought you this, Lucy. Father Russell sent it you. He thinks it the best beginning book you can have. He always gives it in the parish; and if the mothers will only use it, it makes it so much easier to teach the children when they come to Sunday school.'

Lucy took it doubtfully. It was called 'The Mother's Catechism;'

and, opening it, she saw that it contained a series of questions and answers, as between a mother and a child.

'I don't think Sandy would understand it,' she said, slowly, as she turned it over.

'Oh yes, he would!' said Dora, eagerly. 'Why, he's nearly five, Lucy. It's really time you began to teach him something--unless you want him to grow up a little heathen!'

The last words had a note of indignation. Lucy took no notice. She was still turning over the book.

'And I don't think David will like it,' she said, still more slowly than before.

Dora flushed.

'He can't want to keep Sandy from being taught any religion at all!

It wouldn't be fair to you--or to the child. And if he won't do it, if he isn't certain enough about what he thinks, how can he mind your doing it?'

'I don't know,' said Lucy, and paused. 'I sometimes think,' she went on, with more energy, 'that David will be quite different some day from what he has been. I'm sure he'll want to teach Sandy.'

'He's got nothing to teach him!' cried Dora. Then she added in another voice--a voice of wounded feeling--'If he was to be brought up an atheist, I don't think David ought to have asked me to be G.o.dmother.'

'He shan't be brought up an atheist,' exclaimed Lucy startled.

Then, feeling the subject too much for her--for it provoked in her a mingled train of memories which she had not words enough to express--she turned back to her work, leaving the book on the table and the discussion pending.

'David's dreadfully late,' she said, discontentedly, looking at the clock.

'Where is he?'

'Down in Ancoats, I expect. He told me he had a committee there to-day after work, about those houses he's going to pull down. He's got Mr. Buller and Mr. Haycraft--and'--Lucy named some half-dozen more rich and well-known men--'to help him, and they're going to pull down one of the worst bits of James Street, David says, and build up new houses for working people. He's wild about it. Oh, I know we'll have no money at all left soon!' cried Lucy indignantly, with a shrug of her small shoulders.

Dora smiled at what seemed to her a childish petulance.

'Why, I'm sure you've got everything very nice, Lucy, and all you want.'

'No, indeed, I _haven't_ got all I want,' said Lucy, looking up and frowning; 'I never shall, neither. I want David to be--to be--like everybody else. He might be a rich man to-morrow if he wouldn't have such ideas. He doesn't think a bit about me and Sandy. I told you what would happen when he made that division between the bookselling and the printing, and took up with those ideas about the men. I knew he'd come not to care about the bookselling. And I was _perfectly_ right! There's that printing-office getting bigger and bigger, and crowds of men waiting to be taken on, and such a lot of business doing as never was. And are we a bit the richer? Not a penny--or hardly. It's sickening to hear the way people talk about him! Why, they say the last election wouldn't have been nearly so good for the Liberals all about the North if it hadn't been for the things he's always publishing and the two papers he started last year. He might be a member of Parliament any day, and he wouldn't be a member of Parliament--not he! He told me he didn't care twopence about it.

No, he doesn't care for anything but just taking _our_ money and giving it to other people--there! You may say what you like, but it's true.'

The wilful energy with which Lucy spoke the last words transformed the small face--brought out the harder lines on it.

'Well, I never know what it is that _you_ want exactly,' said Dora. 'I don't think you do yourself.'

Lucy st.i.tched silently, her thin red lips pressed together. She knew perfectly well what she wanted, only she was ashamed to confess it to the religious and ascetic Dora. Her ideal of living was filled in with images and desires abundantly derived from Manchester life, where every day she saw people grow rich rapidly, and rise as a matter of course into that upper region of gentility, carriages, servants, wines, and grouse-moors, whither, ever since it had become plain to her that David could, if he chose, easily place her there, it had been her constant craving to go. Other people came to be gentlefolks and lord it over the land--why not they? It made her mad, as she had said to Dora, to see _their_ money--their very own money--chucked away to other people, and they getting no good of it, and remaining mere working booksellers and printers as before.

'Why don't you go and help him?' said Dora suddenly. 'Perhaps if you were to go right in and see what he's doing, you wouldn't mind it so much. You might get to like it. He doesn't want to keep everything to himself--he wants to share with those that need. If there were a good many others like that, perhaps there'd be fewer awful things happening down at Ancoats.'

A sigh rose to her lips. Her beautiful eyes grew sad.

'Well, I did try once or twice,' said Lucy, pettishly, 'but I've always told you that sort of thing isn't in my line. Of course I understand about giving away, and all that. But he'll hardly let you give away at all! He says it's pauperising the people. And the things he wants me to do--I never seem to do 'em right, and I can't get to care a bit about them.'

The tone in her voice betrayed a past experience which had been in some way trying and discouraging to a fine natural vanity.

Dora did not answer. She played absently with the little book on the table.

'Oh! but he's going to let us accept the invitation to Benet's Park--I didn't tell you that,' said Lucy suddenly, her face clearing.

Dora was startled.

'Why, I thought you told me he wouldn't go?'

'So I did. But--well, I let out!' said Lucy, colouring.

He's changed his mind. But I'm rather in a fright, Dora, though I don't tell him. Think of that big house and all those servants--I'm more frightened of _them_ than of anybody! I say, _do_ you think my new dresses'll do? You'll come up and look at them, won't you?

Not that you're much use about dresses.'

Dora was profoundly interested and somewhat bewildered. That her little cousin Lucy, Purcell's daughter and Daddy's niece, should be going to stay as an invited guest in a castle, with an earl and countess, was very amazing. Was it because the Radicals had got the upper hand so much at the election? She could not understand it, but some of her old girlishness, her old interest in small womanish trifles, came back upon her, and she discussed the details of what Lucy might expect so eagerly that Lucy was quite delighted with her.

In the middle of their talk a step was heard in the hall.

'Ah, there he is!' said Lucy; 'now we'll ring for supper, and I'll go and get ready.'

Dora sat alone for a few minutes, and then David came in.

'Ah! Dora, this is nice. Lucy says you will stay to supper. We get so busy, you and I, we see each other much too seldom.'

He spoke in his most cordial, brotherly tone, and, standing on the rug with his back to the fire, he looked down upon her with evident pleasure.

As for her, though the throb of her young pa.s.sion had been so soon and so sternly silenced, it was still happiness to her to be in the same room with David Grieve, and any unusual kindness from him, or a long talk with him, would often send her back to her little room in Ancoats stored with a cheerful warmth of soul which helped her through many days. For of late years she had been more liable than of old to fits of fretting--fretting about her father, about her own sins and other people's, about the little worries of her Sunday-school cla.s.s, or the little rubs of church work. The contact with a nature so large and stimulating, though sometimes it angered and depressed her through the influence of religious considerations, was yet on the whole of infinite service to her, of more service than she knew.

'Have you forgiven me for upsetting Sandy?' she asked him, with a smile.

'I'm on the way to it. I left him just now prancing about Lucy's bed, and making an abominable noise. She told him to be quiet, whereupon he indignantly informed her that he was "a dwagon hunting wats." So I imagine he hasn't had "the wrong dinner" to-day.'