"What!" said Jill. "What did you say?"
"Sandringham. Where we live. I got the name from your father. I remember him telling me there was a place called that in England."
"There is." Jill"s voice bubbled. "The King lives there."
"Is that so?" said Mr. Mariner. "Well, I bet he doesn"t have the trouble with help that we have here. I have to pay our girl fifty dollars a month, and another twenty for the man who looks after the furnace and chops wood. They"re all robbers. And if you kick they quit on you!"
III
Jill endured Sandringham for ten days; and, looking back on that period of her life later, she wondered how she did it. The sense of desolation which had gripped her on the station platform increased rather than diminished as she grew accustomed to her surroundings. The east wind died away, and the sun shone fitfully with a suggestion of warmth, but her uncle"s bleakness appeared to be a static quality, independent of weather conditions. Her aunt, a faded woman, with a perpetual cold in the head, did nothing to promote cheerfulness. The rest of the household consisted of a gloomy child, "Tibby," aged eight; a spaniel, probably a few years older, and an intermittent cat, who, when he did put in an appearance, was the life and soul of the party, but whose visits to his home were all too infrequent for Jill.
The picture which Mr. Mariner had formed in his mind of Jill as a wealthy young lady with a taste for house property continued as vivid as ever. It was his practice each morning to conduct her about the neighbourhood, introducing her to the various houses in which he had sunk most of the money he had made in business. Mr. Mariner"s life centred around Brookport real estate, and the embarra.s.sed Jill was compelled to inspect sitting-rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and master"s bedrooms till the sound of a key turning in a lock gave her a feeling of nervous exhaustion. Most of her uncle"s houses were converted farm-houses, and, as one unfortunate purchaser had remarked, not so darned converted at that. The days she spent at Brookport remained in Jill"s memory as a smell of dampness and chill and closeness.
"You want to buy," said Mr. Mariner every time he shut a front-door behind them. "Not rent. Buy. Then, if you don"t want to live here, you can always rent in the summer."
It seemed incredible to Jill that the summer would ever come. Winter held Brookport in its grip. For the first time in her life she was tasting real loneliness. She wandered over the snow-patched fields down to the frozen bay, and found the intense stillness, punctuated only by the occasional distant gunshot of some optimist trying for duck, oppressive rather than restful. She looked on the weird beauty of the ice-bound marshes which glittered red and green and blue in the sun with unseeing eyes; for her isolation was giving her time to think, and thought was a torment.
On the eighth day came a letter from Uncle Chris--a cheerful, even rollicking letter. Things were going well with Uncle Chris, it seemed.
As was his habit, he did not enter into details, but he wrote in a s.p.a.cious way of large things to be, of affairs that were coming out right, of prosperity in sight. As tangible evidence of success, he enclosed a present of twenty dollars for Jill to spend in the Brookport shops.
The letter arrived by the morning mail, and two hours later Mr.
Mariner took Jill by one of his usual overland routes to see a house nearer the village than most of those which she had viewed. Mr.
Mariner had exhausted the supply of cottages belonging to himself, and this one was the property of an acquaintance. There would be an agent"s fee for him in the deal, if it went through, and Mr. Mariner was not a man who despised money in small quant.i.ties.
There was a touch of hopefulness in his gloom this morning, like the first intimation of sunshine after a wet day. He had been thinking the thing over, and had come to the conclusion that Jill"s unresponsiveness when confronted with the houses she had already seen was due to the fact that she had loftier ideas than he had supposed. Something a little more magnificent than the twelve thousand dollar places he had shown her was what she desired. This house stood on a hill looking down on the bay, in several acres of ground. It had its private landing-stage and bath-house, its dairy, its sleeping-porches--everything, in fact, that a sensible girl could want. Mr. Mariner could not bring himself to suppose that he would fail again to-day.
"They"re asking a hundred and five thousand," he said, "but I know they"d take a hundred thousand. And, if it was a question of cash down, they would go even lower. It"s a fine house. You could entertain there. Mrs. Bruggenheim rented it last summer, and wanted to buy, but she wouldn"t go above ninety thousand. If you want it, you"d better make up your mind quick. A place like this is apt to be snapped up in a hurry."
Jill could endure it no longer.
"But, you see," she said gently, "all I have in the world is twenty dollars!"
There was a painful pause. Mr. Mariner shot a swift glance at her in the hope of discovering that she had spoken humorously, but was compelled to decide that she had not.
"Twenty dollars!" he exclaimed.
"Twenty dollars," said Jill.
"But your father was a rich man." Mr. Mariner"s voice was high and plaintive. "He made a fortune over here before he went to England."
"It"s all gone. I got nipped," said Jill, who was finding a certain amount of humour in the situation, "in Amalgamated Dyes."
"Amalgamated Dyes?"
"They"re something," explained Jill, "that people get nipped in."
Mr. Mariner digested this.
"You speculated?" he gasped.
"Yes."
"You shouldn"t have been allowed to do it," said Mr. Mariner warmly.
"Major Selby, your uncle, ought to have known better than to allow you."
"Yes, oughtn"t he?" said Jill demurely.
There was another silence, lasting for about a quarter of a mile.
"Well, it"s a bad business," said Mr. Mariner.
"Yes," said Jill. "I"ve felt that myself."
The result of this conversation was to effect a change in the atmosphere of Sandringham. The alteration in the demeanour of people of parsimonious habit, when they discover that the guest they are entertaining is a pauper and not, as they had supposed, an heiress, is subtle but well marked. In most cases, more well marked than subtle.
Nothing was actually said, but there are thoughts that are almost as audible as words. A certain suspense seemed to creep into the air, as happens when a situation has been reached which is too poignant to last. Greek Tragedy affects the reader with the same sense of overhanging doom. Things, we feel, cannot go on as they are.
That night, after dinner, Mrs. Mariner asked Jill to read to her.
"Print tries my eyes so, dear," said Mrs. Mariner.
It was a small thing, but it had the significance of that little cloud that arose out of the sea like a man"s hand. Jill appreciated the portent. She was, she perceived, to make herself useful.
"Of course I will," she said cordially. "What would you like me to read?"
She hated reading aloud. It always made her throat sore, and her eye skipped to the end of each page and took the interest out of it long before the proper time. But she proceeded bravely, for her conscience was troubling her. Her sympathy was divided equally between these unfortunate people who had been saddled with an undesired visitor and herself who had been placed in a position at which every independent nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had loathed being under obligations to strangers or those whom she did not love.
"Thank you, dear," said Mrs. Mariner, when Jill"s voice had roughened to a weary croak. "You read so well." She wrestled ineffectually with her handkerchief against the cold in the head from which she had always suffered. "It would be nice if you would do it every night, don"t you think? You have no idea how tired print makes my eyes."
On the following morning after breakfast, at the hour when she had hitherto gone house-hunting with Mr. Mariner, the child Tibby, of whom up till now she had seen little except at meals, presented himself to her, coated and shod for the open and regarding her with a dull and phlegmatic gaze.
"Ma says will you please take me for a nice walk!"
Jill"s heart sank. She loved children, but Tibby was not an ingratiating child. He was a Mr. Mariner in little. He had the family gloom. It puzzled Jill sometimes why this branch of the family should look on life with so jaundiced an eye. She remembered her father as a cheerful man, alive to the small humours of life.
"All right, Tibby. Where shall we go?"
"Ma says we must keep on the roads and I mustn"t slide."
Jill was thoughtful during the walk. Tibby, who was no conversationist, gave her every opportunity for meditation. She perceived that in the s.p.a.ce of a few hours she had sunk in the social scale. If there was any difference between her position and that of a paid nurse and companion it lay in the fact that she was not paid. She looked about her at the grim countryside, gave a thought to the chill gloom of the house to which she was about to return, and her heart sank.
Nearing home, Tibby vouched his first independent observation.
"The hired man"s quit!"
"Has he?"