Sisters

He had to relinquish her hand, and when she immediately made towards the bell-b.u.t.ton, he followed and arrested her.

"Let us have our talk first," he pleaded. "I don"t want anything to eat until I know--until I feel that you don"t grudge it."

"Oh, I don"t grudge it," she took him literally. "Not one square meal, at any rate. The only thing I am obliged to grudge is house-room--for any length of time--to single gentlemen. But that is not a question of hospitality, as you know. Sit down, and tell me all the news."

He sat down; she also--about two yards off. Across the gulf of Persian rug he looked at her steadily.

"You are angry with me," he observed. "Why, Debbie? Is it still the old quarrel--after all these years?"

Then her face changed like a filled lamp when you put a match to it.

She said, in a deep, breathless way:

"Do you know how many years it is?"

More in sorrow and surprise than in anger, he guessed her meaning after a moment"s thought.

"Is that my fault? The number of years has been of your choosing," he pointed out forbearingly. "You sent me away, when I never wanted to go.

You broke it off, altogether against my wish. You never relented--never made a sign. Even now I come back uninvited."

It was a clear case, and all he asked for was bare justice.

"Why didn"t you come before--uninvited? Why didn"t you come back to me when I was poor and lonely? Claud, I have been in every sort of trouble--my father is dead, I have lost all my sisters in one way and another, I have been living in cheap lodgings, doing without what I always thought were the necessaries of life, to keep Francie going and to get debts paid off--I have been ill, I have been unhappy, I have sometimes been penniless, and you have carefully pa.s.sed by on the other side, like that man in the Bible, and left me to my fate."

He was genuinely shocked. He knew that she had been horribly down in the world, but not that she had suffered to this extent. Seeing her sitting there in her beautiful gown, in her beautiful room, without one trace of those sordid years about her, his heart ached to think of them.

"My darling, I never knew--" "Why not?" she said swiftly. "Because you never tried to know--never cared to know. But now that I can be a credit to you again--the moment you hear that I have had a great fortune left to me--now you come back."

"Do you mean to say," he demanded sternly, "that you think--you honestly think I have come back to you on account of your money?"

She returned his cold, searching gaze in kind.

"Honestly," she said, "I do think so. There is no way out of it."

He rose deliberately, bowed to her, and picked up his hat. He was not really mercenary--or, if he was, he did not know it--and he was as intensely proud as she was. He felt that he had received the deadliest insult ever dealt him in his life, and one that he could never forget or forgive.

Without another word, he turned to the door and walked out. She stood still and watched him go, a calm smile curving her lips, a very cyclone of pa.s.sion tearing through her heart; and she scorned to recall him.

CHAPTER XXI.

Deb yearned to have her Australian sisters--Frances was European--with her at Redford, as in the old days; she hated to be luxuriating there without them. But for a time the husbands stood in the way. She could not bring herself to ask them too. The draper she hardly knew at all--in her correspondence with Rose his name was rarely mentioned by either, except in comprehensive messages at the end of letters; and Bennet Goldsworthy"s company, Deb said, simply made her ill.

It had made her ill since, after her father"s death, the clergyman had permitted himself, in her hearing, to vent his personal disappointment at the unexpected smallness of his wife"s inheritance. The man had presumed to take the air of one reasonably aggrieved; he had even dropped angry words about "deception" in the first heat of his chagrin.

"As if," said haughty Deb, "it was not enough for him to have married one of us!" When he was understood to say that he had "arranged his life" in accordance with the expectations he had been given the right to entertain, Deb"s withering comment was: "As if HIS life matters!"

But she was intolerant in her dislikes.

Poor Mr Goldsworthy, incurable cadger that he was, was bound to feel the family reverses acutely. When he had married Miss Pennycuick for her good, in that risky manner, he had naturally expected to be rewarded for the deed. If ever it be safe to trust to appearances, it had seemed safe then, so far as the solidity of the Pennycuicks"

position was concerned. They had imposed upon him with their careless splendour; they had misled him by their condonation of the marriage, which restored Mary to her privileges as a daughter of the house; most thoroughly had they taken him in by that voluntary wedding gift of five hundred pounds. With his habit--which he took to be the general habit--of getting all he could and giving nothing that he was not obliged to give, he could not understand the airy flinging away of all that money, when there was no "call" for it, only as a proof that Mr Pennycuick had more than he needed for all the legitimate claims on him. And the old man had said, again and again, that his daughters would share and share alike in whatever he had to leave.

When Mr Bentley, the new parson, came--young, sincere, self-sacrificing, devoted, a poor preacher and a hard worker, who refused to batten on Redford bounty--all the old furniture of the parsonage was made over to him (on time payment), and the Goldsworthys began life in Melbourne on the basis of a rich wife. It was surprising how the legend grew amongst his set that Mr Goldsworthy had a rich wife. That she might dress the part on all occasions, so that there would be no mistake about it, the family-provided trousseau was added to; it was also subtracted from, for the simplicity that was her taste and distinction was hateful in his sight. When she looked "common" in a cotton gown, she lowered his dignity in the world and amongst his professional fellows--supposed to be so envious of it, in spite of her red face. Deb had had to suffer the shock of seeing her sister in silk of a morning more than once, and it had been reported to her--though she did not believe it--that Mary wore a jewelled necklace to church on Sundays. Deb did not go to Bennet"s church, which was, fortunately, a long way from her suburban-villa home.

And she had been to his Melbourne house but twice. On her first visit she had penetrated to Mary"s room, and been horrified to find the husband"s clothes hung up in it from her door-pegs, and his razors and brushes mixed up with her things on her dressing-table. The arrangement in the country parsonage was to be accounted for; to find it here, made deliberately and of MALICE PREPENSE, was to see what gulfs now yawned between Mary"s old life and the new one. Deb reached forth for a comb, and drew back her hand as if she had inadvertently touched a snake.

Mary"s red face went purple as she explained that there was not s.p.a.ce in that house for a dressing-room. There was s.p.a.ce enough going to waste in the drawing-room, where Deb had her feelings hurt on her second visit. It was a very large room, sharing the front of the house with a large study; and behind them all the other rooms huddled as of no account, none of them bigger than Keziah"s Redford storeroom. The study was sacred to the master of the house; the drawing-room to "company". One look showed Deb that Mary never sat there, and that it was not she who had chosen and arranged the furniture. The foundation of the scheme was a costly "suite", upholstered in palish silk brocade, the separate pieces standing at fixed intervals apart on a gorgeous Axminster carpet. When Deb entered the room, Mr Goldsworthy was bending over the central sofa, excited and talking loudly. Miss Goldsworthy and Mary stood by, mute and drooping; Ruby looked on irresponsibly, with joy in her eye.

"What"s the matter?" inquired Deb, advancing.

As she was not a great lady then, but quite the contrary, Mr Goldsworthy explained what was the matter, with scarcely any modification of his minatory air. A caller had called yesterday, bringing with her a little boy. Mary had thoughtlessly fed the little boy with soft cake, and the little boy had first made his hands sticky with it, and then pawed the sofa, which had cost him (B.G.) nearly twenty pounds (part of Mary"s 500 pounds). Greasy marks had been left on that lovely brocade, for which he (not she) had given thirty-five shillings a yard, and which he had forbidden children to be allowed to sit on. As if that were not bad enough, "they"--i.e., those two poor women--had, without telling him, tried to take the marks out with some wretched chemist"s stuff, which had not taken them out, but only spread them more. Now the sofa was completely spoiled, and what to do he did not know, unless he could match the brocade, which was scarcely likely.

And ill could he afford to be buying brocade--and so on. Finally he went out to consult with a furniture repairer of his acquaintance, banging doors behind him. Deb cast a scornful glance upon the smudged brocade.

"What a fuss about nothing!" she brushed the subject by.

"My brother is very particular about this room," Miss Goldsworthy apologised for him.

"So I see."

"And he is very fond of this brocade, which he chose himself. It certainly is very pretty--don"t you think so? But too delicate to wear well. I am always frightened to see children go near it, or even grown-up people when it has been raining, or if they have been gathering dust--it does show every spot so! And it was the mother"s fault. I signed to Mary to give him a biscuit, but his mother picked out that cake, which had jam in it. It is very unfortunate. I don"t wonder at his being vexed."

"Why don"t you have chintz covers, Moll?"

"Oh, he wouldn"t like it to be covered up," Miss Goldsworthy struck in, and seemed shocked herself at the suggested waste. Mary lifted dull eyes to her sister"s face.

"Come and have some tea," she said. "Come, auntie; it is no use your worrying yourself."

And they went into the poky living room, which smelt of meals, and had tea, and the sort of barren talk that the presence of the third person necessitated. Mary seemed purposely to avoid a TETE-A-TETE. When Miss Goldsworthy went to fetch the baby, Ruby was kept at her step-mother"s side. Only when the black-eyed boy appeared did Mary brighten into a likeness to her old self. She was a born mother, and her child consoled her. Then, in the midst of the baby worship, back came the still agitated husband and father, the furniture man with him; and the house was filled anew with the affair of the soiled sofa, so that Deb"s presence, as also her departure, attracted little attention. As her brother-in-law pushed out a valedictory hand, she noticed a shirt-cuff that had the grime of days upon it.

"He economises in the wash," she soliloquised, with wrinkling nostril and curling lip. "And in those filthy cheap coals that choke the grate with dust, and in tea that is undrinkable. Oh, what a house!"

And she had not been there since. But now--

Her benevolence embraced the world, and the world included Bennet Goldsworthy. It was no longer in his power to make her feel ill. The sun of her prosperity, shining on him at her sister"s side--poor, struggling, well-meaning little man!--gave him a pathetic and appealing interest. In fact, it was to him that her maternal dispositions towards her family drew her first.

"Thank G.o.d," she said to herself, "I can now make things a bit easier for that poor child. She won"t let me, I daresay, but he will."

She took the humble tram to their suburb, and rang at their parsonage door. Having considerately sent word that she was coming, due preparations had been made to receive her. She was shown into the drawing-room, which had not a displaced chair, and where the many-coloured Axminster and the cherished brocade still looked as good as new. Almost her first act was to search for the grease marks on the sofa--the spot was indicated by a bleached patch--and she sat down on it, alone for a few minutes. On this occasion the old aunt had been ordered to keep in the background; Ruby also, after due consideration of her claims, had been denied the share she clamoured for of the impending excitement, and sent out of the house; Mary had had her directions, and remained invisible for a time. She was employed in getting Robert ready for inspection--brushing his best jacket, tying his best neck-tie, etc., while he jerked about under her hands, and freely criticised her labours on his behalf. For Robert took after his father as a knowing person. He was, in fact, a bright and clever lad, who knew some things better than his mother did. She was ever proud to admit it; but his own open acceptance of superiority, and readiness to keep it before her eyes at all times, was one of the secret crosses of her life, weighed down with so many. However, if you marry the wrong man, you cannot expect to have the right children, and it was something that this boy had the genuineness of his intellectual gifts to give her an excuse to adore him.

"There, that will do. It is very bad form, you know, to be so fussy about people coming, and so anxious about what they may think about you," the young authority upon etiquette instructed the fine-fibred gentlewoman, who had done him the honour to be his mother. And Mary took the rebuke humbly.

Bennet Goldsworthy, alone, came softly into the drawing-room to receive the distinguished guest. He had grown fat and tubby, and a phrase of Claud Dalzell"s flashed into Deb"s memory as she marked the manner of his approach--"that crawling a.s.s, that would lick your boots for sixpence". The noonday sun does not affect polished metal more obviously than Deb"s wealth affected him.

"This is good of you," he murmured brokenly, pressing her gloved hand.

"This is indeed good of you!" "I ought to have been before," she returned graciously--it was so easy to be gracious to him now--"I have been wanting to come; but you cannot imagine how many hindrances I have had."

"Oh, but I can indeed!" with earnest emphasis--"I can indeed! And have grieved that I was not able to be of some service to you in your--your very difficult position. I did not like to seem to force myself upon you, but I hoped--I confidently hoped that you would send for me, if it was in my power to be of the slightest a.s.sistance to you."