Sisters

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 space in that house for a dressing-room. There was space 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 God," 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 ass, 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 assistance to you."

"Oh, yes—thank you so much—if I had needed anybody. But there were only too many kind friends."

"Aha! Yes, I expect so." His eye lighted and his lip curled craftily. "I have no doubt whatever of THAT. 'Where the carcase is—' You know the rest?"

"I am not a carcase," she rallied him playfully—for quite the first time in her life.

"No, indeed; I should have said 'prey'. Ah, my dear De—Miss Pennycuick, you will find plenty and to spare of so-called friends, professing anxiety to serve you, when their only object is to serve themselves."

"I expect so," she assented, smiling.

"So young a girl"—subtle flattery this, now that Deb was in her late thirties—"to be suddenly called to a position of such immense danger and responsibility! But"—cheeringly—"I said when I heard of it that Mr Thornycroft had justified my high opinion of his judgment and character. It is not often that great wealth comes into hands so worthy of it."

"I am afraid they are not very worthy," sighed Deb. Mr Goldsworthy knew better. He knew HER better—not only from personal intercourse, the observation and intuition of a man trained to read character, but from the loving representations of his dear wife.

"Where is she?" Miss Pennycuick asked abruptly. "Not out, I hope?"

"Out—hardly! She will be here in a moment. I am afraid, when you see her, you will think her looking delicate. The state of her health is a matter of the most anxious concern to me."

"What is the matter with her health? She was always well at home. We used to think her the strongest of the family—until—"

"Until she fell into the clutches of that dreadful man," Mr Goldsworthy concluded for her.

"Oh!"—Deb coloured and frowned—"that is not what I was going to say." (What she had really been going to say was—"until her marriage.") "And why do you rake up that old story? I thought it had all been forgotten long ago."

"It has been unpleasantly revived," said Mr Goldsworthy solemnly. "And it is my duty to tell you about it, if you have not heard."

Deb looked equally annoyed and alarmed. "What has been revived?" she asked.

He dropped his voice apologetically.

"I have been hearing of his going on in exactly the same way with another."

"Oh," sighed Deb, relieved that it was not Mary who had been the reviver; "then it's no business of ours, thank goodness."

"Pardon me—it is very much our business," he urged weightily. "I grieve to tell you that it is your sister, Mrs Ewing, who is implicated in the affair. Do you mean to say that you know nothing about it?"

Deb knew something, and so she put the question by.

"I don't encourage scandalmongers. Mrs Ewing is young and thoughtless—and pretty—which naturally lays her open to ill—natured gossip." "My informant is one of the least ill-natured of women; she is a person of the highest principle."

"Ah, those high-principled women—I know them!"

Mr Goldsworthy was nonplussed for the moment. He could not accept the suggestion that Deb was not high-principled. But he gave up his informant.

"There is ample evidence that the man is Mrs Ewing's lover," he grieved. "He has been seen with her in the most equivocal situations. I don't wish to go into details—to mention things unfit for a young girl's ears—"

"I hope not," put in Deb, her patience giving out. "I am not fond of that kind of talk. I should not believe, either, in any nasty tales connected with my sister, or with Captain Carey. And you ought not to listen to them, for Mary's sake. You should not pander to your high-principled ladies. You should tell them to be more charitable, and to mind their own business."

A year ago the parson would have taken umbrage at this rebuke; he now hastened to deprecate displeasure on the part of the one whom, of all the world, he most desired to please.

"Far be it from me to speak ill of anyone belonging to you," he declared solemnly; but still he could not help it.

The most good-natured person, if he be greedy, will seek to ingratiate himself with Power by disparagement of rival suitors. He was following an impulse that might be described as an instinct, in trying to weaken Deb's favour towards the rest of her relatives in order to concentrate as much as possible upon himself—to push back, as it were, the hands that he imagined eagerly outstretched to her (palm upwards), that the more might be dropped into his own. He asked her if she had seen Mrs Breen, and sighed over that plebeian connection.

"I may be poor," said he, "but I do come of a good family. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but we cannot help our prejudices." "It is a ridiculous prejudice," said Deb, "especially in a country like this."

"Oh, it is—it is. I own it; but—well, you know—"

She brusquely brought him back to the question of Mary's health.

"It is Mary that I want to hear about. Tell me—before she comes in—what is the matter with her?"

He was willingly confidential.

"She has worries," said he—"worries that you, my dear young lady, in YOUR position, know nothing of—would not understand if I were to tell you."

"I have been in positions to understand most kinds of worries," said Deb. "What are they? Money worries?"

"Well, I have a delicacy in—"

"Oh, you need not have! I know, of course, that you cannot have been too well off, and I am here on purpose to do something for you, if you will allow me.' There was no need to beat about the bush, she knew, since Mary was out of hearing. 'Tell me exactly, if you don't mind—in strict confidence, of course. No need to trouble her—and I shall not say anything."

He told her, with fullness and fervour, when he had expressed his too fulsome gratitude.

"I have done my best, Miss Pennycuick. You bade me be good to her; I gave you my solemn promise—and I can conscientiously say that I have kept my word." Well, so he had; according to his lights he had been an exemplary husband. "But circumstances have been against me. In the first place, I was in error somewhat, as you know, in regard to my wife's expectations from her father. I did not marry her for her money, as you also know, but appearances were such that I naturally concluded she would have a considerable income of her own. I did not care for myself one way or the other, but I was glad to believe that there would be the means to continue to her the mode of life that she had been used to. I acted upon this supposition, false, as it turned out, and anticipated, most imprudently, I confess, the little fortune that I imagined to be secure. When we came here, where living is so much more expensive than in the country"—with no Redford to draw upon—"I surrounded my wife with the comforts that were her due, and which I fully believed she had every right to." He waved his hand over the still blooming Axminster carpet and the brocaded suite the family was not allowed to sit on. "I spent—we spent the little capital represented by your father's wedding present—I had an erroneous idea that it was to be an annual allowance pending the eventual division of the estate; and then—well, then you know what happened."

Deb nodded.

"Did you," she inquired feelingly, "borrow of those professional money-lenders?"

She was prepared to be very sympathetic in that case; but Mr Goldsworthy repelled the suggestion with scorn.

"Certainly not. I never borrowed money in my life. I struggled and scraped and saved, as best I could; I endeavoured in vain to augment my small income by little speculations—harmless little dabblings in mining shares; I—but I won't bore you with these disagreeables"—pulling himself up with an air of forced cheerfulness.

"But I want to know," said Deb. "You spoke of worries—Mary's worries—worries now; are you still—"

He spread his hands and wagged his head.

"I'd rather not talk about our troubles," he sighed. "I don't want to dim the sunshine of your—"

And suddenly his eye flashed and his brow contracted with annoyance. Mary—somewhat hesitatingly, to be sure—walked in.

Robert had insisted that the pater was all wrong in his idea that it was proper for him alone to receive the visitor, and for the mistress of the house to linger inhospitably after it was known that she must know of the visitor's arrival. Robert had coerced his mother into doing the correct thing. Politely he opened the drawing-room door for her—that, of course, was absolutely the correct thing—and escorted her forward with the aplomb of a man of the world, nicely blended with the respectfulness appropriate to a nephew and a school-boy.

"Ah, HERE she is!" Mr Goldsworthy exclaimed heartily.

The sisters were at once in each other's arms. Deb, pierced to the heart by Mary's aged and faded looks, was the most demonstrative of the two; Mary struck her after a moment as being a little reserved and chilly—as if on the watch to repel benevolence as soon as it should take tangible form. Deb understood, and was warned to be circumspect.

"And this is our boy—grown out of knowledge, eh?"

Mary stepped swiftly aside to let Robert come forward, and there was no mistaking the sentiments held in common by the parents with regard to their son. Their two faces were mirrors for each other, suffused with the same tender pride.

"Perhaps the child has reconciled her to the rest of it," Deb hazarded a hope. "She may be happy."

For Mary smiled and moved alertly about the room. She accepted her husband's ostentatious hand and chair, and when he resumed the conversation, or rather restarted it, on the subject of Robert's achievements at school, she followed where he led, so long as he did not seem leading towards Deb's pocket, backing him up in the most wifely manner. "Can it be possible?" Deb kept asking herself, glad at heart to see such signs, which yet lessened her pity for and interest in her sister. But Mary, with all the pride of the Pennycuicks in her, was not, one to "let on". Her skeleton was locked tight in the cupboard it belonged to when visitors were about—especially such a visitor as this—and also when they were not about, so far as she could have it so.

So that a sort of air of entertaining "company" pervaded the room. Deb felt a constraint with her sister, and that she was making no way with her mission. But Robert stepped into the breach. With Mary's son the impulsive lady of Redford was unexpectedly pleased. There was not a trace of Pennycuick to be discerned in him; nevertheless, he was a good-looking, intelligent and interesting boy. He sat by her on the sacred brocaded sofa while she brightly questioned him, brightly answering her with aptness and good sense; his parents beaming on the pair, even the father content to play second fiddle to give the son his chance. Here, at any rate, thought Deb, was material to hand for the work she had come to do.

"I love boys," she remarked—and so she did, as some people love dogs—"and Robert and I are going to be great friends; aren't we, Robert?"

"It is very good of you to say so, aunt," Robert replied, with characteristic propriety.

"But, do you know, I don't think I shall call you Robert," she went on. "It has a prim sound"—but it was the primness of himself that she wanted to break down—"and it doesn't suit a boy of your tender years. I think I'll call you Bob, if you don't mind."

"I wish you would," he adroitly answered her.

"What is your bent towards, in the way of a career, Bob?"

He said he thought the law—to be a judge some day.

"You don't care for station life?"

"Oh, he does," his father eagerly interposed. "He loves it. But he has had so few chances—"

"Which is your school, Bob?"

A seminary of no repute was named, and the father again intervened to regret that it was not one of the public schools. "But they, unfortunately, have been beyond our means—"

Here Mary broke in with praises of the seminary. It had such an excellent headmaster, was so conveniently situated—really better in many ways than one of the great schools—

And then Robert broke in.

"My dear mother!" he ejaculated, in a compassionate and forbearing way.

"Ah, Bob knows it is not better," laughed Deb. "And it isn't, Mary; you are no authority, my dear. Which of the public schools do you fancy, Bob?"

He mentioned his choice, and the University scholarships that were to be had there.

"Debbie!" implored Mrs Goldsworthy, under her breath.

"Hush-sh!" hissed her husband.

"You be quiet, Molly," Deb playfully adjured her. "This has nothing to do with you, or with anybody except Bob and me. You come and spend your next vacation with me at Redford, Bob, and then we can talk it all over together."

She nodded to him meaningly. He smiled with perfect comprehension.

"How can we thank you," Mr Goldsworthy murmured emotionally, for he also understood. "It is too, too—"

"It's all right, pater," the remarkable boy silenced him. "Aunt Deborah knows how we feel about it."

Mary sat in stolid silence, for once indifferent to her husband's dumb command; then tears welled into her tired eyes. She pocketed her pride for her child's sake. It had been her hopeless longing for years to give her darling's splendid abilities full scope.

"He will repay you, Debbie," she said.

"Ah, don't be so grudging—so ungenerous!" cried Deb.

Tea and cakes were brought in, and Bob, as he was thenceforth to be styled, waited upon his aunt in the correctest manner. He had by this time taken on an air that seemed to say: "You and I understand the ropes; you must excuse these poor parents of mine, who were not born with our perceptions." And Deb, no more proof against this sort of thing than meaner mortals, had a feeling of special proprietorship in him which she found pleasant, although he was not exactly the heir-on-probation that she could have wished; which, of course, it would have been preposterous to expect in a son of Bennet Goldsworthy's. Bennet Goldsworthy accompanied her to the gate when she went away, forbidding Mary to expose herself, hatless, to the wind. And there the benevolent aunt's "intentions" were more distinctly formulated.

"I wish to take entire charge of his education, if you will allow me. He is a very promising boy, and should have all his chances. Let me send him to the Melbourne Grammar after Christmas, and as a boarder, if you don't mind. There are such advantages, both in position and for study, in living at the school."

"I leave everything—everything, in your hands," murmured the grateful father.

"By the way"—as an after-thought—"what about your little girl?"

She was not a little girl now, and had finished with school; but, oh, the boon that a few good lessons in music and languages would be to her!

That matter was settled.

"Well, now," said Deb, "we must think about Mary. She is frightfully thin. I can see that she has had too many worries, as you say. She must be taken out of them. I want to have her at Redford with me—as soon as she can get ready—and give her a good long rest, and feed her up, and make her fat and strong."

"I only wish you could prevail on her," he sighed. "But I am afraid you will not get her to go anywhere without me. I have a devoted wife, Miss Pennycuick"—even if she had not tacitly forbidden "Deborah" in her poor days, he would not have ventured upon the liberty now that she was rich—"too devoted, if that can be. She insists upon sharing all my burdens, though I fain would spare her. I know well that, say what I will, she will never consent to leaving me to struggle with them alone."

"You have not told me what they are," said Deb, who saw that he was in dread of her going before he could do so.

"Oh, debts—debts—debts!" he answered, with a reckless air. "The millstone that we hung about our necks when we anticipated that she would have money, and lived accordingly, and were then left stranded. The eternal trying to make a shilling go as far as a pound—to make bricks without straw, like the captive Israelites of old. But why do you ask me? I hate to talk about it." He made a gesture of putting the miserable subject aside.

"It was very hard on you," Deb said gently—contradicting the Deb of an earlier time and different state of things—"to have those expectations, which were certainly justified, and to be disappointed as you were. I feel that we Pennycuicks were to blame in that—"

"Oh, dear, no!" he earnestly assured her.

"And that an obligation rests on me, now that I have the means, to make some compensation to you—to Mary, rather."

"It is like you to think of that. But really—"

"And I put a blank cheque in my pocket, and a stylographic pen—and will you let me"—she drew forth the articles mentioned, and made a desk of the top rail of the gate—"will you do me the favour to accept from me—what shall I say?—five hundred pounds? Would that relieve you—and Mary—of the immediate worries?"

He said it would, with the mental reservation that it did not amount to what he had been defrauded of by Mr Pennycuick (she had made a mistake in the designation of her gift); but the slight coolness of his acknowledgement quickly gave place to grateful fervour as he realised what the immediate five hundred pounds would do for him, and read in her words an implication that the sum was but an instalment of what she felt to be his due. He was incoherent in his thanks and benedictions as he slipped the cheque into his pocket.

"And you will let me have Mary at Redford?"

"Oh, yes! She will not want to go, but I shall make her."

"And do not tell her more than you can help about this little private transaction. She might feel—"

"I will tell her nothing that is likely to vex her."

"Do not—PRAY do not. Only take these sordid worries off her shoulders, and give her what she needs, and don't let her toil and moil. Remember, it is for her I do it." There was a little sting in that last remark, but he was too happy to feel it.