FAMILY MATTERS
It was a pleasant smiling-faced place this English home of the three
little maids. Phyl and Dolly would like to have heard it was old
enough to call it a “venerable pile” or an “ancient structure,” but,
as a matter of fact, its age was not more than sixty or seventy years.
It was of brown, rough stone, mellowed to a harmonious tint by the
suns and rains of that more than half-century. It was square in shape
with a big, welcoming porch at the front, round which in summer roses
clustered, but that winter saw fringed with icicles. All the rooms
were big and bright, with old-fashioned furniture, the wood of which
was chiefly oak, and the draperies and cushions of flowered chintz in
delicate colours. From the gate a broad drive, ill-kept at this time,
swept to the porch, then curved and ran behind the house to the empty
stables. A shrubbery filled the broad space between the left side of
the house and the thick, tall hedge that cut it off from the road;
the right side looked over a vegetable garden, chiefly filled with
gooseberries, and saw at the limit of the grounds that side a high red
brick wall where a cherished apricot tree grew vine-wise.
At the front stretched a green unmown lawn, lovely to play upon; a
high green bank at the end had to be climbed to come to a strawberry
bed, where as many as three berries had ripened at a time. Red, white,
and black currant bushes, red and yellow raspberries grew in a tangle
beyond, and then came the orchard trees—apples, pears, and mulberries.
Phyl had a dim and fading recollection of an earlier home than this—a
home that brought memories of more flowers and many more books than
this brown-grey, pleasant place of later play-days; a home where her
lisping voice had called father a grave, sad-faced scholar, who was in
no wise like the laughing, merry-natured man for whom nearly all were
wearing these fresh black frocks.
Weenie and the elder little girls were only half-sisters. As a
high-spirited, beautiful girl of seventeen Mrs. Conway had won the love
of a man double her own age, and one for whom all life had gone sadly.
Pleased and touched at the wealth of love he brought her, though she
was hardly old enough to reciprocate it properly, she accepted him, and
they were married at once, her parents, stern, strict Christians of the
old, long dead school, being glad to give their daughter into such safe
hands.
Three years went by, and the girl was still happy, a little more
touched with soberness perhaps at the quiet, reclusive life they led,
but a very child again, with two little daughters, Phyl and Dolly,
who came to spread sunshine through the quiet, book-filled house.
But when Dorothy was barely out of long clothes, and Phyl a slender,
restless sprite of three, the girl—wife and mother already before she
was twenty-one—was also a widow. Her husband, called on sudden business
to Paris, stayed at a hotel where the sheets on his bed were damp, and
so sudden and violent an illness followed that he was dead and buried
before she had time fairly to realize the news.
Three years slipped by again, the widow living in seclusion, and
devoting herself entirely to her little girls. And then, so young
yet and full of life, and so overcome by her loneliness, she married
again—a widower this time, with a half-grown-up family of boys and
girls.
The young, glad love her years reasonably entitled her to, again had
slipped past her. Relief at the escape from the rigid discipline of her
girlhood’s home, together with the wealth of tender, almost fatherly
love showered upon her by her husband, had led her in her first
marriage not to miss that blossoming spring-time. And now, saddened
and chastened in spirit, it seemed to her that only a man of two-score
years could give her the tender protection and cherishing for which she
was yearning again.
And, again, a wealth of affection was given her: surely few women have
passed down life with so great a power of making love spring up for
them in every heart. But with these autumn roses of love came also many
thorns.
There were the ceaseless discussions that are almost inevitable when a
father brings a very young wife home to sons and daughters of almost a
like age. And there were years of nursing.
Mr. Conway, a year after the marriage, fell ill of an incurable
disease, and until his death, some four years later, the slight
shoulders of his new wife carried—and carried cheerfully and
patiently—a burden few older women are called upon to bear.
In addition to the unruly household, the wearing struggle to preserve
justice and peace between the elder members of the family and her own
little girls—now three in number—and the continual nursings for the
last two years of her husband’s life, Mrs. Conway picked up the reins
of business his fingers had gradually dropped, and managed to guide
affairs so as to keep off, for all that time, the ruin with which they
had been threatened.
Mr. Conway was a manufacturer, and before this lingering illness sapped
his energy a moderately wealthy one. The little girls had often driven
over with him to the busy, noisy town, five miles away, and had been
taken over the big factories and seen the great looms at work, and
shuddered at the big engines and the swarms of dirty-looking men,
women, and children. Phyl and Dolly used to be in a state of nervous
trepidation each time they were inside the building lest an arm of a
loom should descend, entangle itself in the hair of one of them, or
rise up again with a dangling body to the ceiling; they had heard some
such accident talked of once. Weenie alone approved of it, and asked to
be taken again; the clashing and banging and whirring seemed most jolly
to her.
But foreign competition, together with strikes and bad management,
struck such blows that two years before the death of Mr. Conway the
factories were almost at a standstill, and complete ruin stared the big
family in the face. It was then the brave-hearted wife stepped into the
breach. From her husband and the foremen of the different buildings she
managed to learn nearly every technicality connected with the business;
she withdrew, all but four hundred pounds, the small fortune that had
been settled on Phyl and Dolly after their father’s death, and spent
it in starting the looms to work once more. Day and night she worked,
business woman, wife, mother, and nurse, and the old home for two more
years still sheltered them within its walls, and the best of medical
skill was made available.
But now at length it was all over. Two months had passed since the
long, sad procession had wound away down the red drive, and away up the
beautiful country road to the Place of Peace. Lawyers and business
men, relatives and friends, had come and gone. The factories stood
silent again, and there was no money anywhere to galvanize them into
fresh life. The big boys and girls were scattered all over England; the
girls with relations until they could help themselves, the boys already
helping themselves, taken into offices of business friends.
The servants were dismissed—all but Harriet Bywater, who had been the
children’s nurse since Dorothy was born, and now insisted upon being
laundress and cook and housemaid and friend to them for the little time
that remained.
Such a very little time it was now; the house had been bought, but the
owner was abroad, and had left instructions that the widow was not to
be disturbed until he was ready to occupy. This had given two peaceful
months in which to make plans for the future and lay the past aside in
its sorrowful shroud, but now word had come that in one more month the
workmen would arrive to make additions and alterations to the house.
The three little girls, after their first passionate tears and grief
were spent, had slipped gradually back as children will into their
old ways of life and play. It was a week after the midnight rescue of
Jennie and Suey that they were first told of and began to realize the
strange thing that was going to happen in their lives.