Rose had never been reckoned a person of importance by her family, but
now that she was gone, there remained a terrible emptiness where she
had been. She was one of those unselfish, good-natured members of
households to whom falls the stocking-mending, the errand-going, the
fetching and carrying, the filling of gaps generally; and at every turn
Deb and Frances missed her unobtrusive ministrations, which they had
accepted as as much matters of course as the attentions of the butcher
and baker. It was presently perceived that Keziah missed her too--that
Keziah, who had loyally opposed the plebeian marriage, was become a
turncoat and renegade, blessing where she should have cursed, blaming
where she should have praised--yes, blaming even Queen Deborah, who,
needless to say, took her head off for it.
It had been Keziah's own choice to follow the sisters into exile, and
to share the privations involved in their change of life. She had given
up her Redford luxuries and importance to become a general servant,
with only her kitchen to sit in, for their sakes; and she had
cheerfully abided by her choice--until Rose went. Rose was the one who
had understood the cost of the sacrifice, and who had lightened it by
sympathetic companionship. They had cleaned rooms, and made cakes and
puddings, and set hens, and stirred jam, and ironed frocks and laces
together; they had spent hours in pleasant gossip over the many homely
subjects that interested both; their relation had been more that of
mother and daughter than of servant and mistress. Regarding her as
virtually her child, Keziah had been quick to spring to the side of
authority in the matter of the irregular love-affair; the natural
parental impulse was to nip it in the bud. But "Providence" had decided
the issue in this case. And a flirtatious girl was one thing, and a
respectable married woman another. And Keziah was lonely, and felt
neglected and "put upon" when nobody came to talk to her in her
kitchen, or to help her with her cooking and ironing--and particularly
after she had told Deb that it was a shame to bear malice to Miss Rose
now, and Deb had commanded her to mind her own business.
She was suspected of treacherous visits to the house next door; she was
known to have spent Sunday afternoons with Mrs Peter herself. The
iniquity of these proceedings was in the secrecy she observed, or tried
to observe, regarding them. It was she who knew, before anybody else,
when a baby Breen was coming--and if a married woman was a personage to
Keziah, an incipient mother was a being of the highest rank. She had
forgiven Mary everything for the sake of her black-eyed boy; now she
took the news that Rose was what she called "interesting" to Deb, and
demanded that action should be taken upon it, with an air that was
almost truculent. Deb, of course, did not believe in being spoken to,
even by Keziah, in that way.
"Has the muffin boy been?" she inquired, with a steady look.
"It's too soon yet--and I can tell you, Miss Deb, that if it was you in
her place, SHE wouldn't keep it up like this--and at such a time too."
"When the muffin boy comes, Keziah, please pay him the sixpence we owe
him from last week. You will find the money on my writing-table."
"Well, I don't care--I call it a shame not to go to her--"
"Perhaps you would like to go to her yourself?" Deb swiftly changed her
tone.
"I'd like nothing better," the old woman retorted, with spirit, "if you
are agreeable."
"I am perfectly agreeable."
"Well, it was only the other day she said she'd give anything to have
me, if it wasn't for taking me away from you."
"Oh, pray don't consider that. I can easily get somebody else," said
Deb affably, though her surprise at the idea of Keziah wanting to leave
her was only equalled by her dismay.
Keziah, also surprised to find herself of so much less consequence than
she had supposed, said that, if that was the case, she'd go and see
Miss Rose about it.
"You can go now," said Deb.
"Thank you, Miss Deb, I will," said Keziah, "as soon as I have cleared
up. Would a month's notice suit you? I don't wish to put you about at
all."
"A month will be ample," said Deb. "A week, if you like."
"I'll see what Miss Rose says," said Keziah.
Rose, after the interview, wrote affectionately to Deb, to say she
would not dream of taking Keziah if Deb wanted her; Deb wrote
affectionately to Rose, to say that she would be rather glad than
otherwise to make the change, as the work was too much for such an old
woman. So Keziah went over to the Breen camp, where she had comfort and
companionship, and her own way in everything; and Deb began to
experiment with the common or garden 'general' as purveyed by Melbourne
registry offices.
She loathed these creatures, one and all. They were of a race unknown
at Redford, and she was singularly unlucky in the specimens that fell
to her; although some of them could have been made something of by a
mistress who knew how to do it. It is only fair to state that they
loathed her--for a finicking, unreasonable, stuck-up poor woman, who
gave herself the airs of a wealthy lady. They came at the rate of two a
month, and each one as she passed seemed to leave the little house
meaner, dingier, more damaged than before. It was not living, it was
"pigging", Frances said--and Deb agreed with her--although when Keziah
ventured to call one day to inquire into the state of things, Deb
calmly asserted that all was well.
In despair she tried a lady-help, in the person of Miss Keene, dying to
return to her dear family (from relations who did not want her) on any
terms.
"Whatever we ask her to do we must do ourselves," said Deb to grumbling
Frances, who seemed never willing to do anything; "and of course we
shall have to get a washwoman, and a charwoman to scrub; but it will be
cheaper in the end. And oh, anything rather than sticky door-handles
and greasy spoons, and those awful voices hailing one all over the
house!"
But it was not cheaper, nor was the arrangement satisfactory in any way
after the first fortnight. Miss Keene, spoiled at Redford as they had
been, was as unfit for crude housework, and she aggravated her
incompetence by weeping over it. She had not gathered from Deb's
letters that the change in the family fortunes was as great as it now
proved to be; and Deb had not anticipated the effect of adversity upon
one so easily depressed. She had no 'heart', poor thing. She struggled
and muddled, sighing for flowers for the vases while the beds were
unmade; and when she saw a certain look on Deb's face, wept and mourned
and gave up hope. So they "pigged" still, although they did not defile
the furniture with unwashed hands, and the plate and crockery with
greasy dish-cloths. With no knowledge of cookery, they lived too much
on tinned provisions--a diet as wasteful as it was unwholesome--feeding
their wash-and-scrub-women with the same; and their efforts to support
the burden of their domestic responsibilities deprived them of outdoor
exercise and mental rest and recreation--kept them at too close
quarters with one another, each rubbing her quivering prickles upon the
irritable skins of the other two. Frances bore the strain with least
good-nature and self-control, and since she had to vent her ill-humour
on someone, naturally made Miss Keene her victim when it was a choice
between her and Deb. The poor lady grew more and more disappointed,
discouraged and tearful. She became subject to indigestion, headaches,
disordered nerves; finally fell ill and had to have the doctor. The
doctor said she was completely run down, and that rest and change of
air were indispensable. She went away to her relatives, weeping still,
wrapped in Deb's cloak, and with all Deb's ready money in her pocket;
and she did not come back.
Then Deb tried to carry on alone. Any sort of registry office drudge
would have been welcome now, but had become an expense that she dared
not continue. Moreover, the spectre of poverty, looming so distinct and
unmistakable in the house, was a thing to hide, if possible, from
anybody who could go outside and talk about it. The thing had become a
living terror to herself--its claws Jew money-lenders, so velvety and
innocent when her wilful ignorance made first acquaintance with them;
but nobody--not even Mr Thornycroft, not even Jim, CERTAINLY not
Rose--could be allowed to play Perseus to this proud Andromeda. Until
she could free herself, they were not even to know that she was bound.
Of course, she need not have been bound; it was her own fault. She
should have managed better with the resources at her disposal than to
bring herself to such a pass, and that so soon; either Mary or Rose
would certainly have done so in her place. But Nature had not made her
or Frances--whose rapacities had been one cause of the financial
breakdown--for the role of domestic economists; they had been dowered
with their lovely faces for other purposes.
That the fine plumage is for the sun was a fact well understood by
Frances, at any rate. And she was wild at the wrongs wrought by sordid
circumstances--her father's and sister's heedlessness--upon herself.
She thought only of herself. Deb was getting old, and she deserved to
suffer anyway; but what had Frances done to be deprived of her
birth-right, of all her chances of success in life? Eighteen, and no
coming out--beautiful, and nobody to see it--marriageable, and out of
the track of all the eligible men, amongst whom she might have had her
pick and choice. She had reason for her passionate rebelliousness
against this state of things; for, while a pretty face is theoretically
its own fortune anywhere, we all see for ourselves how many are passed
over simply for want of an attractive setting. It was quite on the
cards that she might share the fate of those beauties in humble life to
whom romantic accidents do not occur, for all her golden hair and
aristocratic profile, her figure of a sylph and complexion of a wild
rose.
The fear of this future combined with the acute discomfort of the
present to make her desperate. She cast about for a way of escape, a
pathway to the sun. One only offered--the landlord.
He was an elderly landlord, who had lately buried a frumpy old wife,
and he was as deeply tainted with trade as Peter Breen; but he had
retired long since from personal connection with breweries and
public-houses--and a brewer, in the social scale, was only just below a
wholesale importer, if that--and he was manifestly rolling in money,
after the manner of his kind. Half the streets around belonged to him,
and his house towered up in the midst of his other houses, a great
white block, with a pillared portico--a young palace by comparison.
Above all, he had no known children.
From the first he had taken an interest in his pretty girl-tenants. He
had liked to call in person to inquire if the cellar kept dry and the
chimney had ceased smoking; and he had been most generous in offering
improvements and repairs before they were even asked for. Deb had
blighted these unbusiness-like overtures on her own account, and
Frances herself had said the rudest things about them and him--but not
lately. In the utter dullness and barrenness of her life, she had been
glad to accept the civilities of anything in the shape of a man--to try
her 'prentice hand on any material. All the armoury of the born beauty
was hers, and she knew as well how to use each weapon effectively as a
blind kitten knows how to suck milk. They were easily successful with
the old fool, who is ever more of a fool than the young fool; and when
she found that, she found something to entertain her. She not only
received Mr Ewing when he called, but talked to him at the gate when he
went past--and he went past several times a day. Now, when the
situation at home had grown desperate, and she was looking all ways for
means to save herself, his amusing infatuation became a matter for
serious thought. COULD she? She was a hard case, but even she wavered.
He was probably sixty, and she was eighteen. Oh, she couldn't! But
when, after Miss Keene's departure, Deb told her they could no longer
afford hired help, and that she (Frances) must give up her lazy ways
and take her share of that intolerable housework, then Frances changed
her mind. Beggars could not be choosers.
Deb felt like the camel under the last straw when the announcement of
the proposed marriage was made to her. It was worse than Mary's--worse
than Rose's--worse than any other misfortune that had befallen the
family. She sat down and wept at the thought of what the Pennycuicks
had come to. She rated Frances furiously; she reasoned with her; she
pleaded with her; she tried to bribe her; but Frances was getting boxes
of diamonds, and sets of furs and lace, and what not, and it was
useless for Deb to attempt to outbid the giver of these things, or to
part her sister from them. She loved the old man, Frances said--he
certainly was a decently-mannered, good-natured, rather fine-looking,
and most generous old man--and he was going to take her everywhere and
give her a good time--and she would never have to go shabby again as
long as she lived; and if Deb refused her a proper wedding, law or no
law, she would run away with him, as Mary had run away with Bennet
Goldsworthy, and Rose with Peter Breen.
Whether this dire threat prevailed, or the temptation of the money, or
whether she could not any longer fight against fate, Deb gave in. After
all, Frances was not to be judged as an ordinary girl--she was a
hard-hearted, tough-fibred, prosaic little minx, for which reason Deb
pitied the prospective husband more than she did her; and if she did
not do this bad thing now, the chances were that she would do a worse
thing later on. She was made to disport herself in the sunshine of the
world; she was of the type of woman that must have men about her; she
would get her "rights", as she called them, somehow, by fair means or
foul. Deb was sufficiently a woman of the world herself to recognise
this, and the uselessness of thinking she could alter it. Well, money
is a consolatory thing--she knew its value now; and there was that
additional comfort, which, of course, she did not own to--the thought
of where Mr Ewing would be when Mrs Ewing was in her prime.
"You dear old thing!" the bride-elect patronised her elder sister.
"James is so pleased to have your consent, and he says he won't ask you
to give me my share of what father left us--it would be but a drop in
the bucket anyway; you are to keep it all yourself."
Deb had had whole control of the fragments of his once large fortune
left by Mr Pennycuick to his four daughters, on behalf of any of them
unmarried or under age; but Mary and Rose--although Peter had also
protested against it--had been paid the value of their shares (whence
the Jew element in the present difficulties); and the unforeseen
marriage of Frances at eighteen threatened total bankruptcy to the
remaining sister. Yet Deb said, with fierce determination:
"Of course you will have what is your due, like the others."
"I'm sure he won't take it, Deb. He said he wouldn't."
"I don't care what he says. It concerns you and me--not him."
"I really should not miss it, dear. I am to have a thousand a year to
draw against, for just nothing but my clothes and pocket-money."
"I am glad to hear it," said Deb. "You can give your own income to the
poor."
"You really won't keep it?"
"Is it likely I would keep what doesn't belong to me?"
"Well, then," said Frances, her easy conscience satisfied, "we can put
it into my trousseau. I MUST have a decent trousseau mustn't I?"
"Of course!"
Frances saw to it that she had a decent one. Now was the time, the only
time, that she should want her money, and she did not spare it. She
ordered right and left, and Deb seemed equally reckless. The bills were
left for her to settle--of course made out in her name. Mr Ewing
pressed for permission to pay them, and the cost of the wedding, and
Miss Pennycuick could hardly forgive him the deadly insult. He also
desired that she should occupy her villa rent-free, and she gave him
notice on the spot.
"I shall not continue to keep house when I am alone," said she grandly.
"I intend to travel for a time."
The wedding was quiet, but as "decent" as the trousseau. The other
sisters were invited, and Bennet Goldsworthy--who delighted in the
connection, and received a thumping fee--performed the ceremony. Deb
gave the bride away, but was also treated as the bridesmaid, and had a
diamond bracelet forced upon her. She sold it as soon as the donor's
back was turned, together with every article of jewellery in her
possession, every bit of silver plate, and all her furniture. The
breakfast was very elegant, and served in a private room at one of the
best hotels; the bride's handsome luggage had also been brought
thither, and it was the meeting-place of the family which so seldom
met. There, also, when she had parted from Frances, Deb parted from
Mary, so silent and constrained, and from Rose, over-dressed, for her
station, in her rich gown and Brussels lace (but nevertheless sniffed
at and condescended to by her still more wealthy sister), and from the
uncongenial brothers-in-law, to whom she was so discouragingly polite.
Their expressed anxiety to befriend and to see more of her was gently
but firmly ignored.
"I will write," she said. "I will see you again soon. I will let you
know my plans. Good-bye!"
And they went. There were no friends to go, for she had insisted on
inviting none--for fear of the lynx eyes and the destructive influence
upon her plans of Mr Thornycroft and Jim. She gained the one end she
had schemed for throughout--to get past the risks of the public
marriage and back to her struggle in obscurity, unmolested, unpitied,
unshamed. The Urquharts wrote, and Mr Thornycroft, when he sent his
present; but she had "bluffed" them with her implied
misrepresentations, and hurt their feelings by not wanting them at the
wedding. Jim was easily snubbed; Mr Thornycroft--though he did not
mention it--was ill at the time.
So she got rid of all possible hindrances, and then--professing to go
travelling--went nobody knew where, and was virtually lost for years.
Frances drove away from the hotel in her smart carriage, with her smart
luggage and smart maid, and her amorous old husband, and never thought
or cared what was to become of her abandoned sister. She could only
think of her own exciting affairs.
Partly they were unsatisfactory, no doubt. All her rights were not hers
even now--no, not by a long way. But oh, how much better was this than
the drab and shabby and barren existence for ever left behind! She was
bound, indeed; yet she was free--freer than another might have been in
her place, and far, far less bound. One must expect to pay some tax to
Fortune for such extraordinary gifts, and Frances was not the one to
pay it in heart's blood. She was philosophically prepared to pay it in
her own coin, and be done with it, and then give herself to the
enjoyment of the pleasures of her lot.
Her first enjoyment was in her beautiful going-away dress--grey cloth
and chinchilla fur, with flushes of pink as delicate as the rose of her
cheeks--and in her knowledge of the effect she made in that dream of a
costume. There was no hiding her light under a bushel any more. The
highway, and the middle of it, for her now--her proud husband strutting
there beside her--and every passer-by turning to look at and to admire
her. There was joy in the occupancy of the best suite of rooms in the
best hotel at every place she stopped at during her gay and well-filled
bridal holiday; joy in the dainty meals--so long unknown; in the
obsequious servants, in the plentiful theatres, in the ever-ready
carriage that took her to them, in the having one's hair done to
perfection by an expert maid, in sweeping forth with one's silks and
laces trailing, and one's diamonds on. These were the delights for
which her little soul had so long yearned; she now pursued them
greedily. She could not rest if she were not doing something to display
herself and feed her craving for what is known as seeing the world. Her
husband was almost as obsequious as the servants--doubtless because
from the first she took the beauty's high hand with him, as well as the
attitude of the superior, naturally assumed by youth towards age--and
he enjoyed the sensation she made almost as much as she did. Visibly he
swelled and preened himself when his venerable contemporaries cast the
eye of surprise, not to say of envy, upon the conjunction of his
complacent figure and that of the bride who might have been his
grand-daughter; he toiled for that pleasure, and to make pleasure for
her, as no old gentleman should toil; he gave her everything she asked
for, including his own ease and consequence, his own vital health and
strength.
But the honeymoon waned, and the novelty wore off, and prudence and old
habits resumed their sway. He grew tired of incessant gadding about,
alarmed at his symptoms of physical overstrain, weary for his arm-chair
and his club, and his men friends and his masculine occupations. She,
on the other hand, insatiable for admiration and excitement still, was
weary of his constant company. It became the kill-joy of her festive
days, growing from a necessary bore to an intolerable irritation as the
dimensions of her little court of younger gallants enlarged about her.
Therefore she had no objection to his halting on the toilsome path, so
long as he allowed her to go on alone.
It was not a case of allowing, however. He might object, and did; but
he was no match for her either in diplomacy or in fight, and her
cajoleries were usually sufficient for her ends, without calling out
the reserves behind them. In any contest between selfishness and
unselfishness, the result is a foregone conclusion.
So she began to go about with miscellaneous escorts, to play the
combined parts of frisky matron and society beauty--an intoxicating
experience; while the supporter of that proud position played the
humble role of chief comer-stone, unseen and unconsidered in the
basement of the fabric. He attended to his investments and increasing
infirmities, and made secret visits to a married daughter (wife of a
big hotel-keeper), who hated her young step-mother, and whose existence
Frances ignored.
One day, Guthrie Carey, after several voyages to other ports, appeared
again in Melbourne. He had just landed, and was strolling along Collins
Street, when he encountered a vision of loveliness that almost took
away his breath.
"What! It is not Miss Frances, surely?"
"It is not," smiled she, all her beauty at its conscious best as she
recognised his, which was that of a man of men, splendid in his strong
prime. And she told him who she was, and a few other things, as they
stood on the pavement--she so graceful in her mature self-possession,
he staring at her, stupidly distraught, like a bewildered school-boy.
"I had no idea--" he mumbled.
"That I was married? Alas, yes!"--with a sad shake of the head. "We
girls are fated, I think."
"Miss Deb?"
"Oh, not Deb; she has escaped so far."
"Is she well?"
"I have not seen her lately, but I am sure she is, she always is." "She
is not in Melbourne?"
"No. I don't quite know where she is. She has got a wandering fit on.
Come and have some lunch with me, and I'll tell you all the news."
They turned into a restaurant, and had a meal which took a long time to
get through. In the middle of the afternoon they parted, on the
understanding that he would dine with her later in her own house. At
the end of the few days that were virtually filled with him, Mrs Ewing
sat down in her fine boudoir to weep over her hard fate.
"Oh, why wasn't HE the one to have the money! Oh, why do we meet again,
now that it is too late!"
At the end of a few more days she went to her old husband to ask him
how he was. He said he was a bit troubled with his lumbago, but
otherwise fairly well.
"What you want," said she, "is a sea-voyage."
He thought not. He had never found the sea suit him. And travelling was
a great fatigue. And it was the wrong time of year for it, anyhow. They
had a good home, and it was the best place.
But she knew better. She had made up her mind, and it was useless for
him to rebel. The sea-voyage was decided on--not so much because it
would benefit his health as because his young wife had not seen England
and Europe, and was dying to do so.
Then they discussed routes.
"The thing to do," said Mrs Ewing, "is not to crowd up with that lot in
the mail steamers, where you can't do as you like, or have any special
attentions, but to go in a smaller vessel, where you would be of some
importance, and have your liberty, and plenty of space, and no tiresome
rules and restrictions--"
"My dear child, you don't know those second-rate lines. I do. I assure
you you'd be very sorry for yourself if I let you travel by them. They
are not YOUR style at all."
"Yes, I was talking to Captain Carey about it, and that was his advice,
and HE knows. On his ship they have accommodation for about six
passengers, and he suggested that, if we were quick about it, we might
be able to secure the whole, so as to be exactly as if we were on a
yacht of our own. They have a fair cook; but we could take any servants
we liked, and make ourselves comfortable in our own way--nobody to
interfere with us. He doesn't go through the hot canal. He will be back
from Sydney in three weeks--just nice time to get ready in."
Of course, they went that way. And perhaps it is better to leave the
rest of the story to the imagination of the reader, who, one hopes, for
Guthrie Carey's sake, is a common-sense person, as well as a
dispassionate student of human nature.