Miss Grosvenor were engrossed, and at first curious, a little later
she was annoyed with the former.
"I think," she whispered to me, "it's Mr Ernest you'll have to see
doesn't flirt with every girl he comes across."
"Perhaps he isn't flirting," I coolly replied.
"Not _now_, perhaps," she said pointedly; "perhaps he's in earnest
with one and practises with others."
Arrived at the hall, we found the women swarming around Walker like
bees.
"Good Lord! Look what Les. has let himself in for," laughed Ernest; "I
wouldn't stand in his shoes for a tenner."
"Go on! Surely you too are partial to ladies?"
"Yes; but--"
"But there must be reason in everythink," I quoted. He laughed.
"Yes; and reason in this sort of thing to suit my taste would be a
small medium. But what a fine old sport the old dame Clay would have
made--no danger of her not standing up to a mauling or baulking at any
of her fences, eh?"
Dawn would not look at Ernest after the meeting and deputation came to
an end, but walked home with "Dora" Eweword, laughing and talking in
ostentatious enjoyment; while Ernest and the Grosvenor girl were none
the less entertained.
"'Pon my soul, I couldn't make a speech to save my life," he
reiterated. "My friend only laid you on for a lark, did you not?" he
said, turning to me, whom he gallantly insisted upon supporting on his
arm--that splendid arm in which the muscles could expand till they
were like iron bands.
"Don't you believe him, Miss Grosvenor," I replied; "he's a born
orator, but is unaccountably lazy and vain, and only wants to be
pressed; insist upon his speaking, he's longing to do so." And then
his merry protesting laugh, and the girl's equally happy, rang out on
the crisp starlight air, as they went over and over the same ground.
As we neared Clay's I suggested that he should see Miss Grosvenor
home, while I attached myself to Dawn and "Dora"; and I invited him to
come and sing some songs with us afterwards, for the night was yet
young.
To this he agreed, and supposed to be with the other young couple, I
slipped behind, and could hear their conversation as they progressed.
"You're not struck on that red-headed mug, are you?" said Eweword, for
general though political talk had become, there was still another
branch of politics more vitally interesting to some of the electors.
"I'm not the style to be struck on a fellow that doesn't care for me."
"But he does!"
"Looks like it, doesn't it?" she said sarcastically.
"Yes, it does, or what would he be hanging around here so long for?"
"Perhaps to see Ada Grosvenor; I suppose she'd have him, red hair and
all."
"Pooh! he never goes there; but he comes to your place though, too
deuced often for my pleasure."
"He comes to see the boarder--he's a great friend of hers."
"Humph! that's all in my eye. He'd be a long time coming to see her
if you weren't there, if she was twice as great a friend. What sort of
an old party is she? Must have some means."
"Oh, lovely!"
"I suppose the red-headed mug thinks so too, as she is touting for
him."
"For him and Ada Grosvenor."
"Have it that way if you like it, but you know what I mean all right."
"I don't."
"Oh, don't you! I say, Dawn, just stop out here a moment will you? I
want to tell you something else, I mean."
"Oh, tell it to me some other time," said she, "it's too beastly cold
to stay out another minute. Come and tell it to me while we are having
supper round the fire."
"I'd have a pretty show of telling it there. I don't want it put in
the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' but that's what I'll have to do if you won't
give me a chance. If you keep pretending you don't get my letters,
I'll write all that I put in them to your grandma, and tell her to
tell you," he said jokingly; but the girl took him up shortly.
"If you dare do that," said she, aroused from her indifference, "I'd
never speak to you again the longest day I live, so you needn't think
you'll get over me that way. You'd better tell Uncle Jake and Andrew
too while you're about it, and Dora Cowper might be vexed if you don't
tell her."
"Well, I bet you'd listen to what the red-headed mug said quick
enough," replied "Dora" Eweword in an injured tone.
"The red-headed mug, as you call him--and his hair isn't much redder
than yours, and is twice as nice," she retaliated, "he would be a
gentleman anyhow, and not a bear with a scalded head."
By this time they had reached the gate, and Dawn was carelessly
inviting him to enter, but he declined in rather a crestfallen tone.
"Better invite red-head, not me, if you won't listen to what I say,
and pretend you never received my letters."
"Thank you for the good advice. I hope he'll accept my invitation,
because he is always pleasant and agreeable," she retorted.
NINETEEN.
AN OPPORTUNELY INOPPORTUNE DOUCHE.
It was just as well that "Dora" Eweword had been too chopfallen to
come in, for we found the place in what grandma termed "a uproar."
As we had gone out Mrs Bray had arrived to relate her speculations in
regard to Mrs Rooney-Molyneux. Mrs Bray did not live a great distance
from the latter's cottage, and as she had not seen her about during
the day, wondered had she come to her travail.
Andrew decided the matter when he came home by relating what he had
heard when passing the cottage; and he supplemented the statement by
the deplorable information that "the old bloke is up at Jimmeny's
tryin' if he can get a free drink."
"I must go to her," said grandma, rising in haste.
"I wouldn't if I was you," said Mrs Bray. "You don't never get no
thanks for nothing like that, and might get yourself into a mess; I
believe in leaving people to manage their own affairs."
Carry sniffed in the background.
"I'll risk all that," said grandma. "For shame's sake an' the sake of
me daughters, an' every other woman, I couldn't leave one of me sex in
that predicament."
"Oh, well, some people is wonderful strong in the nerve that way,"
said Mrs Bray, and Carry interjected in an aside--
"And others are mighty strong in the nerve of selfishness."
"Of course nothing would give me greater pleasure than to go,"
continued Mrs Bray, "but I would be of no use. I'm so pitiful,
sensitive, and nervous that way."
"It's a grand thing, then, that some are hard and not so sensitive, or
people could die and no one would help 'em," said Carry, no longer
able to contain her measure of Mrs Bray.
Uncle Jake had the sulky in readiness, and grandma with a collection
of requisites appeared with a great old shawl about her, Irish
fashion.
"Come you, Dawn, I might want your help, I'm not as strong as I was
once; and Andrew, you come too, you'll do to send for the doctor; an'
who'll take care of the pony?"
I volunteered, and though a rotten stick to depend on, was accepted,
and we three women rode in the sulky while Andrew ran behind. Having
arrived at the little cottage half-way between Clay's and town, we
found it was too sadly true that the poor little woman was alone in
her trouble, and worse, she had not had the means to prepare for it,
while most ghastly of all, there was no trace of her having had any
nourishment that day.
These are the sad cases of poverty, when the helpless victim is not of
the calibre which can beg, and suffers an empty larder in silence and
behind an appearance of respectability.
The capable old grandmother had prepared herself for this possibility,
and from under her capacious shawl produced a bottle of broth which
she set about warming. She may not have been at first-hand acquainted
with the few silk-wrapped lives run according to the methods scheduled
in first-class etiquette books, but she had a very resourceful and
far-seeing grip of that style of existence into which, regardless of
inclination or capability, the great majority are forced by
domineering circumstance; and being competent to grapple with its
emergencies, she took hold of this case without humbug and with the
fortitude and skill of a Japanese general.
As though the main trouble were not enough, the poor little wife was
further smitten with the two-edged mental anguish which is the
experience of sensitive women whose husbands neglect them at this
crisis of the maternal gethsemane. Doctor Smalley, who soon appeared
after receiving Andrew's message, was not sufficiently finely strung
to fully estimate the evil effect of Rooney-Molyneux's behaviour at
this juncture; but not so the fine old woman of the ranks, with her
quick perceptions and high and sensitive sentiment regarding the
bed-rock relations of life. Calling the doctor out during an interval
she discussed the matter within my hearing.
"Poor little thing, she's just heart-broke with the way her husband's
carryin' on. I wish I could deliver him up to Mrs Bray to scald; he's
one of 'em deserves it, pure an' simple! If Jim Clay had forsook me
an' demeaned me like this I would have died, but he was always
tenderer than a mother. Somethink will have to be done. I'll send
Andrew to Jimmeny's with the sulky to get him; he can get Danby to
help him if he can't manage him hisself, and take the old varmint down
to my place and keep him there secure. Tell Jake there it's got to be
done, an' I'll make up a yarn to pacify the poor thing;" and
returning to her patient, to the old dame's credit, truthful though
she was, I heard her say--
"Your husband's been fidgeting me, an' I never can stand any one but
the doctor about at these times, so I bundled him off down to stay
with Jake, and gave him strict instructions not to poke his nose back
here till he's sent for."
What diplomat could have made it more kindly tactful than that?
"Quite right too," said the doctor, upholding her. "When I see it's
going to be a good case like this, I always banish the man too."
"But I could have seen him, and the poor fellow I'm sure is
overwhelmed with anxiety," said the hapless little martyr in the brave
make-believe that is a compulsory science with most women.
"Well, _we_ ain't so anxious about him as we are about you," said the
valiant old woman. "You're the chief person now. He ain't no
consideration at all, an' can go an' bag his head for all we care,
while we get you out of this fix."
I sat upon the verandah until Andrew passed, taking home with him the
noble Rooney-Molyneux, lordly scion of an ancient and doubtless effete
house, and then the doctor banished Dawn from the house, giving her
into my charge, with instructions to take her home and calm her down.
Had she been the heroine of a romance she would have been a born
nurse. Without any training or experience she could have surpassed
Florence Nightingale, but, alas! she was merely an everyday girl in
real life, and this being her first actual experience of the tragedy
of birth, and the terror of it being intensified and aggravated by the
pitiable surrounding circumstances, she was beside herself. She clung
to me, choked with a flood of tears, and palpitating in an unbearable
tumult of emotion.
This case, so pathetically ordinary that most of us are debased by
acquaintance with similar, to this girl was fresh, and striking her in
all its inexcusable barbarity without any extenuating gloze, made her
furious with pained and righteous indignation.
I led her about by devious ways that her heart might cool ere we
reached Clay's.
The cloudless, breezeless night, though not yet severely cold, was
crisp with the purity of frost and sweet with the exquisite scent of
flowering loquats. The only sounds breaking its stillness were the
trains passing across the long viaduct approaching the bridge, and the
rumble of the vehicles as they ground their homeward way along the
stony road, their lights flashing as they passed, and snatches of the
occupants' conversation reaching us where we walked on a path beside
the main thoroughfare. The heavens were a spangled glory, and the dark
sleeping lands gave forth a fresh, pleasant odour. Man provided the
only discordant note; but for the jarring of his misdoings there would
have been perfect peace.
Oh, the hot young heart that raged by my side! I too had forded the
cruel torrent of facts that was torturing her mind; I knew; I
understood. By-and-by she would arrive at my phase and have somewhat
of my calmness, but to tell her so would merely have been the
preaching so deservedly and naturally abhorred by the young, and
except for holding her hand in a tight clasp, I was apparently
unresponsive.
As she grew quieter I steered for home, and eventually we arrived at
the door of the kitchen and found there Jake, Andrew, and the
Rooney-Molyneux--a small man with a large beard and the type of
aristocratic face furnished with a long protruding nose and a narrow
retreating forehead. Carry, up aloft like the angels, could be heard
practising on my piano, and the soiled utensils scattered on the table
illustrated that the gentlemen had had refreshments.
It being Dawn's week in the kitchen, she set about collecting the cups
in the wash-up dish, and presently some maudlin expression of
sentiment on the part of the Rooney-Molyneux reopened the vials of her
indignation.
"I'm naturally anxious that it may be a son," he drivelled, "as there
are so few male representatives of the old name now."
"And the sooner there's none the better. There is no excuse for the
likes of you being alive. I'd like to assist in the extermination of
your family by putting you in the boiling copper on washing day. That
would give you a taste of your deserts," raged the girl.
She was speaking without restraint in the light of the high demands of
crude, impetuous, merciless youth. I had once felt as she did, but now
I could see the cruel train of conditions behind certain characters
forcing them into different positions, and in place of Dawn's
wholesome, justifiable, hot-headed rage against the likes of
Rooney-hyphen, I felt for him a contempt so immeasurable that it
almost toppled over and became pity.
Seeing the little sense of responsibility that is inculcated regarding
the laws of being, instead of being shocked at the familiarity of the
Rooney-Molyneux type of husband and father, I gave myself up to
agreeable surprise owing to the large number of noble and worthy
parents I had discovered.
"The world does soil our minds and we soil it--
Time brings the tolerance that hides the truth,"
but Dawn had not yet sunk to the apathy engendered by experience and
familiarity. She adjudged the case on its merits, as it would be
handled by an administrator of the law--the common law we all must
keep. She did not imagine a network of exculpatory conditions or go
squinting round corners to draw it into line as an act for which
circumstances rather than the culprit were responsible; she gazed
straight and honestly and saw a crime.
"Dawn, you shameless hussy, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said
her uncle.
"Oh yes, I'm well aware that any girl who says the straight truth
about the things that concern them most in life, _ought_ to be ashamed
of herself. They should hold their tongues except to flatter the men
who trample them in the dust,--that's the proper and _womanly_
attitude for a girl, I know," she said desperately.
"I'm sure this is uncalled for," simpered the hero of the act, rising
and showing signs of looking for his hat.
"You'd better run and tell your wife you've been insulted, poor little
dear!" said Dawn.
"Look!" said Andrew to me uneasily, "tell Dawn to dry up, will you;
she'll take no notice of me, an' if that feller goes home actin' the
goat I'll get the blame, an' he ain't drunk enough to be shut up. Blow
him, I say!"
"I'm sure," said Mr Rooney-Molyneux, who apparently had various things
mixed with politics, "that some men, though the women have taken the
votes and their manhood, still have some rights; bless me, it _must_
be acknowledged they have some rights in creation!"
Here he made an ineffectual grab for his hat and a sprawling plunge
in the direction of the door, saying, "I've never been so insulted!"
"Blow you! Sit down, Mr Mooney-Rollyno, or whatever you are," said
Andrew, "you've got to stay here; and Dawn, hold your mag! You'd give
any one the pip with your infernal gab."
"I'm sure it must be conceded that men have some rights?" Mr
Rooney-Molyneux appealed to me. I was the most responsible person
present, Uncle Jake did not count, the other three were children, and
so it behoved me to take a grip of the situation.
"Rights in creation! I should rather think so! In creation men have
the rights, or perhaps duties, of gods--to protect, to nurture, to
guard and to love, and when as a majority men rise to them we shall be
a great people, but for the present the only rights many of them wrest
and assert by mere superior brute force are those of bullies and
selfish cowards. Sit down immediately!"
He sat without delay.
"All that Dawn says of you is deserved. The least you can do now to
repair matters is to swallow your pill noiselessly and give no further
trouble until you are called upon to obstruct the way again in
semblance of discharging responsibilities of which a cat would be
twice as capable."
"Yes," said Dawn, "if you dare to talk of going home to worry your
wife I'll throw this dish of water right on you, and when I come to
think of things, I feel like throwing a hot one on every man."
As she said this she swirled her dishcloth to clean the bowl, and
turning to toss the water into the drain outside the door, confronted
Ernest Breslaw.
Quite two hours had elapsed since he had parted from us to conduct
Miss Grosvenor to her home, where he had been long delayed in argument
concerning whether he could or could not address a public meeting. I
discovered later that an opportunity to gracefully take his leave from
Grosvenor's had not occurred earlier, and that he had quite
relinquished hope of calling at Clay's that night, but to his
surprise, seeing the place lighted as he was passing, he came towards
the kitchen door.
Dawn was doubtless piqued that he should have spent so much time with
Miss Grosvenor, which, considering his previous attentions to her, and
the rules of the game as observed in this stratum of society, gave him
the semblance of flirting--perfidious action, worthy of the miscreant
man in the beginning of a career which at a maturer stage should cover
cruelty and cowardice equalling that of Rooney-Molyneux! Dawn lacked
restraint in her emotional outbursts; the poor girl's state of
nervousness bordered on hysteria; the water was nearly out of her hand
in any case, and with a smack of that irritated divergence from lawful
and decorous conduct of which the sanest of us are at times the
victim, she pitched the dish of greasy, warm water fairly on the
immaculate young athlete, accompanying the action with the
ejaculation--
"That's what you deserve, too!"
"I demand--" he exclaimed, but further utterance was drowned by a
hearty guffaw from Andrew which fully confirmed the outrageous insult.
"Just what I should expect of you," sneered Uncle Jake, while Mr
Rooney-Molyneux, his attention thus diverted from his own affairs,
gazed in watery-eyed surprise at a second victim of the retributive
Dawn.
"Well, that's about what you'd expect from a _thing earning her
living_, but never of a young lady in a _good_ home of her own and
living with _the mother of a family_," said Carry, appearing in time
to witness the accident.
I said nothing to the white-faced girl, for there was more urgent work
to be done in repairing the damage. Hurrying through the house, and
reefing my skirts on the naked rose-bushes under Miss Flipp's window,
where the dead girl's skirts had caught as she went out to die, I
gained a point intercepting Ernest as he strode along the path leading
to the bridge.
"Ernest!"
"You must excuse me to-night," he said, showing that my intervention
was most unwelcome.
"Ernest, if you have any friendship for me, stop. I must speak to you,
and I'm not feeling able for much more to-night."
Thus did I make a lever of my invalidism, and in the gentleness of his
strength he submitted to be detained.
Some men would have covered their annoyance with humorous satire, but
Ernest was not furnished with this weapon. He only had physical
strength, and that could not avail him in such an instance. I placed
my hand on his arm, ostensibly for support, but in reality to be sure
of his detention, and found that he was saturated. Not a pleasant
experience on a frosty night, but there was no danger of it proving
deleterious to one in his present state of excitement. Being one of
those natures whose emotions, though not subtle, make up for this
deficiency in wholesome thoroughness, he was furious with the rage of
heated youth not given to spending itself on every adventitious excuse
for annoyance, and debarred by conditions from any sort of
retaliation. In addition to being bitterly wounded, his sporting
instinct was bruised, and he chafed under the unfairness of the blow.
The beauty of the cloudless, breezeless night had been supplemented by
a lop-sided moon, risen sufficiently to show the exquisite mists
hanging like great swathes of white gossamer in the hollows, and to
cast the shadows of the buildings and trees in the silent river, at
this time of the year looking so cold and treacherous in its
rippleless flow. The wet grass was stiffening with frost, and the only
sounds disturbing the chillier purity of advancing night were the
erratic bell at the bridge and the far-off rumble of a train on the
mountain-side. Man still afforded the discordant note, and the only
heat in the surroundings was that in the burning young heart that
raged by my side.
Oh, youth! youth! You must each look back and see for yourselves, in
the aft-light cast by later experience, the mountains and fiery
ordeals you made for yourselves out of mole-hills in the matter of
heart-break. We, whose hair is white, cannot help you, though we have
gone before and know so well the cruel stretches on the road you
travel.
Ernest waited for me to take the initiative, and as everything that
rose to my lips seemed banal, we stood awkwardly silent till he was
forced into saying--
"I'm afraid you are overdoing yourself. Can I not help you to your
room? You will be ill."
"The only thing that would overdo me is that you should be upset about
this. It must not make any difference."
"Difference between you and me?--nothing short of an earthquake could
do that," he replied.
"I mean with Dawn. It must not make any difference with her. It was
only a freak."
"Certainly; I would be a long time retaliating upon a _lady_, no
matter what she did to me; but when--when--" (he could not bring
himself to name it, it struck him as so disgraceful)--"she intimates
to me, as plainly as was done to-night, that she disapproves of my
presence in her house, well, a fellow would want pole-axing if he
hadn't pride to take a hint like that."
"She did not mean anything. She will be more hurt than you are."
"Mean anything! Had it been a joke I could have managed to endure it,
or an accident about which she would have worried, I would have been
amused, but it was deliberate; and if it had been _clean_ water--but
ugh! it was greasy slop-water, to make it as bad as it could be; and
if a man had done it--"
The muscles of his arm expanded under my interested touch as he made a
fist of the strong brown hand.
"But being a girl I can only put up with it," he said with the
helplessness of the athlete in dealing with such a delinquent.
"Did you hear what she said too? Great Scott! it is not as though I
had done her any harm! I merely came here to see a friend, and made
myself agreeable because you said she was good to you; and, dear me!"
His voice broke with the fervour of his perturbation. He had been
wounded to the core of his manly _amour propre_; and to state that he
was not more than twenty-five, gives a better idea of his state of
mind than could any amount of laborious diagnosis.
"What can I have done?" he further ejaculated. "Can some one have told
her falsely that I'm a cad in any way? She might have waited until
she proved it. _I_ would not have believed bad any one spoken badly of
_her_." (Here an inadvertent confession of the growing affection he
felt for her.) "Even if I were deserving of such ignominy, it was none
of her business. I only came to see you,--she had nothing to do with
me."