LEBANON HOUSE
Of all the great stations in the world Euston alone preserves in its
Tartarian architecture the spirit in which the first railway travellers
must have set out. So long as Euston endures, whatever improvements
humanity may achieve in rapidity of travel and transport, we shall
understand the apprehension and awe with which the original adventure
must have filled the imagination of mankind. Mrs. Browning took to her
bed in order to recover from the effects of a first view of Paddington
Station; but Paddington is merely an overgrown conservatory set beside
Euston, impressive in its way but entirely lacking in that capacity for
permanently and intensely expressing the soul of an epoch, which makes
Euston worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as St. Peter’s,
or the Pyramids of Gizeh, or even the sublime Parthenon itself. Not
only does Euston express the plunge of humanity into a Plutonian era,
a plunge more lamentable and swift than Persephone’s from Enna in the
dark chariot of Hades; but it peculiarly expresses within the lapse of
a whole period the descent of the individual Londoner to the industrial
Hell.
On an iron-bound day in early March the grimy portico of Euston might
oppress the lightest heart with foreboding as, passing through to the
eternal twilight of those cavernous and funereal entries, the fearful
traveller embarks for the unimaginable North. The high platforms give
the trains a weasel shape. The departure bell strikes upon the ear like
a cracked Dies Iræ. The porters, in spite of their English kindliness,
manage somehow to assume the guise of infernal guardians, so that we
tip them as we might propitiate old Charon with an obol or to Cerberus
fling the drugged sop. St. Pancras and its High Anglican embellishments
impress the observer as simply a Ruskinian attempt to make the best of
both worlds. King’s Cross is a mere result of that ugliness and utility
of which Euston is the enshrinement. Paddington is an annexe of the
Crystal palace. Victoria and Charing Cross are already infected with
the fussiness and insignificance of Boulogne. Waterloo is a restless
improvisation, Liverpool Street a hideous ant-heap. To get a picture
of the spirits of damned Londoners passing for ever from their beloved
city, one should wait on a frozen foggy midnight outside the portals of
Euston.
Nancy may not have read Virgil, but her heart was heavy enough with
foreboding when with Letizia, a tiny Red Riding Hood, she entered
the train for Brigham on that iron-bound morning early in March. She
wished now that she had waited for an answer to the letter announcing
her visit. Visions of a severe man-servant shutting the door in her
face haunted her. She tried to recall what Bram had told her about the
details of his family life, but looking back now she could not recall
that he had told her anything except his hatred of it all. And anyway,
what could he have known of the present state of his family, apart
from the sardonic commentary upon it in his grandmother’s infrequent
letters? It was twelve years since he had escaped from Lebanon
House. His brother had been a boy of fourteen; his father was still
alive then; his grandfather too; and that strange old grandmother,
the prospect of meeting whom had kept Nancy from wavering in her
resolution, was not bedridden in those days.
“Muvver,” said Letizia, who had been looking out of the window at the
Buckinghamshire fields, “I can count to fifteen. I counted fifteen
moo-cows, and then I counted fifteen moo-cows again.”
“You are getting on, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Letizia echoed, whereupon she burst into a chant
of triumph, which caused an old gentleman in the opposite corner of the
compartment to look up in some alarm over the top of his newspaper.
“Hush, darling, don’t sing like that. You’ll disturb the ladies and
gentlemen who want to read.”
“Why do they want to read?”
“To pass the time away.”
“I would like to read, muvver.”
Nancy produced her book.
“A cat sat on a mat. A fat rat sat on a mat,” she proclaimed aloud.
“No, darling, if you’re going to read you must read to yourself. The
gentleman opposite isn’t reading his paper aloud.”
“Why isn’t he?”
“Because it might worry other people and wouldn’t be good manners.”
“Is that gentleman good manners?”
“Of course, he has. Hush, darling, don’t go on asking silly questions.”
“When I make a rude noise with my mouf I put my hand up and say
‘Pardon.’”
“Of course.”
“Well, that gentleman maided lots and lots of very rude noises, and he
didn’t put his hand up to his mouf and say ‘pardon.’ Why didn’t he,
muvver?”
“Darling, please don’t go on making remarks about people. It’s not
kind.”
Letizia was dejected by this insinuation, and sat silent for a space.
Then she cheered up:
“Muvver, if that gentleman makes a rude noise again, would it be kind
for me to put up my hand to my mouf and say ‘pardon’?”
Nancy thought that her daughter’s present humour of critical
observations augured ill for her success at Lebanon House, and she
began to wish that she had left her behind in London.
“Listen, darling. I don’t want you to be a horrid little girl and go on
chattering when mother asks you to keep quiet. If you behave like this,
your Uncle Caleb won’t like you.”
“If he doesn’t like me, I won’t like him,” said Letizia confidently.
Nancy shook a reproachful head.
“Well, I shan’t talk to you any more. In fact, I’ve a very good mind to
leave you behind in the train when we get to Brigham.”
“Where would I go?” Letizia asked, perfectly undismayed by this threat.
“I’m sure I don’t know where you would go.”
“I would ask a porter,” Letizia suggested. “I would say, ‘Please, Mr.
Porter, where shall I go to?’ and then he’d tell me, and I’d say, ‘Oh,
that’s where I shall go, is it?’”
Suddenly a cloud passed across the mother’s mind. It might be that
to-morrow she would be travelling back through these same fields
without her little girl. Ah, nothing that Letizia said could justify
her in making mock threats of abandoning her in the train when in her
heart was the intention of abandoning her in the house of that unknown
brother-in-law. In swift contrition she picked Letizia up and kissed
her.
“My sweetheart,” she whispered.
Rugby was left behind, Lichfield in its frosty vale, the smoky skies of
Crewe and Stafford. The country outraged by man’s lust for gold writhed
in monstrous contortions. About the refuse heaps of factories bands of
children roamed as pariahs might, and along the squalid streets women
in shawls wandered like drab and melancholy ghosts.
“Brigham, Brigham,” cried the porters.
On the cold and dreary platform Letizia in her scarlet hood made the
people turn round to stare at her as if she were a tropical bloom or
some strange bird from the sweet South.
“Lebanon House?” the driver of the fly repeated in surprise. “Mr.
Fuller’s, do you mean, ma’am?”
And every time he whipped up the smoking horse his perplexity seemed to
be writing on the grey air a note of interrogation.
Letizia drew a face on the mildewed window strap and another larger
face on the window itself.
“Aren’t you making your gloves rather messy, darling?” her mother
enquired anxiously.
“I was droring,” her daughter explained. “This teeny little face is
Tizia.” She pointed to the inscribed strap. “And this anormous big face
is you.” She indicated the window.
The horse must have been startled by the sound of Letizia’s laughter
which followed this statement, for it broke into a bony canter at the
unwonted sound. A corpse chuckling inside a coffin would not have
sounded so strange as the ripple of a child’s laughter in this fly
musty with the odour of old nose-bags and dank harness.
Looking out at the landscape, Nancy perceived a wilderness covered with
sheds, some painted grey, some scarlet. A hoarding was inscribed in
huge letters FULLER’S FIREWORKS. That must be the factory. Presently
the fly began to climb a gradual slope between fields dotted with
swings, giant-strides, and various gymnastic frames. Another hoarding
proclaimed THE FULLER RECREATION PARK. Nancy did not think much of it.
She did not know that Joshua Fuller might perhaps have swung himself
into Parliament from one of those swings, had he only lived a little
longer.
At the top of the slope the fly passed through a varnished gate,
swept round a crackling semicircle of gravel between two clumps of
frost-bitten shrubs, and pulled up before the heavy door of Lebanon
House. Nancy looked in dismay at the grim stucco walls stained with
their aqueous arabesques and green pagodas of damp. That the bright
little form beside her could be left within those walls was beyond
reason. Better far to flee this spot, and, whatever happened in
London, rejoice that her baby was still with her. Yet perhaps Bram
had really fretted over his separation from his family, perhaps in
dying he had wished that Letizia might take his place in this house.
Before she could be tempted to tell the driver to turn round, Nancy
jumped out of the fly and rang the front-door bell. It was answered,
not by that severe man-servant of her anxious prefigurations, but by
an elderly parlourmaid, who must have been warned of her arrival, for
she immediately invited her to step in. Nancy hesitated a moment, for
now that she was here it seemed too much like taking everything for
granted to send the fly away and ask the maid to accept the custody
of her dressing-case. She had not liked to presume an inhospitable
reception by arriving without any luggage at all, and yet, now that she
saw her dressing-case standing on the hall chair, she wished she had
not brought it. However, it would really be too absurdly self-conscious
to keep the fly waiting while she was being approved. So, she paid the
fare and tried not to resemble an invader, a thief, or a beggar.
“What is this house, muvver?” Letizia asked as they were following the
elderly maid along the gloomy hall. “Is it a house where bad people go?”
“No, it’s where your Uncle Caleb lives, and your two aunts——” Nancy
broke off in a panic, for she simply could not remember either of their
names. Were they Rachel and Sarah? This was serious.
“How is Mrs. Fuller?” she asked, in the hope that the elderly maid
would feel inclined to be chatty about the health of the whole family
and so mention the names of the two aunts in passing.
“Mrs. Fuller is the same as usual,” said the maid.
“And Miss Fuller?” Nancy ventured.
“Miss Achsah and Miss Thyrza are both quite well.”
_What_ was the name of the first one? The stupid woman had said it so
quickly. However, she had got the name of one. Thyrza—Thyrza. She must
not forget it again.
The elderly maid left Nancy and Letizia in a sombre square room
overcrowded with ponderous furniture and papered with dull red flock.
On the overmantel was a black marble clock with an inscription
setting forth that it was presented to Caleb Fuller, Esquire, by his
devoted employees on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. But
did she not remember that Caleb had sacked all his employees on that
auspicious occasion? Perhaps he had not liked the gift, she thought
with a smile. Above the clock hung a large steel engraving of what
Nancy at first imagined was intended to represent the Day of Judgment;
but on examining the title she found that it was a picture of the
firework-display by Messrs. Fuller and Son in Hyde Park on the occasion
of the National Thanksgiving for the recovery of H. R. H. the Prince of
Wales.
“Why does this room smell like blot-paper, muvver?” Letizia inquired.
“Now, darling, I beg of you not to ask any more questions at all. Will
you be kind to mother and do that?”
Letizia wriggled one fat leg against the other for a moment.
“Yes,” she whispered at last resignedly.
“There’s a pet,” said Nancy, lifting her on a mahogany chair, the seat
of which was covered with horsehair.
“Ouch!” Letizia exclaimed, rubbing her leg. “It’s all fistles, and
where my drawses have gone away and left a piece of my leg the fistles
have bitten it. Your drawses don’t go away and leave a piece of your
leg. So the fistles don’t bite you.”
At this moment the heavy door opened quietly to admit Caleb Fuller, a
plump-faced young man with brown curly hair and a smile of such cordial
and beaming welcome that Nancy’s heart sank, for of course he would be
delighted to accept the responsibility of Letizia’s upbringing.
“How do you do? How kind of you to come and see us,” said Caleb. “So
very kind. I can’t say how much we appreciate it. You’ll stay and have
tea with us, won’t you?”
“Thank you very much,” said Nancy, wondering how on earth she was going
to suggest what she had come all the way from London to suggest.
“You’ll excuse our lack of ceremony? We’re such simple people. I
suppose you drove up from the station? And this is poor Bram’s little
girl, I suppose?”
Caleb’s beaming expression had changed in a flash to one of extreme
wide-eyed mournfulness.
“Will you give your Uncle Caleb a kiss, my dear?” he asked in smugly
sentimental accents.
“No, fank you,” Letizia replied, evidently supposing that she was
behaving extra well in refusing so politely.
Nancy could not bring herself to reprove her daughter’s disinclination.
She felt that, if she had been a little girl of Letizia’s age, she
should not have cared to kiss this very old young man.
Caleb turned on his smile to dispose of the rebuff.
“Let me see, how old is she?”
“Five next July.”
“Can she talk much?”
“I’m afraid she can talk a great deal too much,” Nancy laughed. “Being
with grown-up people all the time has made her a very precocious little
girl, I’m afraid.”
She was wondering how she could manage to keep the conversation
trained on Letizia until she could muster up the courage to ask her
brother-in-law the favour she desired.
“I think it’s such a pity to let children grow up too soon,” Caleb
sighed in a remote and dreamy tone that trembled like the vox humana
stop with the tears of things. “I like all little things so much; but
I think people and animals deteriorate when they grow big. I had a
dear little cream-coloured kitten, and now that lovely little kitten
has grown into an enormous hulking cat and spends all its time in the
kitchen, eating. I noticed when I was going through the household
books that we were getting extra fish, so I went into the matter most
carefully, and do you know....” The horror of the story he was telling
overcame Caleb for a moment, and he had to gulp down his emotion before
he could proceed. “Do you know I found that they were actually buying
special fish for this great cat?” His voice had sunk to an awe-struck
whisper. “It came as a terrible shock to me that such a pretty little
tiny kitten which only seemed to lap up a small saucer of milk every
now and then should actually have become an item in the household
expenditure nowadays.... Of course,” he added hastily, “I told the cook
she had no business to give it anything except scraps that couldn’t be
used for anything else. But still....” Caleb allowed his narrative to
evaporate in a profound sigh.
“Bram spoke of you just before he died,” Nancy began abruptly.
“How very kind of him,” Caleb observed, reassuming quickly that
expression of devout and wide-eyed sentimentality, though in the tone
of his voice there was an implication of the immense gulf between
Bram’s death and his own life.
“He seemed to regret the breach between himself and his family,” she
continued.
“It was always a great grief to us,” Caleb observed. He was still
apparently as gently sympathetic; yet somehow Nancy had a feeling that
behind the wide-eyed solemnity there was a twinkle of cunning in the
grey shallow eyes, a lambent twinkle that was playing round the rocky
question of what she was leading up to, and of how he should deal with
any awkward request she might end by making.
“He was anxious that I should bring Letizia to see you all,” Nancy
pressed.
There was a reproach in her brother-in-law’s gaze that made her
feel as if she were being utterly remorseless in her persistency.
Nevertheless, Caleb turned on quite easily that cordial welcoming smile.
“I’m so glad,” he murmured from the other side of the universe. “I
don’t think tea will be long now.”
“Oh, please don’t bother about tea,” she begged.
Caleb beamed more intensely.
“Oh, please,” he protested on his side. “My aunts and I would be very
much upset indeed if you didn’t have tea. And to-day’s Thursday!”
Nancy looked puzzled.
“I see I shall have to let you into a little family secret. We always
have a new cake on Thursday,” he proclaimed, smiling now with a
beautifully innocent archness. Turning to Letizia he added playfully,
“I expect you like cakes, don’t you?”
“I like the cakes what Mrs. Porridge makes for me,” Letizia replied.
“Oatmeal cakes?” Caleb asked in bewilderment.
“Letizia,” her mother interrupted quickly, “please don’t answer your
uncle in that horrid rude way. Mrs. Pottage was our landlady at
Greenwich,” she explained.
Caleb looked coldly grave. He disapproved of landladies with their
exorbitant bills.
“You must find it very unpleasant always being robbed by landladies,”
he said.
“Bram and I were very lucky usually. We met far more pleasant
landladies than unpleasant ones.”
Nancy paused. She was wondering if she should be able to explain her
mission more easily if the subject of it were not present.
“I wonder if Letizia’s aunts would like to see her?”
“Oh, I’m sure they would,” Caleb answered. “We’ll all go into the
drawing-room. I’m sure you must be wanting your tea.”
“If we could leave Letizia with her aunts, I would like very much to
talk to you for a minute or two alone.”
Caleb squirmed.
“Don’t be anxious,” Nancy laughed. “I’m not going to ask you to lend me
any money.”
“Oh, of course not,” he said with a shudder. “I never thought you were
going to do that. I knew Bram would have explained to you that I really
couldn’t afford it. We have had the most dreadful expenses lately in
connection with the factory. I have had to lock up several thousand
pounds.”
He made this announcement with as much judicial severity as if he had
actually condemned the greater part of his fortune to penal servitude
for life.
“Yes, it must be horrible to have a lot of money that can’t behave
itself,” Nancy agreed.
Her brother-in-law regarded her disapprovingly. He resented few things
more than jokes, for he objected to wasting those ready smiles of his
almost as much as he hated wasting his ready money.
“Well, shall we go into the drawing-room?” he asked, trying to make his
guest feel that merely to lead her from one room to another in Lebanon
House was giving her much more than he would give many people for
nothing.
“Are those aunts?” Letizia exclaimed in disgusted astonishment when she
was presented to the two drab middle-aged women with muddy faces and
lace caps who, each wearing a grey woollen shawl, sat on either side of
a black fire from which one exiguous wisp of smoke went curling up the
chimney.
“Yes, those are your aunts, darling,” said Nancy, hoping that Letizia’s
generic question had not been understood quite in the way that it was
intended. “Run and give them a kiss.”
There must have been a note of appeal in her mother’s voice, for
Letizia obeyed with surprising docility, even if she did give an
impression by the slowness of her advance that she was going to stroke
two unpleasant-looking animals at the invitation of a keeper. Then it
was Nancy’s turn to embrace the aunts, much to the amazement of her
daughter, who exclaimed:
“You kissed them too! Was you told to kiss them?”
“May I leave Letizia with you while I finish my talk with Caleb?” Nancy
asked her aunts.
Caleb looked positively sullen over his sister-in-law’s pertinacity,
and he was leading the way back to what was apparently known as the
library, when the elderly maid appeared with the tea. He beamed again.
“You _must_ have tea first. I’m sure you _must_ be wanting your tea. I
was telling—er—Nancy about our Thursday cake, Aunt Achsah.”
Caleb’s face was richly dimpled by the smile for which the family joke
was responsible, and at which Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza tittered
indulgently. Nancy was saying over in her head the name of the elder
aunt so that she should be able to remember it in future. Then she
gazed round in depression of spirit at the curtains and upholstery
and wall-paper, all in sombre shades of brown, and at the bunches of
pampas-grass, dyed yellow, blue, and red, which in hideous convoluted
vases on bamboo stands blotched the corners of the room with plumes of
crude colour. Could she leave Letizia in this house? Would Bram really
wish it?
Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza had by now wound themselves up to express
the sorrow that they felt convention owed to Nancy.
“He was a wild boy and a great anxiety to us,” Aunt Thyrza sighed. “But
we were very fond of him.”
“It nearly killed his poor father when he took to the stage,” Aunt
Achsah moaned. “He had such a beautifully religious bringing-up that it
seemed particularly dreadful in his case. Of course, we do not believe
that there may not be some good men and women on the stage, but all the
same it was terrible—really terrible for us when Bram became an actor.”
“But didn’t you have a sister who went on the stage?” Nancy asked.
The two drab women stared at her in consternation. How did this
creature know the story of the lost Caterina? Why, their mother must
have told Bram. The shameful secret was a secret no more.
Caleb knitted his brows, and his granite-grey eyes gleamed. So, this
was the woman’s game. Blackmail! This was why she wanted to talk to
him alone. He would soon show her that he was not the kind of man to
be frightened by blackmail. As a matter of fact, Caleb himself, who
had only heard when he came of age about the shameful past of his Aunt
Caterina, had been much less impressed by the awfulness of the family
secret than his aunts had expected.
“Yes, we did have a sister who went on the stage,” Aunt Thyrza
tremulously admitted. “But that was many, many years ago, and she has
long been dead.”
Nancy was merciful to the aunts and forbore from pressing the point
about the existence of good people on the stage. She was not merciful,
however, to Caleb when tea came to an end and he showed no sign of
adjourning with her to the library.
“Are you sure you won’t have another piece of cake? Do have another
piece of cake,” he begged, turning on the smile almost to its full
extent. That he could not quite manage the full extent was due to the
irritation this obtrusive young woman’s pertinacity was causing him.
“No, indeed, I really couldn’t,” said Nancy, donning a bright little
smile herself as a cyclist hopes his oil-lamp will avail to protect him
against the dazzling onrushing motor-car. “Letizia, darling,” she added
firmly. “I’m going to leave you here with Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza
for a little while. You will be good, won’t you?”
“But I’d like to stroke the puss-cat.”
“The cat?” Aunt Achsah exclaimed. “What cat?”
“The puss-cat what that man was talking about to muvver,” Letizia
explained.
“The cat isn’t allowed in the drawing-room,” Aunt Thyrza said primly.
“Why isn’t he? Does he make messes?”
The two aunts shuddered. It was only too sadly evident that the stage
had already corrupted even this four-year-old child.
“Cats live in kitchens,” Aunt Achsah laid down dogmatically.
“Well, can I go to the kitchen, muvver?” Letizia asked. “Because I
would like to see the puss-cat. I fink puss-cats are much, _much_ nicer
than aunts.”
“No, darling, I want you to stay here,” and with this Nancy hurried out
of the room, followed reluctantly by her brother-in-law.
When they were back in the library, which, now that she had a clue to
its status, Nancy perceived did contain half-a-dozen bound volumes
of the _Illustrated London News_, three or four books of religious
reading, and a decrepit Bradshaw, she came straight to the point.
“Caleb, times are rather bad for theatrical business, and....”
“Business is bad everywhere,” Caleb interrupted. “Of course, you know
that I am engaged in manufacturing fireworks? My brother no doubt has
told you that. Trade has never been so bad as it is this year, and only
recently an Order in Council has made it illegal to use chlorate of
potash with sulphur compounds. That is a very serious matter indeed for
firework manufacture. Indeed, if it had not been for our discovery that
aluminium can be successfully used for brightening our colour effects,
I don’t know what _would_ have happened to the business. Luckily I
was one of the first, if not _the_ first manufacturer to realise the
advantages of aluminium, and so I had already ceased to use chlorate
of potash with sulphur for quite a long time, in fact, ever since as a
boy of twenty I found myself practically in sole charge of our factory.
My brother’s desertion of his father twelve years ago ruined all my
chances. I was getting on so splendidly at school. I was winning prizes
for Latin and Scripture and all kinds of subjects, and my masters were
so enthusiastic about my education. But when I was only fifteen, my
father said to me: ‘Caleb, you can either go on with your school work
or you can give up school and enter the business at once on a small
salary.’ It was a hard choice, but I didn’t hesitate. I gave up all my
schoolwork, because after my brother’s desertion I felt it was my duty
to enter the business. And I did. You don’t know how hard I’ve worked
while my brother was amusing himself on the stage. But I don’t bear
his memory any grudge. Please don’t think that I’m criticising him,
because of course I wouldn’t like to say anything about one who is no
longer with us. I only want you to understand that my position is by
no means easy. In fact, it’s terribly difficult. So, though I would be
happy to lend you lots of money, if I had any to spare, I’m sure you’ll
understand that, with all the expenses I’ve been put to over this Order
in Council and changing my factory and one thing and another, it simply
isn’t possible.”
“I’m not asking you to lend me any money,” Nancy said, as soon as her
brother-in-law paused for a moment to take breath. “But Bram when he
was dying....”
“Oh, please don’t think that I don’t sympathise with you over my
brother’s death. It was a shock to us all. I read about it in the
local paper. I’d had a little trouble with the proprietor over our
advertisements, so he printed all about Bram being a clown in great
headlines. But in spite of the shocking way he died like that on the
stage, I showed everybody in Brigham how much upset we all were by
asking for the Recreation Ground to be closed for two whole days. So
please don’t think we weren’t very much shocked and upset.”
“Bram, when he was dying in my arms,” she went on, “told me if I was
ever in difficulties to go to you, because he was sure that you would
want to help me.”
“Yes, that’s just the kind of thing my brother would say,” said Caleb
indignantly. “He never cared a straw about the business. He hated the
factory. He always had an idea that money was only made to be spent.”
“I don’t think that Bram expected me to borrow any money from you,”
said Nancy. “But he thought that you might care to assume the
responsibility of bringing up Letizia. He thought that she might be a
link between him and his family.”
“Bring up Letizia?” Caleb gasped. “Do you mean, pay for her clothes and
her keep and her education?”
“I suppose that is what Bram fancied you might care to do. I would not
have come here to-day, if I had not believed that I owed it to his
child to give her opportunities that her mother cannot give her. Please
don’t think that I want to lose Letizia. It has cost me a great deal
...” her voice wavered.
“But you could have told me what you wanted in the letter, and that
would have saved you your railway fare,” said Caleb reproachfully.
“I didn’t mean the money it cost. I meant the struggle with my own
feelings.”
“I think it would be wrong of me to try and persuade you to give up
your child,” said Caleb solemnly. “I wouldn’t do it, even if I could.
But I can’t. You must remember that I still have my old grandmother to
keep. Of course, she’s bedridden now, and she can’t waste money as she
used to waste it, for she was shockingly extravagant whenever she had
an opportunity. But even as it is she costs a great deal. I have to pay
a nurse-companion; and the doctor _will_ come once a week. You know how
ready doctors always are to take advantage of anybody in a house being
ill. They just profit by it,” he said bitterly. “That’s what they do,
they just profit by illness. And besides my grandmother, I have to pay
annuities to my two aunts. I’m not complaining. I’m only too glad to do
it. But I’m just telling you what a load of domestic responsibilities
I have on my shoulders already, so that you can appreciate how utterly
impossible it would be for me to do anything for my brother’s little
girl. Well, you heard what I told you about that cat, and if I can’t
afford the extra amount on the household books for a cat, how can I
possibly afford what a child would cost? I’m only so distressed you
should have gone to the expense of coming all this way to find out
something that I could have told you so well in a letter. I can’t
imagine why you didn’t write to me about this child. You do see my
point of view, don’t you? And I’m sure that you would rather not have
your little girl brought up here. The air of Brigham is very smoky. I’m
sure it wouldn’t be good for children.”
“Well, that’s that,” said Nancy. “I’ve done what Bram asked me to do,
but I’m just dazed. I just simply can’t understand how you and Bram
came out of the same womb.”
Caleb winced.
“Of course, I know that you do talk very freely on the stage,” he said
deprecatingly. “But I wish you wouldn’t use such words in this house.
We’re simply provincial people, and we think that kind of expression
rather unpleasant. I daresay we may appear old-fashioned, but we’d
rather be old-fashioned than hear a lady use words like that. I’m
afraid, by what you just said, that you haven’t really understood my
point of view at all. So, I’m going to take you into my confidence,
because I do want you to understand it and not bear me any ill-will.
My motives are so often misjudged by people,” he sighed. “I suppose
it’s because I’m so frank and don’t pretend I can do things when I
can’t. So I’m going to give you a little confidence, Nancy.” Here Caleb
beamed generously. “It’s still a secret, but I’m hoping to get married
in June, and of course that means a great deal of extra expense,
especially as the lady I am going to marry has no money of her own.”
“I hope you’ll be happy,” Nancy said.
“Thank you,” said Caleb in a tone that seemed to express his personal
gratitude for anything, even anything so intangible as good wishes,
that might contribute a little, a very little toward the relief of the
tremendous weight of responsibility that he was trying so humbly and so
patiently to support. “Thank you very much.”
Nancy was wishing now with all her heart that she had not been so
foolish as to bring that dressing-case with her. She only longed now
to be out of this house without a moment’s delay. She wished too that
she had not dismissed the fly, for it would be impossible to carry the
dressing-case and Letizia all the way to the railway station. Here she
would have to remain until another fly could be fetched.
“There’s a good train at half-past seven,” said Caleb, who was
observing Nancy’s contemplation of her dressing-case on the hall-chair.
“If you like, I’ll telephone to the hotel for a fly to be sent up.
But I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me from waiting any
longer. I have rather a lot of work to do this evening. I’m trying
to save expense wherever I possibly can,” he added with a martyr’s
ecstatic gaze toward a lovelier world beyond this vale of tears.
“Oh, please don’t trouble to wait an instant. I’ll go back to the
drawing-room.”
“Yes, there’s a fire in there,” Caleb observed, it seemed a little
resentfully.
At this moment a neat young woman with bright intelligent eyes came
down the stairs.
“Excuse me, Mr. Fuller, but Mrs. Fuller would like Mrs. Bram Fuller and
her little girl to go up and see her.”
Caleb’s face darkened.
“But surely it’s too late for Mrs. Fuller to see visitors? Besides,
Mrs. Bram Fuller wants to catch the seven-thirty train.”
“It’s only half-past five now,” said Nancy eagerly. “And I should not
care to leave Brigham without seeing Letizia’s great-grandmother.”
In her disgust at Caleb she had forgotten that there was still a member
of this family who might compensate for the others.
“Mrs. Fuller will be very annoyed, Mr. Fuller, if she doesn’t see Mrs.
Bram Fuller and her little girl,” the young woman insisted.
“Very well, nurse, if you think it’s wise,” Caleb said. “But I hope
this won’t mean an extra visit from the doctor this week.”
The bright-eyed young woman was regarding Caleb as a thrush regards a
worm before gobbling it up.
“It would be extremely unwise to disappoint Mrs. Fuller. She has been
counting on this visit ever since she heard yesterday that Mrs. Bram
Fuller was coming to Brigham.”
“My poor old grandmother works herself up into a great state over every
domestic trifle,” Caleb said angrily. “It’s a great pity an old lady
like her can’t give up fussing over what happens in the house.”
Nancy went into the drawing-room to rescue Letizia from her aunts.
“Good-bye—er—Nancy,” said Aunt Achsah. “I hope you won’t think that
I am intruding on your private affairs if I say to you how grieved
both your Aunt Thyrza and myself are to find that our poor little
grand-niece apparently knows nothing whatever about our Heavenly
Father. We do hope that you will try to teach her something about
Him. Of course, we know that Roman Catholics do not regard God with
the same reverence and awe as we do, but still a forward little girl
like Letizia should not be allowed to remain in a state of complete
ignorance about Him. It’s very shocking.”
“Oh, I do so agree with my sister,” Aunt Thyrza sighed earnestly.
“Good-bye, Aunt Achsah. Good-bye, Aunt Thyrza,” said Nancy. “Come
along, Letizia.”
And the way her little daughter danced out of the room beside her
mother exactly expressed what she wanted to do herself.