A LITTLE DIPLOMAT
'Alas to be as we have been,
And to be as we are to-day.'
For a few days life was a confused tangle; then to prevent themselves
going mad, each assiduously tried to pick out the beginning of a new
thread to follow.
Dot was up at the house, she had the little sitting-room and bedroom of
her girlhood again, and she had sent to Sydney for a parcel of new
music.
Strange wisdom came to the little anxious mother. That it was really a
serious quarrel this time she could not help acknowledging, and at first
could hardly restrain herself from flying down to the cottage and
upbraiding Larrie vigorously. But then again she knew her child had
been to blame as well, and felt that interference just at the present
stage of things would work harm. A little time apart she told herself,
would do them both good, so she remained strictly neutral, and though
her heart ached sometimes at the sight of Dot's unhappy eyes and
carefully smiling lips, she made no obvious attempt to bring about a
reconciliation. She did not even throw cold water upon Dot's wild plans
that embraced an instantaneous sale of the house and a voyage to Italy.
Dot had all the trunks and portmanteaus in the house carried into her
bedroom, and began to pack her own and her mother's favourite
possessions into them.
'This might be useful on board,' she would say, putting in a huge
workbasket or writing desk, or 'You would miss this, even in Italy,'
taking down an old print of the Madonna and Child that had hung in her
mother's bedroom as long as she could remember.
The family solicitor was visited. Dot was to come in to about £3000 by
the terms of her father's will when she was twenty-one. She arranged for
a sufficient advance of it to take her mother and herself to Italy.
'You will like to go, of course,' she said to her mother, 'you are
losing your spirits staying in this wretched place year after year.
Travel is just what you need, isn't it now, small woman?'
The mother acquiesced; she would like the voyage very much, but she
could not be ready quite as soon as Dot wished. She must have six weeks
at least to settle about the house and different business matters.
Dot chafed at the delay, she had wanted to take passages in a boat that
went the very next week, and to leave any arrangements to the solicitor,
but the mother for once held her own.
The cottage was to be let, but until a tenant was found, Larrie was
compelled to stay there with the baby and Peggie who had thrown in her
fortunes with the child, and regarded her master and mistress as being
for the time of unsound mind. She treated Larrie with cold severity,
and no words could express the scorn she felt for the absent Dot. But on
the baby, she lavished all the tenderness of her nature, and told it
half-a-dozen times a day that it was a poor deserted lamb, and if she
was the law she would handcuff 'them two' so fast together they could
not move apart the rest of their lives.
The third day of Dot's residence at the house, Mr Wooster came. He had
called at the cottage, but Peggie had informed him her mistress was up
at the house. So he turned his steps uphill. Dot talked a great deal and
seemed in an excited mood, but he had no suspicion of the real state of
affairs, and merely thought she was spending the afternoon at her
mother's.
But he was staying in the district again for his health, and when he
came the next evening with a promised book for the little mother, she
was there again.
She was sitting at a table with a quantity of paper books and maps
spread out before her.
'I am deciding which way to go home,' she said, in answer to his
questioning glance, 'you have often said I ought to study in Italy.'
He thought she was doing it for a pleasant mental recreation and only
smiled.
'We go in about a month. Did not mother tell you?' she said, and
followed up a dotted line through the Red Sea with a careful pen.
He looked the surprise he felt. So friendly had he become with Dot and
the little mother, that he felt quite hurt to be so tardily informed.
'Mr Armitage is fortunate to be able to get away,' was all he said and
there was a little stiffness in his voice.
Dot went slowly overland from Brindisi to Calais, then she looked up.
'No, he is not fortunate,' she said, 'for he cannot get away at all. I
am going alone--at least, mother and I are going.'
'And your little boy of course?'
Dot yawned with discernible difficulty.
'Oh,' she said lightly, 'children block the road to success, besides I
must leave him as compensation to my husband while I hunt for fame.'
He was too amazed to speak. Larrie had struck him as certainly the one
other man in the world capable of fully appreciating the worshipfulness
of this dear little girl. And to hear he was content to part with her
like this after only eighteen months!
He felt a sudden contempt for Larrie and an overwhelming sorrow for
himself; what a very sweet little child she was with those soft flushed
cheeks and wide darkening eyes! And to think there was a lifetime of
hunger for one man because he could never touch one of those soft,
boyish curls, and the other who had all of her, held her so lightly.
'I suppose you think it is a mad quest after my failure,' she said,
finding him silent.
But he disclaimed that. He was as assured of her ultimate success as
ever, and knew that it was only through nervousness that she had failed
to win immediate recognition. As it was, several of the best critics
had spoken of her hopefully.
'No, you will succeed of course,' he said, quietly. He did not look at
her, he was thinking, wondering whether he should be able to do without
travelling too when Australia no longer held her.
Then he wished hair shirts were sold by modern mercers, and thanked God
she was going. He talked cheerfully of the route, advised the best
places for study, the best masters, offered letters of introduction, and
all manner of things.
The talk stimulated Dot, her eyes and cheeks grew bright; two hours ago
the ache at her heart had been intolerable, but the thought of Italy and
music was easing it greatly.
From her corner, her needle in a wee muslin pinafore, the little mother
looked at them with troubled brows. This kind of thing was inimical to
the baby, to Larrie, to all of them, she almost wished her little girl
had been born without music in her soul. Then something made her catch
her breath and pale suddenly under the brown of her skin. She had seen
and interpreted the look of strange wistfulness in Sullivan Wooster's
eyes, and it made her heart grow cold. Dot looking up from her plans met
his earnest gaze, and for some inexplicable reason blushed; the little
mother in the corner said 'God' below her breath--she was not a woman of
strong expressions, but her thoughts had leapt to terrible
possibilities.
When Wooster rose to go, she went downstairs with him; they had been all
the evening in Dot's little sitting room.
'You want me?' he said half way down the hall, for her large eyes were
speaking. They went into the drawing-room and he waited for her to
speak, hat in hand.
'I do not think this place is good for you,' she said gently.
He looked down at the little fragile woman, her worn, lined face and
great sad eyes were infinitely beautiful to him.
'No place ever agreed with me better,' he said, puzzled.
Her lips grew severe.
'It does not agree with you,' she said very quietly.
Then he understood what the anxious eyes were saying, and was
inexpressibly shocked that she should have guessed what he hardly
allowed himself to know. For a moment he could find no words, he stood
before her with bent head and paling face, then he looked up and saw
grief and tenderness were in her face as well as anxiety. Terrible
though the thing was, the little brown faced woman whom the waves of
life had so buffeted, was sorry for him, her eyes grew humid, she put
out her thin, tiny hand.
'It is not good for you,' she repeated very softly.
He lifted the hand to his lips and kissed it reverently.
'No,' he said, 'it is not good for me. I will go.'