Sunday morning was the time for putting on clean clothes.
"I wish I was a beggar child," Theresa said in Grace's sleepy ear, when
the bells were ringing for early service.
"Why?" Much of the vividness of Grace's life came from her sister's
attitude towards existence.
"I shouldn't have to put on scratchy things each Sunday."
"If you'd only keep quiet they wouldn't be so bad, and you're such a
good pretender, Terry, that you could easily believe they were made of
silk."
"I suppose princesses have silken things, don't they? I think I could
pretend that." She was glad to have an easy way of keeping her temper,
for, after a scene of great gravity on her parents' part and more or
less contrition on her own, it had been decided that the adventure was
only to be related to her that night if her day had been passed in
amiability; and though her resentment would be long in dying, curiosity
lived more strongly.
"Let's go to sleep again," said Grace.
Theresa nestled into the curve of the other's body. "Did I hurt you
yesterday?" she whispered.
"Not a bit," Grace answered, with disappointing cheerfulness.
Theresa was determined to be sensational. "I really did want to kill
you!"
"Oh, I know," said Grace obligingly.
"Wouldn't it have been awful if I had? Would I have been hung? Perhaps
not, as I'm a little girl."
"Don't talk about it."
"I like to. They would have taken me up and tried me, wouldn't they? And
I should have been dressed in black, and I should have had a
tear-stained face."
"Terry, I wish you wouldn't; I hate things like deaths."
"I love them," said Theresa with relish. "Have you ever seen Bessie's
brother? He's a policeman. He can tell you lots of things."
"I'm sick of Bessie's brother. Yes, I've seen him. I don't believe he
could catch anyone."
"Well, he has--so there."
"Who?"
"It was a man who stole a ham from the shop at their home. He's been
promoted since then, so he must be good. He buys a paper all about
murders and things and gives it to Bessie; they're better than the
tracts she used to get for me from that chapelly aunt of hers. Those
were good stories, but not so good as Bill's, and his haven't that funny
writing that the Bible parts are put in; but that's useful, because you
know you needn't read it."
"It's called italics."
"Oh! Why?"
"_I_ don't know. I wish you'd go to sleep. It's ages till breakfast."
That meal was supposed to be at nine o'clock on Sunday mornings; but
Bessie had learnt the folly of preparing it at that hour for the master
and mistress of the house, so she lay long in bed, knowing that if the
children grew impatient they would raid the larder, and just before the
clock struck nine she would hurry down the stairs in her loose felt
slippers. At half-past nine Edward Webb would appear, and read
yesterday's newspaper until Nancy, lazy and smiling, in her trailing
dressing-gown, entered the breakfast-room.
"Oh, did you wait for me?" she would say, and drop into her place behind
the teacups.
No one went to church, but for an hour before dinner Edward Webb would
take his little daughters for a walk, while Nancy, seated in her
rocking-chair, would read her endless novels. Following the indolence of
her body, which was the result of more ill-health than anyone but
herself suspected, her mind had gradually refused to exercise its
natural, homely criticism in literature, and she read greedily, almost
mechanically, any novel, not too serious, she could procure. Her method
at the circulating library was to work methodically along the shelves,
and the attendant, without question, would put the next book into her
hands. Often she did not know its name, sometimes she could not have
retold the tale. Reading and rocking had become twin habits which were
alike soothing and effortless. Meanwhile the mending-basket would be
filled to overflowing, and her husband would complain that he could not
find a mended pair of socks. Then she would flush all over her rueful
face, and, still rocking, she would darn rhythmically until there was no
more daylight, when, murmuring something about trying her eyes with dark
work, she would pick up her book. But once Theresa, with her sharp nose
in the basket and a keen eye for other people's faults, drew forth in
triumph a light-coloured garment. "But here's a woolly vest of
father's!" she cried. "You can darn that!"
"Oh, can I, Miss Interference? Perhaps you would like to do it yourself.
Yes, you shall. It's time you learnt. Get the stool and sit beside me."
Theresa remained there until long past bedtime, and when she had
finished the darn there was a deep hole in her middle finger, for she
had refused to wear a thimble. She avoided the work-basket in future,
and Nancy had not the energy to turn this lesson to further account by
making her mend her own stockings, so as often as not there were holes
in Theresa's heels; but the inkpot was handy, and she used it freely,
foreseeing to what martyrdom more complaints might lead. Grace, who
seemed to have gathered into her beautiful body all the commonsense the
family could muster, had years ago accepted responsibility for her
personal neatness, and her stockings were faultless; it was not lack of
mending that wore them out, but the constancy with which she practised
her dancing.
On this Sunday there was boiled mutton for dinner. "I won't have any,"
said Theresa; "I can't bear the colour of the fat. It looks like wool."
"Don't you like it, dearie? I'm so sorry."
"We all hate it."
"Oh dear, how stupid of me! Would you like to have eggs?"
"Seven a shilling," said Grace promptly.
"Are they? Well, it would be rather extravagant, and I'm not sure that
we have any."
"Of course we must eat the meat," said Edward manfully. "Don't make
faces, Theresa. I'll excuse you from eating the fat."
She peered at him sideways.
"In fact," he was thus forced to admit, "I don't like it myself."
"There's a lovely pudding to make up," said Nancy. "Blackberry and apple
pie--and cream; so we'll be good children and eat the meat. Sarah is
coming to-morrow, and we'll give the rest of it to her." She smiled
serenely, but when the meal was done her husband drew her aside.
"Is that how you practise economy?" he asked.
"What, the cream? It's only once a week, dear."
"No, no--giving away the joint."
"Oh, I suppose it was rather thoughtless of me. No, it wouldn't be
right. We'll curry it."
She went upstairs for her afternoon sleep, and left him with less
confidence for the future.
A drowsy peace settled on the house. Edward Webb, too, had a nap. Grace
read demurely in the breakfast-room, and Theresa sat on the kitchen
fender when Bessie, having washed up the dinner things by a miracle of
speed, had emerged to the light of day. Theresa always tried to catch a
glimpse of her on these occasions, for she could never feel that this
was the same person who, moving amid dimness, clad in drab colours,
besmirched with black, had cooked the breakfast; for on Sunday and the
weekly night out she seemed to leave herself in her bedroom and bring
forth a cruder creature, gowned in bright blue, and shadowless. Theresa
felt that she did not know this person, that the real Bessie was
upstairs in her room, and she pictured a being without body, but with
the form of it, as much like a skeleton leaf as a human being could be,
sitting on the edge of the bed until the blue girl should return. And
when dusk fell she avoided the topmost landing of the tall house, for
she was afraid of what Bessie had left up there.
This afternoon Theresa escorted her to the door. "Are you going to have
tea with Bill?" she asked.
"Yes; but I'm going to Sunday-school first."
"Is it nice there?"
"Most times."
"Could I come with you some day?"
"You'll 'ave to ask your mother."
"I wish I could go to Sunday-school. Why don't we?"
"_I_ don't know. I'll be late. Good-bye, Miss Terry!"
"Don't forget the things Bill tells you," she shouted after her.
As she returned to the kitchen she was aware of a grievance which had
not troubled her before, and when her father, waking, wandered about the
house until he found her, she looked at him with a reproachful face.
"Well, Cinderella?"
"I've been thinking," she said.
"Yes?"
"Why don't we go to church? And why don't we sing hymns on Sunday
evening? And why don't we have a family Bible? They do in books, with
all the birthdays in. We haven't got one. Other fathers and mothers read
out of a big Bible to their children."
He sat down and drew her to his knee.
"I'll tell you why, Theresa. I think you are old enough now to
understand. If you want to read the Bible, you shall do so, just as I
have given you other books to read when you have asked for them. If I
had made you read the Bible, you wouldn't have loved it--it would have
been like medicine to you--and I want you to love it, as I do. When I
was a little boy, your grandmother made me read a chapter every night. I
didn't understand it, and I was generally too tired to try."
"Was she very strict--grandmother?"
"She was a good woman."
"Did you like her?"
"Yes, Theresa, I did, but for many years I hated that book, and I made
up my mind that my little girls should only read it when they wanted
to."
Blown by winds of imagination, Theresa veered from the subject.
"What was grandfather like? Was he nice?"
"He was the most delightful man I ever knew." There was a noticeable
change in Edward Webb's enthusiasm for this parent. "I wish you had
known him, Theresa. You would have been such friends."
"Tell me." And "Tell me," she urged again, when her father had smiled
too long at his memories.
"He was a musician and a poet, my dear. He played the organ at the
cathedral, and he wrote songs, music, and words. I can see him now as he
sat at the piano, playing and singing, trying to make your grandmother
laugh."
"Why wouldn't she?"
"Because she didn't always approve, I'm afraid. They were very often
about her, too." He chuckled at another recollection.
"'Your pretty ankle's slender grace,
Your skirts when they are thrumming.'
"It was on a Sunday night he began that, drawing it out of the last
chords of a hymn. I forget the rest. He reeled it off without a thought.
A strip of a man with a solemn face--until you saw his eyes; then you
had to laugh, you didn't know why."
"Except grandmother."
"Yes-es. Your grandmother hadn't the comic spirit, Theresa."
She nodded. She was on Olympus when her father talked with her thus, a
little above her comprehension, so that she must strain for meanings,
while her faith in herself grew great with her stretch.
"I wish grandfather hadn't died," she said. "I don't mind about
grandmother. I think she must have been flannelly."
"Flannelly?"
"You know the kind--not pretty underclothes like mother's, but grey
things with long sleeves and no trimming."
"Well--yes, yes; I don't know about that. She was very handsome, my
dear."
"But not so pretty as Mother or Grace?"
"Certainly not as pretty as they are."
"Tell me some more about grandfather, and I'll make toast for tea."
"Isn't that rather wasteful of the butter?" he asked anxiously,
conscious that his domestic cares were being doubled by Nancy's
inefficiency.
"There's dripping, Bessie told me, from Thursday's beef. That's cheap,
isn't it?"
"Yes; I think we can still afford that."
"We're poor, aren't we?"
"Yes, Theresa."
"Well, never mind. I think it's rather nice to be poor, and Grace says
she's going to make her fortune. She wants to be a lady in a pantomime.
I think she would look lovely. I should like to be one, too, but then I
shouldn't look right. I shall have to be something where I don't show.
I've decided to write books."
His eyelids flickered. "You will have to work hard at school, then."
"Yes. Would you mind cutting me another piece of bread?" she asked
quickly.
When dusk had fallen, the family seated itself round the fire and Edward
Webb told of his night among the mountains. It was only pride which
permitted Theresa to share the hearing with the two who had been more
favoured than herself, but, realizing the dignity of silence, she
tightened her lips and the clasp of her small hands and prepared to
listen without enthusiasm; but slowly her lips relaxed, and leaving her
little stool at the side of the hearth, she pushed past Grace, treading
on her toes in the dimness, and stood before her father, with her hands
on his knees. "Go on," she kept saying between his halting sentences.
"So I had to stay there all night, you see."
She frowned. "If you'd been a man in a book, you would have got down
somehow."
"But I'm not a man in a book, Theresa."
"People tear up their clothes sometimes and make ropes of them, you
know. In burning houses they use sheets; or you might have leapt from
rock to rock."
Grace giggled. "You baby! How could father do that in the dark?"
"I think it was much braver to sit still all night," said Nancy.
Theresa brightened. "Yes, that was brave. Did things come at you?"
"How could they, dear?"
"But they do. They come at me in the night, through the dark. They are
thick and smooth, and come and come, and you can't stop them. They must
have been there. Are you sure they weren't?"
"Perhaps they were," he admitted.
"Oo! nasty things! Tell me some more."
"At last the dawn began to come, and I was very cold and stiff and wet.
I heard a dog bark, and I thought, 'There must be people somewhere; I'll
try to follow the sound.' So, somehow, I found my way to the mountain's
foot, and I came to a stony track between the hills, and when I had
walked a little way I saw a house--a low white house--and there, sitting
beside the garden wall, was a boy."
"How old?" Theresa whispered.
"He is fifteen."
"Almost a grown-up person," Theresa thought, and aloud she said again,
"Go on."
He obeyed, looking into the eager eyes which stared into his own. Her
fingers twitched on his knee, and she was still gazing when his tale was
ended.
"Tell me about that boy again," she said. "I don't suppose I should be
afraid of geese either when I got used to them, should I?"
He was quite ready to agree that she could do anything.
She sat on his knee. "Is he clever?"
"I don't know."
"I shouldn't think he is," she said comfortably.
"He may be. He had a fine head, I remember."
"Oh! What do you call a fine head?"
"A good shape, good size. It's difficult to explain."
"Oh!" she said again, and after a moment's consideration she added: "But
he ought to be cleverer than me, because he's so much older. What
coloured hair had he?"
"I don't know. It was dark, I think--yes, like his father's."
"And what colour was his mother's? You didn't tell me anything about
her, Ned."
"I told you everything I could remember, dear."
"I meant about her looks."
"She was tall and strong and supple. Ceres, she might be called. I think
her hair was chestnut, and there were freckles on her face."
"But was she pretty?"
"Really I don't know. I don't remember; but she seemed brave and
helpful. She took possession of me, and I felt safe. I'll try to
remember more next time."
"Are you going again?" asked Theresa. "Oh, take me!"
"I did not know you were going again," said Nancy.
"They asked me."
"Yes; but was it the kind of invitation----"
"I think so. Indeed, they made me promise----"
"Do you think it wise?"
"Why not?"
"You don't know them."
"But I want to, Nancy."
"But if the man is what you said----"
"He's not an outcast, my dear, and if he were----"
She was silent, but the air was filled with her voiceless and somewhat
sullen objections. Theresa fidgeted.
"You must do as you please, of course," Nancy said at last.
"Not if it displeases you."
"Why should it?"
He gestured dumbly, and something fell between them like a filmy veil.
It spoilt Theresa's evening, and when she went to bed she wondered what
was happening downstairs in the breakfast-room, where the quiet was
broken now and then by the hooting of tugs in the docks and the voices
of those people who had not gone to church, and walked instead in New
Dock Road. Did her father and mother talk? Were they quarrelling, or,
now the children had gone to bed, was she sitting on his knee? There was
a lump of anxiety in her throat: the world had so many places of
darkness and uncertainty; she felt herself groping among dangers, and
she hoped her mother was not crying. She undressed slowly, thoughtfully,
but as she brushed her hair before the looking-glass she became
interested in the vision of her own pale face, and for a moment she
forgot her trouble.
"Grace," she said, "what do you think of my head?"
The answer came from the midst of bedclothes. "It's red, you silly!"
There could be no two opinions about that, but, as Theresa protested, it
was not just an ordinary red, not like that of the girl who brought home
the washing.
"It's not that awful orange kind, now, is it?"
"No; but I don't like it very much. It's neither one thing nor the
other. It's rather what I call streaky, you know."
"Yes, I'm afraid it is. Well, it doesn't matter. I may grow out of it."
"I wish you would be quick."
"I think," said Theresa, as she buttoned her nightgown over that place
where the anxious pain was felt again--"I think I've got to go
downstairs."
Barefooted, she pattered across the landing and down two flights of
stairs. No light was burning, for gas must be saved, and Theresa was
afraid; but she went on, past the front-door, down the basement steps,
past the dark kitchen which looked vast and cavernous, and so into the
brilliance of the breakfast-room.
"Theresa! Bare feet!"
"I want my book for the morning," she said. "In case I wake, you know."
Her mother was in the rocking-chair, and her father, shading his eyes
under his hand, was sitting at the table, writing. The shadow was still
in the room.
"You should have put on your slippers, dear, and your dressing-gown. Sit
on my lap and warm your feet."
Theresa ran her finger down her mother's pretty nose.
"Aren't you coming to bed soon?"
"Not for a long time. It isn't half-past eight."
"Then will you leave this door open, and I'll leave mine. Then you won't
seem so far away."
"You won't expect it every night?"
"No; just to-night."
"Very well. You must go now."
"I'll carry her up." Edward Webb took off his coat and wrapped it round
her. The three faces were very close together, and Theresa felt the
hastiness of her mother's kiss and the half-unwilling urging of her
hands.
"Go, go; you ought to be asleep."
"Are you sure you can carry me?" Theresa asked as he went carefully up
the stairs. "You're not very big."
"But you are very little."
"I'm going to be tall."
"Are you?" He held her close to him, pressing his cheek against hers.
"Yes, tall and willowy. I'm looking forward to it."
"That's right." He tucked her into bed.
"You won't forget about the door, will you?" She liked to feel that if
anything dreadful happened she would be at once aware of it, for there
was no delay and no evasion in her nature. Better be in the thick of the
fight, see swords drawn and blows given, than find cold bodies in the
morning, and something almost as bad as this, she dreaded. She had been
dowered with a bright and fierce imagination, and had she not read the
literature favoured by Bill and Bessie?
But she fell asleep to no other sounds than those which, all her life,
had carried her into dreams or waked her to a new day, but to-night
there began for her another phase of dreaming, one which was to endure
for many years and make her sleeping hours almost as important and more
adventurous than her waking ones. She dreamed of mountains and of still
lake water. Very black were the rocks and the water, black and awesome,
but holding peace. Sometimes she sat by the lakeside and waited;
sometimes she clambered to perilous places among the rocks, and there
were dangers often, people to be avoided, people with whom she must
fight, but always the mountains and the water were unmoved, unruffled.
They saw all things, and kept their counsel; they seemed to her, as she
grew older, to be both judge and friend; they were more than the scene
of her adventures; they were inseparably part of them, and when there
came nights wherein nothing happened and she sat by the water without
expectation, warmed with content, she knew that her happiness was not
all from within, that if her dream permitted her to wander away from the
precipice and the lake, a chill, like a bitter wind, would fall on her.
Sometimes she made a struggle to get away, but she could never go. There
was a white road somewhere, she knew, but she could not walk on it: she
was a captive beside this dark and burnished mirror wherein she saw a
face not like her own. In the daytime she would continue the stories
begun in dreams. Very often she was a maiden fought for by savage
tribes, a treasure for which men gave their lives in anguish, and at
night she put her head on her pillow with a glad anticipation of horrors
done for her sake. But as she grew older and the dreams themselves grew
and changed their character, keeping pace with her own development, she
was content to be without adventure in a place which never changed,
except to be more beautiful. All other dreams were dull, unwelcome
things, and if many days went by without one of these loved ones, she
felt that half her life was not being lived, and then she would seek out
shops where, by chance, there might be pictures in the windows to allay
her hunger. She was not often fed, for such paintings as she saw were
poor and unreal things, but they made her dreams more perfect. This was
not in the earliest years of her new dreaming, and on this night she had
but a repetition of her father's tale. She sat on a ledge of rock and
she was afraid. She heard a sheep calling through the night, a stone
spattering down the cliff, and she woke, wet and in fear.
"Grace," she cried--"Grace! I was falling. I'm afraid of falling. Will
you hold my hand?"
"What were you dreaming of, Terry? It's all right. I've got you."
"Mountains," she said sleepily, falling back on her pillows--"mountains.
Oh, I hope they'll come again."