In conjecturing that Delia Calmour's honourable renunciation was
probably made at the cost of her peace at home the Squire proved himself
a true prophet, for the poor girl's life became anything but a bed of
roses. When he heard that she had irrevocably carried out her intention
old Calmour grew savage, first abusing her in the most scandalous
manner, and, being half drunk, fell to whining about the ingratitude of
children, deliberately allowing their parents to starve in their old age
for the sake of gratifying a selfish whim. Then he got wholly drunk, so
violently, indeed, that even Clytie, the resolute, the level-headed,
found it all that she could do to keep her nerve, while the intrepid Bob
promptly skulked off out of harm's way.
The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance.
He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the
cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He
went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that
there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty
girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as
would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon
himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had
come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House
were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace,
and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous.
Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.
Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived
at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way
were the occasion to come over again--were it to come over again a
hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father's
alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted
that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it
again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for
Clytie and--one other consideration.
Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round,
declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a
sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that
could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then
Delia had rounded on her.
"Don't talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I'm not going to play any cards
at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us--_us_,
mind," she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the
direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly
wrangling and swearing--the former, as usual, half drunk.
"Pooh! that wouldn't count," was the equable reply. "You don't suppose
you'd have that hamper lumbering around once you'd won the game, do you?
I'd take care of that."
"Well, I shall go; he's always telling me to."
"No, you won't. Let him tell--and go on telling. I can do some telling
too, if it comes to that--telling him that if you go I go too, and we
know well enough how he'd take that. No; you stop and face it out.
You'll be jolly glad you did one of these days."
Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago
less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her
off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have
gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Bassingham and its
neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to
let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.
"I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to
pieces," she sobbed. "I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that
day."
"But you should not wish that, my dear child," mocked Bob, who, passing
the door, had overheard. "You should not wish that. It's very wicked,
as your Papist friends would say." Then he took himself off with a
yahooing laugh.
Now, it befell that on the following morning, while moving her post-card
albums, Delia dropped several loose cards. Upon these pounced Bob, with
no intention of picking them up for her, we may be sure, possibly in the
hope of causing her some passing annoyance by scattering them still
more; but hardly had he bent down with that amiable object than he
started back, as though he had been about to pick up a snake unawares.
"What--why? Who the deuce is that?" he cried. One of the cards was
lying with the picture face upwards. This he now picked up. "Who is
it?" he stammered, staring wildly at it. "Don't you recognise it, or
does it bring back painful recollections?" retorted Delia as she watched
him blankly gaping at the portrait card which Yvonne had given her. For
upon her a new light had dawned. "Don't you? You should have good
reason to," she went on mercilessly, her eyes full upon his face.
"Isn't it Miss Haldane? You know--and I know--who it was that insulted
her on the Swanton road one day, but Mr Haldane doesn't know--_as yet_."
Bob's face had gone white.
"Hang it all, Delia," he gasped, "you wouldn't give your own brother
away, surely?"
"My own brother has just given himself away," was the sneering reply.
"Brother! Yes. You have been very brotherly to me of late, haven't
you--trying to drive me from the house, and making all sorts of
perfectly scandalous insinuations! Very brotherly? Eh?"
"Oh, well, perhaps I said a good deal more than I meant," grumbled Bob
shamefacedly.
"And you'd have gone on doing the same if it hadn't been for finding
that card," she pursued, not in the least deceived by an apology
extorted through sheer scare. "Well, please yourself as to whether you
do so or not, now."
Thus the abominable Bob's turn had come, and so far as he was concerned
Delia was henceforward left in peace. Bob, then, being reduced Clytie
judged the time ripe for reducing her father also.
"See here, dad," she began one day when the old man was grumbling at his
eldest daughter, and suggesting for the twentieth time that she had
better clear out and do something for herself, "don't you think we have
had about enough nagging over that cheque business?--because if you
don't, I do."
"Oh, you do, do you, Miss Hoity Toity?"
"Rather. And I move that we have no more of it--that the matter be
allowed to drop, as they say in the House."
"What the devil d'you mean, you impudent baggage?" snarled her father.
"What the devil I say--no more--no less," was the imperturbable reply.
"Two or three times a day you tell Delia to clear, and we're tired of
it."
"Are you?" he returned, coldly sarcastic. "Well, I wonder she requires
so much telling."
"Well, you needn't tell her any more--it's waste of trouble. She isn't
going to clear, not until she wants to, anyway; except on these terms--
if she clears I clear too. How's that?"
Thereupon old Calmour went into a petulant kind of rage, and choked and
spluttered, and swore that he'd be master in his own house, that they
were a pair of impudent, ungrateful baggages, that they might both go to
the devil for all he cared, and the sooner they got there the better.
Unfortunately, however, he rather neutralised the effect of his
peroration by tailing off into the maudlin, and allusions to the
wickedness and ingratitude of children who thought nothing of deserting
their only parent in his old age, and so forth--to all of which Clytie
listened with unruffled composure.
"All right, dad," she rejoined cheerfully. "Now you've blown off steam
and are more comfortable again let's say no more about it. What has
been done can't be undone, that's certain; in fact, I've an instinct
that it may have been all for the best after all, so let's all be jolly
together again as before. I've got a lot more orders for typing--in
fact, almost more than I can do--and if they go on at this rate I shall
have to get another machine, and take Delia into partnership--she has an
idea of working it already."
"Well, well, there's something in that," said the old man, mollified by
this brightening of prospects. "I must have a glass of grog on the
strength of it."
Clytie looked at him for a moment, shook her pretty head, and then got
out a bottle. He was quite sober, and it was the first that day.
"Only one," she said. "No more, mind."
She did not think it necessary to tell him that this increase of
material prosperity was due to the good offices of Wagram. The latter
was not the one to do things by halves, and had never forgotten the
promise he had made on the occasion of his call at Siege House.
"There you are, Delia!" she triumphantly declared as the orders came
pouring in. "You never know what you lose through want of asking. If I
hadn't put it point-blank to him I shouldn't have got all these--and it
makes a difference, I can tell you. What a devil of a good chap he must
be!"
A few days later a surprise came for Delia in the shape of a letter from
the editor of a particularly smart and up-to-date pictorial, requesting
her to contribute to its illustrated series of articles on old country
seats, so many words of letterpress and so many photographs of Hilversea
Court, and quoting a very liberal rate of remuneration if the
contribution proved to be to the editor's satisfaction. The girl was
radiant.
"It's too good to be true, Clytie. How can they have heard of me?" she
exclaimed. "Surely no one has been playing a practical joke on me. I
can hardly believe it."
Clytie scanned the letter "It's genuine right enough," she pronounced.
"Wagram again."
"What? But--no--it can't be this time. Why, don't you see what it
says: `Provided you can obtain the permission of Mr Grantley Wagram'?
So, you see, it's apart from them entirely."
"That's only a red herring. I'll bet you five bob he's at the back of
it. Are you on?"
"N-no," answered Delia, upon whom a recollection was dawning of things
she had let fall on that memorable occasion of her last visit to
Hilversea. She had prattled on about herself, and her experiences,
among which had been a little journalism of a very poorly-paid order.
"I believe you are right, Clytie," she went on slowly. "I remember
letting go that I had done that sort of thing in a small way, and even
that I would be glad to do it again in a large one if only I got the
chance, but I never dreamt of anything coming of it--never for a
moment."
"No? Well, you're in luck's way this time, dear. Probably this editor
is a friend of his; and then, apart from that, a man in the position of
Wagram of Hilversea can exercise almost unlimited influence in pretty
near any direction he chooses--by Jove, he can."
Delia did not at once reply, and, noting a certain look upon her
meditative face, Clytie smiled to herself, and forebore to make any
allusion to her cherished scheme, which, in her own mind, she decided
was growing more promising than ever.