THE IDOL
"I say, Maud, what a dratted long time you've been! What on earth have
you and the mother been doing?" Young Bernard Brian turned his head
towards his sister with the chafing, impatient movement of one bitterly
at variance with life. "You swore you wouldn't be long," he said.
"I know. I'm sorry." Maud came to his side and stooped over him. "I
couldn't help it, Bunny," she said. "I haven't been enjoying myself."
He looked up at her suspiciously. "Oh, it's never your fault," he said,
with dreary sarcasm.
Maud said nothing. She only laid a smoothing hand on his crumpled brow,
and after a moment bent and kissed it.
He jerked his head away from her caress, opening and shutting his hands
in a nervous way he had acquired in babyhood. "I've had a perfectly
sickening time," he said. "There's a brute with a gramophone upstairs
been driving me nearly crazy. For goodness' sake, see if you can put a
stop to it before to-night comes! I shall go clean off my head if you
don't!"
"I'll do my best, dear," Maud promised.
"I wish to goodness we could get away from this place," the boy said
restlessly. "Even the old 'Anchovy' was preferable. I loathe this
hole."
"Oh, so do I!" said Maud, with sudden vehemence. And then she checked
herself quickly as if half-ashamed. "Of course it might be worse, you
know, Bunny," she said.
Bunny curled a derisive lip, and looked out of the window.
"Did you really like 'The Anchor' better?" Maud asked, after a moment.
He drew his brows together--beautiful brows like her own, betraying a
sensitive, not too well-balanced temperament. "It was better," he said.
Maud sat down beside his sofa with a slight gesture of weariness. "You
would like to go back there?" she asked.
He looked at her sharply. "We are going?"
She met his look with steady eyes. "Mr. Sheppard has offered to take us
in," she said.
The boy frowned still more. "What! For nothing?" he said.
"No; not for nothing." The girl was frowning too--the frown of one
confronted with a difficult task. "Nobody ever does anything for
nothing," she said.
"Well? What is it?" Bunny's eyes suddenly narrowed and became shrewd.
"He doesn't want you to marry him, I suppose?"
"Good gracious, Bunny!" Maud gasped the words in sheer horror. "What
ever made you think of that?"
Bunny laughed--a cracked, difficult laugh. "Because he's bounder enough
for anything; and you're so beastly fond of him, aren't you?"
"Oh, don't!" Maud said. "Really don't, Bunny! It's too horrible to
joke about. No, it isn't me he wants to marry. It's--it's----"
"The mother?" queried Bunny, without perturbation. "Oh, he's quite
welcome to her. It's a pity he's been such a plaguey time making up his
mind. He might have known she'd jump at him."
"But, Bunny--" Maud was gazing at him in utter amazement. There were
times when the working of her young brother's brain was wholly beyond
her comprehension. "You can't be--pleased!" she said.
"I'm never pleased," said Bunny sweepingly. "I hate everything and
everybody--except you, and you don't count. The man's a brute of
course; but if the mother has a mind to marry him, why on earth
shouldn't she? Especially if it's going to make us more comfortable!"
"Comfortable on his money!" There was scorn unutterable in Maud's
voice. Her eyes were tragically proud.
"But, why not?" said Bunny, with cynical composure. "We shall never be
comfortable on our own, that's certain. If the man is fool enough to
want to lay out his money in that way, why, let him!"
"Live on his--charity!" said Maud very bitterly.
The boy's mouth twisted. "We've got to live on someone's," he said.
"There's nothing new in that. I think you're rather an ass, Maud. It's
no good being proud when you can't afford it. We can't earn a living
for ourselves, so someone must do it for us, that's all."
"Bunny!" There was passionate protest in the exclamation; but he passed
it by.
"What's the good of arguing?" he said irritably. "We can't help
ourselves. If the mother would rather marry that bawling beast Sheppard
than starve on a doorstep with us, who's to blame her? I suppose we're
included in the bargain for good, are we?"
Maud nodded mutely, her fingers locked and straining against each other.
Bunny screwed his face up for a moment. Then: "There's that filthy
gramophone again!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Go and stop it, I say! I
can't bear the noise! I won't bear it! It's--it's--it's infernal!
That's what it is!" He flung his arms up frenziedly above his head, and
then suddenly uttered an anguished cry of pain.
Maud was on her feet on the instant. She caught the arms, drew them
firmly down again. "Oh, don't, dear, don't!" she said. "You know you
can't!"
The boy's face was convulsed. "I didn't know! I can sometimes! Oh,
Maud, I hate life! I hate it! I hate it!"
His voice choked, became a gasping moan, ceased altogether.
Maud stooped over him. His eyes were shut, his face white as death.
"Bunny, Bunny darling!" she whispered passionately. "I would give--all
the world--to make it better for you!"
There fell a silence, while gradually the awful paroxysm began to pass.
Then very abruptly Bunny opened his eyes. "No, you wouldn't!" he said
unexpectedly.
"Indeed I would!" she said very earnestly.
"You wouldn't!" he reiterated, with the paralysing conviction that
refuses to hear any reasoning. "If you would, you'd have married Lord
Saltash years ago, and been rich enough to pay one of the big men to put
me right."
She winced sharply. "Bunny! You're not to talk to me of Lord Saltash.
It isn't kind. He is the one man in the world I--couldn't marry."
"Rot!" said Bunny. "You know you're in love with him."
"I know I couldn't marry him," she said, a piteous quiver in her voice.
"It is cruel to--to--" She broke off.
"All right," said Bunny waiving the point. "Find some other rich man
then! I don't care who it is. You'll have to pretty soon. We shall
neither of us stand this Sheppard person for long."
"If I could only--somehow--make a living for the two of us!" the girl
said.
"You can't!" Again deadly conviction swept aside argument. "You're not
clever enough, and you haven't time--unless you propose to leave me to
the tender mercies of the Sheppard. It would be a quick way out of the
difficulty so far as I am concerned anyway."
"Of course I could never leave you!" Maud said quickly.
"All right then. Marry--and be quick about it!" said Bunny.
He turned his drawn, white face to the window--a face of unconscious
pathos that often stirred his sister to the depths. Youth--and the
gladness of youth--had never existed for Bunny Brian. Life for so long
as he could remember had always been a long, dreary round of pain and
disappointment, of restless nights and dragging, futile days. Only Maud,
who shared them all, knew to the uttermost the woeful bitterness of the
lad's existence. It hurt her cruelly, that bitterness, moving her to a
perpetual self-sacrifice, of the extent of which even Bunny had small
conception.
She identified herself completely with him, and had so done since the
tenth year of her life when he had come--a puny, wailing baby--into the
world to fill the void of her childish heart. She had, as it were,
grown up in his service, worn and sallow and thin, with the sharp edges
of nerves that were always strung up to too high a pitch--the nerves of
one who scarcely ever knew a whole night of undisturbed rest. They had
told upon her, those years of anxiety and service; they had shorn away
her youth also. Only once--and that for how short a time!--had life
ever seemed desirable in her eyes. A brief and splendid dream had been
hers, spreading like a golden sunrise over her whole horizon. But the
dream had faded, the sunrise had been extinguished in heavy clouds that
had never again parted. She knew life now for a grey, grey dreariness
on which no light could ever shine again. She was tired--tired to the
soul of her; and she was only twenty-five.
"Maud!" Bunny's voice half-irritable, half-eager, broke in upon her.
"See that fellow down there trying to make his nag go into the sea?
It's going to be a big job. Let's go down and see it done!"
Bunny's long chair was in a corner of the room. It was no light task to
get it in and out of the house; but Maud was used to the management of
it. The weight of it went in with the other burdens of life. She was
used also to lifting Bunny's poor little wasted body, and no wish of his
that she could gratify was ever left neglected. Moreover, the offensive
clamour of the gramophone overhead added to her alacrity to obey his
behests. And the day was bright and warm, with a south wind blowing
over a sparkling sea.
It would do Bunny good to go out, especially if he desired to go. It
was not always that he would consent to do so after a sleepless night.
But there was an extraordinary vitality in the meagre frame, a fevered,
driving force that never seemed to be wholly exhausted. There were
times when inaction was absolute torture to him, and Maud was ready to
go until she dropped if only she could in some measure alleviate that
chafing restlessness. She counted it luck indeed if these moods of fret
and turmoil raged during the day. She was better able to cope with them
then, and it gave the night a better chance. Poor lad! He could fight
his own way through the days, but the long-drawn-out misery of nights of
incessant pain broke him down--how completely only Maud ever knew.
So, gladly she wheeled him forth on that afternoon of late October, down
the hill to the sun-bathed shore.
That hill taxed her physical powers to the uttermost. Secretly she
dreaded the ascent, but not for worlds would she have had Bunny know
it--Bunny who depended solely upon her for the very few pleasures that
ever came his way. To the last ounce of her strength she was dedicated
to the service of her idol.