Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 13

"I wish we could chuck it in his face," Bernard said; he was well on his way, poor boy, to exemplify the truth of the proverb that scornful dogs eat dirty puddings.

"Of all the people who have given, Mr. Boult is the one I would most love to send his money back to," Bessie agreed. "We may be able to wipe the rest off our minds in time, but we shall never be allowed to forget the fifty pounds of the detestable Boult."

"He was poor papa's friend--the only one. He was good to papa," Deleah said, but to herself alone. For in that unhappy household was a law, unwritten, unspoken, but binding none the less, that the name of the husband and father should never be spoken.

"We must remember that the fifty pounds seems a great deal to him," Mrs.

Day reminded them. "The least we can do is to pay him the compliment of telling him what we intend to do with the money."

However, she found, on interviewing George Boult, that no such delicate attention was expected from her. The money he had raised was money for him to handle--for the benefit of Mrs. Day and her children of course, but without reference to what might be their feelings in the matter.

He was not a man to doubt his own wisdom, or to seek to confirm an opinion with the approval of others, or to hesitate in the pursuit of a course which to his perceptions appeared desirable. Also, having mapped out his plan or set out on his chosen path he never afterwards allowed to himself that there were others. A simple method which reduced to nothing for him the chances of regret or mental worry.

He was an eminently successful tradesman. His draper's business, which had been on a par with the businesses of half a dozen drapers when he had originally started in Brockenham, was now easily the first of its kind, not only in the town but in the county. It was natural that he should believe in trade--natural that he should fix his faith to nothing else as a means of money-making.

"There's nothing like business," he said to Mrs. Day.

She was seated in his private counting-room on the upper floor of the big shop--it was half a dozen shops joined into one now. To reach that room she had to pa.s.s through an ante-room full of entering clerks, busy at their desks. They lifted their heads from their quill-driving to look at the poor woman as she went by. She went with hanging head, her thick widow's veil over her face, the thought in her mind, "Perhaps among the poor clerks that collection of six s.h.i.+llings and ninepence had been made."

Perhaps one of the chilblain-fingered girls behind the counters down below had been the "Sympathiser" to whom she had been indebted for a s.h.i.+lling.

She was humbled to the earth. It was so she would have described her condition, as she walked to her interview with George Boult. If she had been told that her heart, on the contrary, was filled with pride, and beating high with rebellion, and that it was just the want of humility within her, who yet contrived to present a humble bearing, which made everything so unnecessarily painful, she would not have believed.

When, seated opposite to him at the small square leather-covered writing-table in the draper's counting-house, she turned back her veil, he noticed at once the ravages which grief and shame and anxiety had made in her face. He was quick to notice, because, practical, hard-working, hard-headed widower as he was, he had an eye for female beauty, and the handsome dark face of his friend's wife--the woman who, in the days of her haughtiness, had turned her back on him and kept him at arm's length--he had unwillingly admired.

The face of Lydia Day now was that of a woman who had been plump but was so no longer. The cheeks which had been firm and full were pendulous, the healthily pale but brunette complexion was of a leaden pallor; in the darkened skin beneath the deep-set, large dark eyes, little puckers showed. Her figure, too, had fallen away. She had lost her proud, self-a.s.sured carriage.

"It's finished her off, as far as looks go," George Boult said to himself, not entirely without satisfaction. He was one of those who firmly believed his friend's ruin lay at her door. William Day had robbed to minister to his wife's extravagance and pride. It was well that she should be humbled.

"There is nothing like business," he repeated. "And I have decided to invest the little capital of six hundred and forty-nine pounds and a few odd s.h.i.+llings I have raised for you, in a business which will yield a good return, and enable you to make a living for your two younger children. A groshery business, in short."

"Grocery?" repeated Mrs. Day, gazing blankly at him.

"Groshery," he said shortly, and looked hardily at her with his lips set, his chin stuck out, and his quick observant eyes on her face.

"Grocery?" she reiterated faintly, at a loss for anything else to say.

"You know that nice bright little business in Bridge Street? Carr's. Old Jonas Carr's. He is retiring, you know--or perhaps you don't know--it's been kept secret for business purposes. I am glad to have got hold of it in the nick of time, and I am putting your little capital into the business."

"Indeed!"

"It's a stroke of wonderful luck, I consider--its falling in, just now."

"But I do not quite understand. Will someone who is taking the shop allow a good interest, do you mean?"

"Not exactly that, ma'am." He gave a sound that might have been caused by a smothered chuckle, or have been meant for a snort of contempt, and going from the table, placed himself upon the hearthrug, where he paused, making a prayer perhaps for patience to be given him to deal with this fool in her untrained, untaught folly.

"Not exactly," he went on. "I am taking the business for you to work, ma'am. Jonas Carr is an old man now, but he has lived out of the business, and brought up his children out of it, and this with only antiquated methods. With new life put into the concern, and with altogether up-to-date management, there is the making there, in my opinion--and I think I may say my opinion on such a matter is of value--of an excellent little business."

"For me to work?" Mrs. Day asked in feeble protest. "Me? A _grocery_ business?"

"Why not?" He eyed her relentlessly, biting his finger nails. "What did you think you were going to do with the money which I have collected for you? Spend it? And collect again?"

"Not that, Mr. Boult. Certainly not that." She looked down at the black-gloved hands which lay in her lap. They trembled; to keep them steady she caught them one in the other. "I have been talking it over with my children, and we have decided, if you approve, to take a good-sized house by the sea, where we could all live together, and take in lodgers.

That would be a way of making a living which would come easier to my girls and me than any other."

"Easier? Yes. The misfortune is, ma'am, that the things which are easier in the beginning are always difficult to finish up. We'll begin the other way round, if you please." He bit the nail a minute longer, looked at it, put it out of sight behind his coat tails. "Ah no; that scheme won't do at all," he said, quite pleasantly. "I know these lodgings, and the miserable women who keep them, and can only make ends meet by thieving the lodgers'

mutton. The groshery line is altogether on another shelf. You and your daughters can not only make a living at it, you can make money. Make money."

Mrs. Day lifted her head, tried to capture something of her old bearing, tried to get a note of firmness into her voice. "I do not really think I could keep a shop," she said. "Above all, a grocery shop. I could not undertake it, Mr. Boult; and I am sure the girls would not like it at all; nor my son."

"What then?" he asked her, very quiet.

"I think my own plan. The house by the sea. We should escape from Brockenham, which we much wish to do; we should begin again where we--where our story--is not known. For the children's sake it would be best. For us all it would be more--suitable."

"But I have told you, ma'am, the plan is out of the question." He turned from her and kicked the coal in the grate, working off his irritation in that harmless fas.h.i.+on. Then, facing the poor lady again he adopted a tone intended to show her he was not to be trifled with. "Understand at once, Mrs. Day, I will be no party to the money subscribed on the tacit understanding that it is to be properly invested for you and your children, being thrown away in any such hopeless, silly fas.h.i.+on. Your husband asked me to stand your friend; to do my best for you. As I understand the position, you have no one else to look to?"

He paused, but she said nothing. William Day's relatives had been poorer, less well placed than he. As he had risen he had left them behind, forgotten them. Mrs. Day had been the only child of parents long since dead.

"Since there is no one else, I am willing to be your friend--within limits, of course. I have been instrumental in securing for you this sum of money--many fortunes have been made with less. To begin with I did not have half the capital. In doing so I made myself responsible for its being put to a proper use. I intend to see that it is done."

Mrs. Day was mute. The eyes looking out from their dark-stained orbits were hopeless.

Mr. Boult having paused for the reply which did not come, went on in a lighter tone. "There is a very good-sized house over Carr's shop. I went over it, and in deed into everything before deciding. There are six bed-rooms and a living room of unusual size. This gives you the opportunity of taking a lodger. I have already spoken to my new buyer about it. My Manchester man. He is anxious to board with a pleasant family, he tells me. So there you have a lodger ready to your hand, ma'am; since you fancy lodgers."

Mrs. Day had a feeling of oppression in the breathless air of the counting-house, of being smothered by George Boult. She untied the broad strings of ribbon and c.r.a.pe of her widow's bonnet, and looked round anxiously for a window. There was none, the counting-house being lighted by a sky-light. Two big tears rolled down her cheeks, she drew a long breath like a great sigh.

"I am giving my Manchester man a good salary," the draper went on. "He would easily be able to spare you thirty s.h.i.+llings a week for board and lodging, and I should not advise you to take a penny less."

Mrs. Day with an effort pulled herself together. "The man who is to manage the shop would want a room in the house, I suppose?" she suggested.

"Manage the shop? What shop?"

"The shop you have been speaking of--the grocer's shop."

"You yourself will manage it," Boult said. "Nice bright little concern as it is, the business won't keep a man; you will manage it, a.s.sisted on busy days by your eldest daughter."

But although Mrs. Day could not fight for herself, she was capable of defending her children. "To that I could not consent," she said; "I would never allow Bessie--Bessie!--to wait in a grocer's shop."

"It would not hurt her, ma'am. It would do her good."

Mrs. Day was silent, but her silence was eloquent. With shaking fingers she tied her bonnet strings--the wide black strings that wanted pulling out, the narrow white ones which must be arranged above them.

Boult, seeing that she was preparing to depart, a.s.sumed a more friendly tone. "You must not feel that you are being hustled into this thing," he said. "The money is, of course, in a sense, yours, although I have had to decide what to do with it."

Mrs. Day rose to go, Boult came forward with his hand extended.

"Anything that has to do with the people's food or drink _pays_," he said encouragingly. "If I had my time over again I would take up with the groshery line instead of the drapery. People must have food, ma'am. They must have it, even before frocks and furbelows."

"About Bernard?" Mrs. Day asked, waiving, not without dignity, the other subject.