Sisters Part 39

And, after all, it seemed that she had not come to the right place for sympathy and understanding. Mary did not laugh, but she stared in a wooden manner that was even more hurtful to the feelings of the new wife.

"Well?" she cried brusquely, after a painful pause. "Is there any just cause or impediment that you know of? You look as if you thought I had no business to be happy like other people."

"Oh, if you are happy! But I am so surprised. Who is it?"

"Guess," said Deb.

"I could not. I haven't an idea. Some Englishman, of course."

Deb shook her head.

"European, then? Some prince or count, as big as Francie's, or bigger?"

Deb wrinkled a disdainful nose.

"It is no use, Moll; you would not come near it in fifty tries. I'll tell you--Claud Dalzell."

"What--the deadly enemy!" This time Mrs Goldsworthy did laugh. Deb joined in.

"Funny, isn't it? I feel"--sarcastically--"like going into fits myself when I think of it, it is so screamingly absurd. And how it happened I can't tell you, unless it is that we are fallen into our dotage. I suppose it must be that."

"You in your dotage!" Mary mocked, with an affectionate sincerity that was grateful to her sister's ear. "You are the youngest of us all, and always will be. Do you ever look at yourself in the gla.s.s? Upright as a dart, and your pretty wavy hair--so thick, and scarcely a grey thread in it! Of course, I don't know how it may be with him; I have not seen him for such ages--"

"Oh, he is a perfect badger for greyness--not that I ever saw a badger, by the way. And he walks with a stick, and has dreadful chronic things the matter with him, from eating and drinking too much all his life, and never taking enough exercise. Quite the old man, I should have called him a few months ago. But he is better now."

Mrs Goldsworthy gave a little shudder, and her unsympathetic gravity returned.

"I see," she sighed. "Your benevolent heart has run away with you, as usual. His infirmities appealed to your pity. You married him so that you might nurse and take care of him--"

"Not at all!" Deb broke in warmly. "And don't you talk about his infirmities in that free-and-easy way; he is no more infirm than you are. Did I say he was? That was my joke. He always was the handsomest man that I ever set eyes on, and he is the same still. No, my dear, I have not married him to take care of him, but so that he may take care of me. I'm lonely. I want somebody. I've come to the time of life when I am of no account to the young folks--not even to Bob, who would not give me a second thought if I was a poor woman. No, Molly dear, it is no use your pretending; you know it as well as I do. And quite natural too. It is the same with all of them. Nothing but money gives me importance in their eyes. And what's money? It won't keep you warm in the winter of your days--nothing will, except a companion that is in the same boat. That is what I want--it may be silly, but I do--somebody to go down into the valley of the shadow with me; and he feels the same.' Something in Mary's face as she stared into the fire, something in the atmosphere of the conversation, drove her into this line of self-defence. 'Oh, there is no love-making and young nonsense in our case--we are not quite such idiots as that comes to; it is just that we begin to feel the cold, as it were, and are going to camp together to keep each other warm. That's all."

Mary remained silent.

"Well, I must go," said Deb, jumping up, as if was.h.i.+ng her hands of a disappointing job. "The carriage must be there, and Bob will be starving for his dinner. No use asking you to join us, I know. But you must come to Redford soon, Molly--or somewhere out of this--when you feel better and able. You shall have rooms entirely to yourself, and needn't see anybody. I will come tomorrow, and you must let me talk to you about it."

Mrs Goldsworthy was stooping to sweep a sprinkle of ashes out of the fender--she was like an old maid in her faddy tidiness--and when she turned, her face was working as if to repress tears. Deb caught her up, a moan bursting from her lips.

"Oh, what a brute I am! when you--poor, poor old girl!--have to finish it alone. But, darling, after all, you have had the good years--a child of your own--a home; we shall get only the dregs at the bottom of the cup. So it is not so very unfair, is it?" Then Mary's pent emotion issued in a laugh. With her face on her sister's shoulder, she tried herself to silence it.

"I can't help it," she apologised. "I would if I could. Debbie, don't go! Oh, my dear, don't think I envy you! Don't go yet! I want to tell you something. I may never have another chance." "Of course I won't go--I want to stay," said Deb at once.

And she stayed. The coachman was dismissed to get his meal, and instructed to telephone to Bob to do the same. The sisters had a little picnic dinner by themselves, was.h.i.+ng up their plates and dishes in the neat kitchen, Deb insisting upon taking part in the performance, and sat long by the fireside afterwards. Fortunately, although the season was late spring, it was a cold day; for the clear red fire was the one bit of brightness to charm a visitor to that poor house. It crackled cosily, toasting their toes outstretched upon the fender-bar, melting their mood to such glowing confidences as they had not exchanged since Mary was in her teens. No lamps were lighted. The widow was frugal with gas when eyes were idle; her extravagant sister loved firelight to talk in.

But for a while it seemed that Mary had nothing particular to communicate. Deb did not like to put direct questions, but again and again led the conversation in the likely direction, to find Mary avoiding it like a shying horse. She would not talk of her husband, but interested herself for an hour in the subject of Guthrie Carey, Guthrie's wife, his child, his home, discussing the matter with a calmness that made Deb forget how delicate a one it was. Then Mary had a hundred questions to ask (probably on Bob's account) about the Countess, of whom she had known nothing of late years, while Deb had learned something from time to time, and could give an approximately true tale. Quite another hour was taken up with Francie's wrongs and wrong-doings, as to which Deb was more frank with this sister than she would have been with Rose.

"It is no use blinking the fact," she said straight out, "that Francie is no better than she should be. I can't understand it; no Pennycuick that ever I heard of took that line before. She has a dog's life with that ruffian, no doubt; and of course the poor child never had a chance to enjoy the right thing in the right way--though that was her own fault--"

"I don't think," Mary broke in, "that ANYTHING is ANYBODY'S fault."

"That's a most dangerous heathen doctrine, my dear, but I'll admit there's something in it. Poor Francie! she was born at a disadvantage, with that fascinating face of hers set on the foundation of so light a character. She was too pretty, to start with. The pretty people get so spoiled, so filled with their own conceit, that they grow up expecting a world made on purpose for them. They grab right and left, if the plums don't fall into their mouths directly they open them, because it gets to be a sort of matter of course that they should have everything, and do exactly as they like."

"And the plain ones--they are born at a worse disadvantage still."

"No, they are not. Look at Rose. Francie, with her gilded wretchedness, thinks Rosie's lot quite despicable; but I can tell you, Molly, she is the most utterly comfortable and contented little soul on the face of this earth. She would not change places with a queen." "But Rose is not plain. Rose is the happy medium. And THEY are the lucky ones--the inconspicuous people--the every-day sort--"

"What's luck?" Deb vaguely moralised. "I suppose we make our luck. It doesn't depend on our faces, but on ourselves."

"Ah, no!" Mrs Goldsworthy received the well-worn plat.i.tude with a laugh. "We don't make anything--we are made. It is just a dance of marionettes, Debbie. Poor puppets of flesh and blood, treated as if they were just wood and nails and glue! Who set us up to make a game of us like this? Who DOES pull the strings, Debbie? It is a mystery to me."

Then Deb waited for what was coming next.

"Possibly it will be cleared up some day," she murmured, putting out her strong, beautiful hand to touch her sister's knee. "Whether it is a fairy tale or not, one must cherish the hope--"

"Not I," Mary cut in swiftly--that same Mary who was once conspicuous in her family for pious orthodoxy. "No more experiments in human existence for me! A few years of peace and cleanness, as I am--as I now am--I hope for that, and for nothing more; I don't want anything more--I'd rather not. To be let alone for the rest of the time, and then to be done with it--that sums up all the hope I have, or need."

"Ah, my dear--"

"No, Debbie, don't look at me with those eyes--don't pity me in that tone of voice. I am only a heathen against my will--not so broken-hearted as not to care what happens to me, which I believe is what you think. I am not even sorry--I wish I was, but I can't be; in fact, I am so happy, really, that I am going about in a sort of dream, trying to realise it."

"HAPPY!"

"Perhaps 'happy' is not the word. I should say unmiserable. I am more unmiserable than I have ever been, I think, since I was born."

Deb's swift intelligence grasped the truth. "Ah, then she was not so insensate as we thought!"--but made allowance for what she diagnosed as a morbid condition of mental health.

"Are you happier than you were at Redford--young, and loved, and with everything nice about you--?"

"Yes. Because then, although, of course, I did have everything, I had no idea of the value of what I had. You can't be really happy unless you know that you are happy. I did not know it then, but now I do."

Deb's glance flashed round the poor room, and out of the window into the squalid street; she thought of Bob, who almost openly despised the mother who adored him; she calculated the loneliness, the poverty, the--to her--ugliness of the existence which Mary's "as I am" was intended to describe; and she groaned aloud.

"Oh, my dear, was it really so awful as that--that the mere relief from it can mean so much to you?"

"I am not going to complain," said Mary. "It was not awful by anybody's fault--certainly not by his. He did his best; he was really good to me.

It could not have happened at all, except through his being good to me--doing what he did that night. I am not in the least bitter against him; he was as he was made just as I am. It had to be, I suppose. The maker of the puppets didn't care whether we belonged or not; the hand that pulled the strings, and tangled them, jerked us into the mire together anyhow--" "Oh, don't!" pleaded Deb. "Don't blaspheme like that! What is religion for if not to keep us from making blunders, and to help us to bear it when they are made--and to trust--to trust where we cannot see--"

Deb was unused to preaching, and broke down; but her eyes were sermons more impressive than any of the thousands that Mary had heard.

"Some day," said Mary, "when I get into a place where I cannot hear religion spoken of, nor see it practised, I may learn the value of it.

I hope so. I have a chance of it now--the way is clear. I am through the wood at last."

Deb drew her filmy handkerchief across her eyes.

"Yes, I know." Mary smiled at her sister's grief. "But it is only for this once, Debbie dear. I did want to let you know--to have the delight of not being a liar and a shuffler for once. I shall not say such things again. I am not going to shock anybody else, for Bob's sake.

Bob, of course, must be considered; after all, it was his father. None of us, even the freest, can be a free agent altogether; I understand that. I shall hold my tongue. The blessed thing is that that will be sufficient--a negative att.i.tude, with the mouth shut; one is not driven any longer to positive deceit, without even being able to say that you can't help it. Oh, Debbie, you have been a free woman--why, why didn't you keep so?--but with all your freedom, and all your money, you don't know the meaning of such luxury as I live in now."

Deb gazed at her sister's rapt face, glowing in the firelight, and wondered if the brain behind it could be altogether sane.

"To call that HAPPINESS!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with sad irony and scorn.