The Devil's Garden Part 27

"Because it's the truth."

"But," said Mavis, indignantly, "you've made her fond of you. You've courted her."

The higgler distinctly preened himself, and smiled archly. "Ah, there's a language of the eyes, which speaks perhaps when the lips are sealed."

Mavis was angry and disgusted. "You, a married man!"

Dale, outraged too, spoke with increasing sternness. "You don't deny you've got a wife?"

The higgler answered very gravely. "Mr. Dale, that's my misfortune, not my fault. But my wife isn't going to last forever, and the day she's gone--that is, the day after I've buried her decently--I shall come here to Mary Parsons and say 'Mary'--mind you, I've never called her Mary yet--I shall say, 'Mary, my lips are unsealed, and I ask you to be my true and lawful second wife.'"

They could make nothing of the higgler.

"It's seven years," he went on, "since Doctor Hollin said to me, 'I have to warn you Mrs. Druitt isn't going to make old bones.' However, we find it a long job. There's a proverb, isn't there? Creaking doors!"

Mavis was inexpressibly shocked. "How can you talk of your wife so?

Have you no feelings for her?"

"Mrs. Dale," said the higgler, solemnly, "I married my first wife for money, and I've been punished for my mistake. That's why I made up my mind I'd marry next time for love--in choosing a wholesome maiden and not asking what she'd got sewed in her petticoat or harbored in the bank;" and, nodding, he again gave his curious self-satisfied wink.

"Mr. Dale, you tell her to wait patiently. I'll be true to her, if she'll be true to me." Then he rose, and smiling sheepishly, once more addressed Mrs. Dale. "The purpose of my call this morning was to say I shall have some _good_ bacon next week."

Mavis refused the bacon, and Dale said a few words of stern rebuke.

"I can tell you, Mr. Druitt, I take a very poor opinion of your manhood and proper feeling."

Then Mavis interposed to check her husband. The fact was, she felt baffled by the situation and utterly at a loss as to what would be the best way of dealing with it. Whatever one might think of Mr. Druitt one's self, there was Mary to be considered. What would ultimately be best for her? The man was warm; and Mary, who was not growing younger, said she liked him.

"I'll wish you good morning," said the higgler.

Then, when they thought he had been long gone and Mavis was talking to Mary, he put in his head at the kitchen doorway.

"Will this make any difference?" he asked shyly. "Should I call again--or do you forbid me the house?"

The three women, Mavis, Mary and Mrs. Goudie, all looked at one another, quite perplexed.

"Er--no," said Mavis, after a pause. "You can call. I may, just possibly, be wanting bacon next week."

"It's a real beautiful side;" and, without a glance at Mary, he disappeared.

Then Mary instantaneously decided that she would wait for him, and not break with him; and she asked Mrs. Dale to run out and tell him that she would wait.

But that Mavis could not do. It would be too undignified. Mary must restrain her emotions till next week, and tell him herself.

XV

The little girl Rachel at the age of six was able to take interest in everything that happened, and to be a real companion who loved to help her mother at any important task. Thus one winter evening between tea and supper, when Mavis was most importantly engaged, she sat up late by special license and gave her company and aid in the little room behind the kitchen.

"Now, see if you can find the blotting-paper over there on daddy's desk. Quietly, my darling. Very quietly--because we mustn't wake Billy."

Billy, the little boy, was asleep in his cradle, near, but not too near, the cheerful fire; a bluish flicker that reminded one of the frost out of doors showed intermittently among the yellow and red flames; the wick of the lamp on the round table burned clearly; and in the mingling lamplight and firelight the whole room looked delightfully cozy and homelike. Mavis, with a body just pleasantly tired and a mind still comfortably active, paused before starting her labor in order luxuriously to feel the peaceful charm that was being shed forth by all her surroundings.

More and more the very heart of their home life seemed to locate itself in this room, and so every day additional memories and a.s.sociations wove themselves about the objects it contained. Rachel, young as she was, showed a marked predilection for it, loving it better than all other rooms. From the dawn of intelligence she had been fascinated by the two guns and the bra.s.s powder-flasks that hung high over the chimney-place; her first climbings and tumblings had been performed on the three steps that led to the kitchen; and she had addled her tender brains, as well as inflamed the natural greed which is so pardonable in infants, by what was to her a sort of differential calculus before she learned to discriminate nicely among the various jams kept by Mummy in the big cupboard.

Nearly all the furniture, as well as the two guns, had belonged to Mr.

Bates. It was solid, and very old--a tall-boy with a drawer that, opening out, made a writing-desk; a bureau with a latticed gla.s.s front; three chairs of the Chippendale farmhouse order; and one vast chair, covered with leather and adorned with nails, that had probably been dozed in by the hall-porter of some great mansion more than a century ago. Here and there Mavis had of course dabbed her small prettinesses--blue china and a clock on the mantel-shelf, colored cus.h.i.+ons, photographs of the children, views of Rodchurch High Street, the Chase, Rodhaven Pier; and the old and the new, the useful and the ornamental, alike whispered to her of fulfilled desires, gratified fancies, and William Dale.

It was her husband's room. Perhaps that formed the real source of all its charms, the essence or base of attraction that lay deep beneath visual presentations of chairs and fire-gleamings, or a.s.sociations of ideas, or memories of past happiness. Those were his books, behind the latticed gla.s.s--the _Elocution Manual_, the _Elements of Rhetoric_, the ten-volumed _People's Encyclopedia_, that he had read, and still read so a.s.siduously. It was here that he ate, drank, and mused. Here he did all of his work that wasn't real office work. Here he received such visitors as head coachmen, stud-grooms, and the huntsmen.

In the cupboard with the jam-pots, there were two or three boxes of cigars, the famous sloe gin, and other liqueurs, for the entertainment of such highly esteemed visitors; and so long as one of them occupied the colossal armchair, her husband was quite a different Dale. He was then such a much better listener than usual, so quick to see a joke and so easy to be tickled by it, so debonair that he would swallow almost insulting criticism of his favorite politicians. As she thought of these things her eyelids fluttered and her lips parted mirthfully.

She never asked any questions as to Dale's more secret methods of dealing with customers' servants. Obviously he got on well with them; and one might be quite certain that he did not offer any material compliments that were either traditionally illegitimate or open in the smallest degree to a suspicion of corrupt purpose.

And she thought admiringly that her man was really a very wonderful man. Though so candid and straight, he could be grandly silent; he told his womankind all that he considered it good for them to know, and the rest he kept to himself; he had that quality of rulers.h.i.+p without which manhood always seems deficient.

"Mummy," said Rachel, "I do believe Mary is reading aloud."

"Is she, darling? Yes, I think she is."

Through the kitchen door one could hear a monotonous murmur.

"D'you think she's reading fairy tales?"

"Perhaps. Would you like to listen to her?"

"Oh, no. I'd sooner stay and help you, Mummy."

"Then so you shall, my angel; and I thank you for preferring my company."

Mavis, with the little girl at her knee, got to work. She had purchased a large sc.r.a.p-alb.u.m, and was now to begin putting in her sc.r.a.ps. For a long time she had collected interesting extracts from the newspapers, more especially portions of old numbers of the _Rodhaven Courier_ which contained her husband's name.

"Here, Rachel, we'll commence with this;" and she started the book with a long account of the ceremonial opening of the Barradine Orphanage. The report of a speech by "Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm" at a political meeting was the second item, and other gems followed fast.

Rachel a.s.sisted from time to time, by twice upsetting the paste pot, tearing a good many cuttings, and finally by tilting the heavy alb.u.m off Mummy's lap to the floor.

But Mavis thought all these actions rather spirited and charming than maladroit and annoying. They proved that Rachel was trying hard to be of use, and her too rapid and abrupt gestures were a pleasing evidence that the little creature possessed a vivacious and not a sluggish disposition. However, the crash of the alb.u.m on the floor had awakened Billy, who was now crying l.u.s.tily; and Rachel's license having long since expired, Mavis decided to send both her treasures to bed.

Rachel resisted the edict, and, presently conducted up-stairs by Mary, bellowed more loudly than her brother; indeed for a little while the house was filled with the harsh sound of squalling. Yet this noise, though distressing, was as musical as harps and lutes to the mother's ears; and while old Mrs. Goudie in the kitchen was saying: "They children want a smart popping to learn them on'y to squawk when there's reason for squawking," Mavis was thinking: "Poor darlings, I'd go up and kiss them again, if Mary didn't always quiet them down quicker than I can."

Alone with her newspaper snippets, Mavis did more reading than pasting. "Heroic Rescue at Otterford Mill"--that was the description of how Will saved good-for-nothing Abraham Veale. She knew it almost by heart, but she had to read it again. "Brave Deed at Manninglea Cross Station"--that was something that made her feel faint every time she thought of it, and she trembled now as she read in the snippet of how there had been a frightened dog on the line between the platforms, and how Will had jumped down in front of the approaching train and whisked the dog out of danger just in time.

She folded her hands, puckered her forehead, and pa.s.sed into a reverie about him. Combining with her intense admiration, there was a great horror of all this reckless courage. He would not have been so foolhardy years ago. It was against the principles that he had once laid down as limiting the risks that a brave man may run. It indicated a change in him, a change that she had never pondered on till now. She thought of him fighting the wind on top of their rick, and of several other incidents unchronicled by the press--of his going with the police at Old Manninglea when there was the bad riot, of his joining the Crown keepers when they went out to catch the poachers, of his wild performance when Mr. Creech's bull got loose. Goring bulls, bludgeoning men, tempest and flood--wherever and whatever the danger, he went straight to it. But it was not fair to her and the babes. His thrice precious life! And she grew cold as she thought that an accident--like a curtain descending when a stage play is over--might some day end all her joy.

Then she thought once more of that dark period of their dual existence; and it was the last time that she was ever capable of thinking of it seriously and with any real concentration. Had that trouble left any permanent mark on him? Her own suffering had left no mark on her. It was gone so entirely that, as well as seeming incredible, it seemed badly invented, silly, preposterous. All that remained to her was just this one firm memory, that, strange or not, there had truly once been a time when his arms were not her shelter, and she dared not look into his face.

But he was different from her; with a vastly more capacious brain, in which there was such ample room that perhaps the present did not even impinge upon the past, much less drive it out altogether. She who in the beginning had tacitly agreed with those who considered her the obvious superior now felt humbly pleased in recognizing that he was of grander, finer, and more delicate stuff than herself. And for the first and last time she was a.s.sailed by a disturbing doubt. Was he completely happy even now? He loved her, he loved his children, he loved his successful industry; yet sometimes when she found him alone his face was almost as somber as it had ever been.

And those bad dreams of his still continued. At first, when things were all in jeopardy, it had seemed not unnatural that the troubles of the day should break his rest at night; but why should he dream now, when he was prosperous and without a single anxiety to distress him?