Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 14

"I have thought of sending Bernard to Ingleby. I have opened a branch there. It is not a big concern at present, of course, but the boy can learn the business there, and if he has anything in him--I shall keep my eye on him--he can come to us later."

Then he grasped the hand she unwillingly extended.

"You see I promised poor William," he told her, by way of explaining his kind interest in her affairs. "And however thankless the task may be, I shall keep my word."

She could not answer him, but when he released her hand she bowed her head and went away.

Before Mrs. Day betook herself home she turned her feet in the direction of Bridge Street. It was situated in a busy part of the town, but was only a short and not by any means prosperous thoroughfare connecting two of the princ.i.p.al streets. Standing on the opposite pavement Mrs. Day contemplated the grocer's shop from which Mr. Jonas Carr was retiring. His name in small white letters was painted on the black lintel of the door: "Jonas Carr, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." A dingy-looking little shop; not such a shop as any of those on which the wife of William Day had bestowed her custom, and she had never been within its door.

The three windows above the shop looked dirty, and closely over them were stretched dirty lace curtains. The windows on the higher floor were dirtier still, and in place of the lace curtains were crooked-hanging blinds.

Poor Mrs. Day set her lips tightly as she looked. Then she crossed the street and entered the shop. Mr. Carr, behind the counter, a toothless, unpleasant-looking old man, was exhibiting in an apathetic manner a piece of fat bacon to a customer.

"You can have the streaky if you prefer it," he said.

The customer did prefer the streaky, and took it, half wrapped, under her shawl, and went.

"And what for you, pray?"

Mrs. Day asked for a quarter of a pound of tea, and while he served her looked about at the dark little dirty shop with its mingled odours.

When she left the establishment of Jonas Carr her spirits had risen. The whole thing was ludicrous. Imagine the name of Lydia Day, "licensed to sell tobacco and snuff," painted over the door! Imagine her--her!--behind the counter of that squalid little shop! Imagine Bessie, and her exquisite young Deleah pa.s.sing their lives in that upper room behind the net curtains! It was ridiculous, grotesque, impossible, and could not be.

But she was to find with astonis.h.i.+ngly small waste of time that it could be.

And it was.

CHAPTER X

Exiles From Life's Revels

For the first year that Mrs. Day waited behind the counter of the Bridge Street shop more trade was done there than in the most prosperous period of old Jonas Carr's tenancy. Quite half the ladies of Brockenham left their particular grocers to bestow their custom on the widow. From kindness of heart, from curiosity, from the impulse to do as others were doing, people flocked to purchase their tea and sugar of Lydia Day, licensed also to supply them, if desired, with tobacco and snuff. George Boult's prognostications of the success of the venture seemed to be more than fulfilled.

Bessie stoutly refusing to go into the shop--it took more than George Boult to manage Bessie!--he was constrained to sanction the engaging of a youth to a.s.sist behind the counter. Mr. Pretty, therefore--he was called "Mr." for business purposes, his tender years hardly ent.i.tling him to the designation--and a boy to go errands, composed the staff.

From eight in the morning till eight at night the shop was open; and even when it was supposed to be closed, Mrs. Day could not enjoy an undisturbed rest with her daughters and Franky in their upstairs sitting-room. For the neighbouring tradesmen, all of whom had stretched out friendly hands to the poor lady so unwillingly becoming one of them, had the bad habit of forgetting to make their purchases till after shop hours, when they would send their maids-of-all-work to the private door for the supper cheese, or the breakfast coffee they had too late discovered they were "out of."

Bessie and Deleah fought against the humouring of these out-of-season customers. Often they attempted to hold their tired mother forcibly in her chair when she would arise to go to them. "Let people get their goods at regulation hours, or refuse to serve them," said the Manchester man, now an inmate of the Day household. But when the grievance was put before George Boult he was of a different opinion.

"Refuse to serve them over-night, and they go somewhere else in the morning," he a.s.serted. "The maxim I have held by all my life is, 'Business is Never Done.' And you may take my word for it, ma'am, _successful_ business never is done. Write that out on a card, Miss Bessie, and hang it over your mantelpiece."

"No, thank you," from a scornful Bessie with an averted head. "As it happens I don't at all agree with you, Mr. Boult."

So poor Mrs. Day, who did not grumble, but who nevertheless knew herself to be a martyr, would rise from her delicious rest in her chair over the fire, accompanied by Deleah to hold the candle, would descend to the cellar to cut the cheese--both the women were terrified of the cellar, the unilluminated caves and corners, the beetles, the rats. In the shop again, they would take down one of the monster green canisters, purchased of the retiring Jonas Carr for the purpose of striking awe into the bosoms of customers, but a few of which did, of a truth, hold tea, and select the special mixture to the taste of the laggard customer. It was an aggravation of the hards.h.i.+p when, in place of the maid, the mistress would run in. In that case Mrs. Day must stand for a half hour to listen to talk of the neighbour's children's colds, the neighbour's servant's delinquencies, the neighbour's husband's shortcomings.

Bessie was always cross with her mother when she returned. "It makes everything so uncomfortable and spoils the evening," she complained. "The only time we have for comfort, mama. You might remember!"

As the Christmas season approached Mr. Boult was inspired with an idea which was productive of good commercial results, but was the cause of added extreme discomfort to them all. Mrs. Day, he ordained, was not only to advertise home-made mincemeat, but to make the mincemeat at home, and of a quality not procurable in shops. The housewives of Brockenham made their own mincemeat because the article on the market was not palatable, the tyrant of the family declared. Every one of them would be glad to be saved trouble. Then, let Mrs. Day, for whom he had procured an excellent receipt, make it for them. The sale would be enormous.

So they advertised the precious stuff from the beginning of December; and from a fortnight before this time to the end of the second week in January, the little family worked at stoning raisins (there were no machines to make the task easy then), chopping almonds and suet and apples and orange peel, late into the night, and sometimes on into the early hours of the morning.

For the sale, as predicted, was great. It taxed the powers of the women to their utmost to keep up the supply. Orders poured in, orders were repeated; customers called to a.s.sure Mrs. Day that while she lived to do it for them they would never be bothered to make the stuff again. Others came with the intention to wheedle the receipt from the shop-woman. Such was the unbusiness-like disposition of the poor creature, she would at once have surrendered it, had the prescription been hers to give. But George Boult, knowing with whom he had to deal, had laid an embargo on the property.

It was during the stress of that first Christmas in Bridge Street that the relations between the Days and their boarder, the Manchester man, hitherto somewhat strained and distant, became easy and familiar.

Beside the comfortable chair in the chimney corner which had been apportioned him, a small table was drawn up which held, always ready to his use, his tobacco jar, his pipe, his book, his papers. To this, the evening meal which he shared with the family over, he would retire, preferring silence and, generally pretended, absorption in his book to the obtrusion of his conversation on the widow and her daughters. But in the hara.s.sment of the time of mincemeat the lodger's shyness evaporated or his reserve broke down. He could not see women, dropping with sleep and weariness, working themselves half to death over their hated tasks while he sat at ease with his pipe and his newspaper.

"Why should you ladies spend your evenings in the kitchen?" he asked. "It is comfortabler in here. Chop your plums and grate your nutmegs and things here. You won't disturb me."

Bessie at once demurred. "We will keep our sitting-room, at least, free of the shop, thank you," she said.

"If Mr. Gibbon doesn't like being in here alone, mayn't he bring his pipe and see us chop in the kitchen," Franky suggested.

The lodger had become possessed of a pistol, bought second-hand, with a view to practise on the stray cats who made a happy meeting-place of the Days' back yard. But, one of the girls proving tender-hearted on the subject of cats, bottles were subst.i.tuted, Franky being admitted to the perfect joy of seeing Mr. Gibbon try to hit them from his bedroom window.

An honour and privilege highly appreciated by the child.

Mr. Gibbon would not bring his pipe, but presently he appeared among them, and drew up a chair to the table between Bessie and Deleah, and proceeded quite cleverly to cut up the orange and lemon peel, a task allotted him by Deleah.

"It is quite the nicest and least messy of all the things," she told him.

Deleah was careful at all times to show little special politeness to their boarder. She had it on her mind that he lived among them, lonely and apart, and often anxiously she pondered in her own mind the question did poor Mr. Gibbon get his money's worth?

"Deleah always chops the candied peel herself," Bessie explained. "She eats it, and feeds Franky on it. Mama, I should think Deda will soon take all the profit off your mincemeat if she eats the citron peel."

"Don't eat the citron peel, my dear," mama dutifully admonished the pretty younger daughter.

"Only the tiniest little bit, mama. Kind of hard bits that you can't cut up. Bessie can take my place, and I can grate the nutmegs if she likes."

"But last night, Miss Deleah grated her thumb as well. We can't have any of your thumbs, Miss Deleah, in the mincemeat."

It was Emily who made that observation. Emily who had gone into the family nineteen years ago as nurse to the eldest child. She had stuck by them in their reverse of fortune--indeed it had never entered either her mind or theirs, so completely had the long service made her one of them, that she could do anything else--and she now occupied the position of "general" in the upstairs kitchen of Bridge Street. She was chopping suet at the present moment, standing apart, at a side table, because Bessie had declared that to see the suet cut made her feel ill.

"Miss Bessie's more nice than wise," Emily commented; but she removed her material from the young lady's vicinity.

"I'm glad to know that I'm nice, at any rate," Bessie said, with her head on one side. "So long as I'm nice, Emily--?"

"Oh there's more than me in the world that think you that, I suppose, Miss Bessie."

"I don't know, I'm sure," Miss Bessie languidly murmured. "I only know I'm very tired."

"Give up for to-night then, dear, and go to bed."