The Red Derelict Part 19

"What! You heard that?" cried Yvonne, astonished. "You _are_ able to hear far."

"Ay; and able to see far too. Would you like to know what I can see for you, my sweet young lady?" she went on, dropping into the wheedling whine of the professional fortune-teller.

"It would be fun to have my fortune told," said the girl rather wistfully.

"Yvonne, I'm surprised at you," said Wagram, with somewhat of an approach to sternness. "Don't you know that all that sort of thing is forbidden, child, and very wisely so, too?"

"I know; but I don't mean seriously--only just for the fun of the thing."

"No--no. Not 'only just for' anything; it's not to be thought of."

"It's 'ard to live," whined the woman, "and me that's tramped without bite or sup since yesterday. And I'm that 'ungry!"

She certainly looked her words. Wagram softened in a moment.

"Here," he said; "and now take my advice and get on your way. We don't want any fortune-tellers round here."

The tramp spat gleefully--for luck--on the half-crown which lay in her surprised palm.

"Thankee, sir, and good luck to you, sir, and to the sweet young lady.

I'll move on, never fear. You're a genelman, you are."

"What are you up to, Wagram?" said Haldane, joining them. "Encouraging vagrancy--as usual? Good line that for a county magistrate."

"Oh, I can't see those poor devils looking so woebegone and turn them away. The principle's quite wrong, I know, but--there it is."

"Quite wrong. They're generally lying."

"More than likely. Still, there it is."

He was thinking of his meditations as he had ridden over--of the contrast between his life now and formerly, of the intense joy of possession, which he hoped did not come within the definition of "the pride of life." Of the ragged tramp he had just relieved he had no further thought. Yet it might be that even she would cross his path again. It might be, too, when that befell, little enough of "the pride of life" would then be his.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MORE SIEGE HOUSE AMENITIES.

In conjecturing that Delia Calmour's honourable renunciation was probably made at the cost of her peace at home the Squire proved himself a true prophet, for the poor girl's life became anything but a bed of roses. When he heard that she had irrevocably carried out her intention old Calmour grew savage, first abusing her in the most scandalous manner, and, being half drunk, fell to whining about the ingrat.i.tude of children, deliberately allowing their parents to starve in their old age for the sake of gratifying a selfish whim. Then he got wholly drunk, so violently, indeed, that even Clytie, the resolute, the level-headed, found it all that she could do to keep her nerve, while the intrepid Bob promptly skulked off out of harm's way.

The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance.

He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace, and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous.

Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.

Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way were the occasion to come over again--were it to come over again a hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father's alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for Clytie and--one other consideration.

Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round, declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then Delia had rounded on her.

"Don't talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I'm not going to play any cards at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us--_us_, mind," she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly wrangling and swearing--the former, as usual, half drunk.

"Pooh! that wouldn't count," was the equable reply. "You don't suppose you'd have that hamper lumbering around once you'd won the game, do you?

I'd take care of that."

"Well, I shall go; he's always telling me to."

"No, you won't. Let him tell--and go on telling. I can do some telling too, if it comes to that--telling him that if you go I go too, and we know well enough how he'd take that. No; you stop and face it out.

You'll be jolly glad you did one of these days."

Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Ba.s.singham and its neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.

"I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to pieces," she sobbed. "I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that day."

"But you should not wish that, my dear child," mocked Bob, who, pa.s.sing the door, had overheard. "You should not wish that. It's very wicked, as your Papist friends would say." Then he took himself off with a yahooing laugh.

Now, it befell that on the following morning, while moving her post-card alb.u.ms, Delia dropped several loose cards. Upon these pounced Bob, with no intention of picking them up for her, we may be sure, possibly in the hope of causing her some pa.s.sing annoyance by scattering them still more; but hardly had he bent down with that amiable object than he started back, as though he had been about to pick up a snake unawares.

"What--why? Who the deuce is that?" he cried. One of the cards was lying with the picture face upwards. This he now picked up. "Who is it?" he stammered, staring wildly at it. "Don't you recognise it, or does it bring back painful recollections?" retorted Delia as she watched him blankly gaping at the portrait card which Yvonne had given her. For upon her a new light had dawned. "Don't you? You should have good reason to," she went on mercilessly, her eyes full upon his face.

"Isn't it Miss Haldane? You know--and I know--who it was that insulted her on the Swanton road one day, but Mr Haldane doesn't know--_as yet_."

Bob's face had gone white.

"Hang it all, Delia," he gasped, "you wouldn't give your own brother away, surely?"

"My own brother has just given himself away," was the sneering reply.

"Brother! Yes. You have been very brotherly to me of late, haven't you--trying to drive me from the house, and making all sorts of perfectly scandalous insinuations! Very brotherly? Eh?"

"Oh, well, perhaps I said a good deal more than I meant," grumbled Bob shamefacedly.

"And you'd have gone on doing the same if it hadn't been for finding that card," she pursued, not in the least deceived by an apology extorted through sheer scare. "Well, please yourself as to whether you do so or not, now."

Thus the abominable Bob's turn had come, and so far as he was concerned Delia was henceforward left in peace. Bob, then, being reduced Clytie judged the time ripe for reducing her father also.

"See here, dad," she began one day when the old man was grumbling at his eldest daughter, and suggesting for the twentieth time that she had better clear out and do something for herself, "don't you think we have had about enough nagging over that cheque business?--because if you don't, I do."

"Oh, you do, do you, Miss Hoity Toity?"

"Rather. And I move that we have no more of it--that the matter be allowed to drop, as they say in the House."

"What the devil d'you mean, you impudent baggage?" snarled her father.

"What the devil I say--no more--no less," was the imperturbable reply.

"Two or three times a day you tell Delia to clear, and we're tired of it."

"Are you?" he returned, coldly sarcastic. "Well, I wonder she requires so much telling."

"Well, you needn't tell her any more--it's waste of trouble. She isn't going to clear, not until she wants to, anyway; except on these terms-- if she clears I clear too. How's that?"

Thereupon old Calmour went into a petulant kind of rage, and choked and spluttered, and swore that he'd be master in his own house, that they were a pair of impudent, ungrateful baggages, that they might both go to the devil for all he cared, and the sooner they got there the better.

Unfortunately, however, he rather neutralised the effect of his peroration by tailing off into the maudlin, and allusions to the wickedness and ingrat.i.tude of children who thought nothing of deserting their only parent in his old age, and so forth--to all of which Clytie listened with unruffled composure.

"All right, dad," she rejoined cheerfully. "Now you've blown off steam and are more comfortable again let's say no more about it. What has been done can't be undone, that's certain; in fact, I've an instinct that it may have been all for the best after all, so let's all be jolly together again as before. I've got a lot more orders for typing--in fact, almost more than I can do--and if they go on at this rate I shall have to get another machine, and take Delia into partners.h.i.+p--she has an idea of working it already."