Sisters Part 15

Mrs Goldsworthy was reconciled to her relations through her illness--the greatest peacemaker in families, save death; and for her sake they made a show of tolerating her husband, after they had given him some bad hours behind her back. But the whole affair was like a blight on Redford, which was never the same place again. Mr Pennycuick had a slight "stroke" on hearing all the bad news at once. It was light enough to be pa.s.sed over and hushed up, but his vigour and faculties declined from that hour with a rapidity that could be marked from day to day. "A changed man," observed his neighbours, one to another. At the same time, they hinted that other things were not as they used to be--that the old man had had losses--that Redford was heavily burdened--that the proud Pennycuicks, already humbled, were likely to experience a further fall. Certainly, the governess was dispensed with, and the das.h.i.+ng four-in-hand withdrawn from the local racecourses and agricultural show-grounds, of which it had long been the constant and conspicuous ornament, to be sold at public auction, without reason given. The great, hospitable house got a character for dullness for the first time in its history. No lights or laughter flowed from the windows of the big drawing-room of an evening; the lawns lay dark and still, while downstairs a rubber of whist or a hand at cribbage with Jim Urquhart or Mr Th.o.r.n.ycroft represented what was left of the gaieties of the past. These men--these old fogies, as fretful Frances styled them both--were not of those who shunned Redford because it had grown dull; on the contrary, they now--according to Frances again--virtually lived there. And it was the absent pleasure-seekers, her true kindred, for whom her soul longed.

He who most openly resented the change, having (next to Mary) been most instrumental in causing it, was Deborah's lover, Claud Dalzell.

He had been none too gracious a lover--although graceful enough, when all was well--seeing that he had continued his bachelor life, with all its social obligations, after as before his engagement, and had allowed this to run to nearly two years, without coming to any effective understanding about the wedding-day; but when, in the thick of her troubles, he descended upon Redford merely to denounce the Goldsworthy marriage as a personal affront, and, as it were, to tax her with it, then her loving indulgence did not suffice to excuse him.

As usual, he went to his room first, to wash and change. He hated to pa.s.s the door of a sitting-room with the dust of travel on him; he could not shake hands with equanimity until he had restored his person and toilet to their normal perfection, which meant more or less the restoring of his nerves and temper to repose. So he appeared on this occasion, fresh and finished to the last degree, the finest gentleman in the world--the very light of Deb's eyes, and the satisfaction of her own fastidious taste--walking in to her where she awaited him, in the morning-room, herself 'groomed' to match, with as much care as she had taken when she had no more serious matter to think of than how to dress to please him.

He met her, apparently, as usual. She, turning to him as to a rock in a weary land, flung herself into his arms with more than her usual self-abandonment.

"Oh, darling!" she breathed, in that delicious voice of hers, "it is good to see you. I have wanted you so badly."

"I am sorry I did not come before," he replied, kissing her gravely.

"Somebody has been wanted to deal with that extraordinary girl."

"Ah, poor girl! Do you know she is very ill with brain fever? Keziah has gone to nurse her. It must have been that coming on. She was out of her mind."

"I should think so--and everybody else too, apparently. What were you all about, Debbie, not to see this Goldsworthy affair going on under your noses?"

"It hasn't been going on. It has been Guthrie Carey--until now."

"I am told"--it was Frances who had told him in the pa.s.sage just now--"that she refused Carey only the day before."

"She did."

"In order to make a runaway match with this parson fellow. The facts speak for themselves."

"Ah!" sighed Deb, turning to the tea-table, "I expect we don't know all the facts."

She meant that he did not know them. He only knew what Frances knew, and providentially they had been able to keep the episode of the dam out of the published story. That was the secret of Mary herself, her husband, her father, and this one sister; and they kept it close, even from Claud Dalzell. "I will tell him some day when we are married," Deb had promised herself; but as things fell out, she never did tell him.

And it was on account of her brother-in-law's part in the suppressed event that she now forbore to call him behind his back what she had not hesitated to call him before his face--that is, failed to show that she fully shared her lover's indignation at the MESALLIANCE, and the scandalous way that it had been brought about.

"But, good heavens!"--Claud took his cup perfunctorily from her hand, and at once set it down--"are more facts necessary? She has made a clandestine marriage with a man whose bishop will turn him out of the church, I hope. They were right, I suppose, in concluding that no one here would consent to it; and what conceivable circ.u.mstances could excuse such an act?"

"Illness," said Deb. "Madness."

"Nonsense! There's too much method in it. It is obviously but the climax of a long intrigue--a course of duplicity that I could never have believed possible in a girl like Mary, although I have always thought HIM cad enough for anything."

"Have your tea," said Deb, a trifle off-hand; "it will be cold."

And she sat down with her own cup, and began to sip it with a leisurely air.

"A clandestine marriage," remarked Claud, ignoring her advice, "logically implies a clandestine engagement. Carey was but a red herring across the trail. And you ought to have known it, Deb."

"Well, I didn't," said she shortly.

He took a turn up and down the room, trying to preserve his wonted well-bred calm. But he was intensely irritated by her att.i.tude.

"I cannot understand you," he complained, with a hard edge to his voice. "I should have thought that you--YOU of all people--would have been wild--as wild as I am."

She exasperated him with a little laugh and a truly cutting sarcasm.

"It is bad form to SHOW that you are wild, you know, even if you feel so."

"I am just wondering whether you feel so. You are not used to hiding your feelings--at any rate, from me. I expected to find you out of your mind almost."

"What's the use? If I raved till doomsday I couldn't alter anything.

The mischief is done. It is no use crying over spilt milk, my dear."

"You look as if you did not want to cry." "Do I?"

"As if it did not much matter to you whether it was spilt or not." "It doesn't matter to me, compared with what it matters to her." "Well, it matters to ME," Claud Dalzell announced, in a high tone, the crust of his fine manners giving to the pressure of the volcano within. "I can't stand the connection, if you can. Carey was bad enough, but he had some claim beside his coat to rank as a gentleman. This crawling a.s.s, who would lick your boots for sixpence, to have him patting me on the back and calling himself my brother--Good G.o.d! it's too sickening."

"Not YOUR brother," Deb gently corrected him.

"He is mine if he is yours." "Oh, not necessarily!"

"Deb," said Claud, with an air of desperation, planting himself before her, "what are you going to do?"

She looked up at him with narrowing eyes and stiffening lips.

"What IS there to do?" she returned. "Are you going to put up with this--this outrage--to condone everything--to tolerate that fellow at Redford, taking the position of a son of the house, or are you going to show them both that they have forfeited their right ever to set foot upon the place again?"

"My sister too, you mean?"

"Certainly--if you can still bring yourself to call her your sister.

She belongs to him now, not to us. She has voluntarily cut herself off from her world. Let her go. Deb, if you love me--"

He paused, and Deb smiled into his handsome but disgusted face.

"Ah, is that to be a test of love?" she asked. "I understand. I am to choose between you. Well"--she rose, towering, drawing the big diamond from her engagement finger--"I am going to her now. I ought to have been there hours ago, but waited back to receive you. Good-bye! And pray, don't come again to this contaminated house. We have too horribly gone down in the world. I know it, and I would not have you compromised on any account. We Pennycuicks, we don't abandon our belongings, especially when they may be dying; we sink or swim together." She held the jewel out to him.

"What rot!" he blurted vulgarly, flus.h.i.+ng with anger that was not unmixed with shame. "Why will you wilfully misunderstand me? Put it on, Deb--put it on, and don't be so childish."

"I will not put it on," said she, "until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them."

"My dear child, I do apologise humbly, if I have said what I shouldn't.

Perhaps I have; but I thought we were past the need for reserves and for weighing words, you and I. And really, Debbie, you know--"

"Hus.h.!.+" She stopped him from further arguing; but she did not stop him from taking her hand and cramming the diamond back into its old place.

"I must go. Father cannot--he is ill himself; and Miss Keene is too frightfully modest to nurse him alone, so that I must send Keziah back, and stay--"

"Can't Miss Keene go and send her back, and stay?"

"Oh, she would be no use in such an illness as Mary's. And I must see for myself how things are--whether they are taking proper care of the poor, unfortunate child--"

"Is she so very ill? I did not know that."

There was commiseration in his tone, but in his heart he hoped that the deservedly sick woman would crown her escapades by dying as quickly as possible. Then, perhaps, he could forgive her.