Secret Bread Part 11

"Why, I shall make him bring his school friends down, of course. They're all gentlemen. And then I shall make them fall in love with me."

"But won't they be a lot younger than you, Va.s.sie? You're three years older'n Ishmael."

"Some of 'em may be older than him, mayn't they? And one thing leads to another. We might both get asked to stay with their folks. Besides--I don't know that I should mind a man younger than me. I'd know more what to do with him. I've always found boys easier. Men are so funny--as if they were always keeping something to themselves. I don't like that."

She looked indeed as though she might demand and take all she could get--a girl greedy of life and the good things in it, or the things that to her seemed good. She swooped down beside the little creature on the bed and flung an arm round her. The younger girl's personality seemed to be drowned in the bright effulgence of the elder as her slight form in the swelling folds of blue taffeta skirt that overflowed her.

"What about Mr. Tonkin?" ventured Phoebe; "he'd have you fast enough.

And he's almost as good as a clergyman, though of course not as good as an officer...."

"Old Tonkin, indeed!" cried Va.s.sie indignantly. "I wouldn't touch him if he was the only man alive. Why, mother's actually jealous of the way he tries to come patting and pawing me.... She can have him--if she can get him. Horrid, pale, fat old man!" She shook the thought of him from off her, and ran on: "And when I'm a la--I mean when I'm married, I'll see what I can do for you, Phoebe. You're too soft ever to do any good for yourself. As like as not you'd take any clumsy lout that offered, simply because you wouldn't know how to say 'No.'"

Phoebe said nothing, but a bright colour ran up over her pale skin and her soft mouth set in a little obstinate line. The whole expression of her face altered when she set her lips so that they covered the two front teeth that at once made her face irregular and gave it individuality. She lost her exquisite softness and became a little stupid, for it made the lower part of her face too brief--what Va.s.sie called "b.u.t.toned up." Phoebe was not actually pretty, but she was very alluring to men, or would be, simply because everything about her was feminine--not womanly, but feminine. Her mouse-brown hair, straight and soft and fine, refused to fall into the heavy polished curtains that were the mode, and which made of Va.s.sie's two waves of rich bra.s.s, bright and hard-edged as metal. Phoebe's eyes were brown, not of the opaque variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee's body. The girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke. Her nose was an indeterminate snub, her chin delightfully round but retreating, falling away from a mouth like a baby's--so fine in texture, so petal soft, so utterly helpless-looking, with its glint of two small square teeth. Only when she looked obstinate and closed her mouth the charm went out of her face as though wiped off like a tangible thing. She looked almost sullen now, but Va.s.sie, heedless of her, jumped up and, pirouetting round to show herself off once more and to give herself that feeling of mental poise for which physical well-being is needful, made for the door. A swish, a flutter, a bang, and she was gone.

Left alone, Phoebe sat a moment longer, then rolled over on the bed with a kitten-like motion and, stretching her arms above her head, lay taut for a second, then relaxed suddenly. Head tucked in the pillow, she apparently was lost in thought, for her brown eyes, slightly narrowed, stared vacantly at the frilling of the pillow-slip. Then she gave a soft little sound that had it not been so pretty would have been a giggle, wriggled round, and slipped off the bed. She ran to the mirror and began to take down her tumbled hair. As she raised her arms her round breast swelled like a bird's when it lifts its head; her bright eyes and pursed mouth, full of hairpins, were bird-like too. She was perpetually, to the seeing eye, suggesting comparison with the animal creation; she was bird-like, mouse-like, kitten-like, anything and everything that was soft and small and obviously easy to hurt and crush physically. That was her allure, her most noticeable quality--that she presented unconsciously, but unmistakably, the suggestion that it would be easy to hurt her, easy and sweet.

She made trial of her hair in the fas.h.i.+on the new Princess had started--drawn back _a la chinoise_, with a long rolled curl, known for some reason as a "_repentir_," brought forward to lie over one shoulder.

Then she went to the washstand and took more care than usual over the cleansing of her hands. That done, she deliberated whether or not to put on her grey chip hat with the pink plume that on her arrival she had flung on the bed, where it still lay. She tried herself with it and without, then debated as to whether it looked better to give the impression of being one of the family by appearing bonnetless, or whether, on the other hand, it would not be more interesting to Ishmael if he got the impression of a visitor ... of someone who was not always about the house, who was to be seen outside. She finally decided on the latter. Then she sat down to wait, though the time was bound to be more than an hour, since Va.s.sie and John-James had only now started in to Penzance in the smart new market-cart to meet the eagerly awaited arrival, Ishmael Ruan.

Downstairs Annie too had her deliberations, her changes of mind, her sudden impulses of affection and of resentment, as her ill-regulated brain had always had them. She had not changed much in the years that had brought them past Ishmael's eighteenth birthday. All of worn tissues and faded tints had been hers long before, and except for an increased jerkiness she seemed the same. In attire she had altered, and her black silk dress, with its scallops and trembling fringes, suited ill enough with her badly-arranged hair and work-worn hands.

She sat in the little parlour, which she had been made to take into use by Va.s.sie, who had successfully made it hideous with antimaca.s.sars and vases of artificial flowers. As Annie sat rigidly upright upon a slippery horsehair-covered chair, her eyes wandered vaguely here and there and fell on the alb.u.m in which Va.s.sie had collected all the photographs taken of the family from time to time. Photographs printed on paper were only just beginning to supersede the older daguerreotypes, and a gleam of interest came into Annie's pale blue eyes, for the alb.u.m was still a new toy to her. She remembered that Va.s.sie had only lately finished sticking in the last photographs, and, picking it up, she began turning the pages.

There was Archelaus ... she caught her breath. Her lovely Archelaus as he had appeared before going off to that terrible Crimea, which Annie always thought was so called because it was such a wicked place. The print was not very clear, as it was only a copy made from the original daguerreotype, but what it lacked in definition Annie's memory could supply. Archelaus was standing with one elbow leaning upon a rustic pillar; he wore his uniform and looked like a king. He had splendid side-whiskers, though their yellow hue did not show in the photograph.

Her beautiful Archelaus ... now toiling and moiling in those terrible deserts, those sandy places, of Australia, which was the underside of the world, where black heathen went about mother-naked. By now he had doubtless dug much gold--many, many sovereigns of it--out of the sand, and perhaps some day very soon he would walk in with his pockets full of it; and then who would cut a dash in the country-side, from Land's End up to Truro and beyond it? Her Archelaus. Even in her dreams Annie did not picture Archelaus pouring out his gold upon her or as being anything but of a splendid masculine surliness.

She turned a page and came on John-James--reluctant, bashful, glowering at the camera ... he was the most dutiful of her children, and she pa.s.sed on carelessly and came to Tom. Sleek and s.h.i.+ny in black broadcloth, with the foxy sharpness of his features somehow suggesting the red of his colouring even in the photograph.... He was sitting in a low plush chair with Va.s.sie standing, after the ungallant fas.h.i.+on of the pictures of the period, behind him, one hand on his shoulder. She looked a swelling twenty, though she had only been seventeen when it was taken.

Another turn of the page and Annie saw herself--an unkind vision, at her most set, hard of hair and jaw, with deep eye-sockets. She admired it for the black gown and the lace handkerchief she was holding; but she was interested in it, too, as the true egoist always is in self-portraiture, however unflattering.

She stared at it longer than at any of the others, then, at last turning the page, came on a photograph of Ishmael, sent by him from St. Renny at the Parson's instigation. She stared at the mouth that, with its more generous curves, was yet so like her own, at the square brow that never came from her side of the family, at the narrow chin that in its delicacy seemed to her girlish. As she looked a sudden tremor ran over her. She realised she had been gazing at it as at the picture of a stranger, so altered did he look from when she had last seen him, over two years ago.... For some reason that stuck-up Parson had made every excuse for the boy to spend his holidays elsewhere for over two years.

She had not seen him since before his confirmation, which she looked on vaguely as some sort of civil ceremony like a superior kind of getting apprenticed ... perhaps as being definitely apprenticed to gentility.

She had had Va.s.sie "done" at Plymouth for that reason. This strange boy, this young man, was coming to-day to her house, which was his house ...

coming to upset everything. She stared again, trying to trace the features she remembered after a fas.h.i.+on, but which love had never imprinted on her memory with the only indelible draughtsmans.h.i.+p. She turned backwards swiftly till she came to the beginning of the book, where was another photograph taken from an old daguerreotype. It showed Ishmael as a baby ... his mouth rather wet-looking, helplessly open, not unlike Phoebe's now ... he seemed somehow a pathetic baby. Even Annie was struck by it.

She laid the book on her slippery lap, whence it fell unheeded to the floor, and stared in front of her.... Out of the dim past, almost as dim to her as to an animal, came a memory, the memory of a touch. The touch of a baby's hands feeling about her breast.... Not of Ishmael's in particular--how should she, whose motherhood had been so forced, so blurred a thing, keep one memory of it from another, or any that was not purely animal ...? But it was his picture she had been looking at which had brought the idea of babyhood back to her, and it was with him personally that her mind connected the swift memory that was more a renascence of an actual sensation. She closed her eyes and clutched at the breast that had fallen on flatness. Her children would all go from her except this one who was coming back.... A warmth that was half-animal, and nearly another half-sentimental, rose in her heart, but at least for the moment it was genuine. There was even some vague feeling that she would protect him if the others made it hard for him....

Wheels sounded on the cobbles of the courtyard, and the clatter of hoofs; it meant that John-James and Va.s.sie were back, bringing her son.

She got to her feet and went through the house to the yard door, already recovering a little of poise, which meant artificiality, but still with something of that real glow about her. She knew a moment of dread lest Ishmael should rebuff it. She held out her arms with an uncontrolled gesture, and heard her own voice call his name on an ugly piping note she could not have told was hers.

CHAPTER II

WHAT MEN LIVE BY

Ishmael Ruan, like the rest of his world that day, had been planning ahead in his mind. His first conceptions were blown away from him with his breath at sight of Va.s.sie glowing on the dingy railway platform; she was far the more self-possessed of the two, which was mortifying to a young man who, all the way down in the train, had been telling himself with what tact and kindliness he was going to behave. John-James had seemed so unaltered that his grip of the hand, as casual as though Ishmael were any acquaintance just back from a day's excursion, had been a relief. Remained his mother, for Tom, contrary to what John-James and Va.s.sie had expected, did not look in at Penzance Station to greet Ishmael on his transit, and as to the Parson, he was letting Ishmael alone to find his feet with his family, holding himself as a person to be come to if occasion or affection prompted it later.

The drive was a silent one, as even Va.s.sie felt shy, though she hid it under an affectation of calmness. Ishmael had plenty of time to readjust himself and think of his mother, the determining factor, now Archelaus was away, in his happiness--or so he thought, ignorant in his masculinity of the force and will sheathed in Va.s.sie's velvet sleekness.

His mother ... he had no sentiment at the name; but then neither would he have had if the relation between them had been a happy one. He would then have felt love, but he would always have been of too deadly a clarity for sentiment. He was sorry for his mother with a degree of sympathy rare in one so young, for he had as little of the hardness of youth as might be, and what he had was not of judgment, but feeling. He was at the moment nothing but sorry for his mother, but though that pity would not change to condemnation it might turn to dislike. He too, as Annie was doing in the parlour as she awaited the sound of the wheels that were bearing him nearer her, tried to clutch at memories. He could find a few of fierce kindnesses, but not one of an embrace unqualified by some queer feeling other than simple love, which he had always felt in her. She did not, of course, care twopence for him, he decided. Well, he would not be a hypocrite--he would not bother or embarra.s.s her with the expression of a tenderness neither of them felt; he would be gentle, he would kiss her if she seemed to expect it, but he would talk brightly and naturally of trivial things, he would make the occasion seem as little weighted with portent as possible. There should be nothing of the return of the master, nothing of the odious briskness of the new broom about him at his entry. Time enough after to talk over things.... He could spend the next day with John-James on the farm discussing improvements, alterations. They were very behind the times down here; he had seen farming in Somerset and Devon in his holidays that would make them open their eyes down here. That would all break it to his mother gently. She was getting old too--she must be quite fifty--and old people did not like to have reforms thrust upon them. No, there should be nothing eager, aggressive about him. He remembered stormy, excitable scenes of his childhood and resolved they should see what the self-control of a gentleman was like. Thus Ishmael, with intentions not by any means, not even most largely, selfish. Yet, of all moods, the worst to meet his mother's.

The growing interest of the drive as they neared the north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June suns.h.i.+ne--the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cl.u.s.ter of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away--green pasture, brown arable, pale emerald of the young corn--all his. He saw in folds of the land little copses of ash whose trunks showed pale as ghost-trees; he saw, gleaming here and there through the gorse-bushes, the stream that ran along the bottom of the slope below the cart-track that led to Cloom. He saw the bleak, grey homesteads, cottages and small farms, set here and there, as he turned in his seat to look around him.

And his heart leapt to the knowledge that all these things were his....

Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened, and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie had magnified it to herself and him, accusing him of throwing her love back in her face when she had offered it, he was wont to reproach himself bitterly. But Annie was so volatile in emotion, except where Archelaus was concerned, that her new flow would, in all likelihood, not have held its course for more than a few weeks at the best. Ishmael knew this, but Annie, by dint of telling herself the contrary, never did. The awkwardness of the actual moment was saved by Phoebe, who had hung in the background waiting for what she thought might be the most telling moment to glide forward, but who, her natural pleasure at sight of her old playmate suddenly overbearing more studied considerations, could contain herself in silence and the shadows no longer.

"Ishmael!" she cried, running forward. "Ishmael!"

She held out her two hands and Va.s.sie thought swiftly: "It's no good, my dear; he's for your betters--he and I ..." and with a worldliness that went far towards bearing out her claims to ladyhood she broke in with:

"You remember little Phoebe, Ishmael--from the mill...."

"Why, of course. You haven't grown much, though you've got your hair done up," said Ishmael, thankful for any diversion from Annie's reproachful arms, which had slid from his neck to hang by her side.

"I'm quite grown-up, though," said Phoebe, dimpling.

"She mean's she's too old for you to kiss, lad," said simple John-James with directness, grinning as he took the mare's bridle to lead her to the stable. Ishmael had not yet the social cleverness to kiss Phoebe at once and without embarra.s.sment or to laugh the suggestion away, but she, who had no social sense at all and never attained any, met the moment perfectly, with a little curtsey and a sidelong look of merriment. "Ah, I remember when Ishmael refused to kiss me, and I cried myself to sleep over it," she said; "'tisn't likely I'm going to let him kiss me now."

"No--did I ...?" asked he; and Va.s.sie gave a shrill laugh.

"To be sure he did and would again," she declared; "he's not thinking of such things. Mamma, is tea ready in the parlour?"

"I fear I forgot about it, Va.s.sie, my dear, but Katie shall get it to wance. Come in here, Ishmael. We do sit here now; simminly we're quality, according to she."

Ishmael followed his mother into the ugly room, which offended his eyes, used as they were to the Parson's taste. An alb.u.m lay on the floor, and he stooped to pick it up, but his mother, quick for all her years and rheumatism, was before him and had thrust it out of his reach.

Tea was a stiff meal; everyone was on company manners. John-James, in from stabling the mare, sat at the edge of a chair; Va.s.sie was too genteel, Phoebe too arch, Annie grim. Ishmael's heart sank with a terrible weight upon it as he thought that these were the people with whom his lot was cast--that he must see them, talk to them, day in, day out, all the round of the seasons.... Va.s.sie's beauty seemed dimmed to him; Phoebe became an annoyance like a musical-box that will not leave off tinkling out the same tune. He bent his head lower as he sat, aware, with a misery of shame, that tears were burning perilously near his eye-lids. Life was sordid, and his position, over which he had not been guiltless of sometimes dreaming as romantic, held nothing but mortification and hatefulness.

The meal dragged on; the daylight without grew glamorous. Conversation flickered and died, and at last Ishmael, pus.h.i.+ng his chair back with a noise that sounded horrible to himself, announced his intention of going to the Vicarage. Annie muttered something about people who could not be content to stay at home even on their first evening....

But he was not allowed to escape alone; Phoebe discovered that it was time she was going back to the mill, and there was no evading an offer to accompany her.

Somehow, away from the others, and out in the open, Phoebe seemed to shed the commonness that had blighted her at that dreadful tea. She still coquetted, but it was with a fresh and dewy coquetry as of some innocent woodland creature that displays its charms as naturally as it breathes. Ishmael found himself pleased instead of irritated when he received her weight as he helped her over the stone steps at each stile--for the only girl he had seen much of in late years had been wont to stretch out a strong hand to guide him.

As they went over the marsh where they had so often played as children they vied with each other in pointing out memorable spots, and the gaiety of the old days mingled with the beauty of the present evening to brighten his spirits. The marsh was all pied with white--pearly white of blowing cotton-gra.s.s; thick, deader white of water-cress in full flower; faint blurred white of thousands of the heath-bedstraw's tiny blossoms.

Phoebe in her white gown sprang onto swaying tussocks and picked plumes of cotton-gra.s.s to trim herself a garden hat, and Ishmael steadied her pa.s.sage.

"Oh, Ishmael, I'm so glad you've come back!" she told him, lifting a glowing face, haloed by the rose-lined hat that had slipped to her shoulders and was only held in place by a pink velvet ribbon which was not softer than the throat it barred.

"It's often dull here," she ran on. "There's not many people I care about going with since I came back from boarding school, and even for those I do go with Va.s.sie spoils it by saying I'm demeaning myself.

She's such a fine lady."

"And aren't you?" asked Ishmael, laughing; "that was my first thought when I saw you, anyway."

"Was it?" She dimpled with pleasure, but added shrewdly: "I'm not one, though. I like getting away from it all and working in the dairy and looking after the tiny calves. I like that best of all, that and my baby chickens. But Va.s.sie's only happy when she's dressed up and paying visits."

"I like your way best," he a.s.sured her, thinking what a jolly little thing she was after all. But Phoebe's mind could not keep its attention on any one theme for more than a minute, and her eyes and thoughts were wandering. Suddenly she gave a little cry.