The Attractive Bessie

Having been permitted to take his place among them, and to chop material for mincemeat at their kitchen table, it was felt by them all that their boarder could never be a stranger to the widow and her children again. Through pride and through shyness they had held him at arm's length, but now that they had joked together about George Boult's peculiarities, and he had ventured with playful force to take the nutmeg grater from Bessie's weary fingers, valiantly completing her task himself, it would have been impossible, even if desirable, to return to their earlier relations.

Bessie, who had treated him with a carefully masked hauteur in the beginning, was among the first to place him on terms of easy familiarity. She had strongly resented the inclusion of a stranger in their family circle, and presently was welcoming his presence there as supplying the one item of interest in the mÉnage.

"A year ago, mama, we should not have admitted Mr. Boult's Manchester man to the same table with us. And now, here we are keeping his plates hot, if he comes in late, and telling him all our secrets."

"Mama and I don't tell Mr. Gibbon any secrets," Deleah said.

"I dare say Mr. Gibbon does not want to hear them. As for me I find, when you live in the same house with a man, it's impossible to keep him at arm's length."

"Who wants to keep him at arm's length? I only mentioned I did not feel called upon to tell him any secrets."

"And I only said he wouldn't care to hear your secrets—if you have any."

"I haven't," Deleah admitted, laughing.

"I have, then. And I shall tell them to who I like, spite of Deda's pertness, mama."

"Say to 'whom you like,' Bessie."

"Mama, will you speak to Deleah? She is being impertinent to me again."

How impossible it would have been to entertain Reggie Forcus and Mr. Gibbon at the same board, Bessie often felt. But the days when Reggie had dropped in to meals with the prosperous Days in Queen Anne Street were over for ever. Half a loaf was better than no bread. To know that a male creature, who could not be indifferent to her, was an inmate of the house was as she often said to herself—something.

She took no interest in him, of course. A young man out of a draper's shop! But it was more amusing to subjugate even such an one as he than to have no one at her feet.

So, at the hour when Boult's great shutters went up over the front of the six shops in Market Street, and the Manchester man was free to go to his evening meal, Bessie took an extreme care to be ready to receive him. She had allowed herself to become a little slovenly over her appearance in the day-time—who was there to look at her, or care what she wore in the sitting-room over the shop? But by supper-time she would have changed into her most becoming frock, would have arranged her hair to the greatest advantage, would have rubbed with a rough towel, or beaten with a hair-brush the plump, fair cheeks she considered too pale.

There was always an irregularity about the meals in the Day family. The shopkeeper was often kept below for an hour after the time she should have been seated at the board above, and when she was detained in such a way, Deleah would always stay too, to help her mother. But Bessie had ordained that the meal should go on without them. It was not right that a man, at work all day, should be kept waiting for his food at night. And so it often happened that he and she would sit, tÊte-À-tÊte, over the cold meat and pickles, of which, with the addition of bottled beer for the boarder, the meal consisted.

Many intimate items of her own heart history did Bessie confide to the politely attentive ear of Mr. Charles Gibbon. She did not receive confidences in return, or ask for them. What could the young shopman have to relate to compare with the interest attending Bessie's revelations?

He was no prince in disguise as it would have been so pleasant to discover him to be—this short, thickly-made, middle-aged man, with the prominent, bright, dark eyes, the large dark head, the knobbly red forehead, whose parents had kept a small draper's shop in a small market-town in the county.

What could a man so born and nurtured have to give Bessie in return for the stories of the high life to which she had been accustomed? But he must consider himself flattered by Bessie's condescension, he must see how attractive she looked seated beneath the three-branched bronze gas-burner to preside at his supper.

Emily, bringing in the hot sweet pudding to replace the cold meat, would wag a facetiously warning head at the young lady behind the back of the unconscious Mr. Gibbon. "Don't you go leading that nice young chap on to make a fool of hisself over you, Miss Bessie," she would caution the girl, the next day.

"He can take care of himself. Make your mind quite easy," Bessie would answer, well pleased. She loved to discuss such topics with her devoted admirer, Emily, and liked to be accused of breaking hearts.

"We shall be late for supper again," Mrs. Day, busy with daybook and ledger in the shop, would say to the young daughter beside her.

"Never mind, mama. Perhaps it is charity not to hurry," Deleah on one occasion responded.

"Oh, nonsense, dear!" said Mrs. Day, looking up with alarm in her tired eyes.

"Well, if Mr. Gibbon is in love with Bessie?"

"'If,' indeed!"

"That will be the end of it. You'll see."

"The end indeed, Deleah!"

"You think Bessie would not take him?"

"Bessie will, at least, wait till he asks her."

"But should you object, mama? He is not a gentleman, I suppose; Bessie says he's not. But I think we've got to accept things and people and our place, as we are; not always to be looking back to what used to be. I often wish Bessie would see it like that, mama."

"We should be all happier if we could, I have no doubt," poor Mrs. Day sighed. The poor lady could not always keep before her mind the fate of Lot's wife, and often cast longing eyes towards the pleasant, easeful land that had been home.

"And I am not always inclined to take Bessie's opinion as to what is a lady or what is a gentleman."

"Bessie does not think so much as you do, Deleah."

"I don't know that I think: I feel," Deleah explained.

While she waited for her mother to finish her books she was weighing out and making up into half-ounce packets the tobacco Lydia Day was licensed to sell. She dropped her voice to a more confidential tone, although she and her mother were alone in the shop, where they were doing their evening's work by the aid of the one melancholy gas-burner, to which they restricted themselves after business hours. It gave insufficient light for the low-ceilinged, narrow length of the place.

"Do you think, mama, Bessie ought to be always saying horrid things about Mr. Boult? Making fun of him, mimicking him, complaining of everything he does; not only to you and me, but to Mr. Gibbon? to Emily—to any one who will listen? Do you think a lady—what you and I think a lady, not what Bessie thinks—would do that?"

"Bessie is sensitive—and very proud. We must not forget that—poor
Bessie! And Mr. Boult's methods are not always pleasant, Deleah."

"No. But he has been our friend. He has stuck to us. Who else has, of all the people with whom we were friendly? And we were never nice to him, in the old days—not asking him to our parties, you remember, and never being friendly to him on Sunday afternoons. Oh, how I wish we had been, mama!"

Mrs. Day acquiesced, but not with enthusiasm. She did not like George Boult well enough to regret having kept him at arm's length while she could.

"I am sure we ought to be grateful to him," Mrs. Day admitted. She was very tired; the scent of the tobacco Deleah was pulling about, staining the tips of her small white fingers, was in her nostrils; she did not feel especially grateful.

"Then, when Bessie is laying down the law about what a lady should do I wish you would remind her, mama, that a lady must show gratitude for kindness."

"And why, my dear, are you suddenly fighting the battles of poor Mr.
Boult?"

"That is a secret," Deleah said. "But one day, if you are good, I will tell you."

The sitting-room, with supper nicely laid, with Bessie nicely dressed, fair and plump and attractive in the gas light, happily chatting to Mr. Gibbon, looked a Paradise of Rest in the eyes of poor wearied Mrs. Day. The room was in fact a very pleasant one; long, low, with broad seats before each of the three windows looking into the street; with a tall and narrow oak mantelpiece opposite the three windows; with panelled oak walls, heavy oak rafters, supporting the low ceiling, old brass finger plates high up on the oaken door—all as in the days when old Jonas Carr's grandfather first kept shop in Bridge Street. It was made sweet with flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom, were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as small as possible a space in order not to incommode the primulas, a brass birdcage holding a canary was hung.

Bessie was carrying on an animated but evidently confidential conversation with the boarder, as mother and daughter came into the room.

"He was riding past again to-day," she was saying. "I took care that he should not have the pleasure of thinking I was looking out for him; but peeping behind the curtains I could see him gazing up at the window. What consolation the poor thing finds in just looking at a window I'm sure I don't know."

"He sees you there, Miss Bessie. Or hopes to see you."

"You can't see me from the street."

"From the opposite pavement you can. I know, because I have seen Miss
Deleah sitting there; with her book, and the bird, and the flowers."

Bessie's attention was caught by that piece of intelligence. "Can you? Are you sure?" she asked; and at that moment, unpropitious for her, Deleah appeared with her mother.

"Mama! When Deda sits on the window-seat in the corner she can be seen from the street!"

"Well, my dear?"

"Well, mama! You don't wish Deda to make herself conspicuous, I suppose?"

"Who says I make myself conspicuous?" an ireful Deleah demands. "Who has been saying anything about me?"

"I," the Manchester man hurriedly admits. "I did not say you were conspicuous, Miss Deleah. I only said I had seen you sitting there with your book—among the flowers."

"She is not to sit there again, mama. Will you please say so? Deda, you are not to sit in the window again. We can't help living above a grocer's shop, but we need not make a display of ourselves."

"If it offends Mr. Gibbon he does not need to look at the window. I shall certainly sit there if I wish."

"Come, come, my dears. There is enough about it. Pray let us have supper in peace."

"You've had a tiring day, ma'am," says Mr. Gibbon. "Let me persuade you to have a glass of ale with your beef, to-night. Just to revive you. Forcus's Family Ale is the finest pick-me-up."

"Reggie Forcus has ridden past three times this afternoon, mama," Bessie informed her parent. Then turned sharply on her sister, "You were at school, miss."

"I met him as I came away," said Deleah, seating herself at the table. "I wish the pleasure had been yours instead of mine, Bessie."

"Did he stop to speak?"

"Of course he stopped. He always stops."

"Well?"

"He asked for you."

"He always does, I suppose?"

"Always."

"There!" said Bessie on the note of triumph, looking round.

"There!" echoed Deleah as she helped herself to the mustard Mr. Gibbon was offering her.

"Mama, do you hear Deda? She is not to mock me."

"Bread, Miss Deleah? Pickles, Mrs. Day?" hastily interposes an obsequious Mr. Gibbon. He was assiduous in his attentions on the ladies, ever anxiously polite and kind. That he found his happiness among them and was eager to gain and to retain their favour he plainly showed. If he sometimes jarred on their fastidiousness he did not know it.

"Any interesting incident in the day's trade, ma'am?" he asked, as he busied himself in supplying their wants.

Nothing much. The Quaker lady had been again for sugar. Again Mrs. Day had unconditionally pledged herself that the canes from which it had been derived had not been grown by slaves.

"And have they?" Deleah asked.

"I'm sure, my dear, I don't know if they have or they haven't," a harassed grocer-woman acknowledged. Her conscience was becoming blunted in the stress and strain of business life. "She took a pound of it as usual, and that's all I can say about it."

"But, mama! For the sake of the profit on a pound of sugar!"

"There's no profit on it at all, Bessie. If she had taken a quarter of a pound of tea with it there would have been three-ha'pence into our pockets. But she did not. So you see I perjured myself for nothing."

"Don't let the thought trouble you for an instant, ma'am," Mr. Gibbon advised. "None of us can afford to be too nice in trade. We've got to live, Miss Bessie. Customers don't think so—they'd skin us if they could—but we have. I'm of Mr. Boult's mind on that subject, although there isn't much I uphold him in. 'Let us do our best for the public while it pays reasonable prices,' he says, 'and when it won't, let us do the public.'"

"All that is so low, Mr. Gibbon."

"But it's business, Miss Bessie. Business is low."

"Oh, don't let us talk about it now," Deleah pleads.

"Deleah has a secret. She's dying to tell us all," Deleah's mother said.

"It's something Deleah's been up to!"

"No, Bess. Calm yourself. Calm all yourselves."

"But how can we? Out with it, darling."

"It's nothing, mama."

"Nothing?"

"Only an idea of mine."

"Something you've been and made up, Deda!"

"Something I'm as sure of, Bessie, as I am that you're always dying to find fault with me. Thank you, Mr. Gibbon, I've got three pieces of bread already, look!"

"You've handed Deleah bread three times in as many minutes, Mr. Gibbon."

"Hand the bread only to Bessie, Mr. Gibbon. (Mama, I must answer sometimes.")

"We're waiting for the secret, dear."

"It's about our mysterious presents, mama. Mr. Gibbon, you have heard us talk about our unknown benefactor who loads us with delightful things, and yet is so ungenerous he won't give us the pleasure of saying 'thank you.'"

Yes. Mr. Gibbon had heard that there was some one who sometimes sent Miss
Deleah flowers.

"They're always sent to Deleah—but I suppose they're meant for all of us," Bessie said.

"And because they came in my name only, gave me the first clue," Deleah said. "Let me see, we began with violets, didn't we? And in January, when they were scarce and expensive. Lovely bunches of violets 'for Miss Deleah.' Miss Deleah's name done in printing characters, so that no one should discover by the handwriting. Then we went on to a basket of sweets—sweets of my very most particular kind, such as none of us can afford any longer to look at. Oh, my mouth waters to think of them even now! No, I didn't ask for any more water in my glass, thank you, Mr. Gibbon."

"We all know what you had, Deleah; we thought we were going to hear who sent them."

"Patience! Patience, good people all! Let me see, what came next? Oh, the bird in the cage. And there he is still in his cage for you all to see," and Deleah leant back in her chair, and threw her pretty head over her shoulder to look at the canary hanging above the left-hand window where was her favourite seat. "Then the azalea. The lovely rose-pink azalea; and after that—oh, I forget. But always something coming—something that we cannot afford to buy, but which has made our sitting-room delightful; and horrid Bridge Street a bearable place to live in. Now you have all been dying to find out who it is that has given us these delightful things; but I have always known; and at last I am going to tell you."

"Then, if you knew you should have told us. Deda ought not to have been so sly about it, mama, if she knew."

"We shall each have one guess; and Bessie, as a reward for her good-nature, shall have the first. Now, Bessie?"

"I've known all along, too, miss. And what's more, I've known that although they were sent to you, they were meant for me. Reggie Forcus."

"Wrong. Here is Emily with the pudding. Emily, you shall have a guess; who is it who sends the flowers, and the books and the birds in the cages—?"

"One of the masters at the school that has fell in love with you, Miss Deleah." Emily gave her opinion without hesitation, going on with her business of changing the plates.

"Wrong again, Mr. Gibbon? Now, I give you a tip. Think of the least likely person in all the world."

"The Quaker lady who objects to slave-grown sugar."

Deleah laughed as she shook her head. "That is most ingenious. And would be delightful; but it is wrong. Now, mama. The least likely person in all the world, remember."

"Mr. George Boult."

"Mama has it. It is Mr. Boult."

"Oh, my dear child, I hope not!"

"Scrooge?" cried Bessie. "Never!" Bessie herself had bestowed the name of Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate.

"It is Scrooge;—a converted Scrooge; and I, I suppose, am Tiny Tim. And he has heaped benefits on me, mama; meaning thereby to benefit the family."

"Oh, my dear, it can't be! I am sure you are wrong, Deleah. Mr. Gibbon, do say she is wrong. It can't possibly be Mr. Boult."

Mr. Gibbon only threw back his head and loudly laughed.

Deleah was a little hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule. She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to her mother.

"Why do you think it impossible, mama? Because Mr. Boult can't say agreeable things is no reason he cannot do them. Don't you know that there are poor shut-up souls who want to be nice, who long to be loved—who have to speak in the dumb language because they can't articulate?"

"Miss Deleah is right. That is so. That is so!" Mr. Gibbon eagerly affirmed.

"Well, then, Mr. Boult isn't blessed with a tongue to say smooth things; but the bird in the cage, the basket of sweets, the rose-pink azalea—they are his kind and polite speeches."

"My dear, what nonsense!" cried Mrs. Day, who did not wish to believe in
Mr. Boult as the author of such agreeable attentions.

But the Manchester man assented with enthusiasm: "Miss Deleah is right, ma'am," he said. "A man who could not get at Miss Deleah to say things to her might try to say them so."

"And you think Mr. Boult wants to say things to Deleah?" a scornful Bessie demanded.

"No, I don't, since you ask me. No, Miss Bessie."

"I should think not! And why, pray, should he have pitched on Deda?"

"Oh, why should any one pitch on me?" Deleah asks, lays down knife and fork, spreads hands abroad, as if inviting with exaggerated humility an inspection of her poor claims to favouritism.

"But—if it were Mr. Boult I think I can understand why it might be Deleah," Mrs. Day said slowly, looking down. She was remembering how her poor husband had made no secret of the fact that the younger girl was his pet; and she recalled also that for her father's sake it was Deleah who treated the arrogant, tyrannical man with unfailing respect and courtesy.

"Yes. And I can understand it too, mama," Deleah softly said.

"Well, them that live'll see," Emily remarked sententiously as she removed the remains of the sago pudding.